It’s hard not to have NBA stars in our eyes as the Cleveland Cavaliers continue their dominance. Could that magic mean another championship?
Well, we won’t jinx it by prediction. But many of us have never quite let go of the joys of the 2016 season that broke Cleveland’s 52-year sports championship drought -- achieved on the shoulders of hometown hero LeBron James. That win lifted the spirits of Clevelanders and ex-Clevelanders alike, jamming downtown with more than a million jubilant fans for a parade unlike any seen in Cleveland before or since.
Still, it’s hard not at least to celebrate the incredible teamwork, drive to win, deft coaching and other factors that have brought the Cleveland Cavaliers to this point:
*The first NBA team this season to secure a guaranteed spot in the playoffs.
*The best in the land, with a 55-10 record, tied for the fifth best start in NBA history, and just ahead of the 54-12 Oklahoma City Thunder, the second to clinch a playoff spot.
*Riding another 15-game winning streak into tonight’s away game against the Memphis Grizzlies, a streak that parallels the Cavs' 15-game winning sprint to start this season.
What’s in store, with 16 more regular-season games after tonight’s -- then what is sure to be a tough matchup in the playoffs -- nobody knows. The Finals, if we make it that far, are scheduled to start on June 5. That seems a crazy long way off.
But whatever the outcome, it’s been a glorious season for our boys of the hoops, a full-team effort sparkling with can-do confidence, a bench that’s delivered in the gaps and stood up to ensure consistency, including when stars like All-Star shooter Donovan Mitchell are sidelined, as now.
Even self-described “unbearable coastal sports media snobs” like The Wall Street Journal’s sports columnist Jason Gay are paying attention.
“The Cleveland Cavaliers may be the best basketball team on Earth (right now),” Gay wrote in a column posted yesterday morning on WSJ.com.
It was headlined, “Why You Should Fall in Love With the Cleveland Cavaliers.”
Why, indeed.
And despite the parenthetical “right now,” Gay allowed himself to gush a bit: “They’re good,” he wrote. “Really good. They’re on pace to win 69 games, which would give them one of the top regular-season marks in NBA history — and the best in Cavaliers history, including the two LeBron eras, the second of which resulted in a title in 2016."
“Surely you’ve heard about the Cavaliers’ team depth,” he added. “... You must know about first-year head coach/wizard Kenny Atkinson, and Cleveland’s ridiculous, league-leading offense (122.7 points per game, capable of pouring it on so quickly the franchise (really) just filed a trademark for the term ‘Cavalanche.’"
Cavalanche. It has a nice, round, delicious ring to it.
Let’s hope for a Cavalanche every game from now on.
The end of this glorious season remains an unknown. But we do know for sure that this team is for real. That it believes. That the players drive hard for victory, with come-from-behinders and blow-outs, alike. That they’ve demonstrated phenomenal firepower, with chemistry on the court that’s charging electricity in the crowd. That they’ve shocked sports-crazed Boston with a commanding Eastern Conference lead over the second-place Celtics.
There is still a ways to go, but all we can say right now is, “Way to go, Cavs!” We believe.
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