Waiting for the Sky to Fall #Lebron

Today is one of those days that remind you why you live in Cleveland after the type of winter we just had.  It's right around 70, not a cloud in the sky, just a slight breeze to keep it fresh.

But it's also one of those days that remind you why you live in Cleveland: because we're still waiting on LeBron to make a decision.  It's the second time in 4 years we've gone through this.  LeBron, himself, aside, we've been waiting for a championship for 50 years.  That's what we're really waiting for and the reason it matters so much.

I've followed the Packers my whole life (since the Browns left right when I got into football).  So I know, to a degree, what it means to see your team win a champsionship. It's great for awhile, and it's something you never forget.  But it doesn't really change your life. 

I think though, that it would be different in Cleveland.  Actually, I know it would be.  It's not just that we'd finally have one and we'd get the same experience everyone else does.  It's that we will finally feel like our most visual city representatives are the best at something. 

Cleveland's got a pretty wide inferiority complex, mostly generated by the percieved, real, and ongoing treatment the city recieves from national media.  For the same 50 years we've been waiting on a title, we've fallen from the fatest growing city in the US to one of the smallest metropolitan areas with 3 sports teams.  We went from a top 5 city in the country to not even being the biggest city in our own state. 

Cleveland has fallen a long way.  We're rebuilding.  We've been rebuilding amidst the fall. In two years we'll be at the heart of the heart of the presidential election, hosting the Rupublican National Convention.  There's a lot of good press out there about Cleveland now, and I'm thankful for it. 

But that illusive championship is still out there.  It's like we've been prepping for a coming out party that just keeps getting postponed. 

In so many ways, this LeBron has been a two-week long distillation of 50 years.  Heck, even if LeBron does return, that's not even a guaranteed title. 

But at least it would prove, once more, that Cleveland is more relevant than the rumors would suggest. 

We all know why we love Cleveland.  We might not even all agree on why we love Cleveland.  But we don't feel like anyone else understands.  Most of the time, I'm sure they don't.  If LeBron came back, more importantly, if we won a title, we feel like everyone would actually believe Cleveland is back. 

I don't know how well that would actually happen.  A Championship won't, on its own, fix economic problems.  It won't change crime rates or poverty levels. 

I'm not even sure how important nationwide respect is for actual change to take place in those areas.  But at the same time, people like to confirm their biases.  I'm not sure what national people could do for Cleveland, but as long as they believe it's a hopeless place we'd all do better to move away from, they'll never do whatever little they could. 

Respect is important.  Cleveland rarely gets any of it outside Cuyahoga county (and let's be real- most outer-rim suburban people treat Cleveland like a necessary evil they'd like to avoid, so you don't have to go far).  Maybe a champsionship will help.  I don't know.  But I know it won't hurt.

And so yeah, I want LeBron to come back.  I don't know if he will.  I'm just hopeful.  That's the only thing you can be if you actually want to survive in Cleveland.
-Zack

The Return?

4 years ago, well, nearly 5, I wrote this post: http://dulacian.blogspot.com/2010/12/and-back-again.html#!/2010/12/and-back-again.html

I thought it'd be pertinent to revisit it, on what's looking more and more like the eve of LeBron's return. 

I can't say I ever thought I'd see the day- there's proof right there of that. 

http://dulacian.blogspot.com/search/2012/01/recognize.html

About two years ago, I wrote the one above. 

And now it's all coming back to something new, different, and yet, old. 

Or maybe it's not. 

I'm not even sure how I'd feel.  I'd be happy.  Cleveland would be contending.  A prodigal son would return a grown man.  Winning without him would always have been the way we wanted to do it- but if he comes back now, it's so largely going to be because of his family.  That's a big part of what it means to be Cleveland- family. 

I've never been to Miami.  The closest I've been is Savannah, Georgia geographically, and New York City metro-size wise.  I don't think you could just combine the two and get Miami, so I have no context. 

But I've lived in Cleveland for 3 years and Ohio my whole life.  Forgetting where you came from isn't an option, and I don't think it ever was for LeBron either. 

But he's not officially back yet.  I'm not sure when or even, yet, if he will be. 

I'll be elated, but things won't be what they were when he left.  Nothing's ever going to take us back to those days.

And maybe that's a good thing.
-Zack

On Predictability and Viability

I'm not the type to say I told you so in writing, but if you've read anything here this week, you'll know that I'm not surprised and not displeased by the David Blatt hiring from the Cavs.  It's a little bit of a gamble, but it's a little bit of a genius all-or-nothing move.  That's as Cleveland as it gets.  Or at least it should be.  It's at least how I see the younger generation here: making the well-informed gamble, because the old way of doing things with limited resources (IE, doing the same thing everyone else does, but worse because it's all we can afford) just doesn't cut it anymore. 

I just hope my LeBron tea-leaf reading lines up with my Blatt prediction.  Granted, there was a lot more to go on with Blatt. 

We're just under a week from the draft now, and I promise, next Friday or Saturday is the latest I'll write a post about nothing but Basketball for awhile.  I might even try to roll something else in in the meantime. 

But for now, I got this one right, and I think the Cavs did too. 

One underrated (in other words, heretofore unmentioned elsewhere) aspect of the Blatt hire is the sorts of places he's worked: Israel, Russia, Hungary: he's worked in places that put the blue-collarness of Cleveland to shame.  He's seen the best and the worst of what Europe has to offer.  There's going to be no pretention about the guy.  He's on record as saying he went to Europe because he wasn't good enough to play in the NBA.  He worked his way up from next to nothing in the basketball world.   That's a good thing for someone moving to Cleveland.  He'll appreciate the grittiness and the struggle. David Blatt's career is not unlike a rollicking metaphor for Cleveland's last 40 years. Sure, Tyron Lue would be happy just to have a chance as an NBA coach.  But he's spent two years in LA and some time in Boston before that.  I'm not saying he'd be opposed to being in Cleveland, but he has ridden some pretty expansive coattails to nearly guaranteed success year in and year out under Doc Rivers.  I'm sure he'll be a fine head coach someday (actually, I have no idea, I'm just saying that because it's the sort of thing you say at this point in this sort of paragraph), but Blatt fits Cleveland a little better. 

I had to talk myself into Mike Brown.  I feel like I'm struggling to dislike anything about this move.  He doesn't have NBA head coaching experience.  But either did Greg Popovich when he took over the Spurs.  If Blatt is 1/5th as successful, Cleveland will be euphoric.

-Zack

On LeBron

I learned in 2010 that predicting what LeBron James will do is a fool's game.  He's a person who keeps his decisions close to the vest.  That being said, it made perfect sense after the fact, given a few tips LeBron left, but might not have known he left.

LeBron was always adamant that he wouldn't talk about his impending free agency.   Nothing has changed there.  At the time, I took what he said for what it was worth: he didn't want to discuss the future during the season.  And then he left.  It could just as easily been that he was planning on leaving but knew he couldn't admit that during the season if he wanted to continue the Cavs quest for a championship. It's easy to see it that way now, true or not.

But LeBron did talk about one thing that season: his number.  At some point, and I think it was actually right after the Cavs had pummelled the Heat in Miami, LeBron claimed he'd be changing his number, and that he believed every team in the league should retire 23 in honor of Michael Jordan (which, by the way, makes Jordan's public schoolyard jibing of LeBron all the more galling: MJ passes up no chance to denigrate his greatest supporter.  Stay classy MJ, and keep drafting less than mediocre UNC grads far too high).

 

It's a strangely little known fact that the Heat, at that point, had only retired 2 numbers: 13 for Dan Marino, and 23 for Michael Jordan.  Neither of which ever played for the Heat, but who's keeping track?  Saying what he did about league-wide retirement, when only one team, at this point, has done that, was among the clearest ways LeBron could have said he's going to Miami without coming right out and saying it.  We all missed it though.  I mean, I'm sure someone in Miami or some backwater internet locale might have pieced it together.  But we wouldn't have believed it then anyway.  Everytime I say we in this, I mean the general public, but more specifically, the general Cleveland public. 

 

Fast-forward four years.  It doesn't look like anything so clear ever came out.  LeBron is still deflecting talk.  He said recently that he owes it to his teammates to talk to them before making a decision.  That could just as easily mean he owes it to them to tell them he's leaving first.  That's a graciousness he never gave the Cavs, so it would mean he's learned from his mistakes.

 

Once more though, LeBron has taken a stab at league wide policies.    He's talked a few times about how he thinks he deserves a max deal at some point in his career (a tautology if there ever was one).  He's also said that he thinks he'd make 50 million a year if there weren't a max level in the NBA.  Maybe I'm reading the tea leaves too much, but that sounds a bit like the number retirement talk.  LeBron feels like he deserves more money.  That's never easy to hear from a multi-millionaire, but if it's ever been true of any multi-millionaire, it's LeBron.  He's worth 4-5 times what he's getting paid.  No matter how set for life you are, there's a level of professional pride in making what you deserve.

 

Certainly, it could still all just be that he's meaning exactly what he says, and he has no idea.  That would appear to break with how he handled things in 2010.  Was the jersey number thing dispositive proof back then?  Well, it did turn out to be true.  Who can say if his mind was already made up?  It probably, at least, proves that he was thinking about Miami as a destination at that point. 

 

It does feel like we have less to go on this time around.  That's fine too: LeBron is a human who can make his own decisions as late or early as he'd like.  But everyone around the Heat has made it sound like an era is over.  Whatever happens, there's going to be a shift out of this Big Three world.  Maybe it's a new Big Three for LeBron in another city, or maybe it's LeBron and 11 guys not on the roster right now.  Last time LeBron made a speech about the way things should be, he ensured that he wasn't part of the problem as soon as he could and switched his number.  Could he do the same and at least insist on getting max money somewhere?

 

It's still a fact that LeBron keeps a house in Bath Township and spends as much time there as possible.  He can obviously afford the nicest temporary home wherever he lives, but there's a pretty clear indicator that Akron is his home and no matter how far his career takes him, he'll always return.  Maybe he's reached a time in his life where being home, actually home, most nights, is more important than a scorched earth pursuit of titles.  Honestly, Cleveland+LeBron is probably better than Miami-LeBron, even last years iterations.  Did it really look, even when they were blowing the Pacers off the court, like that team could win 30 games without LeBron? 

 

From a basketball perspective, LeBron is almost too good.  He can say he wants to go where he's in the best position for a title, but wherever he goes automatically becomes that.  He could go to Boston or Milwaukee and they would be contenders.  It's not just because of how good he is, but how easy it becomes to get quality free agents when he's there.  That was as enduring a theme during the Miami run as the Big Three itself.  Teams in the lottery this season almost invariably have more than enough cap space to add LeBron and 2 or 3 of the top other non-max Free Agents (or better).  This is professional basketball.  It doesn't take much more than that with the right coach.  When we're talking about "the right situation" some are probably better than others.  But LeBron is so good and so attractive, he could make even the worst team better than almost (if not) every other team.  I think he knows that, because he's now experienced it.   Why did the Spurs beat the Heat then?  Because they're the Spurs.  They had the right amount of a chip on their shoulder, rest, and the best coach in the world strategizing for a whole year.  That's what it takes to beat LeBron on an otherwise lottery-caliber team.  Imagine LeBron with the first overall pick in "the best draft in decades" and last year's all-star game MVP.  That's a big 3 better than any combination Miami put forward this year (seeing Dwyane Wade is barely a shell of the shell of his former self). 

 

Cleveland or not though, LeBron's actions now seem to suggest that he's in a similar place as 2010.  The results may, in fact, mirror those.  I don't know that he'll come back, but it seems, right now, that the smart money might actually be on him leaving.  We don't have much evidence, but what we do have, and what we know about the past, suggest it. 

 

I'd say he probably at least opts out and demands a max deal requiring Wade and Bosh to opt out and take cuts so they can still get the right free agents to be competitive again.  If they don't opt out, I don't see him returning to Miami: he rightfully feels like he deserves a max contract and will go where he can get one. 

 

Those are my thoughts at least; only time will tell.

-Zack

Help Wanted: In Search of a Coach

Outside the box, for sure.

I know I don't typically post specifically about sports on a more than macro level.  When I do though, it does tend to be about the Cavs.

After Cleveland was up in arms about how long it took the Browns to hire a coach, the Cavs are getting all sorts of good press for their prolonged search.  In the best light, Cleveland fans are like parents who understand which child responds to what correction/praise best.  In the worst light, we pick narratives and define whatever we see through them.  The Browns are weak and shiftless, so their search looked indecisive.  The Cavs are run by an impulsive mad-man, so their search looks refreshingly thoughtful.

I believe the Browns were being thoughtful and that this current search is actually either needlessly prolonged or a smoke screen.

The man pictured above, who is giving new meaning to the word "blazer," is David Blatt, the outgoing coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv: essentially the San Antonio Spurs of the Euro-league (in the well-coached, winning when they shouldn't on paper sense).  He's a Princeton Alum who never got a shot in the NBA, so he went abroad and became Europe's Phil Jackson.

For years, the NBA has been importing the best Euro players (often to great success, sometimes to Ricky Rubio mediocrity or Christian Eyenga irrelevance).  After communism wasted Arvydas Sabonis, there's always been a steady stream.  Now, for the first time, the Cavs are thinking about importing the best Euro Coach, even if he is an American.

I'll be honest, like most of Cleveland and the U.S., I had no idea who David Blatt was about a week ago.  But he's quickly become my favorite for the job.  The other options have coached in the NBA but none of them have championship.   0.  Indeed, the amount of coaches who end up winning championship on their 2nd or 3rd NBA job is very low, especially if they were fired from their first.  I've always liked George Karl's style, but I don't want to lose in the 2nd round of the playoffs every year.  I was impressed when the Grizzlies made their run over the last few seasons, but surprise second place finishes seem to be Lionel Hollins' ceiling.  Mark Jackson could be the aberration because he never quite got to finish his run and wasn't fired for anything on the court.  As it sits though, I get the sense that all of the guys with coaching experience available don't have what it takes to win a Finals series.  Granted, it seems that you either have to have LeBron or a pact with the devil (how else could Popovich keep whatever he's doing up?) to do that these days, but I'd rather give someone a shot to see what they've got, then sign up for likely failure before the season even starts.

David Blatt knows what it takes to win in Europe.  That's not the NBA, but if we're so sure Colt McCoy got a raw deal because "he's a winner" we need to give Blatt the same benefit of a doubt.  That doesn't fit the aforementioned Cleveland sports narratives we love as a city, but it's the rational step.

As I said, I think this all might have been a smoke screen, all of the interviews with assistants and old coaches.  You see, though the Cavs failed to snag Calipari (before they officially fired Mike Brown...), and though it's been about a month, Blatt has only been on the open market for about a week, since his team wrapped up their title early last week.  David Griffin seems like the nicest guy in the world, but he also seems like the guy most likely to actually be a vampire.  What I mean by that is that you get the sense he's always up to something.  It's never something you see coming (Spencer Hawes?  It's so unexpected but it was perfect.  The Cavs make the playoffs last year if they execute that trade last off-season instead of signing Bynum).

Word on the street is that Griffin has done a lot of Euro scouting so he's been familiar with Blatt for quite some time.  Could it be that Blatt was the plan from the start (post-Calipari at least) but the Cavs had to buy time til they could talk to him?

I'm not saying it's a done deal, but I've got my suspicions.  If they hire him quickly, it will seem pretty clear that he was the number 1 guy and the interview answered any questions they had.  I don't think that's an outlandish thought at all.

So what does it mean then?  It means the Cavs will either christen a new era in NBA coaching or close the door for Euro coaches forever.  I don't really care about that: I want the Cavs to win a championship.  Will the Euro style work here?  I honestly don't see why not.  I think concentrating on how styles work in a certain league is a bit misguided.  It's not so much about if a style works as it is can you run it consistently enough to put up points and keep the other team from putting up more.  That's facile, certainly, but if it scores points, it can work with the right personnel.

I'm no Mike D'Antoni fan, but his teams never won a title because he only coached half a game: same with Mike Brown.  It's not about style as much as it is wholeness of competence.  The 2 Mikes who got fired this year would make 1 great coach.  Unfortunately, half a coach won't win a title, even with LeBron or Nash/Amare in their primes.  Erik Spoelstra proves everyday that you can win titles with decentish schemes on both ends of the floor, but you can't with elite defense but terrible offense, and the reverse.  That's why Popovich would be deified upon retirement, if Adam Silver were Ovid.

In the end, like everyone in Cleveland, I just want a title.  I'd prefer a Cavs title first, because I'm a bigger NBA fan than any other sport.  But if the Indians pull it together, or the Browns shock the world first, I'd take that too.

As a city, we need to realize that the goal is a championship parade down Euclid, to end the bleeding of our City's collective sports heart.  That's more important than how it's done (save for illegally or point-shavingly, of course).

If David Blatt can do it, I'll take it.  If a pink pony from Portugal named Petunia was the coach and got the job done, I'd be fine with that too.  Deep down, I think we all would.

-Zack

Recognize

This won't mean much to you if you're not from or live in Cleveland and or don't care about sports.


They say Cleveland is a football town; I can't dispute that.  I'm not a Browns fan particularly (though I'd like to see them do well), but it seems nearly everyone else is in Cleveland.  Not only are there few supporters of other teams, it's the Browns that get supremacy as the top-dog team among the four pro-teams(though no one actually counts the Lake Erie Monsters) in the city.  If you listen to sports talk radio, even right now, the Browns get next to all of the headlines.

A few years back, at least this time of year, that wasn't the case.  When LeBron was in town and the Cavs were title contenders, they were the toast of the town.  That all changed, obviously, and the Browns came back on top despite their consistent inability to even be competitive.

The NFL is the most popular sport's league in the country right now.  Football is the most popular sport.  Last Friday, I was watching the Cavs hang with a solid Minnesota team, while in the workout room at our apartment.  It went to the commercial so I was reading.  During that commercial break, three other guys came in and changed it to the Orange Bowl; a completely meaningless game between a team from West Virginia and a team from South Carolina  I don't know who the guys were and I had about 2 minutes left, so I didn't make a big deal about it, but to me, it was a telling experience: there are people who live in Cleveland's inner-city who prefer poorly played amateur football to a riveting game of professional basketball.  Two years ago, that wouldn't have ever been the case.  Had it been a Brown's regular season game, even this year when they were abysmal, that wouldn't have happened.

I could bemoan the evident lack of respect and pride in the Cavs I see around the city.  I could excoriate these three people as representative for the whole city when I shouldn't.  I don't know them.  One was wearing a camo-style Indians hat, but other than that, I know next to nothing about them.

Whether or not Cleveland as a metro-area loves the Cavs as much as I do or as much as I believe we all ought is immaterial.  I've watched at least some of every Cavs game so far this year though, and something magical is happening when they take the court to represent Cleveland.  More than anything, I'm afraid the majority of the city is going to miss it.

Cleveland, as a city, has a certain character about it.  There's something beneath the surface of the people here.  It's certainly a blue collar town in its way, but it's not Detroit in that sense and it's not Toledo or Pittsburgh either.  There's something else, something burning and delightful, but hard and tempered on the surface.  There's a grit and a grime about the city and the people who live here.  That sounds dirty and, in a way, it is a bit, but it's also a sort of resolve and drive that says, in the face of any amount of adversity, that we aren't going anywhere and while we probably won't live to see Cleveland become the metropolis it was once on the track toward, we aren't going to give up the hope that we can do something to propel this city forward.    When I watch this year's edition of the Cavs, I see that play out on the court every night.

No matter the deficit, if these Cavaliers do anything, it's hustle.  They don't give up.  Last night, in the face of a 15 point deficit that turned into a 20 point loss, even more than halfway through the 4th quarter, players were running down loose balls like their entire point of being was winning the game.  The style of defense, the tenacity and the hardness with which they play throbs with the spirit of Cleveland's heart.  It is still true that each player is either young, lack talent, or both, but as a unit, they come together and operate like a free-wheeling machine hellbent on accomplishing nothing if not putting forth more effort than would seem humanly possible.  Losses are going to happen.  I'm hopeful for the playoffs, but I'm more doubtful when I'm honest.  That's the way the game breaks.  But, at least for 8 games, I've never seen a basketball team play that hard, for that long, relentlessly.  When I think about their relationship to Cleveland, I can't help but be proud; they/we might not win every game and probably won't win a championship anytime soon, but at least I know they're trying.  That is Cleveland as currently situated.  The Browns might be what all of Cleveland loves best, but the Cavaliers are the epitome of Cleveland.  As of now, it doesn't seem that most of Cleveland really knows or cares.  I just hope the snowball rolls up and we all take notice while we still can.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about it all is the way LeBron's Cavs never quite characterized Cleveland.  LeBron is hated for two things here that are really one: quitting in the playoffs and betraying the city.  More than anything else, he is a quitter- not just for leaving and giving up on his goal to bring Cleveland a championship, but, more importantly and not muddled by his personal rights, he quit on the team during the Boston series his two years ago.  Cleveland doesn't quit.  Feeling as if he was one of our own then seeing him do the things he did drew such a vehement negative response because people who had thought they saw themselves in LeBron ended up seeing that he was never even close to one of us.  He just represented us, and, when it mattered most, he did so poorly.  LeBron's Cavs were always characterized by having at least one player better than anyone else on the other team.  That's not Cleveland.  We have very little to offer that is, on its own, better than any other singular thing in any other city in the world.  But altogether, when you take the food, the lack of traffic, the symphony, the spirit, etc...it all adds up to something beautiful.  LeBron's leaving cost Cleveland a legitimate title shot for years, but if these Cavs, at any point, do win a championship, it will be as a team far more representative of Cleveland as a place, as a collective.  That will be many times more glorious.

-Zack
"I'm sorry but I just can't die for you but I can make 'em put their hands in the sky for you"
-Jay-Z