Baffoe: The Cleveland Cavaliers, The Witnessing & The Release
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) Remember millions of years ago in 2007 when LeBron James was the focal point of the Nike ad campaign "We are all witnesses"? It corresponded to his first career NBA Finals appearance and first shot at nipping in the bud a whole lot of lazy narratives that have clung to him against his will ever since. And it was soundtracked by Marion Williams's cover of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released."
His Cleveland Cavaliers didn't win those Finals, and it would be almost another decade stacked on other decades of sports fruitlessness in a city ripe for national punchlines that the world would witness Believeland's traumatic tried faith justified.
On Sunday night, emotional Cavs were hugging after a Game 7 victory at Oracle Arena, mouths agape in a much different way than those of the home team Golden State Warriors and their fans. The winning team tried to put into words responses to the descriptions and questions of media that preceded their euphoric answers. That pesky feeling set in, the one of quiet hissing deflation that comes with the repressed understanding of an end to a season like the end of another life cycle.
As all that converged, we realized that all those years ago that younger, greener, clean-of-battle-scars-both-basketball-and-rhetorical LeBron was right. And Sunday night was affirmation for us all.
We witnessed greatness. We were all released.
They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here
"CLEVELAND. THIS IS FOR YOU." James fought one final minor battle after the final horn, his emotions dueling with his conditioned reflex of professionalism in immediate postgame interviews to give ESPN's Doris Burke a worthy response. Turning on that part of his brain in that specific situation is impressive in and of itself, but it didn't - -couldn't -- last. The victorious-beyond-this-game James let loose the guttural bellowed tribute to what will forever be his city.
We had just witnessed a story come full circle, concentric ones at that. Yes, the biblical desert wandering of Cleveland solved, but the full penance of the prodigal son as well.
It's the latter -- what we just witnessed with LeBron James -- that is greater.
You and I can't comprehend the personal ramifications of this. Say the Warriors win Game 7.
"Another LeBron failure in Cleveland."
"He could only do it taking the easy route in Miami."
"The Decision is unforgivable since I am without sin."
"He'll never be the man."
"I still hate that he didn't go to college."
"He's a nice guy but maybe too nice."
We see the schadenfreude of every cartoonish Bayless small and smaller fanning out from under the fridge in what would be his newest darkest time. We'd see the self-congratulating of every blind hater of a trans-generational athlete.
As brutal as that would all be on a rational spectator's ears, several thousand more tons would get added to that world LeBron was supporting in those iconic spread arms hanging on the banner outside Quicken Loans Arena.
It's why he broke down on the court floor seconds after the clock hit zero, basic physics as much as mere emotion. Instantly something we can't fathom shot from his shoulders and upward into some space from which it can never return.
They say every man needs protection
They say that every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall
And we escaped the residual takes on the 73-win Warriors vs. the 1996 Chicago Bulls fueling the toxic sludge of "embrace debate" shows and lazy columns and talk radio. We who can appreciate eras, who don't need everything to be a pissing contest, who understand games evolve as do intelligent people, who can appreciate this for the now that it is. That personal danger we all faced. Deep cathartic exhale.
The 'Land can't be dismissed in this stew of pure sports greatness, though. Cleveland's joy right now is most relatable, as we're all pitiful Buffalonians and Chicago Cubs fans in some "Song of Myself" universal connectedness. Even with no skin in the game, the release from some Lovecraftian sports purgatory for Cleveland is something symbiotic for anyone with even a flickering interest in sports or just fantastic theater.
The easy jokes at Cleveland's sports expense and at its civic expense? The tonic of sports as escape from our troubles being perpetually dry on the burning river? The metaphor for any of our struggles being an entire lifetime for a city?
All gone, released.
Now yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
And all day long I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he was framed
And because this spectacular, improbable thing didn't have enough humanity to it, because redemption isn't just about a superhero star or a maligned city, because the dude always keeps you guessing.
J.R. damn Smith.
He was the journeyman shooter who has always seemed to play a bit over his skis, a guy who came from New York as everything emblematic about the dysfunctional Knicks, a supposed "me" guy joining the ultimate mission led by LeBron.
Smith told ESPN earlier this month about his 7-year-old daughter creating an epiphany for him.
Before last season, Smith was rounding up some of his daughter's toys despite her objections. Smith wanted to donate the toys she no longer played with to charity.
"She said, 'I don't want to give away these toys.' I said, 'Baby, that's a sacrifice you're going to have to make. If you want some new toys, you have give some,'" Smith said. "She looked at me and said, 'Daddy what are you going to sacrifice?' I was like, wow. I had to think about it. What was I sacrificing?"
Smith chose to put a great focus on defense and being a more complete player than the selfish chucker and sarcastic hero of comic relief he'd been branded in hoops-watching circles. And still as his team was working toward the first ever comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals, his daughter said, "I'm just proud of him because he made the championship without getting kicked off the team."
So he becomes an NBA champion on Father's Day, and a "me" guy is supposed to be celebrating individual accomplishment and consuming champagne and fame, right?
The most human moment of the night came from the last person we expected it from. Amid all the other releases involved in this Cleveland win, we wept uncontrollably with Earl Smith Jr., J.R. Smith's father, as fellow people who have been mocked for our dumb choices and for our attributes we can't control and tried to put on a mask of coolness in the face of it all until it was too much anymore to not be human.
We witnessed Smith -- and the rest of us who just wanted to make someone, anyone, proud -- released.
There was the Kevin Love kinda-redemption. There was LeBron/Kyrie Irving "we're gonna make this triple platinum album despite our mutual distaste." There was coach Tyronn Lue as the retrospect right coaching choice. There was one of the greatest teams the NBA has ever seen made very pedestrian in comparison to a Cavs team that was supposed to be cooked. There were the Jordan loyalists losing either way Game 7 turned out. There was the LeBron block and Kyrie as hero and the LeBron injury in the waning seconds and the leader of the free world not leaving a landed plane until the game was over because even the president needed this and a million other aspects of Game 7 and beyond.
I mean, think about what we witnessed.
I see my light come shinin'
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
