OAKLAND, Calif. — Let’s take a trip back in time, two years ago,⛄ June 2014, and let’s see how you would respond to a pair of statements proffered in those heady days after the Spurs had gotten their revenge on the Heat, after Steve Kerr had decided to kick-start his coaching career with the upstart Warriors:
1. Someday very, very soon you will be rooting ๊for LeBron James. As an underdog.
2. Someday very, very soon, Kerr and those lovable Go൩lden State Warriors would be almost as difficult to support for people north, south and east of the Bay Ar♌ea as the LeBron-era Heat ever were for people beyond the borders of South Beach.
Your likely responses:
1. Preposterous!
2. Even more preposterous!
And yet here we are. Here we are, on the doorstep of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and somehow LeBron is the captain guiding the Good Ship Cleveland, the protector of hope in a city where hope — at least sporting hope — long💃 ago went to be embalmed. Here is LeBr🌳on James, the unlikely pied piper, rising to occasion after occasion, game after game, his brilliance matched only by his mission.
Fifty-two y🀅ears Cleveland has waited. And now it has been joined by so many of the neutrals, latching on to this run the way the kids gathered round Balboa in the second “Rocky” movie on his dash up the art museum stജeps.
And somehow here we𝓀 are: the Warriors having won 73 regular-season games and 15 mo🍎re in the postseason; having proven their mettle by surviving an assault by Oklahoma City’s Thunder; having stormed to a three-games-to-one lead in these Finals, a second straight title looking so inevitable, and then …
And then this: much of the country suddenly falling in love with Cleveland — with Cleveland! — and so much of the country souring on the Warriors, a ra♉pid descent that can be summarized♏ by three things occurring in rapid order:
Draymond Green’s suspension.
Stephen Curry’s bizarre meltdown.
And Kerr swiping a page clear out of the Pat Riley Playb꧟ook.
“[Curry] had every right to be upset,” Kerr said after Game 6. “He’s the MVP of the league. He gets six fouls called on him, three of them were absol💞utely ridiculous.”
That was the warm-up. Then this:
“Three of the six fouls were incredibly inapprܫopriate calls for anybody, much less the MVP of the l🌌eague.”
Then, the♛ 🌠kicker, in response to if he was “happy” that Curry threw his mouthpiece into the stands.
“Yeah, I’m happy he threw his mouthpiece. He should be upset. … You’re going to call these ticky-tack fouls on the MVP of the league to foul him out, I don’t agree with that.”
Now, Kerr did nothing wrong here, same as Curry, in truth, did nothing wrong with is displ𒁃ay of petulance, same as you certainly could argue that if Green had his Game 4 shenanigans with just about anyone else on the Cavaliers’ roster — or in the league — he never would have been forced to answer for it.
But once public sentiment turns …
And that goes for it flowing in the other direction, too. Intellectually, it should seem impossible for LeBron ever to be considered anything but the largest alpha dog the league has. What he has reminded us with both his Game 5 and Game 6 explosion🐷s is that no matter who the present place-holder as MVP might be, there is one undisputed candidate as BPP — Best Player on the Planet.
But a year after single-handedly making sure the Finals would last as long as six games, he has what may w💧ell be the defining game of his life with a full supporting cast representing a city that — save🌊 for pockets of Pittsburgh, perhaps — has become the secondary favorite for just about every other city that cares about sports.
Maybe we will see this again in ꦯa few months when the Cubs try in earnest to end their 108-year title drought, but even that will be much different. Chicago had the Jordan Bulls and the ’85 Bears and the ’05 White Sox. Chicago has a terrific Blackhawks team. Chicago’s broad shoulders have lifted plenty of hardware lately, even if the Cubbies have steadfastly refused to be part of the fun.
Chicago isn’t Cleveland. And this is a one-shot deal: Once the Cavs (or the Browns, or the Indians) win one, we never will shed a tear for Cleveland ever again, and we certainly never will unite behind it again. For now, though? If Cleveland is All-In, as the slogan says? It seems almost everyone else is, t𝓰oo.
Unless you’re within driving distance of t🌱he Bay Bridge, of course.