Big Chamomile Hunter
photo via funpics47 on Flickr
So I thought about something this morning. There is no clear front runner in the GOP. The field is pretty evenly divided. Lots of candidates are having shit flung at them, and nothing seems to be deterring their popularity (or unpopularity, however you feel it applies). There seem to be two bases at play: Tea Party and older-school GOP conservatives. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Cain and Romney lead those two packs.
How unlikely would it be if BOTH Cain and Romney ran, Cain as and independent, and Romney winning the GOP nomination? I feel like this primary season will be much tighter than the 2008 one between Clinton and Obama, and this scenario is a distinct possibility (considering that Romney will most likely win, and considering how much very influential aspects of the conservative base dislike Romney. ahem.)
I have a hunch that Obama may not win the majority of the popular vote, but he might win a plurality and enough electoral votes while the GOP’s votes are split on two candidates. 100 years ago in the 1912 election, we saw Wilson get elected thanks to Bull Moose Teddy taking away Taft’s votes. Is the Tea Party the new Bull Moose?
I’m not saying that any of the candidates (conservative or otherwise) are as popular as Teddy Roosevelt, but they may be just as principled or at least suffer from the same hubris.
I’m Back! With Terrible Analogies!
So it has been a really long time since I blogged about anything. Lots of tweeting. Lots of reading. Lots of writing for work and school. My creative outlet and hobby fell by the wayside.
But it’s the weekend! And I’m done with exams! Unstructured free time is awesome. So awesome, in fact, that it reminded me that I could start blogging again! It might take me a while to pick it back up even semi-regularly, but I figure I’ve got to start somewhere.
That somewhere is a bunch of terrible analogies. The human brain likes comparing things to other things so you can better file away senses of familiarity and understanding in your squishy gray matter. I had 3 NBA-related analogies pop into my gray matter this week. I’ll relay the first two here, and the third in a later post.
Every Marvin Williams backdoor cut off the glass is 2 pair on the river, when he was only in the hand because he was big blind.
So the first one came during the first half of Bulls/Hawks game 2. Inspired by Matt Moore’s commentary of the Hawks erratic-yet-unexpectedly-effective play, I tried to think of a situation where erratic and unpredictable behavior produced effective results against more competent and inspired opponents. So I came up with the fact that the playing against the Hawks must be a lot like being an experienced poker player that plays against a novice: you have absolutely no idea how to gauge their talents, abilities, and skillsets. And you have no idea how to measure your own talents, abilities, and skillsets against theirs.
“Oh hey look! I have 2 pair! Is it better when the pairs are the same?”
“Oh cool! I win again. That fifth card that gets laid down seems to help me every time. I keep getting 7s AND 2s!”
“Sweet, another win! That’s funny. I was only in this hand because I was blindest. I mean big blind! Silly me!”
Now think about that every time you see Marvin Williams score a bank shot off the glass, while backdoor cutting Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson. Then Josh Smith taking an ill-advised-post-jog 3pointer. Then Jeff Teague crossover Derrick Rose.
So my second terrible analogy is also Hawks-related, but it came after watching game 2. A hoops-head friend of mine at work were discussing the game and talking about the various levels of contribution one sees out of the big men in this series. Then we both started gushing about Al Horford. Great on offense. Great on defense. Underplayed. Underpaid. Undercomplains, even though he’s on a team with a bunch of guys with “meh” attitudes, that has an owner who is currently trying to sell their arena and partner hockey franchise. Distractions? For normal people, maybe. But not for Horford.
So here’s my terrible analogy for Horford: He’s like that one roommate in college that hangs out all night at a house party. Everyone seems to like him enough, but no one pays much attention to him or hangs out with for a long time. In a short while, everyone gets wasted. The apartment is trashed. The other roommates pass out, and then they wake up in the morning. Horford has cleaned the whole apartment, taken out the trash, and bought bagels and coffee for everyone before they’ve even woken up. Sounds awesome, right? Well he does that after EVERY party, so at this point, the other roommates are just used to it and don’t even notice. He doesn’t get any thanks, but he doesn’t ask or want to be thanked either.
He does all the dirty work so his “roommates” can stay in every game. While Josh Smith is passed out on the coach, and Joe Johnson’s unconscious with Sharpie drawings all over his forehead, Horford’s on his way to drop off 3 bags full of empty beer cans at the local recycling plant.
He doesn’t get plays run for him but scores. He sets screens. He gets offensive rebounds. He doesn’t complain. He just goes out there every night with energy and does what needs to be done. That might make him an enabler, though. Maybe if he didn’t clean up after everyone, they’d realize how terrible they were and strive to make an effort themselves. But for now, all we can do is try to pay attention to Horford, appreciate his talents, and hope that someday he gets surrounded by teammates/roommates that pass him the beer bong the night before, and buy him some coffee the next morning.
Iranian Political Legitimacy Redux
OK folks, bear with me here. I’m trying something new. I’ve got a handful of short writing assignments for my grad program that I’ve been churning out, and a lot of them are relevant to international politics today. So with that said, I’m going to start posting them here. Oh, and here’s some info on my professors, Marc Lynch and Mohammad Tabaar. (I promise I’ll talk about the NBA, too. Whether you want me to, or not.)
It seems as though crises of legitimacy in governance are a uniquely Iranian occurrence. Indeed, Iran’s Shi’a heritage (however manufactured by the Savavids) is based in the argument that Ali was the legitimate successor to Mohammad. In 19th century Iran, the Constitutional Revolution went to great lengths to take state control out of the hands of the inept Qajar ruler and into the “legitimate” hands of the Iranian people through a popularly elected Majles. We saw this same battle for legitimacy in the end of the Qajar dynasty and the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty under Rezashah, then again with the fall of Rezashah and the ascendance of Mossadeq. Mossadeq’s fall was orchestrated by attacking his legitimacy—by accusing him of being a puppet of foreign powers—because influential parties inside and outside Iran knew that his popular support would wane in such a crisis. Of course, the Islamic Revolution was perhaps the most salient example of this crisis in modern Iranian history.
The assessments of legitimacy in the clergy-state dichotomy within the Islamic Republic in the Roy and Vakil articles continue this tradition. In both of their discussions of Abdolkarim Soroush, the authors present a growing schism in the ruling elite of Iran. While the principles of the revolution stressed a pivotal role for the clergy in state affairs, the rise of Khamenei to the VF position—along with the 1997 election of Khatami, who was not favored by Khamenei—has proven that the only person who embodied a legitimate confluence of clergy and state was Khomeini. Without Khomeini, the state’s claim on religion and religion’s claim on the state cannot be reconciled.
Soroush’s argument, which certainly resonates today within the Green Movement and the Iranian Reformist community, is that legitimacy can only be restored to both government and Islam if the two are separated in a democratic system that stresses human rights and freedom of religion. Since the 1980s, many Ayatollahs—spanning the gamut from conservative to liberal—have been in accordance with Soroush’s idea of the separation of clergy and state for the preservation of the legitimacy of both. Certainly since the 1997 election of Khatami and especially the disputed 2009 reelection of Ahmadinejad have reemphasized that mentality this schismatic mentality in Shi’a clergy. And as Iranian and Shi’a history have proven time and again: when there exists a crisis of legitimacy in governance, a populist rectification of the ruling class is all but inevitable.
Gladwell’s (and My) Thoughts on Revolution
Gladwell's a cool guy (H/T: Tommy Craggs & Deadspin for the pic)
If you know me (or are at least marginally familiar with me), then you know I like to talk about 3 things:
1) The NBA
2) The Internet/technology
3) Iran
In June of 2009, I joined Twitter. I’d been thinking about joining for a while, but I resisted because I thought it would dangerously enhance my Internet addiction (it did). Since graduating from college, I’d been getting more into reading about sports online (particularly the NBA), and a lot of the bloggers and columnists I liked to read were on Twitter. As were some non-sports news journalists I liked. But at the time, I was relying on my Google Reader, and I thought that was just fine for me. Now that I’m actually on Twitter, I spend a lot of time reading/talking about sports and politics. A lot of time. Probably too much time. But I digress.
But yeah, back to June 2009. Big month last year. Lots of famous people died. Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy “OxyClean” Mays. And lots of not-so famous people died, too. A bunch of those not-so famous people were some ordinary Iranians. Well I guess that’s not true: 1) they weren’t so ordinary and 2) they became pretty famous (especially a girl named Neda). These people, mostly university students, poured into the streets to protest the rigged re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of the ways information about the protests was getting out of Iran was through Twitter and the #iranelection hashtag. You all probably know this already, because that’s probably how you heard about it.
When I saw all this stuff happening (reading articles, reading blog posts, watching videos), I thought to myself, “If my family wasn’t lucky enough to move to the US back in the late 1980s, I would be one of those kids on the street, getting beat up and shot at. There’s got to be something I can do to help them.” I mean, I still have family back there: there had to be something I could do to try to make sure they’d be OK (in the short run and the long run).
So that’s when I joined Twitter. I knew at the time it wasn’t much, but it was something. I checked the news every hour. I checked #iranelection every minute. If I saw something that I thought people should know about, then I re-tweeted it. At the time, I had my Facebook account linked to my Twitter account. My Facebook network was much larger, and I thought it if I wanted people to know what was going on, I should throw some information at people who could match my face to that cause.
Malcolm Gladwell just penned a piece for The New Yorker called “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.” You should definitely read it; Gladwell is a really intelligent person, and a fantastic writer. But I think he’s missing some big points in his article.
He doesn’t outright use this term, but Gladwell alludes to Facebook and Twitter “slacktivists.” These are people who see minimal cost in their participation in a social movement and feel validated that their involvement (however miniscule) is serving some greater purpose, or maybe just alleviating their guilty consciences.
While he’s correct in saying that the Iranian protests weren’t dependent on Twitter (thus even with Twitter’s help did not become fruitful), he doesn’t point out that Twitter did make a difference. Iran is arguably one of the most enigmatic and isolated countries in the world. Yet for the past year, MILLIONS of non-Iranians have been made aware of the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. Is this worthless? After 30+ years of mischaracterization and Orientalist rhetoric being thrown against a monolithic Iranian identity, people from all over the earth learned that Iranians are young, intelligent, powerful, tech-savvy, and hate their crooked government as much as the rest of the world does.
Gladwell also doesn’t touch on the fact that another form of social media–text messaging–DID have a huge role in the campaign. While people in other countries weren’t being constantly getting text message updates like they were with Tweets, Iranian activists in Iran used this technology to organize rallies, slogans, and marches. They used it to tell each other where NOT to go. They used it to help each other. The government did what it could to bog down the communication networks (both the Internet and SMS), but people both inside and outside Iran made strides in creating work-arounds to the blocks, like secure server space outside of Iran for use in protest-organizing message boards.
Many scholars have previously touched on themes of the role of civil society in fomenting change in authoritarian societies through these expansive networks. Keck’s and Sikkink’s (1998) seminal work Activists Beyond Borders goes into great detail about the ability for interconnected civil societies in domestic and expatriate/diasporic communities to create visible political action. The Boomerang Pattern, as they deem it, occurs when political action fails in a domestic sphere, but it gains new life in a transnational civil society network. The civil society in the domestic sphere relays the information to its partners in the expatriate community, and that expatriate community uses its influence to stress its host government to apply pressure to the original “offending” authoritarian government. In this situation, technology–like Twitter and Facebook–can facilitate communication within that network, thus increasing the speed with which domestic political actors can circumvent traditional domestic mechanisms of protest and bring about change from the outside. I don’t think Gladwell gives this aspect of social media enough credit.
I also think Gladwell’s comparison to the protest movements in Iran and Moldova to the American Civil Rights Movement, while thought-provoking, is problematic in one crucial, yet overlooked, assumption: While both eras exhibited these people actors fighting for a just cause, the United States was, and continues to be, a functioning democracy. There exists popular and legal recourse for injustice. Moldova and Iran can claim all the democratic structures they want: their governments are cronyist and corrupt. They don’t have the luxury of the government listening to them at any point down the road.
A final issue I have with the piece is the final anecdote about the lost “Sidekick” (from Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody). Aside from the fact the contrast belittles the efficacy of transnational sociopolitical networks, the juxtaposition of the “successful” retrieval of the person’s lost cellphone screams “racial undertones.” I just thought that was disturbing to have in the same article where the bulk of it was spent discussing the harrowing trials of Blacks in the 1960s.
Since last June, a lot of scholars and writers have discussed the effectiveness of electronic social media and revolutionary activity. Gladwell is another in the “it’s not going to get the job done” camp. I have no doubt that they’ve all done extensive research on the topic before coming to their conclusions. And really, there was no revolution in Iran. Therefore, it failed to help. Right? Well, according to this “slacktivist,” if you think social media was worthless, you weren’t paying attention.
Counterpoint: The Cavs Should Stay Away from JR Smith
- Young, yet a 5 year veteran
- Versatile scorer
- Can score on the break
- Friendly contract
When in Doubt, Ask @LarryCoon
Larry Coon knows everything about the NBA CBA. Everything. He writes for NBA.com, ESPN.com, NYTimes.com, and Hoopsworld.com. He has also been known to rock a wicked mustache from time to time. I believe now is regrettably NOT one of those times, but every stock photo ESPN has of him says otherwise.
And for some benevolent reason, he’s decided to make himself accessible to us miscreants on Twitter. He answers questions right and left. Even the questions he’s answered over and over again.
“What are Bird Rights?”
“How do teams use Trade Exceptions?”
“Don’t you think Luke Ridnour is as good as Kobe, thus why wouldn’t LA do that trade?”
And so on.
I’ve asked him questions from time to time, most recently today. Usually his answers are very informative, and today was no different. However, today’s answer was depressing (to a Cavs fan) as well. Here is our exchange (Larry’s answer is condensed from 4 tweets into 1):
@azv321: What’s the best move the Cavs can make with their TPE? Package it with Jamison at deadline for picks, youth, and $$?
@LarryCoon: The problem with a big trade exception is that it’s mainly useful just to bring in a big salary–a salary another team wants to get rid of, at that. A team that needs to blow it up & rebuild (which the Cavs need to do) don’t want to acquire salary that another teams wants to get rid of. Maybe use it to bring in couple smaller contracts, but I don’t think the Trade Exception will fix all their problems.
Looking gloomy in Cavalier Nation, folks. Not horribly gloomy. Probably average cloudy day in Cleveland gloomy. Let’s see how the management plays this one.
As always, thanks Larry!
Forget about Free Agency, Let’s Talk Trades
Since for some strange reason, the Cavs were handcuffed from making any moves in Free Agency since about Thursday-ish (a little after 9pm), a lot of the first, second, and third tier Free Agents are off the market.
Instead of throwing our capspace at RFAs and UFAs that won’t add anything to the roster next year, now’s the time to talk trades.
The Cavs have a TON of assets. From the LeBron S&T alone, they have a $16mil TPE, 2 first rounders, and 2 second rounders. Plus they have $9mil in capspace from FAs having gone (LeBron, Z, and Shaq). And they have Delonte’s cap-friendly contract ($4.6mil, with only $500k guaranteed) to dole out too. Plus, I’m fairly certain that no one is untouchable on the team, except for maaaaaybe JJ Hickson.
Now that we have our assets in order, let’s look at the teams that are teetering on the necessity to clear space before the new CBA and rebuild. The teams that come to mind are Philadelphia, Memphis, Minnesota, Detroit, Indiana, New Orleans, and Golden State. The Cavs have lots to offer (see above) to teams trying to sell their franchises (NO and GSW), penny-pinching teams (IND, PHI, and MEM), and teams that seem to make a lot of bad choices (MIN and DET).
If you take the best players from all these teams, that would make one really solid team. Hell, even if you take a handful of the top guys from that group, it would be a solid team. What I’m saying is, the Cavs need to take a handful of those guys. Except for GSW, none of them play in substantially bigger markets than Cleveland, so we don’t have that problem (Philly is bigger, but for some reason doesn’t like pro basketball, as I regurgitate this opinion from a Bill Simmons podcast).
The Cavs, right now, are in desperate need of a dynamic scorer and an athletic center. Not just because those are two commonsense jobs every team needs, but because they would be especially needed on Byron Scott’s new running offense.
Oddly enough, my simplest proposal takes both of those roles from only 1 of these teams: Memphis. As far as I can tell (and have been told by a well-versed Grizzlies fan), for some reason Memphis’s two best players are available for trade. Probably because Memphis signed Gay to a huge deal, and they have a history of being “trade friendly,” as it were.
So I say, the Cavs need to try to pry away one or both of either Marc Gasol and OJ Mayo. We need a versatile big man, and Gasol would be fantastic playing alongside Varejao, or really any of our other bigs. Hell, he made Zach Randolph look like an all-star last year thanks to him making up for Zach’s defensive lapses.
And Mayo is young and a scorer. We need that. We need that big time. He’s working on his ball-handling in summer league right now, but making him a scoring SG would be a great plan to me.
The Cavs can package anything they want to get those two. They can even pay for both with part (not even ALL) of their TPE.
If that doesn’t work, I say the Cavs need to work on stripping some of those other teams of their players in exchange for our assets. Even though we have a few players under contract for a while (Mo & Antawn, specifically), the rest of the contracts on the roster are much more flexible and put the Cavs in not-so-dire straights over the next few years.
And if we can’t get players, then we gotta turn those assets into some lottery picks, because on San Antonio can strike gold in the second round.
Do you think if I wrote this post in Comic Sans, Dan Gilbert and Chris Grant would take it more seriously?
Well, He’s Gone
I wrote a post a while back praising LeBron for his years as a Cavalier. I think I still would have stood behind that post had he not announced his decision the way he did. The hype, the ESPN special, the information and misinformation–everything made the decision seem cold and callous.
When it comes to grief, I tend to jump around the stages a bit. I’m a fairly positive person, so I like to get to acceptance as fast as possible. I don’t try to tuck away my other emotions, but I try to get past them in a constructive way. Being on Twitter last night was a way for me to see everyone’s reactions to his decision. Maybe I was living vicariously through others’ anger. Maybe I was just feeling numb the whole time and couldn’t feel anything.
Well, I certainly know that’s not true. I know I felt something because when I read Dan Gilbert’s letter, I immediately agreed with everything in it, and then I also immediately agreed (yet tried to deny) any and all criticism of it. My quick thought on Dan Gilbert’s letter: he legitimately felt as duped as the fans, but he also knows that his letter made sure he retained some Cavs fans next season. Even when it’s not about money, it’s about money. Kind of a shame, but that’s how it goes, I guess.
Anyway, as I looked back on my post from May that sang LeBron’s praises as a Cavalier for 7 seasons, one part stuck out to me immediately:
“…we can’t exactly act like this is some shocking surprise when we knew the stipulations surrounding his contract. When he re-signed in 2006, the terms were he would stay a Cavalier if he won a ring or if he was in the best position to win a ring down the road. The Cavs proved they didn’t do those two things. It’s not like the Cavs didn’t try, and it certainly doesn’t mean the city and fans didn’t support him through the process. Thirty teams vie for the NBA title every year (well, usually 24 vie for the playoffs and 6 vie for John Wall), and only 1 can win it. The Cavs tried to stack the odds in their favor, and they couldn’t get it done. He’s not betraying us. He’s doing what a star athlete should do: getting better and putting himself in a position to win championships.”
I still believe that. Except for the betrayal part. That might go away soon, but I think I really have issues with the platform he chose to announce his decision.
But another part of my piece stuck out to me more:
“we as Clevelanders (whether resident or expatriate), need to take ownership of the image we portray to the rest of the country as sports fans, and to some degree we need to change it for the better. We always feel like our backs are against the wall, and we have a pervasive hollow and self-deprecating attitude. We know that Clevelanders have pride, and that we love our city and our sports. We can no longer allow ourselves to be the punchlines and shameful relatives of other sports cities. But that has to start with us. We have to stop being bitter and living in the past. It’s not the curse of the Wahoo, or the Fumble, or the Drive, or the Shot, or the Jose Mesa [and now the LeBron/Decision]. We can no longer let despair and self-pity consume us. We have to stop acting like we are doomed from ever having anything good happen to us. We rail on LA, Boston, and NY for feeling entitled to win rings because “They have before.” But we feel just as entitled because we haven’t. Now how is this perception any different, except that we get to complain and invoke pity from other fanbases and sportswriters who read and write “Top 10 Unluckiest Sports Towns” lists? We had a really great shot, better than most, and we didn’t succeed. We have the money and the smarts to work to get there again.
…I say we can use this as the impetus to change who we are. No more feeling sorry for ourselves….Yeah it sucks, but we need to learn from it and grow. We didn’t hold back at all. Everyone thought we had the best chance. We set up everything the way we thought, but we overlooked a few angles and it came back to bite us. We must take these lessons and learn from them.
We can’t blame LeBron and dwell on the past. We can only look at our mistakes, try to learn from them, and move forward. No looking back to 1964. Only looking forward to 2011.”
Go Cavs.
Quick Thought on LeBron & Cavs
Forget about the draft. Forget about top tier free agents. Forget about #thewinnergetsjoejohnson. I think I know how the Cavs can make a splash this summer and vie to keep LeBron.
This is a half-joking idea (OK, like 99% joking, but it really could work), but if the Cavs really wanted the “edge” to keep LeBron, shouldn’t Dan Gilbert give contracts to LeBron’s SVSM teammates? Not just summer league spots, like the Cavs have already done in the past. But actual roster spots. They can be spots 12-15 on the roster and used during garbage time; coaches don’t usually go past 10 during a game unless there’s an injury, anyway (fingers crossed). But LeBron can play with them during practice and dream about days of yore. They’re his favorite teammates of all time, and since he’s so loyal to them specifically, he’d have to stay, right?
Marc Berman of the NY Post alluded to this idea for the Knicks a while back, but he implied that the Knicks could actually use LeBron’s old teammate (Joyce, specifically) for PG depth.
OK, so what are all the teammates doing now? Let’s see:
Dru Joyce III: According to Brendan at Stepien Rules, he’s playing for a Polish squad in the Euroleague.
Sian Cotton: Well, he entered the 2010 NFL draft and didn’t get selected. According to his ESPN NFL draft profile, he’s about 6’4″ and 317 pounds. Not exactly in NBA shape, but if you think about it, that’s roughly how big Charles Barkley is, and he is one of the best power forwards of all time.
Romeo Travis: He’s currently playing in Germany, and he’s not too shabby over there either. According to Eurobasket.com, these are his stats from last season:
| G | MIN | PTS | FG | 3P | FT | OReb | DReb | TReb | AS | PF | BS | ST |
| 34 | 31.3 | 14.4 | 51.4% | 39.6% | 73% | 2.3 | 4.2 | 6.5 | 1.7 | 2.6 | 0.4 | 1.1 |
Will McGee: He’s currently a Graduate Assistant coach for the Akron Zips basketball team. Maybe the Cavs could just add him to the coaching staff, and free up another roster spot.
Think about it, Gilbert.
Look how happy they are together...
Well, What if he does leave?
Well, What if He Does Leave?
If LeBron wants to leave, we have to let him go.
First of all, as matter-of-fact as this sounds, we can’t exactly act like this is some shocking surprise when we knew the stipulations surrounding his contract. When he re-signed in 2006, the terms were he would stay a Cavalier if he won a ring or if he was in the best position to win a ring down the road. The Cavs proved they didn’t do those two things. It’s not like the Cavs didn’t try, and it certainly doesn’t mean the city and fans didn’t support him through the process. Thirty teams vie for the NBA title every year (well, usually 24 vie for the playoffs and 6 vie for John Wall), and only 1 can win it. The Cavs tried to stack the odds in their favor, and they couldn’t get it done. He’s not betraying us. He’s doing what a star athlete should do: getting better and putting himself in a position to win championships.
This year, we spent too much time worrying about Orlando and LA, we didn’t think to look out for Boston. And truthfully (someone on twitter said this, but I forget who), the only team you should worry about building yourself around is your own. If you make yourself competent then you won’t have to worry. That includes on-and-off court positions. It would be dumb for me to assert that everything will feel OK next year. It won’t. It will feel fundamentally different, even a little empty.
David O’Leary alluded to this earlier. But in all this talk about how angry and disappointed the city and the fans will be if/when he leaves, we’ve lost sight of the fact that LeBron has been the best Cavalier ever. He played well (and that’s an understatement), and we should be grateful for that. LeBron gave Cleveland the 7 best consecutive years ever of Cavaliers basketball. He came onto the team in 2003 and immediately became the team’s leading scorer, even with chuckers like Ricky Davis around. In 2007, he pretty much single-handedly destroyed the Pistons, a team that had been tormenting us in our division for years, and brought us to the NBA Finals for the first time in Cavs history. In 2009 and 2010, we won back to back division titles, only our second and third in franchise history, thanks mostly to those same Pistons and the Bulls. We had the best regular season record in the NBA two years in a row. He also won a lot of individual awards as a Cavalier, including Rookie of the year, 2 MVPs, a scoring title, All-Star bids (and MVPs), first and second team all-NBA and all-Defense, and 4 Olympic medals. I repeat he won those as a Cavalier. That will never change. Look at these team and individual awards. We had never had anything like this before. This is not all chump change.
LeBron, Danny Ferry, Dan Gilbert, and Mike Brown have all put in an immense amount of work into this franchise in these past years. Of all the things they’ve done, the most important has been that they’ve instituted a culture of winning. And I am confident, that even if LeBron leaves, we will continue to have a culture of winning. Yes, we will be further from a championship, but that doesn’t mean we can’t win any games. This isn’t the same group of Jiri Welsch-Desagna Diop-Ricky Davis rag-tag bunch of players we had in 2003. The rest of the Cavs roster has shown talent, a fighting spirit, and cohesion. Whatever else happens to this team in the long run, we can be sure that Dan Gilbert’s culture of winning won’t go away. The timeline may change, but the message won’t.
On a related note, we as Clevelanders (whether resident or expatriate), need to take ownership of the image we portray to the rest of the country as sports fans, and to some degree we need to change it for the better. We always feel like our backs are against the wall, and we have a pervasive hollow and self-deprecating attitude. We know that Clevelanders have pride, and that we love our city and our sports. We can no longer allow ourselves to be the punchlines and shameful relatives of other sports cities. But that has to start with us. We have to stop being bitter and living in the past. It’s not the curse of the Wahoo, or the Fumble, or the Drive, or the Shot, or the Jose Mesa. We can no longer let despair and self-pity consume us. We have to stop acting like we are doomed from ever having anything good happen to us. We rail on LA, Boston, and NY for feeling entitled to win rings because “They have before.” But we feel just as entitled because we haven’t. Now how is this perception any different, except that we get to complain and invoke pity from other fanbases and sportswriters who read and write “Top 10 Unluckiest Sports Towns” lists? We had a really great shot, better than most, and we didn’t succeed. We have the money and the smarts to work to get there again.
So if LeBron leaves, I say we can use this as the impetus to change who we are. No more feeling sorry for ourselves. What this also entails is not booing LeBron. We have been good to him, yes, but he has also been good to us. He didn’t abandon us. The Cavs organization and the fanbase knew the stakes. Yeah it sucks, but we need to learn from it and grow. We didn’t hold back at all. Everyone thought we had the best chance. We set up everything the way we thought, but we overlooked a few angles and it came back to bite us. We must take these lessons and learn from them.
We can’t blame LeBron and dwell on the past. We can only look at our mistakes, try to learn from them, and move forward. No looking back to 1964. Only looking forward to 2011.
