COMMENTARY
Cavs add to Cleveland sports pain
So Buffalo sports fans, you think you’re frustrated about your teams’ inability to win the big one? Cry me a river, say the folks of Cleveland.
Buffalo has gone through Wide Right and No Goal. But Cleveland has endured more than its share of cursed moments.
The Drive and The Fumble in football. The Shot in basketball. The Blown Save in baseball.
The latest heartbreak for Cleveland occurred on Saturday when the heavily favored Cavaliers were eliminated by the Orlando Magic in the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals.
It has been a long time since a Cleveland sports team sealed the deal in the postseason. The last was the Browns, who captured the 1964 NFL title.
This was supposed to be the year the city’s championship drought ended.
Led by NBA MVP LeBron James, the Cavaliers rolled through the regular season with a league-and franchise-best 66-16 record. They romped past the opposition in the first two rounds of the playoffs, sweeping Detroit and Atlanta while winning all eight games by double figures.
Fans were sure that King James and a supposedly better supporting cast would carry the Cavs to the NBA crown.
The Magic obviously did not get that memo. It clearly proved to be the better team in the series.
And just like John Elway and Michael Jordan, the Magic drove a stake through the hearts of the Cleveland faithful.
No doubt executives at Nike, Vitamin Water and ABC also are crying in their coffee this morning. They all were praying for a Cavaliers-Los Angeles Lakers final that would pit James against Kobe Bryant.
Why else would Nike run so many of those funny puppet commercials featuring the game’s two biggest superstars? It’s no coincidence that Vitamin Water built an ad campaign around the debate over which player was better.
ABC was salivating at the thought of what the television ratings would have been if Bryant and James were meeting in the Finals. The Lakers-Magic is an intriguing matchup and should be must-see TV, but it lacks the box office appeal of Lakers-Cavaliers.
Clevelanders couldn’t care less about all of that. They’re hurting as their 45- year wait for a championship victory celebration continues.
It was just as bad in 1986 when the Browns lost at home in the AFC Championship Game after Elway led Denver on a 98-yard drive to force overtime and then to victory. The Browns fell short again the next year in Denver when Earnest Byner fumbled a couple of yards short of the potential game-winning touchdown.
It was bitter when the Cavs fielded a championship-caliber team in 1989 only to be knocked off by the Chicago Bulls on Jordan’s buzzer-beater.
It was sheer agony when Indians closer Jose Mesa couldn’t hold a one-run lead in the ninth inning and they went on to lose Game Seven of the 1997 World Series in the 11th. It was the second time in three years they tasted defeat in the fall classic.
And now the city is reeling again after another Cavs postseason failure.
For many people in Cleveland, they have come to accept disappointment. They live with the attitude that no matter how good a team is something will eventually go wrong (sound familiar, Bills and Sabres fans?).
Cleveland has a lot going for it from its revitalized downtown to its hospitals and tourist attractions. But in sports, an endless dark cloud with no silver lining hovers over the teams.
Hopes will be raised again as long as there is a next year, but for now sadness reigns in Cleveland. Again.
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