Not so super, man

Sheesh, even Superman has to leave Cleveland to have a chance at a championship.

It's fitting that in the finale of the Eastern Conference Finals, Orlando Magic center Dwight "Superman" Howard turned in the signature performance of the series: 40 points, 14 rebounds, four assists, all while swatting away Cavs post players like they were merely Lex Luthor's henchmen. Clevelanders might have created Superman in 1932, but Dwight Howard co-opted the name and the cape and used his powers against us in 2009.

Here's hoping Dan Gilbert already signed that deal with the Chinese. Those investors might be having second thoughts after watching the Cavs go silently into that good night against the Orlando Magic Saturday night, bowing out in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals. If the Chinese thought that 2009 would be the Year of the LeBron, well, welcome to Cleveland.

Call this one The Disappointment. Best regular-season record, league MVP in LeBron James, Coach of the Year in Mike Brown, home-court advantage, all meaningless. Just a giant setup for another Cleveland sports heartbreak. Sad thing is it's not even all that original. Two years ago the Indians posted the American League's best record, had one of the league's best players in Cy Young CC Sabathia, and had the Coach of the Year in Eric Wedge. They wound up on the doorstep of the World Series as well, locked out with the door slammed in their face.

Hey, but at least they've all still got those trophies. Three teams, one goal, one sad city.

This one even tarnished King James' crown a little bit. LeBron left the court without shaking hands with the Magic, then leaving Orlando's Amway Arena without talking to the media. Until he shares his thoughts we can only speculate that he's a couple steps closer to walking out on us. Jay-Z follows him around like a college basketball coach at a CYO game, trying to convince LeBron to move to New York City and join the Brooklyn Nets when the team opens a new arena in a few years. With our insecurities we'll be thinking that LeBron's mad at his coach for not finding a way to counter Orlando's three-point shooters, at Mo Williams for turning into a pumpkin in the playoffs, at Zydrunas Ilgauskus for not being able to find any Kryptonite, at Cleveland for being, well, Cleveland. Maybe, like us, he's thinking that his team just got exposed and the only way to fix it is to find a new team in a new city.

One that God doesn't hate.

God Hates Cleveland Sports hates this guy

While we all know that God hates Cleveland sports -- and we here know it better than anyone else -- there's no sense in being mean about it. There's no sense in showing us The Shot, The Fumble, and the 1997 World Series all in one clip, with play-by-play from the events.

There's no need to remind us that we haven't won anything since before the Cavaliers were even a glimmer in Nick Mileti's eyes.

There's no need to steal the name of this blog for evil use. There really isn't.

Figures the guy who made this is a Boston fan. Boston fans think the sports universe dates back to 2001. Boston fans think sports were invented just to give them something to do. Boston fans think Red Sox Nation extends beyond Worcester.

Cleveland fans used to have something in common with Boston fans. We suffered our fates. We stoically endured our teams' miserable failures and vowed to get 'em again next year, every year. We named our sports failures. We hugged our fathers and grandfathers and vowed that we would enjoy a championship with them by our sides, someday.

Then the Patriots became a dynasty. Then the Red Sox shook off their curse. Then the Celtics stole Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves. And Boston fans became more annoying than head lice.

Let's make a pact. If LeBron James can carry the Cavs to a title this year, Cleveland fans should vow to never become miserable winners like Boston fans have become. Hell, if any Cleveland team can win any championship ever that should be our vow. Cleveland fans have standards, and the newest one should be we'd rather be losers in Cleveland than miserable winners in Boston. At least that way we could still live with ourselves.

So far, so good

Boy, is that LeBron James good.

So good that he amazed Cleveland native and Sports Illustrated columnist Joe Posnanski by becoming the first player to put up a triple double with at least a dozen points, rebounds, and assists in NBA playoff history as the Cavs won Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Orland Magic Thursday night, 112-102. LeBron scored or assisted on 32 consecutive Cavalier points starting late in the third quarter, shades of his 25 straight points against the Detroit Pistons in, uh, Game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals.

So good that he can make everyone forget that the Cavs choked away yet another huge first-half lead against the Magic, the third time in three home games his team accomplished that feat. Leads of 16, 23, and 22 points have vanished faster than the value of a home in Cleveland over the past year.

So good that it doesn't even matter that Coach of the Year Mike Brown doesn't know what to do other than say to LeBron, "Here's the ball, big fella." (Come to think of it, maybe that's actually what the Coach of the Year should do, recognize his team's best chance of winning and get out of the way.)

So good that he can make sports fans in a snakebitten city actually believe they can win a series in which their team has blown three sizeable leads in home games, needed a miraculous shot to even stay alive, and fell into a hole in which only eight teams in history and Baby Jessica have emerged unscathed.

That's how good LeBron James is. Good enough to wrest a city's angst onto his shoulders ala Atlas and carry it into Game 6 Saturday night on the road in Orlando. Good enough to make us think that the clouds will part, the sun will come out, birds will sing, flowers will bloom, and God will smile down upon Cleveland.

Yeah, he's that good.

You say there's still a chance?

Who would have thought at the end of April that by the end of May the Indians would have a better chance of winning the World Series than the Cavs do of winning the NBA Finals?

It's sad, but it's true. It's also Cleveland.

With the Cavs standing on the edge of the cliff as they enter tonight's Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals down 3-1 against the Orlando Magic, LeBron James has about as much chance of making a dunk in next week's NBA Finals as he does of getting hemorrhoids. No, really, he does -- about a 4.4% chance for either one.

Now, there's still a better chance that LeBron makes the NBA Finals than of him cutting himself shaving today (.01%) or of hurting himself while tooling around on his Cub Cadet (.027%) or of catching a foul ball at a Tribe game while wearing a Yankees hat (.17%), but only because the chances of those things happening are more remote than the North Pole.

Meanwhile, Baseball Prospectus's postseason odds report gives the Indians a 17.8% chance of winning the AL Central. And that's before today's game, which they are leading

Cleveland fans can take solace in the fact that one of the eight teams (out of 182) to have blown a 3-1 NBA series lead was the Orlando Magic. Cleveland fans cannot take solace in the fact that it was the 2003 Orlando Magic, whose only connection to to today's edition is the logo. Heck, that team even featured Shawn Kemp, playing his final season. They also won just 42 games and snuck into the playoffs as a No. 8 seed. They were eventually worn down by the top-seeded and eventual NBA champion Detroit Pistons.

In fact, four of the teams that came back from 3-1 deficits did eventually win the NBA title. So there's that to look forward to if the Cavs do buck the odds. Yeah, a sports championship to look forward to in Cleveland. That and 500 straight sunny days.

Instead, when the morning light comes, we might have to grab hold of that 17.8% chance the Indians have of winning the division like it's the last lifejacket and our boat's going down in the middle of Lake Erie. Because it is. And who would have believed that a month ago, when the Indians were finishing April with an 8-14 record -- hey, they have a losing record for May, too! -- while the Cavs were resting after a sweep of the Pistons.

No one was thinking about living in Cleveland then. They sure are now.

What They're Saying

As Lebron James said after his game-winning miracle against the Orlando Magic Friday night, a second is a long time.

Long enough to watch Cleveland's collective sports history flash before our eyes. Long enough to remember that the last-second crushing defeat was practically invented in Cleveland, with a long line of losses stretching back more than 50 years.

And long enough to erase it all.

National sportswriter Jay Mariotti captures the city's sports zeigeist with his Fanhouse column, calling LeBron's shot, "Cleveland's middle finger to the world." The Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst summarized the Quicken Loans Arena atmosphere before, during and after LeBron's miracle, writing that the sellout crowd was so quiet after Hedo Turkoglu put the Orlando Magic ahead with one second remaining that, "you could almost hear the red lamp on the backboard buzzer come to life."

Then LeBron brought the crowd back to life, resuscitating the 20,562 with a defibrillator of a shot that arched through the air, hit the back of the rim, and rattled through, the rim like a black hole from which even Cleveland's horrific sports past could not escape.

Don't start thinking this was just another buzzer beater. This was Cleveland's buzzer beater. This was Lyle Lovett marrying Julia Roberts. It was The Shot Seen Round the World. As Adrian Wojnarowski writes for Yahoo! Sports, "no city does sports tragedy like this one." It even turned ESPN.com's Chris Broussard into a believer.

In a city with a sports scene so long full of false hope, the most amazing feat of all isn't that we are all witnesses, but that we are all believers. Again.

Where LeBron Happens

They're all real now.

The Powerade commercial where LeBron James makes a bunch of baskets from about 80 feet away? It's true.

The 60 Minutes interview where he swishes a ball underhanded from just beyond halfcourt? It wasn't just showing off.

The practice where LeBron, shirtless and dripping with tattoos and muscles, makes a 40-foot shot from BEHIND the basket, then walks off as if he's done nothing more than picking up his mail? It really was practice.

The halfcourt shots he makes while sitting down? The long throws from the scorer's table that sink through the basket as if they had no place else to go? Tuneups.

They're not camera tricks anymore, not circus tricks, luck, or just some guy screwing around hoping to be called into the remake of the Larry Bird/Michael Jordan McDonald's commercials from 20 years ago.

No, now they're real, and they're spectacular.

Off The Catch, over The Drive, off The Fumble, through The Shot. Nothing but net. LeBron James, our Chosen One, shoved the bad memories into a dark closet with his own memorable moment when his buzzer-beating 3-pointer kept both the Cavs and Cleveland fans' hopes alive in a 96-95 Eastern Conference Finals Game 2 victory Friday night.

Let's face it, the end wasn't just near, the end was here. One second away from blowing everything the Cavs had worked an entire season for. One blink away from devastation. We've been let down time and time again, but this? Two straight home-court losses in the Eastern Conference Finals for a team that was supposed to breeze through to the NBA Finals after the league's MVP led his team to the best record. If Cleveland can't get a title this time -- or at least the chance to play for the title -- then what hope is there? And there's nothing else to turn to. The Indians are treating us to one of the most miserable seasons in their existence. The Browns, months away from playing, just gave us a season worse than the Tribe.

So there was one second left, the Cavs had just blown a 23-point lead, and Charles Barkley was going to be right. Cleveland was one second away from once again becoming a miserable place to live -- especially for sports fans -- and the 30-year-old jokes were going to keep on coming.

One second away from realizing that God still hates Cleveland sports, and always will.

Except that this time the best player in the league is here. The best player in basketball is a Cav. The MVP is on a Cleveland team. And a Cleveland team was on the winning end of a miracle finish that will be talked about for years to come.