Go CAVS!!!

[cato2]

Going to the finals


In a word (Wow), Cavs' win one for ages


Bud Shaw
Plain Dealer Columnist When does this stop resem bling a Disney movie?
LeBron James runs into Zydrunas Ilgauskas' arms at midcourt.

"We just said we loved each other," Ilgauskas would explain.

The player whose feet wouldn't carry him early in his career now takes on all of James' weight. They hug like a Times Square couple on V-J Day.

"Z has been through a lot of losing seasons," James says. "Year after year after year. And I promised him when I got drafted I was going to change it."

James is standing on the scorer's table, waving his arms and blowing kisses to the crowd. He has used the microphone to thank "every last one of the 20,000-plus fans."

Michael Jordan has made this same climb, cigar in mouth. But the people he addressed were his home crowd by NBA draft. They are James' people by birth, first and foremost.

"Something had to go right for Cleveland sports," James says.
It's the odds, plain and simple. Tell that to Vegas, which for so many years has found good reason to demote the Cavs, Browns and the Indians (except for 1995-2001) to long shots.

Tell that to Austin Carr, who stood outside the locker room smiling uncontrollably, head on a swivel looking for his next high-five. Couldn't have taken the downs any harder over the years if he'd had a stake in the team.

The ups - the James pingpong ball bouncing the Cavs' way, making the playoffs for the first time - have left him in tears.

"Got a little emotional out there on the floor, too," Carr says of the love-in at center court.

The man who does have a stake in the Cavaliers swept in two years ago and fired his first coach and general manager after his alarm bell set for dysfunctional relationships went ding, ding, ding.

Dan Gilbert, rather unobtrusive for one so quickly likened to Mark Cuban, keeps center court company with the first-time coach and GM he risked hiring. He gives them all praise.

It seems enough for Gilbert to have watched his Cavaliers surpass his own definition of progress (the Eastern Conference finals) on this special night against his second favorite team.

Cuban?

It's Mike Brown who works up the crowd when he talks of meeting San Antonio and his mentor, Gregg Popovich. In a voice not quite Howard Dean's but not his own, Brown growls, "I'm in it to win it."

There's Larry Hughes smiling widely, two lonely tears tattooed under his left eye in memory of his brother who died this time a year ago.

There's James, the Caped Crusader of Game 5, pushing out of the locker room after Game 6, saying, "Make room for the superstar." Bodies move to reveal Daniel Gibson. James steers the game's high scorer to the interview area.

Strangers slap palms in the concourse upstairs. What might appear to be auditions for the next Kiss Cam break out all over the arena during the trophy presentation.

The Cavs in the NBA Finals? Seems like the basketball version of "Flubber."
Near James' cubicle in the locker room hangs a picture of him dunking. A director's touch? Hands held high in late, futile defense is Tim Duncan.
That's a thought for later this week.

In taking one look back at Saturday night, the operative word was echoed by the head coach. It's a word not used often in the previous three decades of Cavs basketball.

"Wow," Mike Brown said.