What Winning Means

Back in 2004, on the eve of what would turn out to be the end of another high profile sports curse, Bill Simmons wrote that all he wanted, with the Red Sox poised to win their first World Series since 1918, was to “become Just Another Baseball Fan again.”

“[T]hat’s all [Red Sox fans] ever wanted,” he wrote. “Outsiders made up false curses, called us losers, pointed to a legacy of failure, questioned our sanity. We kept hoping… hoping it would be worth it. And it was.” Cleveland fans can now breathe a similar sigh of relief. LeBron James exorcized the city and its fans from the idea that defeat and disappointment are the only real options in life… at least, where its sports teams are concerned.

The Cavs won in the most un-Cleveland way possible, making history by becoming the first team ever to come back from a 3-1 series deficit in the NBA Finals. Add to that the fact that their opponent, the Golden State Warriors, had just set the league record for most wins in a regular season that saw their legend grow to Cult of Personality status and the Cavs were staring at an incline of damn near 90-degrees to get to the mountaintop.

But James is just that great. So, get there they did.

And there’s no question that this win — because of its degree of difficulty, because of the story surrounding it, and, yes, because of its delay — was so sweet, sweeter than it would have been in 2007 or even last year. Last night’s win was aged for 26 years, but meant to be consumed immediately. This time, it was the Cavs and their fans who knew that when the cork popped it popped for them and that this time they would be allowed to drink deep and savor every last drop.

For someone like me, who has built sprawling McMansions to losing all across my creative real estate, last night marked a departure from what I knew I could talk about. In my play Our Greatest Year (that I made with Scott Henkle), Harvey Pruit holds fast to his Cleveland teams as though he believes the constant losing to be an end to itself: always preparing for the worst means never being disappointed and being able to be a loser — losing, getting up, then losing again — on some level means that you’re made of stronger stuff than the people who get to win. After his father dies, Harvey’s wife Elton calls him out for “confusing losing with loss,” for confusing the reflections of ourselves that we find in past times like pro sports for actually losing something of consequence.

But what does that mean now that we’re the ones who get to win?

When the final buzzer sounded with the Cavs up for good at 93-89, I kissed my wife, Becky, just moments before Scott tackled me. Then, I found his’s 13-year old son Will — who proudly proclaimed “I’ve been waiting 13 years for this!” — and bear-hugged him. The team we spent so much time watching, so much time thinking and talking about, were now winners. It was actually possible.

There have been — and I’m sure will continue to be — no shortage of “what does this win mean for the city of Cleveland” stories. Some, like the actual members of this Cavaliers team, clearly benefitted from the win. For the rest of us, though, the benefit is much less tangible. Maybe it’s as simple as this: while losing in sports and loss in real life are different, experiencing one can’t help push us in some of the same directions as the other. On some level, losing reminds us that loss is in the cards.

The same may be true for winning, which I admit is a concept I’m still wearing around hoping to break in like a pair of soon-to-be-comfortable jeans. It doesn’t move our personal needles so much as it is a nice (and high-profile) reminder of possibility. Amazing things can happen. They can happen to us and to people we care about. So, just for that, the outlooks of people for whom these things matter get a little boost and their worlds may seem rosier for a time.

But, this win — the first win — is more than that. This win means that Cavs fans are Just Basketball Fans now… and they’ve got work to do. They’ve have to come up with a new story. The old story about the Cavs always finding a way to lose no longer applies. What’s next could, but won’t necessarily, end in disappointment. That, in itself, is exciting. For the Cavaliers franchise, the sense is no longer resignation, it’s of possibility. For their fans, it feels the same.

What will the new script be? What will we tell ourselves this off-season? Next season? During next year’s playoffs? Where will your 2015-16 NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers take us next, you fine group of winners, you?