The Whore Of Akron Part 7

Over and over, ad nauseam, everywhere.

Never mind that many of the same sports journalists spouting this nonsense were at least dimly aware that there was an entire planet full of fanatics who had just spent a month following the World Cup with a fervor born not of romantic love, but of something far more powerful and transcendent: love of country, of home, of blood.

Never mind that ESPN, whose greed has reduced its journalism to self-parody, produced and broadcast a doc.u.mentary, The Two Escobars, wherein the coach of Colombia's national team told of how a nation with a long history of losing at soccer was transformed by overnight success: "They said, 'That's our team-our ident.i.ty.' They embraced us and infused us with the joy that is the heart of our people. We manifested their dreams, ignited their pa.s.sion.' "

Never mind that around the world, a single soccer, cricket, or rugby match can capture and embody a whole people's history and self-regard, and change it as profoundly and permanently as war.

Never mind that the best basketball player in the world, born and raised in northeast Ohio, had quit in the playoffs and then quit on the city, yet still wasn't quite satisfied with the wreckage.

"We hated Cleveland growing up," LeBron said to one writer after The Decision. "There's a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day."

No perfect a.n.a.logy exists for the disgrace and dishonor Cleveland fans suffered with LeBron James's collapse against the Celtics followed by The Decision, but to reduce it to a high school prom queen dumping her zhlub of an old boyfriend was ignorance, pure and lazy.

No one in the national media even tried to examine the larger cultural and historical issues at the heart of the matter. Like anything else more complex than a car chase-climate change, health care, terrorism-The Decision itself was nothing but fodder produced by and for benighted fools capable of grasping only the simplest narrative.

I have known romantic love, requited and un-; I have been dumped, rebuked, and scorned; I have nursed such hurt a long time sometimes-indeed, sometimes for too long. But this is not that hurt. I love Cleveland with a patriot's heart, not a schoolboy's.

So excuse me for hoping that the Wh.o.r.e of Akron blows out a knee at Hurlburt. Or, better, both knees. Because if I have learned anything from watching this beast, it is that he is as near to indestructible as any athlete ever born. Also because if I have learned one lesson from the long malaise of Cleveland fanhood, it is this: LeBron and the Heat are bound for glory.

Good to come to Chicago. Good to have the Vicodin with me. Good that the old man, who'd made stupid noises about flying in from Los Angeles, didn't show. Plundered and abandoned by his Gypsy, he had gone through two months of depression, until he found a Filipino woman to move in with him. He called one Sunday morning to say he was in love. I told him I know that story by heart, and asked about his meds.

"f.u.c.k you," he said.

"No, f.u.c.k you," I said, and hung up, knowing he'd be aces for another few months, until the Filipino took what she needed and went away.

My mother is a different kettle of herring. All you need to know about Lucille Friedman Raab Mandel Michael is that husband number three was a happy-go-lucky clarinet player named Erwin, a mellow Jew her age, whom she had dated once in high school. Erwin had lost his wife and buried a son and beaten cancer himself. He had never met an obstacle he couldn't overcome until he became Lucille's man, a condition he endured for a matter of months before jumping in his car one day and taking his talents back to West Palm Beach.

She sees me at the shul in Chicago-morbidly obese, limping, literally bent-and I know her inner Sh.e.l.ley Winters is dying to bust loose. I know too that she can't make a real scene without my help, which for the first time in memory I refuse to offer.

Instead, I tell her I know how I look. I'm working on it, I say. Don't upset me. Don't upset Lisa. Let's enjoy ourselves.

Dayenu. It works. A f.u.c.king miracle. We shall mark the date each year, and celebrate with rugelach and Vicodin.

At the Kiddush lunch after the ceremony, I see her from afar, the woman who bore and raised me. She's almost eighty now; I'm almost sixty. LeBron loves Gloria; I have mixed feelings about Lucille. My first tattoo is forty years old, the heart with MOTHER bannered across it, meant as a parody and to p.i.s.s her off. I got it in 1971. Not so many years from now, we'll both be dead. Players come and go but no mother will ever replace her. The Browns, Cavs, and Indians will live on. Not her.

There will be other Cleveland fans eating their livers season after losing season. Not me.

It feels like half an epiphany, which may be worse than no epiphany at all.

Worse still: no lox.

There is lox, mind you, just not for a 400-pound Jew.

Better a whole Vicodin than half of an epiphany.

f.u.c.k you, LeBron.

Chapter Eight.

Hater Daze I land in Cleveland under the same sunless sky I left in May. Heavy weather coming. My bones know it. I smell it on the north wind. I grew up on this reservation.

The Cavs open tomorrow at home against the Celtics, who open tonight against the Heat. The guard at the car-rental parking lot gate was an usher at the Stadium on December 27, 1964. John. Eighty years old, a big-fisted ramrod. No one is a stranger to me here. I head for the Great Swamp Erie and follow North Marginal Road along its sh.o.r.eline-past the munic.i.p.al power plant that boy-mayor Dennis Kucinich refused to hand over to the bankers and monopolists who bled Cleveland dry, past the concrete pier that for many years pleaded "Help me. I'm dying. L. Erie" in shaky spray paint-and pull to the curb on a block of East 72nd Street. It was always a rough block. The graffiti on the rail bridge span above and across it featured in my day a swastika under the legend "White Power"-but now it's gla.s.s-littered, half abandoned. I gaze up to the blind second-floor windows where the bedrooms of the Sisters Zimmerman, German G.o.ddesses of my early twenties, used to be.

Kelly worked occasionally as a topless dancer; Char, the smart one, was my first great love. Both are long, long gone.

"You can't find any Jewish girls to date?" my mother used to ask.

I didn't like Jewish girls, and even if I had, I didn't know any Jewish girls looking for a tattooed college dropout who broke into vending machines for pocket money. Maybe I should have looked harder. Maybe somewhere in Beachwood or Shaker Heights my naked Jewess awaited, bent over a mirrored dresser, with a couple of 'ludes in her palm and a pint of Jim Beam.

Then away. From East 72nd back to the lake and up Liberty Boulevard, which now is named for Martin Luther King, snaking through cultural gardens planted after John D. Rockefeller bequeathed the land before the Great War. There is ghetto on both sides of the road, up the hill, beyond the trees, out of sight. Just off Liberty is where Big George bought me my first Polish Boy-kielbasa with fries, slaw, and BBQ sauce on top-paid for with the coins we had plundered from the dorm's vending machines.

I watch the Miami-Boston opener alone in my room at the Residence Inn. The Heat look glum and play tight. James scores 31 points but turns the ball over 8 times in an 8-point loss. The Celtics fans boo him all game, hard. When he's at the free-throw line, some of them wave sticks stapled with a photo of Delonte West's face; West has signed with Boston, but he's sitting out the season's first ten games as a league punishment for his weapons arrest last season with the Cavs.

It's a bitter sight to watch LeBron playing for the Heat. Tomorrow night at the Q, the lights will dim, flames will belch from the JumboTron, the packed house will come roaring to its feet, and 20,562 people spurned by a homegrown G.o.d will stare down upon the corkscrew curls of Anderson Varejao. Who, by the way, would like to be traded.

At least Cousin Jeff will be there. He'd sell the seat, if only he could find a buyer. I don't need it: I'll be back in the highest perch on press row, up where the Chinese guys used to sit. They're gone, too.

At shootaround on the morning of the Cavs opener, Joe Gabriele introduces me to old Jim Chones, a shambling 6'11" mountain who works as a postgame radio a.n.a.lyst for the team's flags.h.i.+p radio station. Chones is only three years older than I am; he seems ancient only because he has been twenty-six years old in my head for the past thirty-five years, ever since the Miracle of Richfield.

The Miracle of Richfield was not a shot or a game; it was a team and a season, an unfolding of fate that can stand alone as an exemplar of the cruel architecture of Cleveland sports. The Cavs were in their sixth year of existence and their second year of play at the Coliseum. They began the 197576 season with some reasons for optimism: they had finished the previous year a best-ever 4042; they had a nice core of versatile young talent and a few steady journeymen; and they were led by their original coach, Bill Fitch, a former Marine Corps drill instructor and savvy hoops tactician who would go on to coach a total of 27 seasons in the NBA.

They got off to a lousy start. Their best young player, Austin Carr, had suffered a serious knee injury the season before and would never fully get his game back, and Fitch had no leaders on the floor. On November 27 their record was 611, and they made what seemed like a minor trade, s.h.i.+pping a couple of f.e.c.kless young centers to the Chicago Bulls for a backup forward and what was left of Nate Thurmond.

Thurmond was an Akron native and a monster of an NBA center with the San Francisco Warriors for most of his career. As a rookie in 1963, he had backed up Wilt Chamberlain on a Warriors team that lost to Bill Russell's Celtics; three seasons later, Nate averaged 19 points and 21 rebounds to lead San Francis...o...b..ck to the finals, where they lost to a Philadelphia 76ers team led by Chamberlain. Thurmond was a punis.h.i.+ng defender, an able low-post scorer, and still ranks fifth all-time in rebounds per game.

By the time the Cavs got him, though, Nate was thirty-four years old and in his thirteenth season. His cranky back and knees limited him to 20 minutes a game, and he was averaging 4 points and 5 rebounds for the Bulls. In short, he was shot.

But something wonderful-something approaching alchemy-happened when Thurmond arrived. Fitch actually played Nate fewer minutes, but Thurmond's experience and smarts made for a deep Cavs squad, one that could rotate two separate teams depending on the game situation and opponent. Thurmond led a backup unit that could choke off any offense the Cavs faced, and young Jim Chones, in his fourth season, led a starting five that was efficient, if not spectacular, with the ball in their hands.

After Nate Thurmond joined the Cavs, their record was 4322. Ten players averaged more than 15 minutes per game; seven averaged double figures in scoring. They were a joy to watch for a fan, not only because they won, but because the pleasure they took in playing with one another was infectious.

The Cavs clinched the NBA Central Division, made the playoffs for the first time, and the Coliseum was all of a sudden filled with 21,000 fans calling down lightning every night they played. They faced Was.h.i.+ngton first; the Bullets had finished one game behind Cleveland and started three future Hall of Famers-Wes Unseld, Elvin Hayes, and Dave Bing.

The series came down to a Game 7 at Richfield, and Game 7 came down to one play. d.i.c.k Snyder, one of the Cavs' vets-and a native of nearby North Canton-took an inbounds pa.s.s with nine seconds left, faked a pa.s.s, dribbled twice, drove past Unseld toward the basket, and laid the ball up and in with four seconds on the clock.

The Bullets inbound pa.s.s from half-court was a lob toward the basket; Snyder knocked it away. Phil Chenier of the Bullets grabbed the ball in the far corner and fired up a prayer over a leaping Thurmond. Never made it to the rim.

All at once, from every corner, thousands of fans rushed the court, mobbing the Cavs, hugging each other, thrusting their arms skyward, and finally tearing down the baskets. It is one of the greatest moments in Cleveland sports history, which means, of course, that it was followed quickly by one of the worst.

As the Cavs prepared to meet the Celtics for the Eastern Conference champions.h.i.+p, Jim Chones came down on a teammate's foot at practice and broke his own foot. And that's how the Miracle of Richfield ends. Nate Thurmond is forced to play without a backup against the Celtics' Dave Cowens, a future Hall of Famer in his prime. The Cavs lose to Boston in six games, the Celtics go on to beat the Suns in the Finals, and I will never meet a Cleveland fan who won't insist that the Cavs would've won it all if not for Jim Chones's broken foot.

Including Jim Chones.

"No doubt," he says. After Chones was traded to the Lakers in 1979, he won his t.i.tle, and on the night he won, he thought back on the Miracle of Richfield and wept, and said to himself for all of Cleveland: "We should have won the champions.h.i.+p."

Some Cleveland fans still rank the ending of the Miracle of Richfield at the top of the list of heartache. I myself don't have a list. I don't need a list. But I think it says something profound about the experience of Cleveland fanhood: what Clevelanders refer to as a miracle ended in heartbreak and agony.

Frankly, Chones would rather talk about his writing-three novellas, he says, and forty-six short stories.

I'd prefer to talk about LeBron.

"If you were raising a child," says Chones, "would you always give that child everything he wanted?"

Of course not. But what the h.e.l.l befell the guy last year in the playoffs? How did he come apart and take the whole d.a.m.n team down with him?

"He became what he always was," is all Chones says.

Back at the Residence Inn, I pull Chones's business card out of my wallet and toss it on the desk. On the back, it says "Writer-Philosopher."

LeBron is everywhere, and nowhere. n.o.body wants to speak of him. Even poor Mo Williams, who admits that he considered retiring rather than facing life without LeBron, avoids the subject now. Dan Gilbert calls him "the player who left."

One beat writer asks Gilbert if he's making a conscious effort not to speak his name.

"Who's 'his?' " Gilbert replies.

Behind the closed, unmarked door of the owner's suite directly across the hall from the locker room, the nicest thing Gilbert calls him is "The Queen."

"It's still a shock," he says. "I can't believe he actually did this. It's just unreal. He f.u.c.ks the entire city and then on top of it dances on your grave-it's unbelievable. There's no words for it-the amount of rage."

I find myself thinking that the only cold-eyed businessman in this sad farce was James himself. LeBron knew the business long before the Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s delivered him unto Cleveland. He had dealt with the shoe companies. He had gone to court to restore his high school eligibility. He had seen Gloria James and Eddie Jackson hustling cash for years based on his future earnings. He saw Maverick Carter drop out of college to take a job offered by Nike as part of the company's years-long wooing. LeBron was a pro long before he graduated high school.

When LeBron joined the Cavs, Gordon Gund owned the team, by all accounts a fine man, a civic giant. Gund had gone blind at age thirty, but rarely missed attending a home game in person. He watched through Cavs' radio announcer Joe Tait's voice in his earphones.

Carlos Boozer played his second season when LeBron was a rookie, and they made a formidable pair. Boozer, a power forward from Duke, played close to the basket and angry. He averaged double figures in points and rebounding, and James's first-year numbers were better than all but two rookies in NBA history: Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan.

They had Ilgauskas at center. They had a tough, experienced head coach, Paul Silas, who won three rings as a player, one of them as an enforcer on that Celtics team that beat the Miracle at Richfield Cavs back in 1976.

Those 20034 Cavs won 35 games-they'd won only 17 the year before-and missed the playoffs by one game.

It hardly mattered, because the Cavs were bound for glory. Every Cleveland fan saw it coming each time LeBron did something on the court no one had ever witnessed before.

Then Carlos Boozer, in the off season, walked away from a handshake deal with Gordon Gund and signed with Utah. The Cavs had him under his rookie deal for a third season at league minimum. They let him out of that commitment with the understanding that Boozer would immediately ink a new contract with Cleveland. Carlos still claims he never gave Gund his word. Maybe he had his fingers crossed and Gund never saw it.

The following season, Gund sold the team to Dan Gilbert, and Gilbert fired Silas with 18 games left in the season and the Cavs in the running for a playoff spot. They lost 8 of their last 12 games and ended up missing the playoffs by one game. Again.

That's when Gilbert hired Mike Brown and Danny Ferry, and began spending hundreds of millions of dollars on free agents, on upgrading the arena, on building the new practice facility, on trying to make sure that LeBron would never, ever leave.

How strange, how brutal, how infuriating it must be for Dan Gilbert to discover that the Wh.o.r.e of Akron's heart was never, ever really here.

The Cavs have a new slogan: "All for one. One for all."

Could be a season too late, is what I'm thinking. I want to stay positive; it's the opener. The crowd is great-not just enthused, defiant. We're still here, turncoat. You're gone? So what.

"We can't guarantee a whole lot of things," says Byron Scott to the fans before tip-off, standing in front of the team at center court. "But one thing we can guarantee is we'll get a maximum effort from these guys behind me, who'll play hard every single night."

The crowd goes apes.h.i.+t. I can't begrudge them their excitement just because I'm not feeling the love, nor can I force myself to muster the same optimistic spirit. I know too much. I have been here too many times before, with every Cleveland team. I have paid my dues over and over, living and dying with bad, boring teams stocked with has-beens, never-weres, and clowns.

But I'll be d.a.m.ned if these Cavs don't come at Boston hard, with more than a little defiance of their own. Down by 5 after three quarters, they run the Celtics off the court in the fourth. Sure, Boston's old, and tired from last night's thras.h.i.+ng of the Heat, but when the confetti starts falling from the rafters and Dan Gilbert is high-fiving everyone he can reach, it doesn't really matter. I am well pleased.

In the locker room afterward, Joe Gabriele yells over the din at me.

"Your favorite commercial's on."

It's Wieden & Kennedy's new "What Should I Do?" spot, starring the player who left as the iconic rebel who must go his own way, whose smoldering integrity simply won't let him live by anyone else's rules. Something like that.

"Gutless motherf.u.c.ker," I bark at the screen.

b.o.o.bie Gibson, backup guard, looks wide-eyed at me.

"I'm sorry," I say. "Did I say that out loud?"

He cackles.

A man I've never seen before walks up to me, sticks out his hand.

"I'm Wright Thompson. We've never met, but we have a lot of mutual friends."

Wright has choppered in to work on a story about Cleveland after the apocalypse for ESPN's website. He turns out to be a good guy. We go to a nearby bar. I show him my ticket stub. I tell him the story of Ray Chapman's grave, or try to. I start crying before I can get to the part about all the coins.

Maybe it's the Vicodin. Maybe it's the win over the Celtics. Or maybe I've stepped back through the looking gla.s.s.

I'm here. I'm home. I'm circus-fat and soft in the head; already I stink from the road. I miss my wife. I miss my son. I've got a plane to catch in the morning, to Miami, and a date with the Wh.o.r.e of Akron tomorrow night.

Chapter Nine.

Jew over Miami I have inhaled a half pound of unsalted jumbo cashews by the time I squeeze into the single-seat row of an MIA-bound commuter jet built in Brazil. No first-cla.s.s section. One bitter flight attendant, whom I accost.

I seem to have outgrown my seat belt.

She is as pleased to hear this as I am to say it. Perhaps I should've said, Jumbo c'est moi.

A hundred pounds ago, on a plane from Florida to Newark, a flight attendant leaned over to ask Jumbo if he was married. The sweater and slacks he wore that day still hang in his closet, waiting to be bagged with the rest of the flotsam that will follow him to h.e.l.l.