Cleveland Cavaliers fans, check your heartbeat, keep your favorite stomach medicine nearby. Be ready for long, wild nights watching your favorite team followed by bleary-eyed mornings that come too quick.
The real playoffs begin when your team steps on the Quicken Loans Arena floor Wednesday night against the Orlando Magic. This is the NBA's Eastern Conference finals, and it probably is a series in which the Cavs won't need to use a broom, as they did in sweeping away Detroit and Atlanta in the first two rounds. Orlando is the kind of team the Cavs must beat if they are to make history. Cleveland fans know the history: The Drive. The Fumble. The Shot. Jose Mesa.
Please, pass the aspirin right now, the heads of local sports fans are about to explode!
The most recent major sports championship happened before many Cavs fans were even alive, thank you, the 1964 Cleveland Browns.
But how about the 2009 Cleveland Cavaliers sharing a little of the glory? How about a parade down Euclid Avenue for a team that actually won its final game of the season? Not like the Indians in 1995 and 1997 who were correctly celebrated, but still lost in the World Series.
How about the Cavaliers not vanishing from the playoffs because of the Magic that suddenly surrounds an Orlando team? That Magic team crushed defending NBA champion Boston on the Celtics' home floor Sunday night by a stunning 101-82 verdict in Game 7.
32-1.
That's what Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy wrote on the blackboard before Sunday's upset. That's because Boston was 32-0 when leading, 3-2, in a best-of-seven series.
Not anymore.
So the team coming to Cleveland on Wednesday won 59 regular-season games. They won two playoff games in Boston, they beat the Cavaliers in two of their three regular-season games. They have Dwight Howard, the self-proclaimed "Superman," a 6-11, 270-pound defensive monster in the middle. Orlando is a team good enough to keep Cavs coaches up until the early hours of the morning watching game tapes, scrawling schemes of X's and O's on yellow legal pads - or even on napkins in the middle of meals.
That probably makes you nervous. That probably means some of you still are afraid to embrace this team despite its success because you don't want your sports heart shattered again. Some of you have trouble watching any local professional team without one eye in the rearview mirror. The temptation will be to panic the moment the Cavs lose a game or two, to give up on them and start counting down the days to Browns training camp.
Remember this: one goal.
That has been the theme all season for these Cavaliers . The goal is not having the NBA's best regular-season record of 66-16. Or being 43-2 at home, counting the playoffs. Or even LeBron James being voted the league's Most Valuable Player.
Those are all mile markers on the road to . . . dare we say it? . . . a championship.
The Cavs have been saying it over and over. This is their year. This is the right team. This is why they play the game. They have LeBron James, a local product from Akron who is the best, most dominating, most feared player in the league.
The NBA is different right now. The two remaining teams in the West are the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver. In the East are the Cavs and Orlando. The Lakers are the only one of those to even win a single game in The Finals. Denver never made it that far, the Cavs (2007) and Orlando (1995) were swept out of The Finals in their only appearances.
This is a new season with a Cavs team playing at a new and lofty level.
This is a time when the Cavs will be tested, when their fans will fret and grumble, and be ready to lose faith. But it also is a season when maybe, just maybe, the Cavaliers might play their best when it means the most.
To reach Terry Pluto: terrypluto2003@yahoo.com,
216-999-4674
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