She couldn"t control her pupils.
He snorts. "Tell me another," he says.
One more. Then I have to get to work.
"Okay."
Old man gets knocked down by a car. The driver stops and gets out, scared to death. The old man"s lying there, conscious and groaning. The driver calls 911 and tells the old man not to worry-an ambulance is on the way. He takes off his jacket, folds it up, puts it under the old man"s head, and asks the old man if he"s comfortable.
The old man looks up at him and says, "I make a living."
"I don"t get it," Judah says.
You will. Now go to sleep, sweetheart.
When he becomes a father, kinehora, he"ll know that the jokes and stories don"t matter. What matters are these moments. Fifty years later, I remember my father"s smell, but I had just turned ten when my mother left Los Angeles for Cleveland with my brothers and me, and after that there were no moments.
I could lie beside my son all night, just listening to him breathe. I head up to the office, thinking about LeBron. If I grew up feeling fatherless, hurt, and angry, how much worse it must have been for him. He had no one to miss. No smell. Nothing.
Now he"s living in Miami, and his six-year-old and three-year-old sons are in Ohio and go weeks at a time without seeing him. I wonder what it is that he thinks echoes in eternity? Triple-doubles?
On February 11, his boys are courtside in Detroit to see him play against the Pistons when a front-row fan inquires loudly of James whether Gloria is heading to Boston to spend Valentine"s Day with Delonte.
James walks over.
"What did you say to me?"
"I said, "Is your mom going to Boston for Valentine"s Day?" "
"Say whatever you want to say to me," James tells him. "Just don"t get disrespectful."
The fan shuts up. A security guard warns him against any further badinage. LeBron is praised far and wide for defending his sons against a heckler so nasty as to insult their grandmother. But did the heckler know those were his sons? Does anyone but me wonder why-since he has been reviled by Pistons fans his entire career, and since the Palace of Auburn Hills is notorious for its nastiness-LeBron thought it was a good idea for his little boys to attend a Friday night game there?
The Heat win, of course, 10692; their record now stands at 3914.
That same night, the Cavaliers beat the Los Angeles Clippers in overtime, ending their losing streak after 26 games and bringing their own record to a gaudy 945. Since playing the Heat on 12/2, they"re 234.
Word comes that very week from California: Sandy Raab is in the loony bin. The precipitating event-the sudden departure of the Filipina who"d followed the Gypsy into and out of his bed and his heart-plunged him into a depression no less profound nor painful for all its familiarity.
I knew he was back in the hole when I returned from Miami and heard him on my voice mail, barely able to speak. I call him back and he manages to tell me that she done left him and he"s thinking of killing himself.
I ask about his meds and he starts a song-and-dance about how the shrink prescribed another antidepressant to combat this latest swing, but my father hasn"t gone out to get the pills yet.
"What"s the use?" he says.
That"s not a question; that"s depression. The only question is, Why aren"t you following your doctor"s orders?
"I"m sorry I called," he says.
Me, too. I"m in New Jersey. What do you expect me to do from here? Call Michael.
Michael"s my half brother. He lives in Burbank. When my mother took us back to Cleveland, my father married the woman he was having an affair with, and Michael is their progeny. I know from talking to Michael that he confiscated Sandy"s .38 Police Special after the Gypsy left and the old man started waxing suicidal. Let Michael deal with this, too.
Michael lets his wife handle it, and when Sandy calls and tells Michael"s wife he feels like killing himself, she takes him at his word, phones 911, and they give Sanford a lift to the mental health ward at Northridge Hospital.
I"m heading to Boston, where the Celtics kindly credential me for their game against the Heat on 2/13. The Celtics have whipped Miami both times they"ve played this season, and the Heat, riding an 8-game win streak, try to whistle past the graveyard-this game isn"t a test, they say, isn"t make-or-break, isn"t a big deal. But the teams are essentially tied for the best record in the East, and the Heat will have to beat Boston to reach the Finals. The Celtics are down to eight healthy players today. It is indeed a test, and the whole league knows it.
Especially the Heat. As the Celtics pull away in the third quarter, Dwyane Wade hammers Kevin Garnett with an elbow in the back, drawing a flagrant foul. As the officials huddle to discuss the call, Boston"s Rajon Rondo wanders over to where the Heat are gathered around Spoelstra. Rondo leans in to listen, unnoticed until James nudges him away. Rondo eases himself right back to where he was when James nudged him. LeBron just glares; finally, the Celtics" Ray Allen comes and leads Rondo away.
The subtext of Rondo"s clowning seems clear enough. Disrespecting the Heat is a tactic, part of beating them. The Celtics lead by 13 going into the fourth, but the Heat, led by LeBron, come back. With 19 seconds left, James misses a free throw that would"ve tied the game. With 6 seconds left and Miami down 3, James pa.s.ses the ball to Mike Miller, a bargain-bas.e.m.e.nt free agent who has missed 3 of 4 shots today, all from long range. He"s wide open, but Miller bricks the 3-pointer and Miami loses, 8582.
That same day, in Cleveland, the Cavs" one-game winning streak dies when the Washington Wizards, 025 on the road so far this season, build a 22-point halftime lead and coast to a 115100 victory.
"I"m still trying to figure them out," Byron Scott says of his eunuch legion. "Because to me, that was ridiculous."
I don"t know, Coach. It"s no more ridiculous than paying you $4 million to stand on the sideline with your arms crossed and your mustaches twitching with disdain. Aren"t you supposed to be motivating these guys somehow? Or does that cost extra?
As for the Heat, with two-thirds of the season played, with the game on the line against the Celtics, with no time left on the clock, and with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh on the floor, the guy taking the final shot is Mike Miller.
Fifteen hundred miles away in Miami, Pat Riley sniffs the wind and winces. Garlic.
Sandy goes from the psych ward to an a.s.sisted-living apartment in the Valley.
"I feel abandoned," he says on the phone.
You"re not abandoned. You"re on the phone with me.
"I wish you were out here," he says.
No. I"m right where I belong.
Three thousand miles away, my father hears the no.
"I know that," he says.
On February 24 a miracle: Mo Williams shipped to the Los Angeles Clippers for Baron Davis and a first-round draft choice. It is nothing short of a complete reversal of the Dayenu Principle. Ridding the Cavs of Mo by any means is good enough. Baron Davis, despite his flaws-he"s aging, fat, oft-injured, and cranky-is a nice fit. He"s an alpha dog. He has played, not always happily, for Byron Scott; and-when he"s feeling it-B Dizzle has that same canine hunger that Shaq prized in Delonte.
Plus a number-one? Plus? From the Clippers, no less, as poorly run as any franchise in all of pro sports. It means that the Cavs are likely to have two lottery picks in the NBA draft this summer-their own and the hapless Clippers".
And-praise Jesus-I never have to watch Mo Williams in a Cavalier uniform ever again.
Trust me, though, I am not blind to the pathos here. My life as a Cleveland fan has come to this: the Cavs, 4414 a year ago, are 1047; Miami is 4216; LeBron is playoff-bound; and I"m shouting hosannas. No Mo.
With Baron Davis feeling it, the Cavs play like an NBA team. Not a good NBA team, but that"s okay; they no longer look like a team with no hope of winning or interest in trying. Even Byron Scott gets into the spirit, occasionally uncrossing his arms. He and Baron are at peace. With Davis leading the pack, the Cavs bear little resemblance to the curs who played dead on 12/2.
The news out of Florida is heartening, if strange: the Heat have been reduced to tears. After a last-second one-point home loss to the Bulls on March 6-the Heat"s fourth straight loss, after James and Wade both miss last-second shots-Spoelstra tells reporters, "There are a couple guys crying in the locker room right now."
Wade b.i.t.c.hes about wanting the ball in the fourth quarter. LeBron promises his teammates, "I"m not going to continue to fail late in the games." Bosh, the Heat"s Eva Peron, captures the aching that follows "when you put your heart and your soul, your blood, your sweat, your tears into something, and you want something so bad and it just slips from you."
Two days later, with the mocking laughter still ringing around the NBA, Spoelstra accuses the media of sensationalism and says his boys weren"t crying after all.
"I saw glossy eyes, but that"s about it," he says.
The Heat have now gone more than a month without beating a team with a winning record. Their two main Eastern Conference rivals, the Bulls and Celtics, are a combined 60 against Miami. Riley"s us-against-the-world approach has dissolved like the mascara on Chris Bosh"s avian cheek as the team, its fans, and the Miami media commence moping without shame about feeling hated.
"The world is better now because the Heat is losing," Wade pouts.
To which Stan Van Gundy, the current Orlando Magic-and former Miami Heat-head coach, speaking on behalf of a weary but proud nation, replies, "If you don"t want the scrutiny, don"t hold a championship celebration before you"ve even practiced together."
The Cavaliers won"t be printing playoff tickets anytime soon. Even with two lottery picks, they may not make the playoffs again for years. Before LeBron, the Cavs made the playoffs only 13 times in their 35 years of existence. They would have to win their next 250 games to even their all-time won-loss record.
The Browns rose from the dead in 1999, their rights sold by the NFL to Al Lerner, a billionaire who owned a slice of the old franchise and also introduced fellow Brooklyn-born Jew Art Modell to the Baltimore money men who financed Modell"s theft of the team; Modell signed the papers that finalized that shabby heist on Lerner"s private jet.
Al Lerner had chutzpah enough to call his bid for the New Browns "an act of conscience"; Fate rewarded him with brain cancer. Al died on the fourth anniversary of his acquisition of the team, leaving his son, Randy, in charge. The New Browns have a 12-year won-loss record of 64128, with two winning seasons and one playoff game.
The Indians were purchased in 2000 by one of the failed bidders for the New Browns, Cleveland native Larry Dolan, a member of the Irish nincomp.o.o.p clan that has so successfully run the New York Knicks into the ground. Larry has held his own by snuffing an entire fanbase. Ten years ago, the Tribe"s streak of sold-out games ended at 455. Last season, the team ranked dead last in MLB attendance.
When I was born, Cleveland was America"s seventh-largest city; now it ranks forty-third, and falling fast: the town lost 17 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010, and dropped below 400,000 for the first time in a century. Sometimes, especially for an expat, the mere existence of the Cavs, Browns, and Indians seems like all that keeps Cleveland from slipping into darkness forever.
And sometimes, especially this season, it feels like there is no Promised Land, only sand, like all hope is mirage and all memory a dream, like the Cleveland living in my heart and soul will die along with me.
Lord, I"m tired. Haven"t I paid dues enough? Hasn"t Cleveland? I"m not looking to cut a deal. I don"t need another Yahwevian covenant, not when the last one cost a chunk of my p.e.n.i.s and my son"s, and for what? All I ask for is the strength to go on and finish the job, and that You keep half an eye on my wife and son. And maybe a shred of rachmones for Cleveland fans. Did I say a shred? I meant to say a scintilla. Let"s start with a scintilla. Amen.
I"m headed to Cleveland one last time this season, for the return of the return of the Wh.o.r.e of Akron on March 29. Right now it"s Sunday night, the twenty-seventh, and I"ve timed the drive so that I"m in the car on I-80 arrowing through Pennsylvania in time to hear Joe Tait call the Cavs-Hawks game tonight.
Tait began calling Cavs games in 1970, during their first season. He was thirty-three years old then, and it was his first big-time gig; the Cavs rookie coach, Bill Fitch, knew Tait from his student-radio days at Monmouth College in Illinois, where Fitch had coached basketball. Joe was Midwest-born and bred and sounded it, and his voice had a deadpan edge that perfectly suited a 15-win NBA expansion team. In the early "80s, the Cavs" radio rights went to a rival station for a year-Tait spent that season calling Nets games-but otherwise, Joe Tait has been the one and only voice of a team whose face was often ghastly to behold.
Hoping to call a Cavs championship before he retired, Joe hung on longer than he wanted to, and given his girth and the grueling travel that goes with the job, longer than he should have. Just before the regular season began, he came down with pneumonia, which led to blood clots in his lungs and, in January, double-bypa.s.s surgery.
Joe swore before he went under the knife that he"d come back to finish the year-his final year, at age seventy-three-and so he has, for the Cavs" last five home games, starting tonight.
I"m on I-80"s last Pennsylvania leg, between Lamar and Sharon, when Joe signs on.
"It"s basketball time at the Q," he says, same as ever.
No, I"m not crying. If my eyes are a little glossy, it"s because I can still hear him calling the end of Game 7 against the Bullets during the Miracle of Richfield 35 years ago-and because that game turned out to be Joe Tait"s championship.
The day before the Heat game, I finally get back inside the owner"s vault across from the Cavs" locker room with Dan Gilbert, who"s trying to explain why he left his courtside seats at halftime on 12/2 and never came back.
"I was literally afraid of going out on that court," says Dan. "I knew what the a.s.shole was doing, and I didn"t want to-" and he stops.
"Sometimes I can lose my-" stop. I can see the red beginning to rise.
"He was taunting. He was loving every second of it. I wouldn"t have physically gone after him, but I would have probably said and done some things that I would have regretted. So I didn"t come out."
Your players came out. They came out, smiled pretty, and spread wide their cheeks.
"I guess it just wasn"t a thought that entered our minds, that maybe these guys-look, some of them might"ve been Cavaliers for a few years, but they"re not from Cleveland-they weren"t born and raised here. He was a co-worker of theirs. We should"ve reminded "em. If we"d said, "Look, you need to understand how serious this is," I think our players would"ve listened. I blame us more than them. I kick myself in the a.s.s on that one. That"ll always haunt me, because I think it was the beginning of the end of our season."
Gilbert"s biggest regret, though, is losing all leverage when James committed for only three years in 2007 instead of signing a longer extension.
"When he said, "I"m signing for three years," we should"ve had the b.a.l.l.s to say, "Shove it." He wouldn"t have left. He wasn"t prepared and ready to leave. We should"ve said, "f.u.c.k you. Go. Let"s see it." "
The fans would"ve been screaming for your blood, not his.
"I would"ve gone to the fans and explained it. How much we love LeBron, and how we"re doing all we can to build a team around him to bring Cleveland a championship, and not just one. But LeBron has to step up, too. He has to commit long-term or it won"t work. And if he"s not willing to do that, I can"t have one player hold the organization hostage. If he won"t sign a long-term deal, I have to try and trade him for players who really want to be here."
I don"t know, Dan. All I know is that the fans are the ones who always wind up suffering. That"s just how it is in Cleveland.
"The Cleveland fan is the most undertold story in history," Gilbert says. "It"s the best sports town in the world. I had a bunch of friends go to Miami for somebody"s fiftieth birthday party, and they came back and said, "How does he even go there? They don"t give a s.h.i.t about sports." "
That night I take a psychiatrist to dinner, Dr. Richard Friedell. Rich was at the Browns t.i.tle game in 1964, but he seems unburdened by a sense of deep frustration about Cleveland sports or rage over LeBron"s departure.
"I don"t care about the ring," he says. "I care about my team."
Well and good, but I myself can"t help but feel a championship would make a profound and positive difference to Cleveland"s collective psyche.
"The ring, the ring, the ring, the ring. Enough with this stuff."
But so many decades of failure. So much hope, dashed. So many dreams, dead. And then this guy comes along, and he"s the best player in the league-and he"s from here.
The good doctor is admiring his gla.s.s of red. He is beefy, florid, and full of irony.
"My wife was very fond of him," he says. "Who knows at what depth of personal fantasy?"
That"s not what I"m talking about. I"m talking about a lifetime of sports defeat and despair, culminating in a single act of treachery. I"m talking about the rage engendered by suffering decade after decade after decade with no release.
"Another reason for legalizing prost.i.tution," says Dr. Friedell.
I"m driving down Lee Road to get my Game Day haircut Tuesday morning when Friedell calls. His friend Howard Edelstein has an extra ticket for the Cavs game and would be honored if I"d join him and his son, Brian.
I call Howard, who turns out to be an original Cavs season-ticket holder; his seats are in the third row behind the visitors" bench. I tell him that he might not want me sitting with him; if I"m not in the press box, I"m going to get loud.
Not a problem, says Howard.
Excellent.
Lee Road heading north is full of memories. Uncle Manny owned a TV repair shop in Maple Heights-long gone, like Manny, who took his flatulence to Florida in the "90s and pa.s.sed away there. Once I reach Cleveland Heights, I"m home.
Cedar and Lee was where the shoe store used to be. When I started working there in 1972, the first wave of blacks had moved to Cleveland Heights from the inner city and a lot of the white people began moving farther east. Now the surburb"s population is evenly divided, more or less, but only in terms of overall numbers. Heights High, whose campus sprawls from one quadrant of the Cedar-Lee intersection, is three-quarters black now, and the town has lost more than a quarter of its population since 1970.
Lee Road is black. The barbershop, Center Court, is black. The barber, Dmitri Sumbry, is black. I"m white, and I know enough to know that a strange white man strolling into a black barber shop is indeed a strange white man. I know I"ll be only three rows behind the Heat bench: and I want a message razored into my hair-something special from me to the Wh.o.r.e of Akron. So I"ve arranged my haircut in advance by getting in touch with the writer Jimi Izrael, whose own barber is Dmitri.
I want something else, too: I want to have a conversation with a black guy about my animus toward LeBron. Jesse Jackson and Maverick Carter and a few black voices in the media have weighed in on the role race played in the reaction to The Decision. Some claim it"s a factor, some deny it-I"m not looking for antipathy or absolution: I just want to know what I don"t know. I want to think about what I haven"t thought of yet.
Jimi Izrael is a Cleveland guy, built like a nose tackle, with dreadlocks hanging down to his belt. Not a big sports fan, not a LeBron hater or lover: Jimi"s a man of letters, a culture critic. Which must be why he"s disappointed to see my shoes.
"You wore Crocs to a black barbershop? Crocs?"