What We Wanted to Happen in Cleveland

I’m going to make this brief; like the citizens of Cleveland, I have a lot of resumes to put in. There is an unconscious desire that drives every person’s values and opinions on various matters, a desire that is never expressed (or even thought about) for fear of exposing the subconscious id. Most of you are aware of that, I hope. We should have known what would happen in Cleveland last night. I think we knew all along that it was going to be a complete massacre (figuratively speaking), a dusting of a really bad – mediocre, at best – team by a pretty good playoff team. But what did we want to happen?



I had to go through hundreds of smug Free Darko tweets to get to this one that I thought perfectly described the fervent desires of those watching last night: "I hope Cleveland stays peaceful & won't treat #LeBron James like #Ron Artest @Detroit 6 yrs ago". Except we all did! Everyone in the world wanted a physical, tight game until the fourth quarter, then for a crowd of drunk assholes to nail LeBron in the head with full cups of beer, then for him to react [in some Real fashion] and for everybody to violently storm the court like a ‘50s state high school championship. Instead, the Heat licked their lazy maws and you can probably remember how unwatchable the game was after that. "Reality" returned to Quicken Loans Arena pretty quick with a 4,000-point deficit to make up.

Like me, you probably have friends who are attracted to Premier League soccer and exhibit disgust at the thought of sitting down and watching men throw a ball through a hoop for two hours. The game last night was undoubtedly watched by millions of non-basketball fans, looking forward to an entertainment event similar to The Running Man, just hoping that LeBron would do something unhinged and get swallowed up by the earth as a result. I mean, even the President said it was going to be "brutal"!! But as the reality of that horrible game set in, our desires of primordial violence faded into the darkness. At least the GSW/PHX game was entertaining.