Jesus CHRIST. Not even this. We get the best player in the league . .. and it STILL doesn't help. Nearly 17 thousand days since Cleveland last won a title in something. How does one three-sport city go that effing long without anything? Without ANYTHING??? NOTHING???
http://sports.yahoo.com/nbaStop strutting, stop preening, stop stomping away as an ungracious winner, a sore loser, and win something, LeBron.
Win something now.
No more excuses. Not now, not after this biblical bottoming out that pushes the Cleveland Cavaliers to the brink of an unthinkable collapse. And yet, after Tuesday’s ferocious failure of his professional career, the encompassing embarrassment of a 120-88 Game 5 loss to the Boston Celtics, James dismissed his unthinkably poor performance with this colossal cop-out: “I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have three bad games in seven years, it’s easy to point them out.”
Who is he to be indignant after he gave a playoff game away? What’s he ever won to be so smug to the masses? That’s what drives the Celtics crazy about James. Eventually, he will understand his greatness isn’t measured on the hit-and-runs through NBA cities across a long season. It’s measured now, in the teeth of the battle, when a tiny guard, Rajon Rondo(notes), has stolen his stage and nearly a series.
(snip)
Yet make no mistake: James has enough around him. This team isn’t perfect, isn’t assured of beating the Los Angeles Lakers, but it has no business losing in the conference semifinals – never mind failing to even compete. And, yes, as much as ever, this is on James.
He invited all this drama about walking out on his hometown team this summer, and now free agency hung over the Q like an anvil. Here’s a city that’s waited 46 years for a championship, a town that reacts viciously to the sheer suggestion that James could leave for New York this summer. These fans have been much better to James than he’s been to them. It hasn’t been the media that’s built his role in the summer of 2010 to a crescendo, but James himself. He constantly manipulated it with suggestions and hints and wink-winks to New York.
James proclaimed July 1, 2010, as the biggest day in the history of basketball, ramping up suspense of his ultimate decision: Do I stay or do I go? What it has done is throw more palpable pressure in the air, more desperation, and it’s come back to haunt him now.
And barring an act of God, it's destined to be 17,000 more.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/michael_rosenberg/05/12/cleveland/index.html?eref=sihpLeBron James may yet rescue the Cavaliers and the city of Cleveland, in that order. He may score his team's final 25 points in Game 6 Thursday night, as he once did in a crucial playoff game, and lead the Cavs to a win in Boston to keep their season alive. He may win a championship and re-sign with the Cavaliers. Someday we may see a 30-foot statue in downtown Cleveland of LeBron wearing all eight of his Cavaliers' championship rings.
Yeah, that might all happen in Cleveland ... except that, well, good sports things never happen in Cleveland.
Imagine what it is like now, to be a rabid sports fan in the most tortured sports city in America. If the Cavs lose to Boston in Game 6 -- and the Celtics have been the better team in this series, without a doubt -- Cleveland fans might just give up on the following, in order: the Cavs, all of sports, eating and the possibility of a benevolent God. There is a time and a place for perspective in sports. Cleveland, right now, is not the place.
(snip)
Most sports fans remember most of the punches: the Brian Sipe playoff-game-killing interception, Earnest Byner's Fumble and John Elway's Drive (capital letters required), Michael Jordan's shot over Craig Ehlo, Edgar Renteria's World Series-winning single against the Indians. But I don't think most fans realize this: Those were the high points. Those were the moments when Cleveland teams had a chance. The rest was just plain old losing.
That's what it has meant to be a Cleveland sports fan: long periods of suffering broken up by brief periods of feeling hopeful, followed immediately by worse suffering. And of course, there was the worst indignity of all: Art Modell yanking the Browns out of Cleveland, changing their name, then winning a championship in Baltimore.
If James leaves Cleveland -- for New York or anywhere else -- it will be an even darker moment than when the Browns left. At least then, Cleveland got another version of the Browns. How the heck is it going to get another version of LeBron James?
Disgraceful.
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