An oddly plausible theory on LeBron's return #illuminati #lafamilia

As I walked back to work from Walnut Wednesday today, I put on the old iPhone.  I'm not too embarassed to admit that I have a potential LeBron's return pump up playlist.  It's mostly music from the LeBron era in Cleveland that I associated with the NBA and Cavs games (for instance "Put On" by Young Jeezy- the intro song they played at the Q back then).  Among them is "Run this Town" by Jay-Z, featuring Rihanna and Kanye.  There's a line in the first verse I had to relisten to, and it made me rethink the whole song.  Context determines meaning friends, and this song has a new meaning for me today.

Pause though.  Before I jump into the song itself, there was a little uproar when twitter realized this:

As far as I've been able to tell, those are the only three NBA player twitter profiles with La Familia on them.  It's kind of a stretch, but we're talking about the game of shadows that is NBA free agency.  Every clue is a lead and every lead is a leak. 

Back to Run this Town:  Near the end of the first verse, Jay-Z says "This is la familia, I'll explain later, but for now let me get back to this paper."    You'll see that it doesn't make a ton of sense in that context either.  Whatever it means, it seems our only hope for an explanation is Jay-Z's eventual story. 

Whether or not Jay-Z does indeed explain later is immaterial.  In the context of Run This Town it seems that La Familia is talking about the way a group of people do things to "run this town" and "get back to runnin circles round these (expletive omitted)" 

LeBron and Jay-Z have something of a relationship.  Whatever it is is fairly unclear, but you can be certain LeBron's a fan of the music.  I'm sure he's heard "run this town" plenty of times. 

Could he have adopted the thinly veiled "code word" from Jay-Z (who, it should be said, features two of his most prominent label mates in the song.  Kanye and Rihanna are the two most readily described as the "we" in "la familia")?  Could LeBron be telegraphing something based on "Run this Town?"  It's possible.  I don't know if its probable.  But LeBron's had a well-documented longing, establishment, and loyalty to his family and friends.  He wrote a book about it.  His twitter profile and website drip with it. 

I don't know if its far fetched or a little bit genius- Run This Town turned 5 years old two days before the NBA draft.  Who remembers a throwaway Jay-Z line from one of his worst albums?  LeBron would, if he's longing to get back to Cleveland and join la familia.

This is all probably hogwash.  But the best part about all of this is that some people might think it's true if LeBron comes back.  Half of us get to be right no matter how much we're making up. 

That's the best and worst thing about NBA free agency and twitter.

-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

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