Bring the World Some Extra ‘Zine

If you’re a regular reader of Cavs: the Blog, part of the reason (we hope) is that you enjoy good, fresh, engaging writing about (what we assume is) your favorite basketball team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

If the above statement is true — and you’ve never had a pleasure to get your hands on any of the previous four installments of CavsZine: The Bible of Cavs Fandom — well, you’re in luck. The fine folks at CavsZine, which features writing from your favorite local and national Cavs scribes, Cavs-centric illustrations, humor… oh, and some of the most amazing free goodies (see CavsZine exlusive Mark Price sticker above, for example) this side of a free Taco Bell chalupa on game night.

This year, with the aid of their first Kickstarter campaign, Cleveland Jackson, Alex Raffalli and company are upping the ‘Zine’s production to better be a Bible of Fandom for a championship contending team.

I’ve had the pleasure of being a CavsZine contributor for several years now. Below is just a taste of the type of what you can find in the ‘Zine. Taken from last year’s edition, here is an excerpt of my piece on Robert Traylor and Chris Gatling called “Not Exactly What We Had in Mind: The Cavs’ Intriguing Post- Millennial Duo That Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong”:

Some bad teams are easy. They’re just bad. No head scratching or stat crunching or blame assigning – it’s the fault of everyone yet not fully the fault of any one; it’s bad. Just bad.

But there are other bads to be had and bad teams that aren’t so easy – that seem to resist, to push against easy bad even if badly so. These are the bads that leave sports fans with “what if”s, “what might have been”s and the feeling, sometimes nagging, sometimes reassuring that your team’s bad, at the very least, comes with more wrinkles than someone else’s, that your team’s bad is unique, putting its own branded stamp on bad, that your team’s bad is special.

The 2000-01 Cleveland Cavaliers were bad. That season, coached by Randy Wittman, General Managed by Jim Paxson, and still majority owned by Gordon Gund, that unit whose powder blue, black and white uniforms featured names like Harpring, Langdon and Weatherspoon, they were bad. They weren’t historically bad. They weren’t even recent-historically bad. They went 30-52 and ranked right at the top of the bottom third of the league in points per game, opponents points and attendance. They weren’t horrible; they were just boring.

While some of this team’s contemporaries were Fat Shawn Kemp bad or Injured Zydrunas Ilaguskas bad (well, this one was bad like that too), this one just seemed bad. That is, until you look down the bench and get to two men, one nearly 300 pounds of risen dough and the other, shave-headed and head-banded with a big C-shaped scar running over his dome.

They were big and talented and skilled, both possessing infectious smiles that they’d flash as they cracked each other up on the sidelines, which is where they began most games. They were the Cavs’ reserve frontcourt – 6-8 power forward Robert Traylor and 6-10 backup forward/center Chris Gatling – and they had the potential to be one of the most devastatingly unique front courts the league had ever seen.

They were not, though. Of course, they were not. We know that now. Most of us knew most of it back then, as well.

Still…

All donations go to cover the cost of production of CavsZines. So, go check it out.