How basketball – but not exactly basketball – can make you cry

I keep explaining to people from outside of Ohio why the Cavaliers’ run in these NBA Playoffs is a potentially-redemptive story involving so much more than sports. I’ve tried to explain how, in a down-and-out city like Cleveland, sports are sometimes the only thing people have been able to get excited about, yet the city doesn’t have a major sports championship since 1964 (the Browns won the championship the year before the Super Bowl began). 

The past 45 years tell the story of a city placing its gritty rustbelt hope on the shoulders of its athletes, only to have its heart broken over and over again. We often chatter about certain sports franchises being “cursed.” But even when the Red Sox couldn’t secure a World Series, Boston had the Celtics. And though the Cubs have been toiling for a century, Chicago had the Bulls of Jordan and the Bears of Ditka.

Cleveland? Cleveland has been left with only that phrase of faint, often insincere hope: “Maybe next year.”

Which is why when LeBron James caught an inbounds pass with one second to go and knocked down a game-winning 24-footer, my eyes welled up with tears. Because this isn’t about basketball, or sports. This is about having some pride in your rustbelt roots, about wanting to see a group of people who are at the bottom of a lot of socio-economic charts be able to raise their beers, do a funny dance, and say, “Today, we are the best.”

I’m not the only one feeling this. Talk to anyone in or from Cleveland and they’ll tell you about the heaviness this city feels and the pressure on this year’s Cavs team to “break the curse.” It’s why, as the Cavs soared to the NBA’s best regular-season record and seemingly defeated the rest of the league on cruise control, every Clevelander I talked with told me they were too nervous to get excited.

There’s a precedent for that nervousness. Earnest Byner’s goal line fumble, Jordan over Ehlo, and Jose Mesa’s blown save are just a few of the reasons why an entire city is scared to trust. And when the Cavs blew a 16-point lead to Orlando to lose Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and then lost a 23-point lead to slip behind the Magic with one second to go in Game 2, I, like most Clevelanders probably, felt ashamed for getting excited, for allowing myself momentary daydreams of title-winning glory during the regular season. I was embarrassed for beginning to believe.

After all, we’re just Cleveland. And we were back to “Maybe next year.”

But then it happened. The Shot happened. Our homegrown star, very much aware of our history, showed us what it looks like when a last-second buzzer-beater goes our way. Most people I’ve talked to just stood in front of a TV in disbelief. Me? I welled up. Because it’s not over yet for Cleveland. I can have at least a few more days of allowing momentary daydreams of Clevelanders raising their beers, doing a funny dance, and saying, “Today, we are the best.”

We certainly haven’t won yet. There’s a ways to go. But with one giant off-balance 24-footer, LeBron took a city full of downtrodden and distrusting fans from “Maybe next year” to the feeling that maybe it’s not so silly to start believing after all. 

Can you see that this about so much more than basketball? It’s about a city in rough times feeling permission to believe.

—-

Check out this YouTube clip of Cleveland’s ABC affiliate and the news team’s reaction to the game-winner.

 

Why are you so mad about Facebook and Twitter?

Reading the Relevant website today, I came across an article from Brett McCracken titled “The Death of Facebook,” in which McCracken blasts the recent chain-post “25 Random Things” that blazed Facebook in recent weeks. He believes that the utter lameness of the 25 things phenomenon will propel Facebook into cultural faux pas and irrelevance.

In other words, he thinks Facebook is about to go MySpace on us.

It’s really clear that the author is not a fan of social networking of this type. Not in the least. But I wonder if his description of how and why social networking sites are used really shines light on why the average person (or at least the average person of legal adulthood) uses such sites. 

Here’s the climax of the article:

I feel like I have false notions of so many people, just because I know them only or primarily through the Internet. It’s so much more interesting and enlightening to get to know someone in reality, without all that. I like being able to discover things about people by asking them, hearing from them, having mysteries and encountering little discoveries along the way. I like seeing the dissonance between someone’s facial expression and or body language and what they are saying. When we all have control over what we look like and how we define ourselves on the Internet, it removes that mystery. And it turns “friendship” into something that has less to do with knowing people deeply than just knowing whatever bits and pieces of them they want to reveal (which happens in real-world relationships too, but moreso on the Internet).  

Human beings are far, far more complex and wonderful than their status updates and “ingredient listing” profile pages. And it is far more rewarding and profound to get to know someone in an unsafe, slightly uncertain and awkward way than to rigorously research them and pretend to know them via all the accumulated Internet data on them.  

So let’s take a step back from “25 Things” and think about this. Do we really think that sending out mass notes with carefully selected tidbits about ourselves is making anyone more known? Who are we kidding? As a mindless diversion and exercise in classic facebook self-love, it’s fine. But as a commentary on the uses and practices of online social networking (which I think it pretty much is), “25 Things” is nothing if not a warning sign that the end is near. 

I think the author’s points are interesting (not to mention articulate, which I appreciate). But I generally disagree with his conclusions, and want to point out a few reasons why. (I’m not even going to get into the fact that Relevant thrives on the culture he’s bashing; it’s like Sports Illustrated running a piece about how sports are dull and and we should all be more interesting in knitting.)

1) All mediums of communication suffer from the shortcomings this article attributes to Twitter, Facebook, and the like. If anything, this validates Facebook and other forms of online social networking. Have you ever said anything super embarrassing over the phone? How many “sacred” face-to-face conversations do you make it through without saying something you regret?

If people look back on the “25 things” (which I didn’t participate in, by the way, so I’m not writing out of some deep wound or bias) and say to themselves, “That was so lame of me,” so what? Does that invalidate Facebook as a medium for communication? Or is it actually the other way around?

2.) The Internet is reality, as much as a face-to-face conversation is reality. If we’re going to have a big old philosophical conversation of reality and its ontology, I think we’ll find that poking someone on Facebook is “real” in that it happens. Is it significant? I don’t think it is. If it’s meaning we’re after, then let’s identify that. But people create reality that is not significant (think: reality television) all the time, and many of the face-to-face interactions we have are just as shallow. All of that to say I think people are enthralled with the idea that they can create reality (even if that reality is not significant to most of us).

3.) Social networking is probably used to maintain relationships far more often than it is used to create relationships. Most of the criticisms of Facebook and Twitter are knocks on their ability to help us get to know someone. (Which in itself is a questionable point because we carry such a strong facade on the phone or sitting across a table over coffee. I’m not deconstructing this to the point of saying it is impossible to truly know another person. I’m just saying that I don’t observe a lop-sided impact of insincerity and facade in one particular medium of communication.) 

Facade aside, I think there’s something to be said of shared experience as a relationship-builder. And it’s more difficult to share experiences online than in person, I think. My guess is that most of us don’t attempt to do that, however. There are already people in our life with whom we’ve built shared experience and story, and we use things like Facebook to maintain the relationships beyond and in addition to those shared experiences.

Which leads to my next point.

4.) We are scattered. In the past six years, I’ve lived in Cleveland, Boston, and Seattle while having short stints (but building very cool relationships) in Chicago and Portland. There are so many incredible people I’ve met in each of those stops, and I want to continue those relationships still. 

Psychologist Malcolm Gladwell says in his book The Tipping Point that human beings, on average, have the capacity to maintain between 12 and 13 close relationships. I think my personal capacity might even be below that average. At the same time, I absolutely love people I’ve met along my different stops. So while I don’t think it’d be healthy for my entire 12 to consist of people outside of Seattle (where I am now), I think it’d be weird if there weren’t 3 or 4 people on my list from places like Cleveland and Boston. I see integrity in that.

Not only do I want part of my 12 to reflect the other points along my pilgrimage, but I would like to think that people outside my 12 aren’t dead to me. I would like to think that I could maintain relationships with the occasional Facebook “How are you?” or by reading up on what my friend is up to these days.

It’s a much-improved version of the Christmas card relationships of our parents’ generation. 

I use examples from my own story, but I believe that most people are in a similar position to my own. If anything, I think people (especially folks who are 10-15 years older than me) are more traveled and connected than I am. Globalization is not simply an economic term; it’s something that happens to us as people more and more with each passing year.

I don’t want to be punished relationally for having relocated a few times. Nor do I want to stick it to my friends who’ve done the same. Why should globalization cause us to fracture friendships and familial relationships? It makes no sense.

Is the “25 random things” phenomenon going to cause Facebook to shed it’s hip factor? I doubt it. But even if that did happen, there would come a new social networking site. Because millions of people are looking to utilize such sites to preserve connections around the world.

How ready are we to dismiss that as shallow?

Even when a networking site becomes lame and goes by the wayside, our maintained friendships tend to shift over to the next “in” site (how many of us have Facebook friends today that we’ve preserved from MySpace and Friendster days?). I don’t think we’re necessarily shallow. I think we’re learning how to navigate relationally through increasing globalization.

Because friends are friends, and we have them all over the place.

Intro to the NBA season

The 2008-2009 season is underway as of tonight. The Boston Celtics are looking to turn last season’s title into a mini-legacy by winning again this year. In the Western Conference, the Los Angeles Lakers look to rebound after getting dropped by the Celts in last year’s Finals, while younger teams (Portland and New Orleans) look to leap past perennial playoff squads like Phoenix and San Antonio.

It’s only October, but here’s how I think things will shake down by June.

(* for playoff teams)

EASTERN CONFERENCE

Atlantic Division: *Boston, *Toronto, *Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York

Central Division: *Cleveland, *Milwaukee, *Detroit, Chicago, Indiana

Southeast Division: *Orlando, *Miami, Atlanta, Washington, Charlotte

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Southwest Division: *New Orleans, *Houston, *Dallas, *San Antonio, Memphis

Northwest Division: *Portland, *Utah, Oklahoma City, Denver, Minneapolis

Pacific Division: *Los Angeles Lakers, *Phoenix, Golden State, Los Angeles Clippers, Sacramento

Eastern Conference Finals: Boston over Cleveland

Western Conference Finals: Houston over Portland

NBA Finals: Boston over Houston

MVP: LeBron James, Cleveland

ROY: Greg Oden, Portland

COY: Nate McMillan, Portland

Forbes finds stress in the rust

I found an interesting link on the Neue site – a story by Forbes listing the ten most stressful US cities.

Interestingly, Forbes found a couple of rustbelt cities – Detroit and Cleveland – to be extremely stressful (second and seventh, respectively, on their list) while leaving off Boston, Washington D.C., and Seattle. This is probably due to the categories Forbes measured to calculate stress levels: air quality and unemployment rate were part of the criteria, while traffic woes, housing costs, and taxes were not.

I promise you that Detroit and Cleveland are less stressful than Boston and Seattle.

Nonetheless, the Forbes article is worth a look.

Regarding my home teams

A few thoughts on recent happenings with Ohio sports:

1. Ohio State’s 35-3 loss to USC Saturday was ugly, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. First, the injury factor/excuse cannot be ignored. Beanie Wells is, in my opinion, the best player in college football – or at least the best running back in college football. His contribution in this game would have been invaluable.

Yes, Ohio State has other talented backs, specifically Boom Herron and Brandon Saine. But their role in the Bucks’ offense is as change-of-pace backs – they’re meant to offer a separate gear from the pounding Wells (especially in the case of Saine, a state-record track star in high school).

The game was poorly officiated. Ohio State seemed to get the brunt of every call – most obvious on the flags thrown (or not) in the secondary on pass coverage. This isn’t one loyal fan’s whining; the national media have been pretty even-handed and across the board in claiming that OSU got shafted by the zebras to some degree.

Jim Tressel called this game way too close to his sweater vest. I would never want to have another coach in Tressel’s place, but one of the main reasons OSU suffers against other powerhouse programs is their play-calling offensively. Play-makers need to have the chance to break one open; two draws and a slant route isn’t going to get it done.

To Tressel’s defense, Ohio State’s receivers are nothing special. Brian Robiskie and Brian Hartline are about as vanilla as the receiver position gets – seemingly incapable of creating a play for themselves. Maybe we’ve been spoiled at this position as Buckeye fans. Growing up on Joey Galloway, Chris Sanders, Terry Glenn, David Boston, Santonio Holmes, and Ted Ginn, we’re accustomed to wide-outs who can stretch the field, but with Robiskie and Hartline the quickness just isn’t there. And it’s not like we can forgivingly label them “possession” receivers, either (a la Anthony Gonzalez), as these guys have their share of uncontested drops.

With a healthy Wells, better officiating and some decent play-calls (can we keep Pryor in the game for consecutive plays already?), USC may have edged out a win, but it wouldn’t have been the blowout that was witnessed on national television this weekend.

So where do the Buckeyes go from here? They need to kill the Big Ten. No tanking it in the fourth quarter. No conservative play calls once they hold a slight lead. It’s going to take some drubbings to get the Buckeyes back to national respect in time for the Bowl Selection Committee’s nominations.

Not only do they need to win big, but they need to build the celebrity status of Pryor and Wells. Get as many touches to those two as possible. Pad their stats. One of the things that will help OSU come bowl selection time is if television viewers across the country are excited about them – a near-impossible task after two fumbled championship games. But if out-of-state football fans can be convinced that Wells is the best player college football has to offer and Pryor is as flashy as it gets, Tressel’s team has an outside shot at playing for a title in January.

2. The Browns are awful, but not necessarily for the reasons that most media pundits commonly ignite.

Broadcasters and columnists are beating up on the Browns’ defense, saying that the off-season acquisitions of Shaun Rogers and Corey Williams were a waste. Yet I think that Tony Romo and Ben Roethlisberger would heartily disagree. The sack total could be higher, but when the D-line is getting to the quarterback, the signal-caller is paying for it. The front seven is a good unit.

And who can blame the Browns for their secondary woes? With Gary Baxter and Daven Holly tanked, Eric Wright fighting through some injuries and then having Sean Jones scratched from the line-up, what are Browns coaches to do? There’s not one team in the NFL that could bounce back from that number of injuries to defensive starters.

One thing for which coaches are to blame, however, is the ridiculous clock management and use of time-outs that we’ve seen for the four years Romeo Crennel has been at the helm. Crennel readily admits making mistakes in that department. It’s no slight to Crennel’s intelligence to suggest that he might not be the most efficient with mental math when thinking on his feet. That’s fine – there are plenty of intelligent, capable people who make mistakes in that department – but he needs to delegate the clock management to a different coach if that’s the case. A good leader asks for help when help is needed, and coaching in the NFL is no exception. More than anything else, clock management is what cost the Browns a victory against division-rival Pittsburgh on Sunday night.

Derek Anderson hasn’t been a hit, either. I’m admittedly ready to see Brady Quinn get more out of that offense. But to Anderson’s defense, he hasn’t had his usual receiving corps to work with. When Joe Jurivicius and Donte’ Stallworth are back, this offense should take off. Once they’ve returned, expect Anderson to have only a one- or two-week leash to make things sail, or we’ll be seeing the home-grown Quinn under center.

3. Speaking of home-grown athletes, I’m not the only Cleveland fan upset with LeBron James these days. Steve Aschburner’s recent article for SI.com rails on Cleveland fans for their frustration regarding King James, who wastes no opportunity to flaunt his infatuation with every city and team on the globe that isn’t Cleveland. James first made waves by wearing a New York Yankees hat to Progressive Field for the Indians’ playoff series against the Yankees. Last Sunday he showed up on the Dallas Cowboys’ sideline during pre-game in their team colors, high-fiving Terrell Owens and Adam “Don’t Call Me Pacman Unless I Say It’s Okay, Which I Will Do From Time to Time” Jones.

Aschburner defends James’ stunts and denounces Clevelanders as being paranoid.

I think Braylon Edwards said it well:

“As I’ve gotten to know LeBron, LeBron isn’t a Cleveland guy. LeBron only plays for the Cavaliers, and who knows if he even likes the Cavaliers? He doesn’t like the Indians. He doesn’t like the Browns. He’s a guy from Akron who likes everybody but his hometown.”

The funny thing is that the sports media have taken Edwards’ quote as support of James. I read it quite differently. I think Edwards’ sentiment is similar to my own.

Has anyone noticed that LeBron has been spending the past year on a parade of emphasis, declaring that he is from Akron, not Cleveland?  The cities are, what, 35 miles apart on Interstate 77? Many people live in one and work in the other. Having grown up in the mid-point between these cities, I can tell you that even the towns slightly north of Akron are considered Cleveland suburbs. Akron might as well be a Cleveland suburb.

LeBron is simply full of crap on this one. All he is doing is working people over so that when he ditches his home fans for the money in two years, he can convince people that he never actually left his home team. It’s not like they’re the Akron Cavaliers. 

I’m two months older than James; we went through school in Northeastern Ohio at the same time, roughly 15 miles apart. I grew up on the Cavaliers, on Mark Price, Brad Daugherty and Larry Nance. For the early part of childhood, the Cavs were a perennial playoff team. And do you know where they played? Richfield, Ohio, a small town that is two-thirds of the way to Akron from Cleveland. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the Cavs moved into what was then Gund Arena.

So when it comes to the Cavs not being his hometown team as a kid in Akron, the Cavs were playing closer to Akron than any professional team ever had while James was young. 

To the same point, James was a huge celebrity during high school, with people coming from all over Northeastern Ohio to pack in a college arena to see James play high school ball. When it comes to mutual loyalty, does he really believe that only Akron residents supported him? 

When James was drafted as the first overall selection by the Cavs in 2003, was all of the hype surrounding his selection simply because he was top-notch talent? No way. The fanfare had everything to do with him being a top-notch player who was a home-grown talent. 

My point isn’t to say that James should feel guilty for liking the Yankees or Cowboys (he has since he was a kid). Personally I liked the Buffalo Bills (as well as the Browns). It’s not as if people are obligated to cheer for the local team. But – and this is what Ashburner can’t grasp – this isn’t about cheering.

This is about tossing loyalty into the face of Clevelanders. It’s about more than a Yankees hat. It’s about showing up to an Indians game to cheer against them! The fans who band together to holler as James drives the lane at a Cavs game are also banding together to support the Tribe, and LeBron’s actions state, “When I’m not the one who benefits from your cheering, I am not one of you.”

I realize that in the free agency era of sports, nothing is sacred. But in my naivety, I believed that what made James such an excited player was the possibility of how the story could wind up: a hometown player grows up to spend his career leading the local pro team to success and, ultimately, the championship it craves. 

I wasn’t the only fan who rehearsed that script on draft night of 2003. The fans who’ve packed the Q through James’ career have been living in the same fraudulent tale.

It turns out he’s not one of us. He’s not from here. He’s from Akron, whatever that means.

I guess what it means is that we shouldn’t feel particularly spurned when he leaves us for more money in two years. The stage is set for it. He’s never been one of us, so why should we feel particularly burned?

He sure didn’t bring this up when the extra money wasn’t on the table, when people from all over Northeast Ohio cheered him on from as far back as his sophomore year at St. Vincent-St. Mary.

I’m sure he’ll remind us that basketball, like all sports, is a business. And he’s right. But we thought there was a stronger storyline at work here. 

But, if this is just a business, and if he’s only one of us until the going gets good, I’d gladly take Chris Paul and a draft pick for some guy from Akron.

King on Cleveland

Words from my favorite writer, Peter King, on the fate of my hometown Cleveland and other rustbelt cities:

The 2007 census data came out last week, and there was continuing ominous news for three Rust Belt cities with NFL franchises.

Pittsburgh, the nation’s 59th-largest city with 311,218 people, is now smaller than Aurora, Colo. (311,794). Pittsburgh has lost 7 percent of its population since 2000. I’ve noticed in recent visits the stark downturn in several city neighborhoods.

Buffalo (272,632) has dropped from 59th to 68th in the city-population standings and now is less than half the size of Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, Long Beach, Fresno, Mesa (Ariz.), and El Paso all outsize Cleveland (438,032), which has dropped from 34th to 40th. Worse news for Cleveland: No city has lost a bigger chunk of its people since 2000 than Cleveland — 8.3 percent. Cleveland … the nation’s 40th-largest city. Shocking. Just doesn’t seem possible. I should note that all of these figures are city populations only and don’t include suburbs. Cleveland’s are sprawling.

I’m not playing Taps for these towns, but that news underscores the importance of an NFL team for civic pride. When people look around their hometowns and find not a lot to get fired up about, they turn toward their civic institutions and say, “Give us something to make us feel good about our future. Please.”

——

It’s not easy to hear about Cleveland going through hard times (which has been the last decade-plus, no doubt). For as much as I was ready to leave the area five years ago, living in two very different regions of the country shows me what a big role Cleveland has played in the person I’ve become. (Part of me wonders – some days with fingers crossed – if I’ll ever live in the rustbelt again.)

And I understand Peter King’s emphasis on the importance of sports franchises in those cities. By sports franchises, it’s really football teams that he’s talking about. These are rust belt cities. Rust belt cities believe in football.

For a city in a fragile economic state, having a sports team drawing 40,000 (70,000 in the case of football) to a stadium (let alone the thousands who occupy restaurants and bars to watch the game) does in fact make a difference. When the old Browns left Cleveland, a number of businesses had to close down. 

I understand that sports aren’t very important, even if they are interesting to me. But in a town that’s suffering the way Cleveland is, the issue stretches beyond entertainment purposes to economic concerns and something as intangible as city pride. There’s not a lot to be excited about in Cleveland, but when the Browns win, everyone in town is proud to be from Cleveland.