2016 NBA Champions
THE LITTLE CLEVELANDER
There are so many elements to this championship that are making me happy, but honestly the happiest I’ve been was when I was watching terrible ESPN coverage of a crowd around Cleveland outside the team plane. There was a kid, maybe eight or nine, about how old I was when The Indians lost their Game 7 to Seattle back in ‘97. He had a Cavs shirt on and a 2016 Cavs Champions hat in one hand with a Believeland sign in the other that he was holding upside-down. He was overjoyed, furiously pumping his fists into the air and cheering.
I thought to myself that this kid is old enough to love his team and his city, old enough to know when good things happen on a basketball court versus bad things. He’s old enough to get excited about dunks and big threes, but he’s not old enough to have had that horrible thought the rest of us know too well: maybe this will never happen; maybe I’ll die before there is a championship in Cleveland. He’s not going to grow up feeling like his city carries a stigma of failure, a city where our river catches fire, where everything gets articlized and added to The List. That little Clevelander and so many others like him are going to grow up normal, happy sports fans, who will always have this championship to hold in their hearts, as they go on talking about their favorite teams and favorite players and knowing it’s possible for Cleveland to be the very best of all. That’s how kids from Northeast Ohio should grow up. Happy and Proud.