The Whore Of Akron Part 4

"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.

"I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best player on the court," he says. His cream T-s.h.i.+rt matches his sweater perfectly and his golden earrings and wrist.w.a.tch sparkle in the TV lights. "When I'm not, I feel bad for myself-because I'm not going out there and doing the things I know I can do. I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have three bad games in a seven-year career, it's easy to point that out."

Enough? Too much. Too much, to ask LeBron to carry a team, and too much to ask him to satisfy the yearning for redemption of millions, and too much-way too much-to ask him to comport himself with any measure of grace or grit in the wake of abject failure.

Bad enough? f.u.c.king ridiculous. Our warrior: a f.e.c.kless child stunted by a narcissism so ingrained that he's devoid of the capacity to respond to failure with even a semblance of manhood. The fans are spoiled? In King James's playhouse, there are no mirrors.

"As far as worried about the series," he added, "I'm not worried about it."

Meanwhile, the Cavs have lost two home games by a total of 50 points to a team they were heavily favored to beat and are on the verge of a final meltdown.

Thank G.o.d, though, n.o.body seems to be panicking.

Turns out that LeBron truly isn't worried about the series.

It ends against the Celtics, in Boston, in Game 6. LeBron puts up an empty triple-double, plus a ghastly 9 turnovers.

It ends with a minute and a half to go in their season and the Cavaliers down by 9, with their head coach on his feet, windmilling his arms, urging them to foul, begging them to push the ball upcourt, pleading with them to keep trying.

The Cavs prefer not to. They won't foul. And when they get the ball, they simply let the clock run out. Not happy to lose, but perfectly content to stop trying to win. They quit.

Quit on their coach and on each other, quit on their fans and the city that loved them.

And then their leader, LeBron James, the camera tracking in front of him on his way through the tunnel to the locker room, tears the jersey off his chest and tosses it away. As if he has gone down fighting. As if he gives a rat's a.s.s. As if every basketball fan watching-and every basketball player-hasn't just now witnessed the truth revealed.

LeBron James is a fraud. No guts, no heart, no soul.

Dayenu?

Don't be silly.

"I'm not using the elbow as an excuse," LeBron says after the game. "It limited me some."

A reporter kindly points out that the elbow might've limited him plenty. "It seemed like there was a large part of your game missing," says the reporter.

"Well, I got a lot of time to think about it now," LeBron says.

Odd: he keeps right on talking, answering a question that hasn't yet been asked.

"I have no plans at this point. I've made no plans. Me and my team"-his other team, the Akron chapter of Mensa-"we have a game plan that we're going to execute, and we'll see where we'll be at."

Then comes the inevitable follow-up question, about free agency.

"I love the city of Cleveland, of course. The city, the fans. It was a disappointing season, to say the least. But at the same time, we had a great time together. We'll see what happens."

Dayf.u.c.kingenu. Cab fare's on the dresser, b.i.t.c.h. Close the door hard behind you. The lock sticks.

The rumors about Delonte West and Gloria James start filling my e-mail in-box almost as soon as Game 6 ends. There are several versions, but each begins by referring to a source-a mortgage broker, a general contractor-who has done business with the Cavs, and goes on to a.s.sert that LeBron found out that West and Gloria James were s.e.xually involved, and that the Cavs' playoff trail of tears may be traced to his discovery.

In walking back the rumor with folks close to the team, one source tells me that there was a loud argument in the locker room before that game, during the course of which Delonte screamed, "I'm gonna f.u.c.k yo' momma," at LeBron.

I don't buy it, and I can't find anyone in a position of genuine knowledge who does. I think Gloria James ill-used her son in some obvious ways from the instant she gleaned how many hundreds of millions of dollars he might be worth, but I have no doubt at all that she loves him fiercely, as he loves her. To suggest that she betrayed their bond by consorting with a teammate says more about the rumormongers than anyone else.

Truth is, not even the Dayenu Principle covers this sort of thing. The most salient and sane explanation I can find for the best player in the NBA having three of the worst games of his career in one playoff series on the verge of his free agency has nothing to do with s.e.x, and it comes from a source I consider both impartial and unimpeachable: despite his frequent postseason brilliance, James has always had problems coping with playoff stress. Through his last few seasons, he has suffered-come the games that matter-a range of unreported maladies, including s.h.i.+ngles, back spasms, and chronic indigestion, and it has been a source of ongoing concern for the Cavaliers. But perhaps not for much longer.

My favorite story of Cleveland fanhood is about an old friend of mine named Joey, the 1997 World Series, and a shortstop who played for the Indians nearly a century ago, Ray Chapman. Chapman was a fine ballplayer and a sweetheart of a guy, much loved by his teammates; he batted second on one of the greatest Tribe teams of all, the 1920 Cleveland Indians.

Those Indians won the World Series-1920 and 1948: that's the complete list in 110 years-but Ray Chapman wasn't with them. He was. .h.i.t by a pitch in a game at Yankee Stadium on August 16, 1920, and died early the next morning.

They brought his body back to Cleveland and buried it in Lake View Cemetery, one of the world's greatest boneyards. I s.h.i.+t you not: Lake View holds more than 100,000 former people, sits on 285 gorgeous acres, and is the resting place of James Garfield; Eliot Ness; John D. Rockefeller; Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major American city; and the ashes of the finest writer Cleveland has ever produced, Harvey Pekar. It always was one of my favorite places to get high and-far, far less often-laid.

Ray Chapman's grave is hard to find. The granite monument that marks it-paid for back in the day by donations from fans-simply bears his full name, Raymond Johnson Chapman, along with the years of his birth and his death, 18911920. Joey had never visited, but he figured it couldn't hurt to pay homage in the fall of '97 before the Tribe took the field down in Florida to play the deciding game against the Marlins.

He found the grave in an old section of Lake View, near the Euclid Avenue gate, spotted it standing by itself amid a row of unraised markers. As he walked toward it, he saw something else: the top of Chapman's headstone was covered end to end with the coins of the Cleveland fans who'd already made the same Game 7 pilgrimage.

The story ends, naturally, with Jose f.u.c.king Mesa blowing his third save of the Series in the ninth inning. It ends with the Tribe losing, 32, in the eleventh, on an unearned run after an error by Tony "Feh" Fernandez on a routine ground ball to second base. It ended for me in the rocking chair in North Jersey-with Lisa trying to console me. I told her the same thing I always tell her in those moments: I'm good. I'm used to this s.h.i.+t from a long way back. I'll wake up tomorrow morning with you next to me, a job I love, cash in my wallet, and money in the bank. You want to feel sorry for somebody? Feel for those poor f.u.c.ks in Cleveland who were ready to head downtown and revel for the first time in their lives in the only joy strong and wide enough to bridge-to transcend-50 years of collective civic misery.

Ray Chapman was twenty-nine when he died. He was a jug-eared kid from Beaver Dam, Kentucky, who still kept his United Mine Workers card in his wallet after eight seasons in the majors. In The Pitch That Killed, one of the greatest baseball books ever written, Mike Sowell notes that when Chapman's salary was b.u.mped up to $3,500, Ray bought himself silk s.h.i.+rts and handmade suits. Pro baseball was a business then, too, far uglier in crucial ways than today-the year before Chapman died, the Black Sox had thrown the World Series. But for a poor boy born into a hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth existence, making a living by playing the game had to feel like nothing short of a miracle.

LeBron James was born into blight on the west side of Akron, and the fact that the world of professional sports had been transformed into a carnival of global scope by the time he came along hardly negates the astonis.h.i.+ng nature of his flight to riches and glory. It happens to poor boys in other sports and from other tribes; once upon a time, Jews dominated pro boxing and basketball in America.

James did not choose to be born in Akron, and he did not choose to play for the Cavs when he entered the NBA. The team tanked shamefully during the season to improve its draft position, chose him, and that was that. It never was clear that LeBron wanted to play for Cleveland in the first place, and he made plain-in word and deed-his desire to maximize his future options when his rookie contract expired and he chose to sign a three-year deal rather than four, or five, or six.

Looking back . . . f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k. Listen: I don't want to return to Ray Chapman's era. I believe in free will, free lunch, and free agency. I believe I can offer no more than an educated guess at what's in my long-fingered wife's heart, or my sweet young son's-or, frankly, my dog's. Too many days even now, pus.h.i.+ng toward sixty, I remain a stranger to myself.

What then can I read upon the stone heart of LeBron? What can I learn from the odyssey of a black kid, sprung from the loins of a teen mama, fatherless save for the seed of himself, who was a rock star at the age of fifteen, with girls lining up to lay naked with him just so that years later they could boast to their boyfriends that they had boffed King James?

That he's an a.s.shole? I knew he was an a.s.shole years before he became a free agent. The whining and ref baiting; the tough-guy scowling and biceps flexing belied in every instance by his failure to step up for a cheap-shotted teammate; his ludicrous sideline dancing in the fourth quarter of Cavs' routs: he is a hideously poor sportsman and more adept each season at acting every inch the prima donna b.i.t.c.h.

But despite all of that-and the Yankees cap at Jacobs Field, and the refusal to commit to a longer contract that would've relieved some of the win-now pressure on the front office, and the disillusioning up-close view of an entire organization warped to fit his whims-despite it all, he is still my a.s.shole.

Our a.s.shole.

I never loved Lake Erie any less when it stank of piscine death. I didn't have Chief Wahoo tattooed on my left arm in tribute to Albert Belle's integrity and Manny's mental hygiene. And I didn't have to like the Wh.o.r.e of Akron just to love him. His game, great as it was, was only part of our intoxication. Because he was one of us, a landsman, son of the same soil, a member of the tribe.

None of this makes LeBron's performance against the Celtics-not only his play, but also his comportment-easier to explain or excuse. Quite the opposite: for fans whose bond to the spirit of Cleveland sports is a legacy dating back a century, bequeathed by a father and grandfather, it was a betrayal most profound. It was stupid and selfish enough to call attention to his elbow; had he not shot the free throw left-handed in the Bulls game, n.o.body outside of the team itself would have known about what was a minor injury. It was beyond stupidity and selfishness to tell the fans that they had been spoiled by his excellence. It wasn't only Clevelanders who watched LeBron James choke and quit. He brought disgrace and dishonor upon the city, and that went far past the game: it went straight to the heart and soul-his heart, his soul.

And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet. The same fans famished by decades of defeat, still so full of hope and hunger that they paid homage by the hundreds at the grave of a ballplayer few of their fathers had been alive to see play: Who among us hopes LeBron will walk away from the Cleveland Cavaliers?

The Catch. The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot.

Dayenu: The Decision.

Coming to a cable channel near you.