Why Cleveland Hates LeBron James

Last night while watching the Cleveland Cavs vs Miami Heat basketball game, an announcer said, "Cleveland needs to get over it and move on."  He obviously isn't from Cleveland and doesn't understand Cleveland sports, and therefore has no place making a comment about something he knows nothing about.

He knows nothing about working sixty hours a week to come home, put on a jersey, plop down on a couch and know, this time the Browns are going to win, even though it seems they never do.  He knows nothing about what it feels like to spend your last few nickels on Indians tickets to watch them lose for the umpteenth thousandth time and still stand and cheer for a great hit by a player that can't wait to get traded to a "better team."  


This announcer has no idea what it feels like to have 12 Browns quarterback jerseys because Cleveland sports teams ownership is pathetic, the general managers have no idea what it means to TRULY build a team and the players in Cleveland have no desire to play for leaders that couldn't lead themselves out of a paper bag tumbling down Euclid.  



If you are not from Cleveland you don't understand what it was like to have your beloved Browns taken away from you by a criminal named Art Modell, and you have no idea what it was like to watch them finally return.  You didn't tear up when your team returned to your city and you saw the new Browns players on a float in the St. Patrick's day parade that cold March day.  You don't understand why a woman from Cleveland still HATES the Baltimore Ravens only a little less than the Pittsburgh Steelers and why she won't shop at Modells even if Art doesn't own the store.


If you aren't from Cleveland you don't understand that LeBron James wasn't just a basketball player, he was our shinning hope.  He was a guy from Cleveland that loved Cleveland as much as we do and was invested in having the Cavs win as much or more that we do.  We BELIEVED that he meant that he was going to give us a championship because he "got it."  We BELIEVED that he was here to stay, unlike any other player in the past, or unlike any player in the future.  He was THE ONE, he was the king, because he understood what it is like to live in a town where the result at the end of every professional sporting game in Cleveland is LOSS.  He was THE ONE that was going to change all of it.  He was going to take us to a new place, a place that our generation had NEVER seen.  He was going to give us a championship, a parade and the pride that Cleveland is just as good as every other sports city.

We don't just burn LeBron's jersey because we are making a statement, we burn his jersey because our king left us holding our dreams.  He left us when WE KNEW he would stay.  He left us when WE KNEW that out of everyone in our life, he would never, ever leave.  NOT LeBRON, he gets it, he will NEVER betray Cleveland!  


On the day that LeBron left, it was like catching our devoted husband with another woman.  Everything we ever believed to be true and pure and real, was gone, in one moment.  Everything that we held in the hope of our future, left in the second that he cheated.  He slapped our faces and said, "I'm not the one for you, I'm not who you thought I was, I lied to you and it's your fault for believing in me."

We were children that day.  We were children running around Cleveland wondering what happened.  We couldn't believe that our great king had been a fraud.  We couldn't believe that we put all our love into a man that had been cheating on us for years.  We couldn't believe that he made us believe that our love was real and true and pure, and it wasn't.

So, Mr. Announcer and the rest of the not-understanding world, we were cheated on, we were led to believe, and left holding bobble heads and jerseys without a warning, without an explanation, without the courtesy of a conversation.  To be a Cleveland fan, you have to have more hope, more love, more passion than humanly possible.  You have to climb into an orange RV every Sunday dressed like a bulldog and freeze next to Lake Erie praying to God that the Browns finally figure it out.  You have to walk into an empty multi-million dollar baseball stadium and cheer for a team that can barely draw 5000 fans a game.  And when a guy named LeBron James flies through the air and promises that he will never leave us until he brings Cleveland a championship, we hold that as tight as a newborn baby.

We BELIEVE, we love, we hold that true.  We buy his jerseys, we buy his bobble heads and we love him like a family member.  LeBron, we don't hate you, you just disappointed us.  You left us when we thought you loved us to.  You left us when we thought that you were committed to us, like we were committed to you, and we BELIEVED.  Now I am sure of it, that powder that you blow up in the air at the beginning of the game, that's not baby powder, that's smoke.

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