Daybreak By The Lake
“In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned.” So wrote LeBron James when he announced his return to Cleveland. And just a couple years later, his superhuman effort led the Cavaliers to an unlikely, record-breaking NBA title — and ended Cleveland’s fifty-two year championship drought. Here are the best moments from Game 7.
+ Bethlehem Shoals in GQ: “After spending years carefully crafting his public image, LeBron James’s best version of himself has turned out to be the simplest one: The guy who came back home to end the losing once and for all.”
+ Like most big sports stories, this one is about more than sports. It’s also about those sections of America that have been left behind as an information revolution supplanted the industrial one. If you want to understand what this title means to northeast Ohio, watch the documentary Believeland. And read Paul I. Franklin on fathers, sons, and sports: “Anybody who grew up in Cleveland knows that our sports teams are everything.”
+ Related: Minnesota, you’re on the clock.
+ Even though, as a Warriors fan, leading with this story has made me throw-up in my mouth about forty times (though I suppose that could also be caused by the handful of Xanax I swallowed during Game 7), I’d like to thank both teams for giving us a much-needed break from reality. And I’ll hold to the theory that the Warriors didn’t lose despite the 73 win season. They lost because of it. Teams can only play so many big, high pressure, must-win games in one season. The best records don’t end in championships.