National Basketball Association

The Cleveland Cavaliers are top (under)dogs

Published May. 28, 2015 12:00 p.m. ET

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By Marty Gitlin

As Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals approached, an Atlanta reporter offered on one of the Cleveland sports talk stations that his city and the Hawks deserved to play for the NBA championship. He talked about how the team had never won one, how it played unselfish basketball all season, how the entire metropolis had been so supportive, blah, blah, blah.

Well, not happening. The Hawks looked at times like they didn’t belong on the same court with the Cavaliers and were swept to the dustbin of history.

But let’s get one thing out of the way. The series opener at Phillips Arena was not even sold out as of the day before. The fans there have been notorious for non-support over the years. If Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland boasted a capacity of 50,000, Games 3 and 4 here would have been sellouts within 48 hours of the Cavaliers’ advancement into the next round.

The fans of Northeast Ohio are far more deserving of a title—any title—than those of any area in the nation. They have waited with increasing impatience since 1964 for one of their teams to snag a crown.

This Cleveland-based author should know. I was 8 years old in December 1964 when my freezing butt was at Cleveland Stadium to see the Browns stun the heavily favored Colts in the NFL Championship Game. But I was too young to gain any long-term pleasure from the experience. My lone hazy memory of that afternoon was the fans rushing the field after the game and tearing down the goalposts. That vague recollection is quite unsatisfying at age 58.

Nobody 50 or under has been alive to witness a Cleveland team winning a title. And some media type in Atlanta is claiming the fans of that city deserve one? Maybe they do—the Hawks indeed have never won one for that city—but they don’t register on the old Deserve-o-Meter in comparison to their counterparts on the shores of Lake Erie.

The folks in this shrinking metropolis have put up with a lot both inside and outside the world of sports. They have endured the mayor’s hair catching on fire. They have endured the lake catching on fire. They have endured bankruptcies. They have endured the endless stream of “Mistake by the Lake” jokes from comedians who can’t seem to come up with fresh material.

Then there are the numbing disappointments on the fields and courts of battle. What most of the young folks don’t realize is that we Baby Boomers watched the Browns lose three NFL Championship games in the 1960s, two of which would have made them the only team in the league aside from the Packers to qualify for a Super Bowl that was still in its infancy.

The crushing blows came rapid fire starting in the late 1980s and have destroyed the dreams of all three major franchises and their fans.

There was The Drive engineered by Broncos quarterback John Elway that wrested defeat from the jaws of victory in the 1987 AFC title game at Cleveland Stadium. There was The Fumble by Earnest Byner that clinched a heart-wrenching loss with a Super Bowl on the line a year later in Denver. And, finally, there was a bandit named Art Modell stealing the team altogether in 1995 and moving it to Baltimore.

There was The Shot in 1989, seen countless times on replay, with the outstretched arm of hapless defender Craig Ehlo flailing in vain as Michael Jordan rose up to bury a shot in the first round of the playoffs and with it the hopes of Cavaliers fans everywhere. There were five years of playoff disappointment more recently when that team could not find enough championship-worthy pieces with which to surround LeBron James, leading to The Decision. Add that hammer to the ego of the Cleveland sports fan to the list.

And, finally, there was the so-close-but-yet-so-far tale of the Indians, who in the 1990s put together one of the most devastating offenses in baseball history, yet fell painfully short of winning a title despite two trips to the World Series. The agony of defeat reached a crescendo in 1997 when they took a one-run lead into the ninth inning against the Marlins and closer Jose Mesa blew it. Shortstop Omar Vizquel wrote about the vacant expression on Mesa’s face upon entering the fray and how he suspected that the veteran right-hander was not emotionally up to the challenge.

And speaking of the Indians, they went from 1960–93 without sniffing contention. Let THAT marinate. Thirty-four years without the hint of a pennant race by early September. That is a run of futility unmatched in the history of the sport, perhaps in all major sports.

There have been other disappointments. The “Red Right 88” play called by Browns coach Sam Rutigliano that resulted in an interception in the 1980 NFL playoffs and a broken leg sustained by center Jim Chones that devastated the Cavaliers in the 1976 Eastern Conference Finals certainly come to mind.

Some root against the Cavaliers because they dislike LeBron James. But he must be defended. He is no mercenary. He has admitted that The Decision was a tactical mistake. He left Cleveland for Miami just as a college student would leave home for personal exploration and because he felt it gave him a better chance to win an NBA title. He said he returned to Northeast Ohio because it’s his home and he wanted to provide the fans of the community with a crown most had never had the opportunity to enjoy. There is no reason not to believe him considering the passion he has displayed in going about achieving that goal.

Folks shouldn’t put “deserve” in the same sentence when comparing the anguish of their fan base to that of Northeast Ohioans. You have no idea.

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