The Cleveland Cavaliers won the 2016 NBA Championship. Good for them. It was an epic comeback in a series we all thought was over. Everyone was ready to crown the Golden State Warriors back to back champs. This was a remarkable comeback and I take nothing away from LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and the Cleveland Cavaliers. They were down 3-1 and they stormed back and punched the Warriors in the face repeatedly until Golden State crapped all over themselves in the final 5 minutes of Game 7. Almost 5 minutes without a point for the so-called “greatest team of all time”! Yikes. Good on the Cavs though.
While everyone else who hates Cleveland wants to say the refs made this series closer than it should’ve been, Draymond shouldn’t have been suspended, the NBA is fixed and “how dare you root for Cleveland! Wah! Wah! Wah!” I’m here to tell everyone who loves it when Cleveland loses as much as I do; LeBron and Kyrie took this championship from Golden State. There was no fix. There was nothing bogus about it. The old timers were right about the Warriors. Barkley, Pippen, Magic, and all of the geezers saying their teams would have beaten these Warriors were right about the fact that Golden State was S-A-W-F-T! SAWFT!
The Warriors had one guy who was willing to grind and step up when they were finally faced with adversity after a season where they coasted and that was Draymond Green. Everyone else on GSW got punched in the mouth and caved to Cleveland’s sheer will. Sure the Warriors fought back down 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals themselves. That was a tremendous comeback in a tough series, but it wasn’t the finals. That series against OKC was against a team playing at their absolute best. The Cavs were not at their best in this series, they just wanted it more. They willed their way to a championship and for that, even I, a devout follower of Cleveland schadenfreude, cannot deny.
While all the credit goes to LeBron for being an inspiration and putting on a legendary performance, can we please not call Cleveland a “city of champions.” This is simply not true. First of all, to be called “City of Champions” you need to be a city with multiple championships in multiple sports. Also, champions implies multiple winners and we all know that Cleveland is a city of losers. This is LeBron’s championship. He was such an inspiration and so gracious in victory that he made the decision to share his championship with Cleveland. The heartache is over (until the Browns play), the curse may be lifted, and Cleveland finally has a team with a title, but this 2016 NBA Championship was not won by the city of Cleveland, it was won FOR the city of Cleveland. A royal gift, from a mighty King.