Cavs Wrap-up Pt. 1

My apologies for the hiatus. I knew my next article was going to have to be about my Cavs getting beat the Magic, and it has taken me awhile to really process it. I recently realized, when a friend sent me a YouTube video showing LeBron’s playoff highlights from this year, that I am not ready to look back at it visually and/or enjoy the good parts of the run just yet. However, I have mostly recovered and am ready to at least talk about the team, the season, and their accomplishments with as much objectivity as is possible for me. 

First, hats off to the Magic, and all of you Magic fans out there (several of whom I have talked to, and have mostly been very nice about the beating they gave us). They played a hell of series, shot an incredible percentage, and never let up once they knew they had a chance to beat the Cavs. They are incredible team, and they create mismatches for a lot of teams because of their length. Unfortunately for them, the Lakers are not one of those teams. This has made me feel a little better, as I don’t think the Cavs would have beaten them, for the same reasons they lost to the Magic: the Lakers are taller, stronger, and have good compliment of lengthy perimeter players who can shoot. So, I take some solace in that this probably wasn’t the year for a championship (more on this later), although one more series victory would have been nice.

Second, despite how good a team the Magic are and how well they played, I believe the Cavs were a slightly better team. But, the Magic were perfectly built to beat the Cavs. As I said in my preview way back when, they had power and size down low, forcing us to more or less double Dwight Howard and/or foul him 25 times a game. The latter strategy led to a) our big men being in constant foul trouble and b) free throws for Dwight Howard that he suddenly started hitting. The doubling strategy led to the Magic swinging the ball out and around to 3-point shooters, who because of their height, even though our defense closed out pretty well, they could still shoot over the defenders and drained some pretty amazing shots. As Chris Broussard recently said, the Cavs had built their team to beat Boston, and probably would have, but now you will likely see them make moves to make sure they can beat either team, not to mention the Lakers and other West contenders. 

Third, I got a lot of comments about “how well I was taking the loss.” I am not sure whether I consider this a compliment or not. J  On one hand, I consider it a sign of maturity that I can take losses with some dignity and not let it get me completely down. On the other hand, I consider it an affront to my fandom if people think that them losing like that didn’t hurt me, rest assured it did, very much so. I contribute my calm-ish demeanor afterwards to these factors. A) Game 1 hurt real bad. Andy is really the only one who can attest to this, as well as a few people that I vaguely remember talking to over chats. I had still believed we could beat the Magic pretty handily before that game, and that game not only shattered that illusion, but put the Cavs in a very problematic situation series-wise. I got most of my anger out that night and the next day while partaking in some mildly destructive behavior. After that, it was a slow march to what was basically inevitable. B) Game 2 and 5 were redeeming moments for the team. We got to have one of the greatest playoff shots ever and one of the best fourth quarter takeovers by one of the best players on the planet (LeBron, of course), during a series where it now appears we were overmatched.  C) By the time the series actually ended, Abby was back to comfort me, everything else in life was going well, and I had expected the result for a while. It helped me to put the result in perspective and try to get excited for the offseason and who we might pick up to help the team.

To be continued on Wednesday...