LeBron James Clearly Can No Longer Lose with Cleveland, Even If He Never Wins
The question didn't hit Jim Chones quite right, because it wasn't something the former Cleveland center and current radio analyst had cared to consider. It was posed about an hour prior to Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Quicken Loans Arena, after LeBron James and the Cavaliers had won the first NBA Finals contest in franchise history, when there still seemed at least an outside shot for them to end a city's 51-year professional sports championship drought.
What if James never wins here?
What if, when his career concludes, his only two rings were won in Miami?
"Well, I feel that we're gonna win, because we're doing everything that's necessary for us to win," said Chones, whose Cavaliers tenure included three playoff appearances and one trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. "He's our hero. Heroes give you hope. We're happy with hope. But we know that we're better than that."
How sure was he?
"The Warriors, they should have picked another year," he said. "This is going to be very hard on them. See me after the game, you'll see. They've never seen anything like this."
That night, Chones was right—James scored 40 points, the Cavaliers won 96-91, and that elusive parade, which may have made its way from the abandoned Flats to the thriving outdoor eateries of East 4th Street to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, seemed possible.
Perhaps even probable.
But then Cleveland fans saw something they've seen before, decade after disappointing decade.
They saw three straight losses. They saw another local squad come just short.
And so that party, the party that Chones said would go on for "100 years...really...you see I'm not laughing," was pushed back. Again.
And so, Friday, on television, they can watch another city—this time Oakland—celebrate the end of its own 40-year drought, though its is just in basketball, since the Bay Area has put up plenty of other sports banners since.
Maybe next year in Cleveland will be different, or the year after that.
Maybe none will be.
Either way, it is unlikely that anyone here will blame LeBron James.
"You're looking at a city and a town that has had some serious issues, on both sides of the track," Chones said. "And this guy is the only guy that I know that has brought everybody together, because of the kind of person he is."
He brought them together in anger when he left. Extreme, unapologetic, unbecoming anger.
With his return, he apparently earned more than forgiveness, even if that sentiment always seemed odd, since every person in every other American industry has the right to seek employment wherever they please, without facing the personal attacks James did upon his departure.
With his return, he evidently also earned immunity.
It's clear he can't lose anymore, even if he never wins.
Scott Raab says he has always "loved" LeBron James.
Loved him before he wrote the rather unsubtly titled, The Whore of Akron: One Man's Search for the Soul of LeBron James.
Loved him during his time in Miami, even if some may have believed he'd lost his mind—and, in the process, lost his NBA credentials. So he spent the Cavaliers' 2014-15 media day in a parking lot handing out donuts and watched Tuesday's Game 6 loss from a Quicken Loans Arena seat he purchased.
Loved him after, too.
"I said in the book—I never said anything else—he's the best basketball player I've ever seen," Raab said.
The Esquire contributor—a Cleveland native and Cleveland State alum turned New Jersey resident—hasn't been granted the opportunity to directly apologize to James since penning the aforementioned, often amusing, somewhat autobiographical examination of modern fandom at its most extreme. That may never occur, even if Raab completes his next book on the subject, one that will take a very different tone.
Over the course of the season, this Bleacher Report writer spoke with many Clevelanders—from bartenders to taxi drivers to store clerks—about this subject, and nearly all expressed the sentiment that, while they certainly expected James to win again, and how dare I for suggesting otherwise, they wouldn't bear any ill will toward him if he couldn't. Even so, you'd assume that if anyone with Cleveland ties would hold James to a higher standard, should he never give that city the championship ecstasy he gave Miami, Raab would be the one.
You'd be wrong.
He insists James has done right by Cavaliers supporters, whatever happens from here.
"He made good," Raab said. "If they never win a title, as a lifelong Cleveland fan, LeBron made good on The Decision the way he came back home and the way he played this year. And I think his play as the Finals unfolded, in 50 years, we'll remember that. It was kind of mythic. And on the fan level, I'm really satisfied with the homecoming.... And the way he played in these Finals made good on the way he left on the court as a Cavalier (against the Celtics) in 2010."
Raab goes so far as to say that, in retrospect, "The guy made the right decision to go to the Heat, I mean, in every possible way. And I respect him for doing so. And feel badly, feel abashed to some degree about the harsher judgments I made, but I give the guy credit for the growth that he's made, because however the PR is spun, he's backed it up every step of the way. And I respect the hell out of a guy taking the burden on, whether it's on or off the court, and living up to it."
Even if James never takes the Cavaliers over the top.
Even if, in the end, hope was all Cleveland really had.
"I think (hope) has to be enough," Raab said. "In Cleveland, it has to be. LeBron knows. You were there for 'Not one, not two, not three, not four.' And it's going to be so easy that Pat (Riley) [says], hey, you can come back and play point guard for us. It's f--king hard to win a championship. Everything has to break your way."
Everything didn't for the Cavaliers this postseason, not with Kevin Love sidelined for the final three rounds, and not with Kyrie Irving out for the final five games of the NBA Finals. But those injuries, while unwelcome, did more than give James a buffer from any criticism. They've also allowed many fans to rationalize the situation. Yes, there was some misfortune, again, as has been so common for the teams here. But at least it wasn't a failure of will from a team's cornerstone talent. And, at least, this summer, there won't be desertion, with James likely opting out for financial reasons, not to flee.
So the dream, in the minds of many, was merely delayed this June against the Warriors.
Not doomed.
"Everyone of a certain age, at those moments, they do dread," Raab said. "They feel certain that it won't be fulfilled. I do know people who say, in the wake of the Finals, the losing, better they don't even make the playoffs than I should be tortured like that."
That's actually similar to what James said, after losing Game 6.
"Well, I don't know, I kind of live for those moments and LeBron brought them back," Raab said. "Period. I got a 15-year-old kid, and we went to Games 3 and 4 of the Hawks series. And there's no greater pinnacle of emotion. It all sounds corny. But to be able to go with my kid who is a Cavs fan, that s--t is meaningful. You get to my age, and you really do love those teams. Man, that's good stuff."
That will have to do, until the championship comes.
If it comes.
Austin Carr, the former Cavaliers guard and current Fox Sports Ohio analyst, dismissed that qualifier as quickly as former teammate Chones did.
"I didn't even think about it," Carr said of James never winning again. "But I think the fans will still embrace him. The first year back, we get to the Finals; to me, that's a story in itself. And personally, I think the opportunity is huge for us.... It's gonna happen."
Mike Snyder, the Cavaliers' longtime WTAM radio studio host, offered an echo.
"I don't even want to think about that," Snyder said, prior to Game 6 on Tuesday. "I'll be honest with you. Because he's gonna win here. It will happen eventually. It might be Friday night."
It wasn't, but that likely won't sway Snyder much. It certainly wouldn't have swayed Fred McLeod, Carr's television partner on Fox Sports Ohio, who came away from the NBA Finals similarly convinced. Born in Strongsville, a suburb of Cleveland, McLeod jumped up and down, and watched his father cry, while listening by radio to a Cleveland team winning a championship. That was the Browns. That was 1964.
"I'm like, 'Daddy, we can do this every year,'" McLeod said, at halftime of Game 6 of the 2015 NBA Finals. "OK, 51 years later. Not quite every year."
What would it mean?
"You can argue about what kind of impact sports has on a local city, but no doubt it would just raise the city to another level. Because two generations, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, that don't even know what a championship is like.
"I've lived in Detroit and I've lived in Pittsburgh, two cities that you can argue have the same more or less going on for them," McLeod said. "Since '64, they've won nine, Pittsburgh has won 11. That's 20, sandwiched around (Cleveland). That's cruel! That's just cruel! You can't make that up."
Snyder disputes the notion that Eastern Ohioans need a championship to feel a sense of self-worth ("I don't think we're this poor, forlorn people; I think we've got a pretty good town"), but does think, at the least, "It pushes the weight of the 51 years, seeing the Drive replayed, the Shot replayed, the Fumble, that goes away. We know it's there, but now we can slide it along."
But once more, it's all a huge if. James will turn 31 next season.
He's logged more minutes than anyone else over the course of his career. What if he can't lug the Cavaliers up the hill?
"It depends on how it happens," said Fox Sports analyst Jimmy Jackson, who starred at Toledo High, two hours away, before moving on to Ohio State and the NBA. "They will always appreciate him coming back, they will love him no matter what. But the fact that he couldn't get it done, but got it done in Miami, will still be there. Because the bar is set so high because he won. So anything less than that...."
Then even he equivocated. "From the mainstream media, they will look at it like that's about LeBron," Jackson said. "He didn't win it. From the fan perspective, I don't think they would look at it like that."
Indeed, it's clear any disappointment at not winning wouldn't be directed at James, whose return, to some, symbolizes something more.
"I don't think it can be emphasized enough: The town has had no luck in any area of social life in America," Raab said. "It's a hardscrabble area. You know downtown, Public Square, it looks and feels like a bus terminal. It smells like a bus terminal. I mean, this is a tough town....
"And part of it is a spiritual thing. There is a spiritual sense that one of our own came home, and talked about it, and everyone paid attention. You know, it means something! As corny as it is, and I can't think of anything cornier. It is sincere. It is a sense of pride in the city."
At least for now, that seems, for many, to be sufficient.
Ethan Skolnick covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and is a co-host of NBA Sunday Tip, 9-11 a.m. ET on SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio. Follow him on Twitter, @EthanJSkolnick.
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