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Cavs and OSUFB Parables and the Cleveland Sports Fan Conundrum

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Bolt's picture
May 27, 2015 at 10:07am
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I'll start by saying I'm a massive Cavs fan and am also a realist when it comes to expectations. The NBA is easily my favorite professional sports league and barring the year I lived on the other side of the planet in 2010-11, I've probably missed no more than a handful of Cavs games ever in a given year  (and even then I managed to watch a lot of those sorry, sorry games) and constantly watch other NBA games when they're not on. Last night after the Cavs won, it was like reliving the OSU vs Wisconsin B1G Championship game all over again for me. For the TL;DR crowd, this is about parallel feelings with the Cavs and OSU football team this past year. I've had my caffeine this morning and am feeling chatty, so here goes.Feel free to skip to paragraph 4 and/or 5. 

I've maintained all year that, despite the star power this Cavs team has, it's hugely unrealistic to expect them to win a title in this, their first year together. Aside from the KG/Ray/PP Celts, it just never works that way. My initial prediction was they'll make it to The Finals and lose to the West, based mostly on how weak the East is. Regardless, this was going to be a great, fun year with them having an outside shot at winning it all. But next year when they've got a year under their belt they'll be unstoppable. This was the exact same feeling I had about OSU going into this past football season. At the beginning the Cavs suffered frustrations and struggled to get it going. Ohio State frustratingly lost to a not very good VaTech team. Somewhere in the middle of their respective seasons, both teams started clicking. At that point (and with ATL boasting a pretty insurmountable lead in the East), I maintained, the Cavs will beat ATL or CHI in 6 in the ECF and lose to whoever comes out of the West in 6. 

Fast forward to the NBA playoffs. Kevin Love gets his arm yanked out of the socket. It had that simliar gut wrenching feel as when JT got his ankle mangled against ttun. I still maintained we're better than anyone in the East and will win the ECF in 6. I still maintained OSU the best team in the B1G and should hold on to win the B1G title game. I also still maintained that we'll still lose to whoever comes from the west in 6. I felt whatever progress OSU could show is great and a playoff berth is icing on top, but didn't think we'd come out of it, realistically....next year will be the year. Then Kyrie gets hurt, Iman gets hurt, LeBron is banged up. Adversity looks like it's starting to pile up. 

Catching up to speed, as recently as a week ago, I was still saying we can't keep up with Golden State in the Finals. They're just too good, too deep, too versatile, etc. And then last night's beatdown happened (and really the whole series, we punished them in 3/4 games). I had the exact same amused, bewildered, "where the hell did this come from?!" feeling I did on that December night when Ohio State put a 59-0 beatdown on Wisky. The same feeling where our injured, limping team just showed us heart, swagger and a flash of holy shit! against a quality opponent in a meaningful game. That feeling that, man, we play like this, we can beat anyone anywhere. It was very surreal. I even went so far as to jokingly call Delly this team's version of Cardale to some friends. Golden State, the consensus best team in the league, coming out of the big bad Western Conference, is the parable to Alabama coming out of the big bad SEC. Before we decimated Wisky, I wasn't too optimistic about our chances facing Bama in the playoffs. After that game and after last night's win I feel like we can beat anyone, even shorthanded with the brotherhood mentality on this team. I'll say it publicly for the first time...I'm taking Cleveland in 6 or 7 against GSW. #nextmanup

But that's not all...this is where Cleveland comes into play. This is where a lifetime of feeling any sort of professional sports optimism gets harshly stomped and shoved in my face without remorse. As excited as I am for The Finals to start...is there anyone else that just has that sick feeling somewhere in their stomach that this is going to blow up in our face again now that they've got us fully convinced? Cleveland has made me a broken sports fan like that; like I'm still flinching, waiting for this to become the next infamous, crushing Cleveland sports moment. I'll make no real bones about the fact that I'm not the biggest LeBron fan in the world (a whole other topic I could write another amateur level novel about and I've had plenty of scathing LBJ #hottakes on 11W over the years), but this is also the first time I'll publicly admit that if he plays his ass off the way he did against ATL in The Finals against GSW and wins Cleveland a title...he'll go back to having a soft spot in my heart again. He'll be the one that frees me from the shackles of that ominous feeling in my stomach as a Cleveland fan, that something will go wrong. I've got to ask, Cleveland fans...How are you feeling about this one?

This is a forum post from a site member. It does not represent the views of Eleven Warriors unless otherwise noted.

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