Cavs 104, Pistons 79: Over Before It Started
March 22, 2010Shaquille O’Neal Reportedly in Great Shape, Awaiting Return
March 22, 2010
Yes, I am fine. (thanks for the “TD, step away from the ledge” email I got from you Denny, 2 minutes after the game. Nice touch). If you read my NCAA Tournament piece from Thursday, you know what I am talking about. See, I am a Kansas grad. Yeah, go ahead, pick me apart. Lets just get it out of the way.
My team was #1 in the country the majority of the year and failed to make it out of the opening weekend. It’s the first time that a #1 seed has had that happen to them since 2004. Many are calling Northern Iowa’s 69-67 win over my beloved Jayhawks the biggest upset in tournament history. Everyone’s national champ pick couldn’t even make it to the Sweet Sixteen. Let me have it. I can take it.
The worst part of it is that everyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about KU basketball and for the most part, I’m the only KU fan that many of my friends know, especially in Cleveland. So now I get to walk around town and everywhere I see people they can give me the obligatory “your team killed my bracket” routine. That should be fun. However, I will be fine. I’ll deal with it. It’s not like I didn’t grow up in Cleveland with losses so brutal they live on by specific names.I’m 34 years old. I am old enough to remember Red, Right, 88 (well, not well, but I remember my father coming home from the game ready to kill someone). I was at the old stadium for “The Drive.” As long as I live I will never forget Brian Brennan’s 4th quarter TD to give the Browns a 20-13 lead and jumping up and down with my brother screaming “we’re going to the Super Bowl! We’re going to the Super Bowl.” Then probably an hour later being stuck in a miserable parking lot in dead silence in our car after John Elway ripped our hearts out. My father didn’t put on the radio. He didn’t speak. Nobody said a word the entire time.
I remember exactly where I was a year later, in Ellicottville, New York, watching when Earnest Byner was stripped of the football just a yard shy of the endzone by Jeramiah Castile. Again, we sat in stunned silence. Was this really happening to us again?
Little did I know there would be more.
Again, I was lucky enough to be in attendance for another classic Cleveland disaster moment – The Shot. Yes, I was there when Michael Jordan hit the famous jumper over Craig Ehlo that ruined what was thought to be at the time, the greatest Cavs team in their history. Because the Coliseum essentially had one exit, our strategy was always the same – the second the game ended, sprint to the car. This one was especially fun, seeing as though my heart had just been ripped out of my chest (again) by another all time great in his sport, Michael Jordan.
Fast forward to March of 1997, when Kansas was the #1 team in the country from the beginning of the season. They entered the tournament 32-1, with their only loss in double overtime at rival Missouri. This team included future NBA players, Paul Pierce, Raef Lafrentz, Jacque Vaughn, and Scot Pollard. They rolled seemingly everyone in their path, until the Sweet Sixteen matchup with Arizona, who finished fifth in the Pac-10 but got it all together at the right time. They stunned the Jayhawks and the nation 85-82 on their way to winning a National Title, knocking off three #1 seeds in the process.
I took this one extremely hard, because I thought this was it. I was finally going to get my first ring. My college buddies all blamed me and my Cleveland ties.
I had to wait just seven more months for another seminal moment in my sports loving lifetime. This time, it involved my top sports passion, the Indians. The ’97 Tribe was well on its way to being the Team of Destiny. Everything during that playoff run pointed to Wahoos having the magic on their side. Sandy Alomar’s homer off of Mariano Rivera while facing elimination. The wild finishes in the Baltimore series (including Omar Vizquel’s botched squeeze play). Chad Ogea’s two hits and masterful pitching in the game six win in Florida to force game seven.
In my apartment in Lawrence, Kansas, I sat to await what I thought would be the greatest moment of my life at the time. The Indians were finally going to win a World Series and end this city’s misery. Well you all know what happened after Jose Mesa got the first out in the ninth.
What you don’t know, and can be corroborated by my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) and my friends who were watching with me, was that when the game went to extra innings, I became violently ill. After the ball went passed Charlie Nagy’s glove, I shut down. I went into my bedroom and layed there. Next thing I know, the room began to spin. I ran into the bathroom and began to throw up. Not proud to say it, but this story is all true. (I promised my wife I’d leave out the part where I took a shower and began to sob uncontrollably).
What a year 97 was for me, huh?
In 2004, reality set in. My father passed away just one month after being diagnosed with throat cancer. It really put sports losses into perspective for me. They are no longer life and death for me. Do they still hurt? Of course they do. But you will never see a “TD Tribe 97” reaction out of me ever again. That is why the Cavs loss to Orlando in the Eastern Conference Finals didn’t affect me nearly as much as it would have 10 years ago.
The truth is, when you have been a Cleveland sports fan as long as I have, you live with these losses. They are in our DNA. We have been through so many for so long without our team winning the big one, that its ingrained in us. This is what makes us tough in this town. We ban together as one with our impending doom.
Obviously I am stunned by the loss. This is yet another in the pantheon of horrific losses for my teams. But I am fine this morning. More importantly, my daughter will be born sometime in the next seven days and Ali Farokmanesh’s three should be out of my head completely by then.
I hope.
21 Comments
“I remember exactly where I was a year later, in Ellicottville, New York”
A Drinking town with a ski problem
Yeah, tough loss, but I don’t think it’s as surprising as some seem to think. UNI was pretty good all year, not a typical 9 seed from a mid-major.
Also, if its any consolation, those saying its the biggest upset in tournament history have NO sense of history. KU lived on the edge all year, they were not a wire to wire #1, so it’s not as though they were the prohibitive favorite some made them out to be. As for biggest upsets, it pales in comparison to the few 15 over 2 seeds, George Mason, or ’85 Villanova winning the title as an 8 seed.
Congrats on the kid TD! I’ll pray for her health. A lot of things definitely transcend sports.
My brother lives in KC and goes on and on about what insufferable pricks KU fans are during basketball season. He called me Saturday and was giddy like a schoolgirl with all of the down faces he could see at the bar as they went from mocking him for having a tOSU shirt on to sobbing into their mugs as they lost to an MVC team. Good times all around.
Poor guy. You’ve only seen 1 championship in the last 2 years.
Whenever someone says “your team killed my bracket” you should get teary eyed and yell “THEY KILLED MY HEART!” then start sobbing.
Gotta bounce it back on them somehow…
Thanks a lot, TD. I hold you personally accountable for my lost $10.00 in the pool I’m in. Pay up you Jayhawk jerk.
Hey, our alma maters lost in the same round so that means they’re equivalents, right? haha
Go Bobcats!
Georgetown grad here chiming in to say I feel your pain.
I knew I should have never picked Kansas that’s what I get for pushing my luck for the second year in a row. North Carolina did it last year I should have stuck with my gut feeling that Kansas couldn’t last as the #1 overall seed the whole way through.
I’m still happy for the upsets it’s what makes the NCAA basketball tournament one of the best. College football eat your heart out!
Sorry about KU.
I remember that 97 World series. I was at Dayton, and told my friends I needed to be alone to watch game 7. As the Indians were up and the innings flew by, more and more of them gathered in my apartment to watch with me. As the 9th drew closer I began to hear rumblings of “you’re finally going to have a winner.”
I told them, “Not yet. I’m from Cleveland.” There was silence as the game was tied, but everyone was too afraid to leave.
Then the 11th inning came. I yelled, threw a pillow across the room and stormed out.
As I walked across campus other Indian fans were doing the same, we could recognize each other by the scowl on our faces, and only greeted each other with a grunt and a nod.
Someone from Campus South opened their window and yelled, “Indians Suck, Go Marlins!” It was the closest I’ve ever come to killing someone.
never say never. i recall an ohio state loss to michigan (74?) and i was 14 and crying and recognized that the emotional reaction was out of proportion.. been much better since then. rolled pretty well with the broncos fiascos and the marlins and the shot and (the worst one imo) rr88. the three OSU champ losses (2 in BCS and one bball) hurt but i felt worse for my 14 year old son who’s adopted tOSU and had to wear his brutus ballcap to school and take his beatings (we’re outside of boston).
but yet.. there i was a year ago literally rolling on my living room floor when BU killed Miami with that absurd texas league blooper over our goalie for the national hockey championship.
we’ll get em this year.
So true about us Cleveland sports fans. We’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The TD Tribe Meltdown story is classic!
Congrats on the birth of your daughter TD. You do know if the Cavs do what we all hope they’ll do, you’ll have to knock up your wife for next season’s title run.
Was stationed in Korea in ’97 and watched games 1-6 in the dayroom in our barracks. Went to the field on the day of Game 7 (incidentally, also my birthday). Had no expectation of finding out what happened that night until my buddy, a Mariners fan that had not forgotten ’95, figured out a way to make a phone call from the barracks to the field on our secure radios (unfortunately, he was also a genius). I got called to the Tactical Operations Center (a place no E-4 really ever wants to be called to), just to hear my buddy on the other end of the radio gleefully announcing that “the Tribe blew it in the bottom of the 9th!” Apart from being an extreme breach of military protocol, it was a successful sucker punch that lasted for a long time. We didn’t come out of the field for 45 days, and by that time, I was too worn out to kill him.
Now he has Cliff Lee.
Nice article TD! I completely understand what you mean about how the death of a loved one changes your perspective on sports losses. I lost my dad to cancer in July of 2008. The Cavs losing didn’t hurt quite as much, the dismal Browns and Tribe seasons don’t seem nearly as awful as they once were.
Not that I don’t want them to win… It’s just that I was slapped with the realization that these are indeed only games…. and there are a lot bigger things out there to cherish in life.
I also have concluded that sometimes it’s just not meant to be. For whatever reason. Another team get the lucky bounce or gets hot at the right time.
Someday, it WILL be a Cleveland team !
Congrats on the new daughter on the way !
What probably makes this loss even tougher for you to take is that Ali Farokhmanesh clinched it by burying that 3 that he had absolutely no business taking. What a gutsy, gutsy shot, and he swished it. I imagine his athletic supporter is size XXXL.
Bruce Drennan just reported on STO that the Browns will be bringing in Colt McCoy for a visit because they are reportedly interested in the Texas QB.
I thought about giving you the killed bracket routine as soon as I started reading this post, remembered how much it sucked when OSU lost as an overwhelming favorite to Florida and the fact that THAT loss was to the #2 team in the country rather than a real upstart, then thought better of it.
Then relived all those fun Cleveland memories.
Great story TD.
Add our sports losses to the crap economy in Cleveland…..Screw NYC, if you can make it in Cleveland you can make it anywhere.
I’m only 20, but I remember the ’97 series clear as day. My parents were so excited and I LOVED baseball at the time because the Cavs were an after thought in my house and the Browns were gone. The loss was the first in a long line for me.
I remember the first Browns win in ’99 on the Couch to Johnson tip Hail Mary, Bottlegate, and Couch beating the Steelers. I remember Northcutt dropping a bread basket catch and us losing a 17 point lead on Pittsburgh. The Cavs loss in the Finals, although I didn’t expect them to win, the Detroit series was heavenly bliss for me.
The Tribe losing to Boston after being up 3-1, the Cavs losing to Boston on another EPIC LBJ game, only to have Paul Pierce have the game of his career. And, of course last year, when the Cavs were indestructible only to get killed by Orlando while still playing amazing basketball. Delonte misses the open 3 in game 1, LBJ brings me one of the greatest moments in my entire life (probably better than losing my virginity) and then my heart is ripped out 3 games later because Ben Wallace can’t get around an illegal Howard screen to cover Rashard Lewis hitting a leaning/fall away 3 pointer.
I’m determined to say this year is it, it’s finally over! But, it’s Cleveland….Never say it’s over.
Until I became a father, my most memorable moments were also usually sports related — and usually some awful Cleveland loss.
The odd thing is I’ve passed that dreaded gene to my oldest son. Even thought we live in California, he’s adopted the Indians, Browns and Cavs as his own and suffers the losses just as much as I do.
Do your daughter a favor. Make her a tennis fan!