Game #163 – Twins, Tigers, and The Indians Connection
October 7, 2009LeBron James Supports the Fight Against Cancer
October 7, 2009Yesterday’s story about the Cavs sending out season tickets (complete with playoff tickets, including the NBA Finals) has gotten around the intertubes and apparently raised some eyebrows. Skeets covered it here and gave his take. Then Brett Pollakoff at Fanhouse read Skeets’ article and decided he had to weigh in. Prepare your minds to be blown by the fine journalism that follows. I’m the one writing in italics, Pollakoff in bold.
[Note: Brett dropped by and commented below and his piece was sarcastic. I didn’t pick up on it and wrote this post. The more you know!]
The Cavaliers are one of three teams, along with the Celtics and the Magic, that most experts have favored to come out of the Eastern Conference. Cleveland, however, comes across as a bit more confident than the others.
The Cavaliers are a bit more confident – why ever would they do that? They’ve got the league MVP, added Shaq and much more skilled role players – unlike the Celtics, who added another AARP member and who still haven’t invented a new knee for KG. And they didn’t lose their PF/SF/PG Hedo Turkoglu and trade away one of their most promising players for the lead singer of Me First and The Gimmie-Gimmies Vince Carter.
What gives us that impression? Only the fact that they’ve printed playoff tickets for every possible series, and included them in their packages that were already sent out to season ticket-holders.
ONLY the fact. Heaven forbid that a team provide its season ticket holders with potential playoff tickets. Lord knows the Cleveland Indians haven’t done this for the past five years. The Browns don’t include divisional and AFC Championship tickets with their season ticket packages. And why in the world would a team want to provide its season ticket holders with playoff tickets anyways? Don’t the Cavs know that in these dire financial times they could just sell them all to corporate sponsors, like I don’t know – maybe AOL!!
This included, of course, tickets for the NBA Finals.
The NBA Playoffs include, of course, the NBA Finals.
Waiting For Next Year has the photos of the actual tickets, as well as a plausible explanation for the team being so bold as to predict their appearance in the championship round before they’ve played so much as a single preseason game.
The team sure was bold with those tickets. I saw bold and bright wine, gold, and blue on the tickets. And in a completely unrelated note, aren’t athletic teams supposed to be confident in reaching the pinnacle of their respective sports? No? How about the Cavs just print out playoff tickets for the first and second round – I bet that would draw no ire!
<Scott yesterday: Obviously, the team feels relatively confident that LeBron, Shaq and Company will at least find themselves among the top eight teams in the east.
With that, printing the whole batch of tickets now would likely be less expensive than printing, binding and mailing one set now and then doing the same thing come March or April.
This is like the only part of the article that I have no problems with.
Ah, yes: the economy. The catch-all excuse for everything. But, as Skeets pointed out at BDL, is saving a few bucks on printing and shipping costs really worth the risk of jinxing a franchise in a city that’s famous for, um, not winning championships?
I blamed the economy when I rear-ended that old lady’s Cadillac with my Hummer and then set her hood on fire. Why? Because the economy is the catch-all excuse for everything. Then I went home and rehashed someone elses’ argument in an article I was writing – why? Because the economy is poor, and I can’t afford my own opinion.
Yeah, probably not the best idea. But apparently it’s something that’s been going on for at least the last few seasons, and even teams who could barely be considered a threat to make the playoffs have done it too — like the Minnesota Timberwolves, for example.
So let’s single out the Cavs and use this soapbox moment to call the Cavs cocky. The Blazers (per BDL commenter) and TWolves do it – but who cares? KG GON BE ANGRY.
If nothing else, something like this could be used as a little extra motivation for the other elite teams in the East, right? In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Doc Rivers getting his hands on a set of these babies and taping them up on the white board before the Celtics open the season — in Cleveland — on October 27.
Right, because most season ticket holders I know are just dying to sell their NBA Finals tickets to Doc Rivers. Fortunately for us, Boston will be too busy hanging out under their blank 18th banner to notice.
Regardless – Write it down folks, we have a new curse to add to our long history. We have The Drive, The Fumble, The Mesa, and now THE TICKETS.
14 Comments
Can you feel the hate? I blame Michigan.
The Cavs have been including the playoff tickets in their season ticket booklet for several years now. It’s just to save costs and simplify things. This is a non-story.
@2
It’s a catch-a-glimpse-of-the-ads-while-you-determine-it’s-a-non-story story.
What is the story here?
What was funny is when the Browns used to do it. We would just laugh. I loved saving them and giving them away for gag Christmas gifts when the Browns would be 3-12 at the time.
It’s called sarcasm, brother.
If they trade the tickets to New York then sportscasters everywhere will begin talking about the tickets’ upside. That could turn the tickets’ careers around.
@ Brett – sweet. I like sarcasm. Cheers.
Wow. Of all the references I expected to see on WFNY, a Me First and the Gimme Gimmes was pretty low on the list. I have no clue what that band has done since ’97 but I got lot of miles out of their first album as a sophomore in high school.
yay! sensationalist journalism is the best kind!
@ #3 – Firefox and Ad Block Plus are your friends.
Haven’t the Cavs done this for a few years now? And didn’t the Indians do it back in the late 90s? I always thought that almost every team included generic playoff tickets in their season ticket holder packages
@ #3 – Firefox and Ad Block Plus are your friends.
Yes the Browns did the same thing as recently as 2007. If they make the playoffs then you log in to their Web site and activate your tickets with a credit card. You already have them in hand, no additional expense or fees for ticket delivery.
Channeling your inner FJM; I like it. I don’t care if it was sarcasm; it needed to be said. Well done.
FWIW, I miss that site (FJM and at Deadspin if you need a reminder…again, not for those who don’t like swear words).