My three Muskingum College roommates and I used to kill time between classes watching TV shows together (Side note millennials: in 1990, we didn’t have smartphones, Wi-Fi, YouTube, Netflix, X-Box Live, or texting. And group chats back then incorporated a complex technique called face-to-face interaction). We went through good re-run phases (The Golden Girls were hilarious) and not so good (anyone remember Balki Bartokomous on Perfect Strangers?).
One semester, my roomie Mark turned the channel to NBC each day at 1 p.m, to hear these opening words: “Likes sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives.” Thus, I wasted the next several months on a soap opera hamster wheel, where drama was on an endless loop, and resolution was a foreign concept.
While the soap opera genre no longer rules the afternoon television landscape, it is thriving within the Cleveland Cavalier franchise. Headliner LeBron James and his cast of supporting characters have generated enough drama both on and off the court to create their own reality TV channel (with Tristan Thompson dating a Kardashian, I wouldn’t be surprised if that plan is already in the works).
These last seven months have been a crazy roller coaster ride for the Cavs and their fans. The blockbuster off-season trade of superstar Kyrie Irving caused a Cleveland roster shake-up that still hasn’t quite settled. The season has had more streaks then a 1970s college campus. The Cavaliers won three of four games to start the season, then lost six of eight, then won 18 of 19, then lost 11 of 15 prior to Friday’s win over Indiana and Sunday's over Detroit.
The recent losing trend has Cavalier Nation in an uproar, with many fans ready to throw in the towel, blow up the team, and prepare for life without LeBron. My advice to the Wine and Gold faithful comes from the words of Packers QB Aaron Rodgers: ‘R-E-L-A-X’. It’s a looooooong season, so just chill out, and save your anxiety for the playoffs.
I have two pieces of evidence to support my ‘Hakuna Matata’ philosophy:
EXHIBIT A: The NBA regular season is the most meaningless in professional sports. Thirty teams each play an 82 game schedule over a long, seven-month stretch that only eliminates 14 teams (47 percent). The NFL (63 percent of teams eliminated) and MLB (67 percent gone) have regular seasons with much more impact. And a lower playoff seed is much less detrimental in the NBA than those other two sports. Remember, only one of the four Cavalier teams that made the NBA Finals was a No. 1 seed.
EXHIBIT B: In case you forgot, the three previous Cleveland regular seasons since LeBron James returned in 2014 were also soap operas filled with win streaks, loss streaks, injuries, trade speculation, bickering, and uninspired play. In the 2014-15 season, Cleveland actually had a record of 19-20 on January 13 (they are currently 29-19). The next year, they fired head coach David Blatt mid-season. Last year, they lost six of eight games in January, and five of seven in March. In each of those years, Cavalier interviews, tweets, photos, and videos—primarily involving LeBron--were dissected by the media and fans for their hidden meanings.
Did the Cavaliers collapse under all of this scrutiny and adversity? Of course not. When the playoffs arrived each April, the Cavs quickly got their ducks in a row. In those three post-seasons, Cleveland dominated the Eastern Conference, winning 36 of 41 games and nine straight series--six of which were sweeps—on their way to a trio of NBA Finals’ appearances.
Do I have concerns about this Cavalier team? Of course. There are some glaring red flags for this team that will be addressing those in my next article. But Cavalier fans need to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride. Not only is your team a three-time defending conference champion, but you have the greatest athlete IN THE WORLD wearing your uniform. I would rather suffer through an occasional piece of undercooked prime rib in the penthouse than eat a daily diet of stale rice cakes in the outhouse. If any Cavs fan forgets what a stale rice cake tastes like, let these names from the past remind you: Ted Stepien, Ricky Davis, Keith Lee, Shawn Kemp, Anthony Bennett, Dajuan Wagner.
If those names still don’t make you appreciate this current Cavs’ team, here’s one more to slap you upside the head: THE 0-16 CLEVELAND BROWNS.
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