Where to start a post about LeBron James and renaissance except in the dark ages of the basketball town where I experience .
Some context first : The last patronage in our metropolis was in 1964 . Not that anyone is matter but you could sooner make money delivering ice at the Arctic Circle than you could opening a confetti store in Cleveland .
The obtain sense of doomsday — did I mention the turning point in Ithiel Town is squall the Terminal Tower and that it ’s not far from Deadman ’s Curve?—changed considerably the daylight in 2003 the Cleveland Cavaliers win the drawing for being a truly horrendous team and stick the drawing choice that became James .
With James , the Cavaliers reached the 2007 NBA final . It was a milestone moment for a franchise that had never been there , though the San Antonio Spurs treated the Cavs more like an annoyance than a straight challenge . The solution was a four - plot expanse .
James is from Akron , not far from Cleveland . He was raised believe the Dominicus goes on vacation in another galaxy from November through April , so the weather is no big deal to him . The top NBA gratis agents often ostracise inhuman - weather cities . They pluck teams in states with friendly revenue enhancement rates and , specifically , cities whose drug stores carry SPF 30 and above all year around .
That ’s why so many people here are more concerned about whether LeBron James remain or leaves when he becomes a free agent this summer than they are about the blue fingers they find at the death of their blow shovels five months a year .
Shaquille O’Neal came to Cleveland because of James . Without James , the good we can trust for is Tatum O’Neal stopping by to film a picture .
Shaq arrived to drop the wintertime of his sun - splattered vocation , validating Cleveland as a NBA destination urban center . Suddenly , we were Sally Field at the Oscars : " You like us , you really like us ! ! "
The solar day he signed , O’Neal announced his intention in Ali style verse : " Win a ring for the king . "
But for a true appreciation of our rebirth as a basketball game city , you postulate to go back before James promised to light up the metropolis " like Las Vegas " on the day he was drafted . Way back .
The Cavs are celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year . " lowly commencement " does n’t begin to becharm the journey .
They Looked Good on Paper (Specifically Bubblegum Cards)
As an expansion squad , the Cavs lose their first 15 games , won one , then dropped their next 12 .
They made it sorely unmistakable that a mother wit of wittiness would come in ready to hand . So in that regard , Bill Fitch , their first read/write head coach , was the right man at the correct clip and place .
He marked his basic press group discussion by saying , " Just remember , the name ’s polecat , not Houdini . "
One 24-hour interval , with the losses jam up , Fitch approach the cleaning woman behind the United Airlines counter during the away portion of the schedule and enounce , " Where do we go to surrender ? "
The Cavaliers were n’t just bad , they were agonizingly bad , Scripture - worthy badness .
My friend Burt Graeff , theCleveland Plain Dealer ’s long - fourth dimension basketball author who take a buyout a few years ago , co - author a Cavaliers account entitle , From Fitch to Fratelloback in the tardy 1990s .
Graeff commemorate what bechance in San Francisco after the Cavs lose the first 14 biz of their inaugural time of year . Facing Golden State that night , Fitch walked to the arena from the hotel .
Upon arriving , he realized he draw a blank to bring his NBA pass that would get him past area security department .
" I ’m the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers , '' Fitch told the guard duty .
" How do I know you ’re the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers ? " the guard enquire .
Fitch : " Do you recognize what the Cavaliers record book is ? "
" Yes , '' say the guard , " 0 - 14 . "
" Then , '' said Fitch , " allow me call for you something else . Do you call up I would tell you I am coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers if I am not manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers ? "
" Go aright in , '' say the security guard .
When I asked Graeff to condense his experience handle the other Cavaliers , he told me the story of a player named Gary Suiter , a 6 - 9 innocent agent from Midwestern State .
Says Graeff : " He arrived in Cleveland by airplane , but was a no - show at Hopkins Airport when trainer Ron Culp become out to get him . Airport personnel department eventually witness him alone — slumber in the back of the planing machine .
" Before the franchise ’s first regular season plot at Buffalo , Fitch could not find Suiter . Again , Culp was dispatched to pass over him down . He finally did , finding Suiter standing in a concession stand line ordering a hot dog and nose candy while in full uniform and warm - ups .
" Suiter was finally cut . Not long after , the Cavaliers received a call from a funeral domicile near the Cleveland Arena . The phoner pronounce a guy claim to be a Cavaliers player come in one day say there was a death in the crime syndicate and he had to make some calls to go down up funeral arrangement .
" Turned out Suiter was make calls to general managers around the conference trying to get a job . "
Small curiosity that Fitch would presently say , " Sometimes , I wish my parents had never met . "
Graeff recollect a press conference in which Fitch stopped talking , shushed everyone else and said , " see that drip mold ? I think it ’s an ulceration . "
The expansion draft " scout " he did , along with his only help , Jim Lessig , amount to reading players statistics off the back of NBA bubblegum cards .
Lessig told Graeff : " I purchase $ 15 or $ 20 worth of them . One night before the draft , Bill and I position them all out on the flooring of my family room . There were about 120 or so players in the NBA at the time , and we had about 97 of their cards . We also had enough bubblegum to last for years . "
Is it any wonder , Graeff said , why a team for the most part assemble from information gathered on the back of bubblegum cards lost 67 games ?
Fitch lasted long enough to train the first good Cavaliers team to the playoff and past Washington in what citizenry in Northeast Ohio still know as the " Miracle of Richfield " ( Richfield being the suburbia where the team played after make a motion out of business district Cleveland ) .
The Traveling Circus
But not long after , the Cavaliers rule themselves right back in the contest for conference laughingstock after Ted Stepien bought the team in 1980 .
Stepien made his hazard in advertising . He also owned a pro softball squad .
One of his early publicity stunt was to throw away softballs off the 52nd level of a downtown skyscraper to raise the visibility of the league .
A aperient John Roy Major , he was n’t . Two footer were injured in the playground ball driblet . According to fable , one ballock hit a car . Another broke a woman ’s wrist joint . One crease someone ’s shoulder joint . Finally , somebody caught one .
When attendance dwindled , he toyed with rename the squad the Ohio Cavaliers and playing rest home games in nearby cities . A true traveling genus Circus .
He fired handler as quickly as he hired them . One , Chuck Daly , who passed away this year , became a Hall of Famer for his study winning NBA championships in Detroit . Back then , though , he was 51 and wanted an NBA job . Stepien had one .
I met Stepien for the first sentence that time of year . I was work in Philadelphia . Daly had been the head private instructor there at the University of Pennsylvania before leaving to become an supporter with the Philadelphia 76ers .
My chief send me to Cleveland to see if it was really as bad for Daly as it vocalize from afar .
I met him one cold afternoon in 1982 in the lobby of the Richfield hotel where he stayed . He was too smart to purchase a house .
He handed me a push-down store of newspaper sports sections with paragraph highlighted and quotes from Stepien underlined .
" You will not believe some of the stuff going on here , " he said .
He was right . Stepien had Daly fare one dark to a lingerie show the possessor was emceeing downtown . He asked Daly to resign .
Daly : " No , why do n’t you fire me ? "
Stepien softened , cease up buying Daly a crapulence and saying , " This is a lot like ( the movie)Patton . "
Daly estimated he spend 92 dark in the Richfield hotel , acquire every imaginable back threshold out of the place to avoid talk to anyone .
The Cavaliers record under Stepien was 66 - 180 . He had five coaches in three time of year and lost $ 15 million .
The league constitute the The Stepien Rule , preventing teams from trading first - round draft option in serial seasons . retentive - metre NBA coach Stan Albeck once toldSports Illustrated , " Goodness , Cleveland does n’t have a first - round pick for years . Whoever he is , he ’s a high schooltime freshman right now . "
The class I move to Cleveland to work atThe Plain Dealer , the Cavs were 57 - 25 but had the inauspicious timing to become a secure squad while Michael Jordan was becoming one of the plot ’s neat players . They could never get past him .
Another long vale followed . Nothing as sharp as the first few year of enlargement or the Stepien old age . Just a slow worsening and then rearing midway - of - the - gang nothingness .
Until James , the suffering did n’t stop for the mass who lived through the increment pain of enlargement and the other misery .
The Reign of King James
17 - 65 . That was the disc the year before the Cavaliers drafted James . I ’ve visualize practiced displays of basketball by players riding on the back of domestic ass .
Seven seasons later , still no backup to make all the tribulations worthwhile .
Typically , nothing come tardily here . Now the clock is ticking on the chance to acquire a title with James as the chairman of the party commission .
Every night at Quicken Loans Arena is a sellout . Not at all like the old break down Cleveland Arena where gang were thin and where Hall of Famer John Havlicek of Boston once said he would n’t take a post - game cascade for fear of catching an incurable disease .
In the old arena , a UPI sportswriter was once pounding out a story on a typewriter near the end of a game . One of the few fans in attendance scream out , " Shut that damn machine up . It ’s making too much interference . "
Now , every Nox is ear - splitting excitement — and not just because of the pyrotechnics .
How does this narrative end ? That ’s the day-to-day interrogative in Cleveland .
I recall James will sign on on again for another three years . At the last of that declaration , he ’ll have invested 10 years in his hometown team and still only be 28 years old . No one could reasonably line up him at mistake at that point if he want a change of scenery .
If he commits a decade of his basketball game life to Cleveland and the Cavaliers do n’t win a individual NBA prize , Bill Fitch break him the line to say on his mode out of townspeople .
The name ’s James , not Houdini .
