You might say I"m relieved. You might say I"m overjoyed. You might say I"m overtired, too; I haven"t slept more than an hour or two at a stretch all week.
More than anything, I"m grateful that the real suffering to come remains for now just that: the suffering to come.
I"m thankful to the G.o.d I don"t believe in for any deferral of the real suffering that comes-soon or late but always-to every one of us.
The real suffering to come has nothing at all to do with sports.
The series moves to Dallas for Game 3, and the Heat win, 8886, on a late shot by Princess Bosh, to go up 2 games to 1.
Since the NBA went to a 2-3-2 playoff format in 1985, the team winning the third game of a 11 series has gone on to win the series 11 of 11 times. But something else is happening: Something is cracking inside LeBron. He comes out strong early, and then stops. Stops driving to the basket. Stops defending close to the basket. Stops rebounding, stops shooting.
I"m hardly the only one to see this. With a little over three minutes to play and the Mavs making a last-ditch run, Wade is screaming at James as both teams line up for a Dallas free-throw attempt.
Wade"s screaming because James had the ball on the Heat"s previous possession, and rather than trying to score, James had quickly dumped it off to Mario Chalmers, who was too closely guarded to do much but turn it over. It was a boneheaded pa.s.s, thrown by a player who didn"t want the ball in his hands.
They"re still on the floor, and Wade"s screaming so loud that the announcers can hear it.
James turns his back and walks away, toward the Heat bench. Wade follows, still screaming. James has nowhere to go now, and turns sideways, scowling. LeBron says something, and Wade, his back to the camera, stomps away.
After Game 3, Gregg Doyel, a CBS sports columnist, asks LeBron why he"s shrinking in the fourth quarter.
James advises Doyel to study the game film with an eye to his st.u.r.dy late-game defense.
"You"ll ask me a better question tomorrow," LeBron tells Doyel.
Plenty of Doyel"s sportswriter colleagues-"lumps of well-dressed clay," in Hunter S. Thompson"s phrase-scorn him as a troll for his question. But Doyel"s right: James has scored a total of 9 fourth-quarter points in the series" first 3 games.
The Germans must have a better word than schadenfreude for what I"m feeling. In Game 4, LeBron scores a total of 8 points, hitting 3 of 11 shots and 2 of 4 free throws. Not only is it the worst game of his career, he vanishes exactly as he did against the Celtics in Game 5 last season, drifting away from the action, unmoored from the game going on around him. In the entire fourth quarter, with the game up for grabs, he attempts one shot, and the Heat lose, 8683.
Now the series is tied 22, with Game 5 coming up in two days, and the one question on everyone"s mind is, What the h.e.l.l is wrong with LeBron James?
History repeats itself off the court as well: on the morning of Game 5, Stephen A. Smith and Chris Broussard are chatting on ESPN2 when Smith alludes to rumors he"s heard about LeBron"s on-court performance being affected by off-court matters "of a personal nature" involving "someone other than the player." Smith primly a.s.sures Broussard-who clearly knows exactly what Smith is referring to-that he would not reveal any details even if he could confirm said details, because they have "nothing to do with the game of basketball."
Soon the interwebs are ablaze with the story of LeBron"s girlfriend"s affair with Rashard Lewis, who plays for the Orlando Magic. Lewis, recently engaged to be married, quickly denies any such thing.
Months ago, when I began trying to find out if there was any truth to the Gloria JamesDelonte West story, an NBA reporter suggested that one source of those rumors was none other than Maverick Carter himself, trying to deflect the blame for James"s poor play against the Celtics. This sort of s.m.u.t, two seasons running, seems far too strange to be a coincidence.
When James and Wade enter the arena before Game 5, they"re caught on camera coughing and laughing behind their hands, making fun of Dirk Nowitzki, who played with the flu during Game 4. It is an exceedingly bizarre moment in a Finals that has become a recurring nightmare for LeBron James.
Maybe it"s because Wade dressed him down in Game 3 in front of millions of fans and both teams. Maybe it"s because James is suffering from another of the undisclosed playoff maladies that befell him as a Cavalier. Maybe it"s because Dallas coach Rick Carlisle, who was coaching the Indiana Pacers back when LeBron was a rookie being gelded by Ron Artest, is running Shawn Marion and DeShawn Stevenson at him like me and Big George at a cigarette machine. Whatever the reason, James is fading into nothingness game after game.
Nowitzki, meanwhile, dogged his whole career as a player who failed in the clutch, knows that this may well be his last chance to win a championship; the idea that he is faking an illness, as Wade and James seem to be suggesting, is insane. The Wade-James clown act mocking Nowitzki is emblematic of what the Heat have become: a genuinely loathsome team, flexing and roaring and beating their chests when they"re ahead, panicking when they"re pressured, and ref baiting on almost every offensive possession. They"re preening, gutless chumps whose confidence seems more and more like delusion.
After Game 5-after Nowitzki scores 29 points and the Mavericks finish with a 174 run; after LeBron falls apart yet again in the fourth quarter, scoring 2 points; after Dallas rolls to a 112103 win, pushing Miami to the brink of extinction-an irate Wade claims that his pregame coughing was genuine, while LeBron feebly attempts to deny that he"s collapsing under the pressure of the Finals.
"I don"t think so," he says.
"I don"t believe so," he says.
"I know I"m not," he says.
The boy, kinehora, is back in school and I"m cleared for takeoff. First-cla.s.s both ways and all the way. I"m not staying across from Big Pink; I"m at the Viceroy. No Malibu; I"m rolling a Lincoln. No Luna Bars; I"ll take the prawn salad for starters, and the ribeye.
I"m representing, motherf.u.c.ker. I"m in Miami with every Cleveland fan who ever lived. I"m here with Manny and Lorry and Cousin Jeff. I"m here with my old man and his, and I"ve brought the thing on my nose for Lucille.
I"m here for Dan Gilbert and Mo f.u.c.king Williams, too. For Joe Gabriele. For Ray Chapman and Brian Sipe. For Walt Wesley, d.i.c.k Snyder, Jim Chones, and Joe Tait.
I"m here for Lisa, for Judah, and for the dog, who asked me to put five large on the Heat for him. I tend to agree.
Oh, yeah: I"m here for Nicky, too. And for that fat twelve-year-old kid who rides with me always.
I find a couple of tickets on the Heat"s own website-because FanUp! in Miami means even the season-ticket holders would rather pocket a few bucks than watch the team fight for its life-in the lower bowl, near the Dallas bench.
My buddy Don Van Natta, a New York Times reporter who lives in Miami, is coming along to help keep me out of jail or the hospital in case things go even worse than I expect.
What do I expect? Let"s put it this way: Game 6 is tonight, June 12. My return flight is the early bird on June 15-because Game 7 will be played on the fourteenth, and because the fifteenth is Judah"s twelfth birthday. Kinehora.
What I expect, as a lifelong Jew and Cleveland fan, is that the Wh.o.r.e of Akron will play the two most spectacular games of his career and forever etch his scoundrel"s name into the history books.
What I expect is the usual. The Blue Ball Special: travail, with a side of woe and a big slice of rue for dessert.
I remove the white slipcover from the back of my chair, mop my brow with it, and stick it in my pocket. No need of it here: we are sitting in a sea of Maverick blue, and not the only one, not by a long shot. A quarter or more of the lower bowl is filled with Dallas fans.
Here the Wh.o.r.e of Akron chose to come, and here is where he belongs. He came of age in Northeast Ohio rooting for the f.u.c.king Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and Michael Jordan, and he has found a perfect place to play, where there is no home and there are no fans.
He opens by hitting two 3-pointers.
"Uh oh," Van Natta says.
Nah. It"s a good thing. He"ll keep shooting jumpers.
Sure enough, he does. What worries me most-that he will suddenly remember he"s LeBron James, that no one on the court can stop him-isn"t happening. It isn"t going to happen. His shots stop falling, and, once again, James stops playing.
Nowitzki misses jumper after jumper, but the Mavericks, playing with the sort of certainty I"ve never seen in a Cleveland playoff team, storm ahead by 12 points.
Then the Heat launch a 14-point run, and there"s a scuffle down by the Heat bench. The Heat fans awaken at last. Some of them. A few of them. I can hear them at the other end of the arena, faintly. And back come the Mavs. Even with Nowitzki shooting 111, Dallas has a 2-point lead at halftime-because Jason Terry, LeBron"s man on defense, has 19 points on 810 shooting. James, after scoring 9 points in the first 5 minutes, scores only 2 more the entire half.
LeBron doesn"t score in the second half until under two minutes remain in the third quarter and the Mavericks are ahead for good. He doesn"t want to shoot, doesn"t want to drive, doesn"t even want the ball. As soon as it hits his hands, it"s gone. In the last game of the season, fighting against elimination in the Finals, LeBron James"s signature play is a quick swing pa.s.s to Juwan Howard.
When time mercifully runs out, he"s still in a daze. He finds Dwyane Wade and hugs him for a long time. He drifts into the scrum of players and coaches shaking hands, stops and turns and leaves the court, head down. It"s over.
I"m in a state of serious confusion. Van Natta kindly gives me the tweet of a lifetime-"Not one"-and I text the boy ("Someday you and I will go to a game like this"), but I can"t quite handle the emotional calculus.
There is no Cleveland laundry here, and yet I"m happier than I have been at a Cleveland game since 1964, and I feel no shame for that. LeBron James has lost in the worst possible way and I was here to see it.
But there"s sadness, too.
"Not one" is still the same number of championships two generations of Cleveland fans have ever known.
For most of seven seasons, I pulled hard for the kid. I rooted for him to succeed and he failed. Now I"ve spent a year rooting for him to fail-and at failure, he succeeded beyond anything I could"ve hoped. It wasn"t luck or Mo Williams. It wasn"t an injury or a lousy call at a key moment. It was him. All him.
Now he"s on the TV. Van Natta and I are at Tobacco Road, an old Miami dive. Don"s drinking light beer, the point of which I"ve never understood. I"m drinking club soda. The place is mostly empty, and n.o.body"s looking at LeBron on the TV but Van Natta and me.
Someone asks about how he feels about all the folks rooting against him.
"At the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before. They have the same personal problems they had today. I"m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things I want with me and my family and be happy with that."
Was it easy, LeBron? Did it go down smooth and sweet as peach cobbler? I almost feel bad for you, son. You"re not a grown man. You"re a kid and you"re afraid.
What are you so afraid of, LeBron, the losing or the winning?
Do you finally understand that it"s not easy? That it"s not meant to be easy. Hard is the only thing that makes it mean anything, the only thing that makes losing or winning worth the pain of trying, the only thing that makes living and dying worth the suffering.
Akron never taught you that. n.o.body there loved you-not your talent, not your future earnings-loved you enough to teach you that there was suffering yet to come that no amount of money or talent could forestall forever. You had no father to teach you that a man doesn"t give up and walk away, doesn"t point his finger anywhere but at himself. You had n.o.body honest or smart enough to tell you that you can take your talents to South Beach, but that those innumerable talents don"t travel alone-the demons come, too.
Learn to face those motherf.u.c.kers down, son, and you just might grow up to be a man someday.
Me, I"ll wake up tomorrow and point that rented Lincoln toward the airport. I"ll turn on the radio and laugh out loud when I hear Le Batard talk about Pat Riley maybe shipping you to Orlando for Dwight Howard. They don"t give a s.h.i.t about you here, pal. You don"t have a home team anymore. You never will.
I"ll land at Terminal C in Newark, and Lisa will meet me and we"ll head home. She"ll wrap my swollen legs, and if the boy"s still in school, we"ll have time for some loving contemplation. The dog will be grateful I never placed the bet. The boy will smile and hug me when he sees me, and his smile and hug will push all that suffering to come a little farther into the far corner where history waits.
Let it wait. Great cities and great athletes live and die. No twelve-year-old can know that; I know it now. I see them pa.s.s like the seasons, quicker each year while I wait, too, like all Cleveland fans. Certain only of defeat, we wait.
Our love is our hope: that we"ll somehow last long enough to witness that parade down Euclid Avenue, and that this-finally, always-could be the year.
Acknowledgments.
Thanks first to the journos who lit the way: Brian Windhorst, Bill Reiter, Jason Lloyd, Tom Withers, Joe Goodman, Dan Le Batard, Zac Jackson, Vince Grzegorek, John Krolik, Howard Beck, Jonathan Abrams, Adrian Wojnarowski, Chris Ballard, Buzz Bissinger, Wright Thompson, Surya Fernandez, and Andy Baskin.
To Don Van Natta Jr., Robin Thompson, and NFN Kalyan for help and inspiration in Miami; to Nicole Prowell, and Nathaniel Friedman, Jimmy Izrael, Brian Spaeth, and Joe Posnanski for creative kinship; to Jay Crawford for being a mensch; to Tim Livingston for transcribing.
To die-hard friends: Jeff Friedman, Jack Sanders, Sean Manning, Howard and Ken Elinsky, Joey Blackstone, Bryan Wessling, Ryan Coakley, Jon Frank, James Waltz, and Jay Woodruff.
To the Cavaliers organization, particularly Dan Gilbert, Tad Carper, Amanda Petrak, Tora Vinci, Mark Podolak, Chris Lesko, Garin Narain, and-above all-Joe Gabriele.
To Arnie Jensky, with deep grat.i.tude.
To my Esquire family, with special thanks to Mark Warren, Eric Gillin, and Matt Sullivan; to Tom Junod, Tom Chiarella, and Cal Fussman; and with love to the man who made my career come true, David Granger.
This book would not exist if not for the hard work and tireless support of my friend and agent, David Black, and my friend and editor, the amazing David Hirshey. And it would not be the book it is if not for the brotherhood of Hirshey"s protege, Barry Harbaugh.
To Lisa Brennan, my soul mate and wife, whose unflagging patience, devotion, inspiration, and love are beyond words, I offer my heart. It has belonged to you since the day we met, and it always will.
About the Author.
SCOTT RAAB, a Writer-at-Large for Esquire since 1997, is a graduate of Cleveland State University and the Iowa Writers" Workshop. His work has been widely anthologized, including in The Best American Sports Writing. Born and bred in Cleveland, he now lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. This is his first book.
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Footnote.
* It always begins with The Catch, when Willie Mays snared Vic Wertz"s 420-foot drive in the eighth inning of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. There were runners on first and second and no outs; the game was tied 22. The Giants won that game in the bottom of the tenth on a pop-fly home run down the right-field line and went on to sweep the Tribe-whose 111 regular-season wins that year stood as the major league record for another 44 years.
Willie was twenty-three at the time; I was two. I"d say I"ve seen The Catch at least 500 times, and every time I see it I say the same three words: f.u.c.k Willie Mays.
end.