Against All Odds

Tonight the NBA Finals begin.  For the fourth straight year, the Cleveland Cavaliers will face off against the Golden State Warriors.

If you listen to the pundits, this will be the most uncompetitive, lopsided contest in recent sports history.   You’ll see headlines like “Everybody is counting out LeBron James, Cavs in NBA Finals Again” or “Is Warriors-Cavs IV the biggest mismatch in modern Finals history?”  You’ll read about how the mighty Warriors, with their entire roster filled with All-Star studs like Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, are going to mop the floor with the poor Cavs, who can offer only LeBron James and a gang of unknowns and retreads.  You’ll see statistical analysis of why the Warriors are destined to win, and hear about how the Cavs are in the Finals only because the Eastern Conference of the NBA is like the minor leagues compared to the Western Conference, and see that the Las Vegas oddsmakers have made the Warriors a prohibitive favorite and set a double-digit point spread for the first game.

The only way puzzled commentators think the Cavs might even win a game or two is if the entire Warriors team comes down with the flu, or Draymond Green and a few of his teammates get suspended for multiple games after a crotch-targeting binge that can’t plausibly be viewed as involving “basketball moves.”

Is this the biggest mismatch in sports — say, since the mighty Miami Hurricanes were supposed to wipe the field with the Ohio State Buckeyes in the National Championship game on January 3, 2013?  I guess we’ll just have to see if the know-it-all commentators and talking heads could possibly be wrong, and the Cavs can luck out and scratch out even a single win against the media darlings — which would no doubt happen only with the help of the officials and an overconfident Warriors team that doesn’t bring its “A” game against a feeble opponent.

Sometimes, in sports, the underdog does win, and the conventional wisdom proves to be wrong.  Will it happen this time?  I’ll be watching to find out.  But if the impossible does occur, and David does manage to slay Goliath in 2018, it will be one of the sweetest wins in the history of sports.  Because this time, it truly is Cleveland against the World.

The Rematch Of The Rematch

Tonight the Cleveland Cavaliers square off against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA championship finals.  It’s the first time in NBA history that two teams have played each other for the championship three years in a row, and the ledger stands at 1-1 — with Golden State winning the first year, when two of the three Cleveland stars were out with injuries, and the Cavaliers memorably winning in seven games last year, as LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and their teammates brought the first championship trophy to Cleveland since 1964.

There are more story lines to this series than you can count.  There’s the tiebreaker angle, of course, and the fact that the lineups of the two teams are more studded with NBA All-Stars than any two prior teams that have met in the finals.  There’s the fact that Golden State hasn’t lost a game this post-season, going a perfect 12-0, and are pretty much invincible when Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant are on the floor.  (Cleveland, on the other hand, has lost only one game in its march to the championship series.)  There’s the fact that the gifted Durant joined the Warriors specifically to try to win an NBA championship, and now he gets his chance.  And there’s the weird, post-“off the schneid” vibe of a Cleveland team playing for a championship without the weight of 52 years of futility, bad luck, and bad karma hanging on their shoulders.  A Cleveland team, playing as defending champions?  Who’da thunk it?

The overwhelming consensus seems to be that the Warriors will win handily, just as they’ve done in virtually every other game this season.  In fact, some people are betting that the Warriors will end this post-season 16-0, which has never been done before.  That conventional wisdom is not surprising, because in the last three seasons Golden State has won more regular season games than any team ever has, even though they are playing in the much tougher Western Conference — so they logically should be the favorite.   Of course, the same arguments were made last year, when the Warriors were of course without Durant, and the Cavs ended up winning anyway.

I don’t pretend to have any great insight into how tonight’s game will go, but I’ll be watching for one thing:  can the Cavs keep the game close?  The Warriors blow out so many teams, you just wonder how they will react if the game comes down to the wire and they’re thinking their home-court advantage might be on the line.  I’ll also be interested in seeing what kind of impact Cleveland’s other key contributors — players like Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Kyle Korver, and Channing Frye — have in this game.  If the Cavs hope to win, they need a significant contribution beyond just the James/Irving/Love trio.

Two other points:  First, the NBA playoffs seem to take forever, and there are long layoffs between series, so let’s hope the two teams are not too rusty.  Second, why does the game have to start at 9 p.m. Eastern?  I know it’s out on the west coast, but can’t the NBA have a little regard for the working stiffs among us who’ll need to get up tomorrow morning and get off to work?

An Athlete For The Ages

I never got to see Babe Ruth up at bat in a baseball game, watch Jesse Owens run and jump, or cheer as Jim Brown carried the football on a sweep . . . but I am getting to watch LeBron James play basketball.

Every once in a while, an athlete comes along that is so spectacularly gifted that they break all the records, bust through every preconceived notion, and change their sport and the expectations about it in fundamental ways.  Babe Ruth singlehandedly turned baseball from a bunt and steal, scratch for a run, “small ball” game to one in which home run hitters and big innings were what brought fans to the ballparks.  Jesse Owens set records that lasted for decades and thumbed his nose at Hitler and his racist notions about a “master race” while doing so.  Jim Brown crushed every NFL rushing record then in existence and was such a dominant player, in size, speed, and power, that he is probably one of the few NFL players of his era who actually could have played, and starred, in the modern league.

And, then, there is LeBron James.  He hasn’t had quite the same impact on his sport as Ruth, Owens, and Brown, because he’s working against a much longer history of NBA players — but he’s still steadily moving up the all-time records lists, routinely scoring 30+ points in the playoff games when the challenges are the greatest, and winning, winning, winning, wherever he plays.  He’s probably not going to catch Bill Russell or Michael Jordan when it comes to winning championships, or score the most points every year, but in every game he is the dominant player and, to use Reggie Jackson’s phrase, the “straw that stirs the drink.”

And, speaking as a non-athlete, it’s pretty amazing to watch a barrel-chested, 6-foot-8, 270-pound man who can run like a deer, jump out of the gym, dunk from the free-throw line, shoot three-pointers, and block shots from the cheap seats.  He’s basically unguardable, and he imposes his will on every contest.  Watching LeBron James play is simply an awesome spectacle.

Let’s not engage in petty arguments about whether LeBron James or Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time, or worry about whether LeBron’s team wins the championship every year.  Let’s just savor the fact that we’ve got an athlete for the ages in our midst, and we’re lucky enough to watch him work his magic in real time.

My Heart Is In Cleveland

I’m sitting at a computer here in Columbus, Ohio, but my heart is in Cleveland right now.

If I were physically in Cleveland, I’d be cheering my brains out, and drinking another beer, and buying a round for the bar, and wanting to stay out forever and talk about the game, and my town, and my teams, so the night would never end.

I’d want to think about LeBron James’ clutch block, and Kyrie Irving’s killer shot, and the nails defense that the Cavs played in the last quarter — because those plays had finally pushed The Drive, and The Fumble, and Red Right 88, and the ’97 World Series to the background, where they belong.  Bad thoughts have finally — finally! — been exorcised and replaced by happy ones.  And these are happy thoughts that we will always have.  I’ll never forget it, and I doubt that any true Cleveland sports fan will, either.

The people of Cleveland deserve it.  They really do.  They not only deserved to win, after so many years and so many heart punches, they deserved to win in historic fashion, with the northern Ohio kid who came home, with the first NBA team to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win it, with the impossible three-game winning streak — including two victories on the road — against the best regular-season team ever.  No one will ever forget this NBA finals, and it went to the Cleveland Cavaliers.  LeBron James will never have to buy a drink in Cleveland, for the rest of his life.

When LeBron James fell to his knees and wept after the final buzzer sounded, I knew exactly how he felt.  My emotions were so close to the surface, I’m not sure if I was laughing or crying or cheering.  All I know is that 52 years of frustration was finally coming out, in whatever way it could.

Deep down, I think, I never really thought I would know what it felt like for a Cleveland professional sports team to win a championship.

Now I know.

Game Prep

How often does a team you’re rooting for get to play one game for the championship?  I’m working on getting my game face on.

Go, Cavs!

For The Cavs

I don’t particularly like the NBA.  I don’t like the one-on-one, isolation element of the game.  I think it’s ugly basketball.  I don’t like the calculated refereeing, or the glitzy, strobe light element of the player introductions, or a thousand other aspects of the over-hyped NBA version of basketball.

But, damn it, if the Cleveland Cavaliers don’t win this game and this series there is no justice in the world.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.

What does Cleveland have to do, anyway?  It has lost jobs by the thousands.  It has been humiliated.  It has had its river burn, and become the butt of sorry jokes.  It has had victory snatched from its grasp, and seen bitter disappointment by the score, again, and again, and again.

So, if there is anything fair, and proper, and reasonable in the world — if there are cosmic tumblers ready to click into place — if there is any semblance of balance — LeBron James and his teammates are due.

Damn it!  They are due!  Come on!

-Aire Jordan

The latest Forbes magazine list of billionaires has come out.  Unfortunately, I’m not on it — but Michael Jordan is.  In fact, Forbes determined that Jordan made a mind-boggling $100 million last year to enter the exclusive billionaires’ club.

How did Michael Jordan become a billionaire?  Basically, it’s because he owns a big chunk of an NBA team — his share of the Charlotte Hornets is estimated to have a net value of $500 million — and because he’s got the ultimate brand, even though he’s been retired from the NBA for more than a decade.  Last year he made $100 million from Air Jordan sales.  More than $2.6 billion of his shoes were sold — or more than half of the U.S. basketball shoe market.  Even at Air Jordan prices, that is a lot of shoes.

People often begrudge the wealthy all of the dough they’ve accumulated, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting too upset about Michael Jordan’s wealth.  He was a great player who built a great reputation and then a brand, and he’s made a lot of savvy decisions for himself since he hung up his own Air Jordans.  In an era when many athletes are breaking the law or frittering away their millions on their “posses” or frivolities, Jordan has been smart — and a guide for other athletes who want to end their playing days with money in the bank and future prospects for more.

It would be good for athletes the world over if more of them wanted to Be Like Mike.

The LeBron Effect

The new-look Cleveland Cavaliers open their season tonight, playing at home against the New Your Knicks.  When I was driving home from work tonight, one of the local radio stations announced that it would be carrying the game.

“That’s odd,” I thought.  I don’t think any station carried the Cavs games last year.

And then I remembered:  LeBron is back.

If you ever wondered about the impact of one player on a team, a franchise, and a city, consider the LeBron Effect. When LeBron James announced that he was returning to Cleveland, it energized the city and the Cavaliers franchise, produced huge ticket sales and set the roster dominoes to falling.  Now the Cavs have a changed lineup and a changed attitude — and so do their long-suffering fans.  My friends up in Cleveland say that the Cavs are by far the toughest ticket in town.

With LeBron, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love, the Cavs expect to contend for an NBA championship — which would be the first championship a Cleveland sports team has earned in 50 years.  Those expectations are a heavy burden, but LeBron James is used to the pressure.  It’s all just part of the LeBron Effect.

NFL Overhype Overload

Could the National Football League be any more overhyped than it now is?  It’s got it’s own year-round network.  It’s fodder for talk radio chatter every day, regardless of season.  Even the NFL combine, when prospects just run drills for a collective group of scouts, gets breathless coverage and instant analysis.

But the annual NFL draft always seems to reach new heights of overhype.  After all, it’s just the mechanism by which NFL teams select new players.  It doesn’t involve anyone playing a game, throwing a pass, or making a hit. Once it was done in a day, in a private room in New York City, without any TV coverage. Now it’s a glittering event, stretched out over three days, conducted live on America’s principal sports network in front of reporters and fans, with newly drafted players trotted out in front of the cameras and prominent players waiting to hear their fate made the subject of endless speculation.  Sports commentators talk about the draft and what teams might do for weeks beforehand, experts perform pointless “mock drafts” and those fake drafts get discussed ad nauseum, and the experts and commentators then criticize the selections the teams do make — all before any player even plays a down.  It’s absurd.

If you’re the NBA or the NHL, you’ve got to be shaking your heads.  You’re in the midst of your playoffs — the most important event in your season — and you’re knocked to the back pages and end of broadcast video clips by the NFL’s mere draft.  What could be a better illustration of the NFL’s popularity dominance?

I’ve long since grown sick of hearing about the NFL draft and wouldn’t watch it, and I’ve started to hear other sports fans say the same thing.  Could it possibly be that the NFL hype machine has gone too far, and people are starting to react to the overload?

Dennis And The Dictator

Former NBA player and walking tattoo billboard Dennis Rodman is back in North Korea. This time Rodman is leading a group of former NBA players who will play a basketball game today, apparently to celebrate the birthday of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un.

Rodman says the dictator is a great friend and that he is on a “basketball diplomacy” mission, similar to the trip of the U.S. table tennis team to China that helped to thaw relations between those two countries during the Nixon Administration. (The U.S. says Rodman isn’t representing this country, in case you’re wondering.)

For somebody who professes such aspirations, Rodman is a pretty crappy diplomat. During an interview, he made comments about Kenneth Bae, an American who worked as a tour operator in North Korea, was arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, was sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp, and apparently has suffered significant health problems since then. Rodman was asked whether he would speak to Kim Jong-un about Bae, reacted with anger, and asked the interviewer if he knew why Bae was imprisoned and what he had done in North Korea — comments that Bae’s family and others have interpreted as suggesting that Bae did something wrong and deserves his treatment.

It’s not surprising that Rodman would go back to North Korea. During his NBA days he grew accustomed to celebrity status, after his retirement he went through the mill of professional wrestling and bad reality TV shows, and he continues to crave the spotlight. Now, the only way anyone pays attention to him is when he goes to visit brutal dictators who lead a destitute and starving nation — and he’s apparently willing to pay that price. I wonder, however, why any other self-respecting former NBA players would participate in Rodman’s folly. After all, Kim Jong-un is regarded as so unbalanced that some news media found plausible an apparently satirical claim that he had his uncle torn apart by a pack of 120 dogs. Why would anyone voluntarily travel to a benighted land and put themselves under the complete control of an absolute dictator who clearly does not feel constrained by principles of international law or human decency?

The NBA And Social Media

Richard got a chance to go to one of the NBA championship series games last night, to cover the NBA’s use of social media.

The result is a really interesting article that addresses not only how the NBA deftly uses different social media sites — and decides which sites are best suited to which kinds of stories or photos — but also the enormous popularity of basketball worldwide.  I had no idea that the NBA had millions of followers worldwide, or that so many people use social media to follow the sport.  If you want to get a good idea of how the internet and modern communications have made the world a much smaller, more intimate place, Richard’s article is a good place to start.

And allow me to put in a plug for Richard’s Twitter feed, which not only gives you a first look at his articles but also includes links to other interesting stories and observations.

Does Anyone Care About The NBA Lockout?

Okay, the headline for this posting is a bit of an overstatement.  I’m sure the NBA players care about the NBA lockout, and the owners probably do, too.  And perhaps Charles Barkley does, and so do the businesses located around the arenas where NBA games are played.  But does anyone else, really?

According to news reports, negotiations between the NBA owners and the players are continuing, but the first weeks of the season will be canceled if an agreement isn’t reached soon.  If a strike were going to take away regular season games in the NFL or pro baseball, the outcry would be tremendous.  Everyone would be talking about it and putting pressure on both sides to compromise and get back to playing.  But the NBA?  You can hear the crickets.  I have not heard one non-media person even mention the lockout or the possible effect on the regular season.

This is bad news for the players.  If they are expecting the public to force the owners to settle, they’re dreaming.  There just isn’t that kind of interest in the league.  That means the negotiations will turn into a waiting game, and the players are destined to lose if that happens.  Many NBA players are rich, of course — but they aren’t as rich as the owners.

 

On Public Square, Thinking Of LeBron James

In Cleveland today, passing the majestic Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Public Square, it was hard not to think of . . . LeBron James.  Boy, the people in Cleveland seem to be walking with a spring in their step on this bright, sunny day!  Their hometown hero left them, in a very public, very classless way, and they have happily been rooting against him ever since.  So when the Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat last night, denying LeBron James the NBA championship that he took his talents to South Beach to grasp, the people in Cleveland celebrated.

For one day, at least, the colossal spire of the Cleveland Soldiers and Sailors Monument seemingly was transformed from another Midwestern monument to the sacrifices made during the Civil War into a monumental middle finger to LeBron James, his conceit, his ego, and his lack of basic Midwestern decency.  The good folks of Cleveland aren’t shy about their feelings in this regard.  “Hey, LeBron!” they seem to be saying.  “You want to treat us like crap?  We are only to happy to reciprocate!”

LeBron is still a young man.  Maybe this whole exercise will teach him a valuable lesson in humility.

Da Bullz!

I was in Chicago today for a meeting, and when I got to my destination I saw this sight.  Whoever this bearded, apparently tormented, big-footed fellow is — Poseidon?  One of the Titans?  A weaver outraged by the high cost of cloth? — he at least has the civic spirit and good sense to wear a Chicago Bulls jersey.

People in Chicago are excited about the Bulls, who are playing the Miami Heat in the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals and have a 1-0 lead.  The interest of Chicagoans is to be expected, but I imagine that virtually every other sports fan in the country — including especially those in the Cleveland area — is rooting for the Bulls to beat the Heat.  Who wouldn’t want to bring LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh and the best team that money can buy down a peg?

I don’t follow the NBA or care much for the NBA style of basketball, but I wouldn’t mind seeing da Bullz knock off the South Beach Hustlers.  Maybe then this old guy can take his bath in peace.

The Steady Retreat From Fandom

The other day I realized, with a start, that baseball season is underway.  I haven’t been paying attention, candidly.  The fact that the Tribe is expected to be lousy again this year is probably part of the reason; the fact that the Indians’ roster is largely peopled by players I’ve never heard of also is a contributing factor.  (Seriously, who are these guys?  The Tribe has players named Lou Marson, Vinnie Pestano, and Jack Hannahan, among others.)

The reality, however, is that I’ve been steadily losing interest in sports for a few decades now.  I haven’t watched a boxing match since the 1970s and the heyday of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard.  I don’t follow the Summer or Winter Olympics and don’t really care if the U.S. wins the most medals.  I stopped paying attention to the NBA in the early 1990s, and you really couldn’t pay me to watch an NBA game these days.  In golf, I’m down to maybe checking out parts of the four major tournaments.  I also feel my interest in the NFL and major league baseball ebbing away, to the point where I have only a vague understanding of which teams are doing well and which aren’t.  I still care passionately about college football and college basketball, but that’s about it.

Why is this so?  Part of it has to do with the fact that the Cleveland baseball and football teams that I follow have been putrid lately.  It’s hard to maintain interest when your team is out of the running before the season is even half over.  But the broader issue is that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that being a sports fan — other than with respect to OSU football and basketball, of course — is kind of a waste of time and energy.  I’d rather play golf than watch it.  Taking a walk or reading a book or catching up on the news is preferable to spending hours in front of a TV watching a game.  And sports talk radio is too insipid for my tastes.

For some reason, this trend bothers me.  I actually feel kind of guilty about it.