Part 4 (1/2)
”I love my teammates. I respect that.”
Still waiting. Best tool in journalism: waiting.
”But the fact that-when you have Shaq, it's a different commodity. It's a different guy.”
Waiting.
”He's a four-time champion. Everybody knows what he's been able to do on the court, but off the court-he's much better off the court than he is on the court.”
Huh? It doesn't sound like he's criticizing Shaq's on-court demeanor or play. In fact, Shaq has played himself into shape-for the first time, he's willing to appear before the throng of media in the locker room without a s.h.i.+rt on-and with him playing well, the Cavs certainly look like the best team in the East. The chemistry between Shaq and LeBron on the court seems fine, although there are times when Shaq feels LeBron isn't going to the basket often enough.
”If we're in a game and he misses four or five jumpers,” Shaq had told me, ”I don't want to see my guy miss that many shots, so I'll just tell him, 'Drive.' I always tell him, 'Drive.' ”
I'm about to try to push LeBron in that direction myself-and maybe jam something in about the book-when he smiles. He seems less tense. He is s.h.i.+fting into full bulls.h.i.+t mode.
”We're kind of similar, honestly. We're both like big kids that love to play the game of basketball-have fun every single day, do a lot of laughing, do a lot of joking. And the fact that we are the same-it's easy for us to get along.”
He turns to finish getting dressed. I walk away, straight into the towel receptacle, a large wooden open-topped bin on wheels, waist high for normal folk. I stagger on the thick carpet, but manage to right myself without falling. And as I gather myself, I catch a sideways glimpse-here I'm going to flout what is unarguably sports journalism's most precious and closely guarded rule-just a snapshot, really, of the Chosen Junk.
Eh-nothing special. Proportional, which is to say larger than my own c.o.c.k last time I managed to find it.
I take one last shot at James, in Newark, in early March. Shaq tore a ligament in his right thumb against the Celtics a few days ago and just had surgery in Baltimore. He isn't with the team, and I figure this might be a good time to sidle up to LeBron again. Sooner or later, d.a.m.n it, we're going to bond.
I wait for the media scrum to clear out, but the Cavs' media relations folk have other plans. They usher a local TV reporter and her cameraman past me, and in spite of her tight skirt and high heels she somehow manages to lower herself onto the floor in front of King James, who seems absolutely delighted to make her acquaintance.
”I'm trying to figure out a way to ask you the question without you getting mad at me,” she says.
”Oh, I don't get mad,” says LeBron. ”I've heard the question over and over, so at this point we just gon' see what happens. It's a long ways away-we'll see what happens. I'm very happy with what's going on in Cleveland. I've given everything to this franchise and they've given everything back, so . . .”
I go looking for the head of media relations to ask him if it might help my cause to hire a hooker.
Chapter Five.
Coins on a Cold Grave Being Jewish and being a Cleveland sports fan have always felt to me like the same thing. I see little material difference between ”Wait till next year” and ”Next year in Jerusalem”-both are variations on what might be called the Dayenu Principle, which exists in a spiritual realm where both celebration and sorrow meld into a single chord that first fires the heart, engorges it with hope and joy, then bursts it apart in icy agony.
”Dayenu” is itself the theme song of the Exodus, a Pa.s.sover tribute to G.o.d's power and goodness, and also a Hebrew word whose meaning is ”It would have been enough for us.” Pesach is unarguably the peak of our tribal history, above even the Great Koufax's refusal to pitch a World Series game on Yom Kippur. The song is more than a thousand years old, 15 stanzas in praise of Yahweh. On and on and on it goes: To deliver us from bondage? Enough. To split the sea and drown our enemies? Enough, enough. To give us the Commandments and the Torah and the Sabbath, to deliver us unto the Holy Land-ENOUGH!
Dayenu is an endless paean exalting a G.o.d who has chosen the Jews as his people. Applied to Cleveland sports, on the other hand, the Dayenu Principle pays tribute to another Power beyond human ken, whose ineffable puissance b.u.t.tresses a single tenet: suffering is inescapable.
To lose and lose and lose again is never loss enough.
Time after time, with each Cleveland team, I have whispered ”Dayenu” to myself, bitterly, and felt that mystery of G.o.d trembling in the air, foul as rotted flesh. But only as the Cavs' season winds down do I begin to grasp the full cruelty of its existence.
I am, as ever, first met with hope. The Cavs play a faster, more fluid offense with Shaq out, and do just fine. They clinch the best record in the league early enough to let Mike Brown rest LeBron for the final 4 regular-season games, casting their gaze to Chicago in the opening round. Shaq has rehabbed his thumb, dropped 15 pounds, and shaved his beard; he looks 10 years younger and raring to go. The city is geared up for another run at the NBA champions.h.i.+p, hoping that this time-this time-next year will finally arrive.
Dayenu.
It was bad enough, in the waning moments of the first round's final game against the Bulls, for us to witness LeBron James shooting a free throw left-handed. Bad enough, for us to be told-after that free throw-that he had played with an injury to his right elbow for weeks; bad enough, that the precise nature of his injury existed in that ethereal realm beyond even the vocabulary of the Cleveland Clinic's best doctors.
Bad enough, to hear LeBron proclaim, ”Cleveland fans don't have any reason to panic,” before the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Celtics, as if Cleveland fans actually needed a reason to panic.
The Cavs open slow in Game 1 at the Q against Boston, then blow the Celtics off the hardwood. LeBron finishes with 35 points, 7 boards, and 7 a.s.sists.
Panic? Us? No f.u.c.king way. We got you, babe.
NBA commissioner David Stern hands James the MVP trophy at center court before Game 2, and James raises it high to each corner of the Q. I've got tears in my eyes up in Section 130's press area-to hear that prideful roar, to see all those fans up on their feet, to watch a Cleveland player accept an MVP award: I've never before seen the like of it.
And then the whistle blows-Dayenu-and LeBron wobbles through Game 2 as if hungover. He scores 3 points in the first quarter, 5 in the second, and 4 in the decisive third, when the Celtics pound the Cavs 3112. The Cavs lose, 10486.
Dayenu? f.u.c.k, no.
Bad enough, to see LeBron outplayed by the ghost of Rasheed f.u.c.king Wallace.
Bad enough, to see Mo Williams shoot 19 and serve as a human traffic cone for Rajon Rondo, who had 19 a.s.sists.
Bad enough, to watch Shaq rendered null on both ends of the court by Kendrick Perkins, to watch Delonte wander the court like a wino in search of his cardboard box, to see Mike Brown's vaunted defense shredded for 83 points in three quarters.
Bad enough, to see Brown fuming at his postgame press conference, so mad that he even unleashes a ”G.o.d d.a.m.n”-the first time all season I've heard the coach swear-only to be followed to the podium by an insouciant LeBron, who shrugs off a reporter's question about Brown's anger.
”Maybe he talks that way to you guys,” quoth he. ”I didn't hear none of that. I know we have to play with more urgency. The series is 11. There's no panic for me. I've been in these situations before.”
Indeed, James has. But-Dayenu-the Cavs have lost each and every time.
And again with the panic bulls.h.i.+t? n.o.body else is talking about panic except for this too blithe young gent whose team has just played like s.h.i.+t in a playoff game against an older, smarter bunch of veterans who two seasons ago won it all. The Cavs have just blown their home-court advantage in a lopsided loss to the most storied, successful franchise in league history-and excuse me, pal, but you played like c.r.a.p.
And the elbow-the streets are filled with a dull muttering that James's Game 2 fog was due to an injection to soothe his pain.
”I don't want to use the elbow as an excuse,” he says, a phrasing perfectly equivalent to using the elbow as an excuse.
It gets worse. Over the two-day break before the series resumed, I hear from multiple sources that the Cavs were partying on the evening before Game 2, after LeBron's personal MVP ceremony at the University of Akron, and had greeted the dawn in a state of groggy disrepair. Not a mere handful of players, mind you: more or less the entire team. They played like they were hungover because they were.
Game 3 is a miracle-deliverance from doubt, our hope restored, our faith affirmed. LeBron hits for 37-he alone outscores Boston in the first quarter, 2117-and the Cavs hand the Celtics their worst home-court playoff defeat in all their fabled history. As the final horn sounds, the Boston crowd boos its aging champions off the court.
Two days later and again LeBron and the Cavs come undone. In Game 4, James has the same number of turnovers as made baskets-7-while Rondo puts up 29 points, with 13 a.s.sists and an amazing 18 rebounds, a testament to both his own gifts and the Cavaliers' bizarre pa.s.sivity.
It is a 10-point loss that looks and feels like 50. Shaq, who played better than any other Cav, refuses comment after the game; he is furious with Brown for not putting him back into the game late in the fourth quarter when Cleveland mounted a doomed comeback. Brown clearly lost the thread tonight; never a strong in-game coach, he rotated players off the bench seemingly on a whim. It reminds me of the Orlando series last season-Brown has more options now, but no more of a clue.
The same goes for the team. The Cavs played tonight's game as if their Game 3 rout of the Celtics had been a knockout punch, like they felt Boston would go down easy. Now the series is heading back to Cleveland tied 22, and the Celtics look not only like the better team, but also far more resilient and determined.
In Game 5-Dayenu-James does something he has never done before: he chokes. Shut out-scoreless-in the first quarter, he attempts only 4 shots in the entire first half and finishes with 15 points on 314 shooting for the game.
The Cavs lose, 12088. In the most important game in franchise history, the two-time MVP plays the worst game of his career.
Dayenu?
Absolutely not. No way. Not nearly bad enough without LeBron's postgame presser.