The Whore Of Akron Part 11

"I just want to thank you," she says. "Thank you for standing up for Cleveland. For all of us."

Please stop crying. Please. You're making me cry. What's your name?

"Chris. I was born in 1965," she says. "I have seen nothing but failure my entire life. I've been with the Cavs for sixteen years, and I thought we were going to finally win something-we're going to win something in my lifetime-and then this piece of s.h.i.t."

His name is unp.r.o.nounceable; she simply points down to the floor.

"He's a piece of s.h.i.t. He's never, ever going to be treated the way he was treated here."

The JumboTron's showing live shots of Cleveland heroes one by one as they walk to their seats. Drew Carey. Bernie Kosar. Josh Cribbs. Travis Hafner. The crowd cheers each face, but I find this parade heartbreaking. How little these urchins have ever had to celebrate. The last face on the screen is Dan Gilbert's, and his draws the loudest cheers of all.

James is introduced first, almost inaudibly. The booing turns to cheers when Ilgauskas is announced, but Z doesn't lift his head. Not so much as a wave: to acknowledge the Cleveland fans would be too great an affront to his lord, King James.

Eik nachui, Wh.o.r.e of Kaunas.

He tosses the chalk. Of course he does. Now, who's going to toss a beer in his face from a courtside seat? I don't wish for mob violence, but I'd hoped that if James performed his routine as if this were just another arena, someone in the crowd would remind him-with a drink, a D-cell, a cinder block-that this is Cleveland, motherf.u.c.ker.

Nope. And then, just before tip-off, the handshaking and hugging begin, and now the fans booing LeBron are watching Anderson Varejao embrace him like a long-lost brother. No hard feelings, LeBron-we don't really give a s.h.i.t what our fans are feeling; we're all in the Millionaires Club, buddy. Let's just get this over with nice and easy. Please don't hurt us.

I'm booing in the press box, something I've never done before. I'm sick to my stomach. I don't even want to watch.

By the end of the first quarter, James has 10 points, 5 a.s.sists, and 4 rebounds. The Heat double Mo Williams as he brings the ball across mid-court; by the end of the first quarter, Mo has. .h.i.t 1 of 5 shots and turned the ball over 3 times.

"AKRON HATES YOU," the crowd's chanting at LeBron as he toes the free-throw line. He's grinning ear-to-ear. The Cavs stand round-shouldered, arms dangling. Lambkins.

By halftime, the Heat are up 19. I walk down to the front of the press area to meet Cousin Jeff.

"Can you believe this?" he asks.

All my life, I say. All my life, whenever I've been stupid enough to think it won't get worse, it gets worse. Losing I expect. This meek surrender I do not. For the first time in my life, I feel ashamed to be a Cleveland fan.

Chris joins us in our gloom. She can't shake the memory of Red Right 88, especially tonight. Her dad was at the game; she and her sisters were home watching. They had friends over for the game. Just a bunch of Cleveland girls giddy over Brian Sipe and the Kardiac Kids-they've made posters and hung brown and orange crepe over the fireplace mantel. It's a little party.

Sipe tosses the interception, but hey-it's still a party. These are young teens, innocent, free of care. The Browns lost and that's sad, but they've got cookies and hot cocoa and a fire in the fireplace on a bitter-cold day. The Browns lost, but that's all right. Life will take the hurt away.

Then her dad walks in the door, blind drunk and half frozen, takes a look around, and loses his mind. He's bellowing the singsong Cleveland football chant-"Here we go, Brow-nies, here we go"-like he's back at the Stadium, and while he chants, he starts tearing down and crumpling all the posters and signs and crepe paper and throwing it into the fireplace while the girls scream in fear.

"Scared the h.e.l.l out of us," she says now. "You would've thought that would've been it for me, but it just made me a crazier fan."

Cousin Jeff points down to the crowd behind the Cavs basket. There are two guys holding up a sign toward the press area. The sign reads "Scott Raab Is the Man."

What the f.u.c.k. It barely registers at that moment. It's way too weird. I'm at a Cleveland game and two guys are holding up a sign with my name on it. No way.

"You should go down there," says Chris.

I'm too embarra.s.sed.

"You want me to go?" she asks.

Yes. Take my phone-get a picture of it, please. And tell them it means a lot to me.

James scores 21 points in the third. He runs by the Cavs bench on almost every Heat possession, talking s.h.i.t. The score after three quarters is 9565.

The Cavs players sit there, stone-faced. Dan Gilbert never comes out for the second half.

No one in a Cavs uniform stands up to James. No one stands up for the team, the fans, the town. One a.s.sistant coach tells him to shut the f.u.c.k up, and that is the sum total of the Cavs' show of pride and strength and loyalty to their fans. No one fouls LeBron hard; they all but wave as he goes by.

James sits for the entire fourth quarter; he has 38 points in 30 minutes, 8 a.s.sists, and zero turnovers. It is by far his best game of the young season-and the Heat's. Mo Williams, who called this game "our Super Bowl" and urged the fans to stay cool, scores 11 points on 28 shooting.

In the Cavs locker room, the players can barely look at one another. I can barely look at them.

Saying goodbye in the press room before I hit the road, I almost take a swing at a Miami writer who shook my hand and said, "I felt sorry for Cleveland tonight."

Spare us your pity, hack.

It's a long ride home, 450 miles, with plenty of time to think.

I don't have spirit enough to put on the radio and listen to the postgame shows. I don't know if I can even watch another NBA game. f.u.c.k the Cavaliers. With LeBron, they turned themselves into a clown car driven backwards by an infant: The Finals in 2007, the conference finals in 2009, the semis in 2008 and 2010. Abandoned now, his old teammates genuflect before him. Not one player or coach on that team was man enough to step up while that a.s.shole was bent over in front of the home bench, talking smack right in their faces. Nary an elbow or a shove in the back while he and his new chorus line humiliated them on the floor he once bestrode, in presumptive glory.

That I will not forgive. The Cavaliers are dead to me.

What is all this suffering worth? To ask, "Why, Lord?" while I roast alive another seven months on the spit of David Stern's indifference? Not enough, to witness LeBron waltz into the Q and disembowel my town; not enough to curse myself for caring; not enough to have already spent so much of my life on this ridiculous mission? Why go on? Is the road ahead not clear? Is there any way the Heat won't win it all?

Dayenu. A thousand times: Dayenu.

I'm past Clearfield, halfway home, when I recall the sign.

"Scott Raab Is the Man."

Good enough.

I am n.o.body's hero but my son's, and not his for much longer. I'm glad he'd rather play than watch. I see no trace of fan's insanity in him; I hope I never do. I don't want him to be a writer if he comes to it as I did, drowning and desperate. But I know another kid, back in Cleveland, fatherless, fat, and frightened, p.i.s.sing into a Folger's can at his grandparents' house, living game to game because the games are all that make his life seem worth its suffering.

The sign, it's not silly to that kid. That sign is the greatest thing the fat kid has ever seen. The fat kid, I'm starting to like him a little bit. From now on, the fat kid's riding up front, here with me.

Chapter Thirteen.

Franz Kafka Bobblehead Night That loss lingers like no other. The Heat leave Cleveland and win 18 of their next 19 games. Erik Spoelstra grows six inches. Dwyane Wade and LeBron James trade riffs like Clapton and Duane Allman. Miami's defense is as ferocious as its offense is fluid. They began December with a record of 108; they finish 259, winning 10 of 10 road games, allowing 100 points exactly once. To a man, coach and player alike, they say it was the game against the Cavaliers that truly made them a team.

The Cavs, on the other hand, leave Cleveland without bothering to pack the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es Miami stomped. They fly first to Minneapolis, where they yield 73 points in the first half and lose by 34 to the 415 Timberwolves. Then Detroit, where they lay down for the Pistons, another league doormat. Then Philly, a 20-point loss. Then home, for more of the same. The Cavs began December 710; they finish 824.

Dayenu. Most nights, they aren't playing to win; they play because the bus dropped them off at the arena. It's no longer possible to defend against the claim that James had to leave if he hoped to ever win a championship. Never mind that the Cavs have changed coaches and systems and several players, that they were built to complement a single unstoppable force, and that many so-called experts picked them to win it all the past two years. After their fainting spell on December 2, they have taken to bed with the vapors. Night after night, Byron Scott stands on the sideline, arms crossed, waiting for his team to show up. The players, pleased to draw their paychecks, wait with him.

The Heat are coming to New York to face the Knicks on December 17, and I have a lunch interview on the Upper West Side with Chris Rock three days before the game. When he says he'll be in Saint Martin with his family, I ask if I can have his seat.

"I already gave it up," he says.

I'm writing a book about LeBron.

"I don't even see what the big story is. The owner's an idiot. I was at a Lakers game-it was on TNT, and they asked me about LeBron. I said, 'They should trade him.' On national television."

We thought he was coming back.

"You could've got any player, literally any player outside of Kevin Durant and Dwight Howard. You could've got any two or three players you liked. The day the season was over, they asked me again, 'Where's LeBron going, what's going to happen?' I said, 'Well, if he's going to Cleveland, you will know within twenty-four hours, but if Pat Riley gets him in a room, it's all over.' "

We thought he was coming back.

"Why would you think he's coming back? People move from Cleveland to Miami every f.u.c.king day. They don't move from Miami to Cleveland."

You're killing me, man. Killing me.

"It's Cleveland, man. And I'm not disparaging Cleveland."

Yeah. You are.

"Look, if I'm twenty-five-even though he's got a baby mama, he's not married. Where the f.u.c.k is he going to go? Who didn't see this guy going to Miami?"

We didn't see him going to Miami.

"Dude, they're on the f.u.c.king beach right now. In f.u.c.king sandals."

He's got a big LOYALTY tattoo.

"Loyalty to friends. And all his friends are there. He's surrounded by six twenty-five-year-old black guys-where do you think they want to be? In Miami."

My ticket guy, Joe D., loathes LeBron. Joe was so sure LeBron was coming to the Knicks that he loaded up on season tickets, certain he'd cash in. When I tell Joe I'm from Cleveland, he throws in a food voucher.

"I never thought I'd meet somebody who hates that d.i.c.k more than I do," says Joe.

Madison Square Garden is full of haters. Somehow, n.o.body has warned New York City not to give itself a black eye. "f.u.c.k you, LeBron" shouts punctuate the National Anthem, and the crowd lets loose each time he touches the ball. The Knicks fight hard for a half, and then the Heat defense throttles the life out of Amar'e Stoudemire and the crowd; New York loses by 22 points, and James posts a triple-double.

"Best basketball venue in the world," he says afterward. "The fans here are great."

When I get home, Lisa and Judah are asleep. The dog and I watch the replay of the Cavs loss to Indiana earlier. The Pacers are up by only 5 at halftime, and the Cavs look like they've chosen to play hard tonight.

Don't spoil the ending, I tell the dog. For all I know, he watched it while I was at the Garden.

The Cavs lose by 9-their tenth loss in a row.

The Knicks fly to Cleveland after the Heat game, and the Cavaliers beat them in overtime the next night to end the 10-game skid. They then celebrate by losing their next 26 games, the longest losing streak in NBA history.

Dan Gilbert is laying low. He's paying a Cleveland law firm to try to build a tampering case against Count Riley and the Heat. On a road trip to Orlando and Miami early last season, James was peppered with questions after Dwyane Wade told reporters that he and LeBron had talked about joining forces; James responded by saying that he'd no longer answer any questions about free agency. The next night, after the Cavs beat the Heat, James announced that he had decided to change his number from 6 to 23, explaining that Michael Jordan was of such unique importance to the NBA that no other player should ever wear his number.

"I'm starting a pet.i.tion, and I've got to get everyone in the NBA to sign it," James said. "Now, if I'm not going to wear number 23, then n.o.body else should be able to wear it."

It was no secret, of course, that younger LeBron chose 23 to honor Jordan. Nor that the only team in the NBA to have retired 23 in tribute to MJ was the Heat. Nor that Michael himself was at the Cavs-Heat game that night, sitting courtside with Patula.

The whole thing amounted to no more than one day's news in a November already forgotten, and no big deal; LeBron had worn 6 in the Olympics, and had spoken idly about changing numbers in the past. Now it's at the heart of a hypothetical case that also involves a so-called secret meeting last June, where James, Wade, and Bosh agreed to sign with the Heat, weeks before the official opening of free agency.

I don't know if Dan Gilbert is any more serious about this than James was about his 23 pet.i.tion; serious or not, he has no prayer. The NBA wouldn't investigate a tampering charge involving LeBron if Gilbert handed David Stern a time-stamped video of Pat Riley sinking his fangs into LeBron's neck.

Forget it, Dan-it's Cleveland, where the quest for justice ends at the city limits and every night is Franz Kafka Bobblehead Night: every second fan gets a doll and the rest get punched in the nuts.

The Heat leave the Garden after LeBron's triple-double on December 17 and win 10 of their next 11, highlighted by a Christmas Day beatdown of the Lakers in LA, with LeBron putting up yet another triple-double.

As it becomes clear just how good Miami is, an awful certainty descends. The Heat will win it all; LeBron James will get his ring. With the certainty comes the sadness of surrender: seven seasons in Cleveland, zero t.i.tles. It is finished.

Only then does my anger give way to despair. It always does. It always has. When my first wife was in residency and I was in the process of dynamiting our marriage, I went to get my diagnosis of bipolar. Given the family history and the life I'd led, I had no doubt. So I took my lithium, chasing it with bourbon and hydroponic bud, and next thing I knew I was living alone with the mastiff and the pistol-grip Mossberg 12-gauge in the old one-room schoolhouse an hour outside of Philly.

I was . . . troubled. Baseball was on strike, just when the Indians were getting good. The dog was more than I could handle. Lisa was more than I could handle. The job was more than I could handle. I wasn't turning in my drafts. I was dodging phone calls from my editor.

The only TV channel I could get was NBC, and Friends had just debuted, and I knew it would be huge-and Friends was the last straw: I couldn't live on a planet where Friends was a smash.

Fetus me no fetuses: I might've been able to handle Friends if not for the dead baby. Not both, though. I don't believe that I was sober one waking moment in the fall and early winter of 1994. The dead baby was dead. Never spoke a word. The Mossberg wouldn't shut up.

The gun and I were going to tune in on Thursday at 8:30 for a very special episode of Friends. At some point that week, I went to see a guy in Philly, some psychologist. The shrink who wrote my lithium scrips had asked me what other drugs I was using-I'm sure now that she meant prescribed drugs-and when I finished my list, she said, This guy. Go see this guy.

Arnie. Arnold B. Jensky. Brawny Jew, old school Brooklyn accent, blue-collar to the core-he's missing the tips of two fingers and half of another that got chopped when he was installing roof vents in Union City, New Jersey-and no bulls.h.i.t. He knows why I'm here, even if I'm not yet sure.

He asks, I tell him.

How often do I drink and drug?

Every day.

How many times a day?

All day.

How many years?

Twenty. Twenty-five. I took a couple of years off a few years ago, before I moved to Philly.

The lithium?

I don't feel the lithium. When I remember to take it.

We talk about my job, what's left of it. We talk about the dog. I don't mention the shotgun or dead baby.

What kind of dog?