You Guys are the Best: While We’re Waiting

Man, did I pick one hell of a week to go on vacation… Anything happen while I was out? Oh, you don’t say…

Many of the takes on LeBron James returning to Cleveland appear to be rooted in storybook-like happiness. Josh Levin over at Slate referred to The Decision 2.0 as the antithesis of the first one—this time, things were heartfelt and, well…right. “We evaluate athletes as much on their self-presentations as their statistics,” he writes. “We want star players to say the right thing, and we want them to say it in the exact right way.” The way that The Return unfolded—rumors and cupcakes and flight-tracking notwithstanding—was perfect. The Decision, the first one with Jim Gray and the Boys and Girls Club, was a product of James’ management team and ESPN collaborating to ultimately provide one of the biggest debacles in live sports television. This time around, he did it his way.

Two of the best pieces I’ve read to this point on the very matter come from Cleveland-native Joe Posnanski over at ProBasketballTalk…

There is something about the city that gets inside you and never lets go, something about what it feels like the first day you can see grass poking through the snow after a long winter, something about Cleveland blue skies, something about the way the streets intersect and the many accents you cross, something about the way the restaurants and bars are given first names like “Eddie’s” and “Corky and Lenny’s,” something about the sports mix of hope and gloom that swirls like gin and tonic. […]

Of course I’m happy he’s coming back to Cleveland. I’m happy because he instantly makes the Cavaliers a serious playoff contender in the weak Eastern Conference and good things can and should build from there. I’m happy because my hometown gets a win, something Cleveland doesn’t get enough of. I’m happy because NBA fans — not just Cleveland fans — are in love with this story; I received countless texts and emails from people saying, essentially: “I love LeBron James now.”

I’m happy because as a sportswriter this is an incredible story, perhaps even unprecedented, a superstar at the height of his game coming back home to try and win a championship for a city that hasn’t had one in a half century. There will probably be movies about it. This says so much about the man LeBron James has become that he could see the opportunity in Cleveland for him to do something singular. This sentence in his essay speaks to how LeBron thinks now:

“My goal is still to win as many titles as possible, no question. But what’s most important for me is bringing one trophy back to Northeast Ohio.”

It is almost enough to make a Clevelander cry.

But more than anything, I’m happy because James is happy. “The more time passed,” he wrote, “the more it felt right. This is what makes me happy.” People will talk about hard feelings and who forgave who, they will talk about Miami’s missteps that might have caused this, they will form theories about it all. But maybe, just maybe, it came down to this. LeBron James is from Northeast Ohio. And he is one of us.

… and Jay Caspian Kang over at the always-spectacular New Yorker.

The sportswriting scolds of America have had their Red Weddings over the past ten years at the hands of the quants, the über-scolds, and the sort of writer who feeds sports (and everything else) through the postmodern machinery of his or her liberal-arts education. (As someone near the last of these camps, I would like to say that I miss the old scolds. Vive le Mushnick!) And so, while I’m sure there will be some column space filled about how Cleveland fans should not “accept” LeBron back and some catastrophic metaphors/cosplay-narratives about jilted girlfriends and dignity, the overwhelming mood among basketball fans waiting for LeBron’s announcement felt both anxious and celebratory. Fans of the underdog couldn’t help but root for Cleveland, a city that hasn’t won a championship since 1964. Lovers of family, small towns, and happy endings must have teared up a bit at the thought of the embattled hero, still stinging from a humiliating defeat at the hands of the San Antonio Spurs, limping back home.

Conversely, there’s this from CBSSports.com’s Matt Moore, who attempts to pin all of the unfortunate things that have happened to the Cavaliers on majority owner Dan Gilbert where the role of the unfortunate—as if decades of losing is anything but—is played by the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey.

He took shortcut after shortcut trying to get back to the playoffs. There was no patience, no rebuilding plan. Drafting Dion Waiters, trying to nab a transcendent surprise talent. Signing Jarrett Jack. Keeping Anderson Varejao. The Cavs spurned a methodical, well-planned rebuild in favor of a win-now-at-all-costs approach. And it was catastrophic. In a system like the NFL, where the worst team gets the No. 1 overall pick and so on, the Cavaliers would have been stuck in neutral, trying to find their way out of mud Gilbert put them in.

I understand the basis for Moore’s thoughts—I’ll be the first to admit that winning three NBA Lotteries in four years is teetering on absurd. But to pin all of the bad on the shoulders of Gilbert borders on confirmation bias. Yes, Gilbert penned a letter following James’ departure; yes, he wanted to get back into the playoffs as soon as possible. But it was Chris Grant who drafted Dion Waiters and Anthony Bennett, and signed Jarrett Jack and Andrew Bynum. But it was also Grant who, with the backing of Gilbert’s wallet, traded Mo Williams for the pick that ultimately became Kyrie Irving. It was also Grant who, with the backing of Gilbert’s wallet, traded John Leuer for what will be a first-round draft pick from the Memphis Grizzlies. (These two moves were mysteriously omitted from the owner-versus-GM referendum.)

Dan Gilbert is far from the Patron Saint of the NBA. He’s vocal. He can be overbearing. He may not deserve anything. But you can’t have it both ways.

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Media-curious fans will find this interesting: A day-by-day diary of life at The Plain Dealer, wherein graphics people were constantly wrestling with the what-to-do decisions that came with a will-he-or-wont-he rumor mill in addition to how they came up with the “HOME” cover.

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Catapult that commentary, kids. It’s time for this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting

“Nothing to see here” by David Fleming (ESPN The Magazine): “On the far left side of the locker room, in front of his stall, Michael Sam wrapped himself in a towel, grabbed some shampoo and walked across the room that during OTAs can reach nearly twice its normal capacity. Then he arrived at a pattern of tiny gray-and-blue linoleum tile, thereby breaking the ultimate taboo in men’s team sports: an openly gay man showering with his NFL teammates.”

“The Rio the World Cup didn’t show” by Wright Thompson (ESPNFC): “On the surface, there has been no unrest or unhappiness during the World Cup, but beneath there’s been a hidden battle to make sure nothing got in the way of the party Brazil was throwing for the world. There was an alleged shootout in a favela between drug traffickers and the Brazilian army a few hours after the Brazil match on Tuesday. Did you read about it? Did you see it on the news? Today, maybe there will be a big protest — one is scheduled for the afternoon — or maybe it won’t escalate beyond a few hundred marchers because movement leaders are sitting in jail cells.” 

“Adam Wainwright, the Elite Bridesmaid” by Shane Ryan (Grantland): “It’s a thing of absolute beauty, slow and wonderful, breaking nine inches to the left (fourth-best among starters) and nine inches down (seventh-best).”

“Inviting the Nightmare (Donte Stallworth seeks redemption)” by Robert Klemko (MMQB): “Stallworth took the podium in an amphitheater at the Bertram Hotel four times last week, flanked each time by the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. He delivered the talk he’d rehearsed in the hotel room. It has been nearly a year since he was last on a roster (Washington cut him last August), and he’s five years removed from March 14, 2009, the morning that delivered him here.”

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First off: I could really link to every entry in Wright Thompson’s “blog” that ESPN FC has been publishing during the World Cup. The work that those guys allocated toward this event was second to none. Between Wright, Chris Jones, Pablo S. Torre and a handful of others, they wrote in a way where one didn’t have to be a soccer fan to fully enjoy the time, effort and care put into their words. If you haven’t read their stuff, go do it—you’re only cheating yourself. The fact that they considered his work a “blog” should only stand to raise the bar for everyone else who does the same.

Secondly: This.

Props to ESPNcom editors. It's always a risk to use curses in print (esp. at a Disney Co.). But right call with that Thompson piece.

— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) July 13, 2014

I’ve been a longstanding member of #TeamUncensored. It always strikes me as odd when reporters choose to self-edit quotes, especially in instant mediums like Twitter et al., when disseminating such to readers. We have a long-standing policy of being “Family Friendly” here at WFNY, which I still stand by in many regards, but I also couldn’t agree more with Richard in this instance—that lede would simply have not been the same had “shit” been supplanted with any other form of the word. (Especially “poop.” Who says that?)

There’s a chasm between egregious and effective. Any ill-constructed, lazy sentence is, in many instances, worse than one that is carefully crafted with some form of word choice that could be considered “swearing.” Kudos to Jay Lovinger, assuming he was the one to push Wright’s words through the flimsy, arbitrary filter that I can only hope is evaporating with every piece of quality work that requires it.

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And finally, a big thank you from me to all of you—for sticking with us through the last four-plus years of miserable sports, where posts that discussed the doldrums were not only more frequent, but received way more attention. It’s beginning to look like those days are slowly coming to an end. It’s Cleveland, so sure—there will be some downs with our ups. But with the Browns appearing to be on the rise, the Indians heading into the break at .500 and the Cavaliers having one of the biggest off seasons in all of professional sports, the Waiting looks like it’s starting to pay some dividends.

Cheers, kids.