And the city of Cleveland let out a collective sigh

Ugh. I didn't even want to write about this. But I feel like its my duty. At the very least, this blog has been an outlet for me to lament my misery, so why stop now?

It all started out so well. There was definitely magic (with a lower case "m") in the air at the Q, and it had nothing to do with Orlando. (No, just because we lost, I will not spare you the cheese).

But the game started off weird from the beginning. About a minute into it, Dwight Howard (more ranting on him to come) decided to start breaking things. An overly aggressive slam brought down the shot clock on the backboard. To make things fair, the one on the opposite basket was shut off, and two clocks on the floor were used the remainder of the first half. DH, didn't your mother ever tell you that when you go to play at someone else's house, its not nice to break their things?

After a little show from the maintenance crew at the Q, the Cavs lit up the first quarter. The crowd was electric. At one point a friend of my brother's, who does regular reporting on the Cavs and is in the press box at nearly every game, sent him a text that said he'd never heard the place as loud as it was at the end of the first quarter. I believe it. I don't know if I've ever had that much fun at a game.

The second quarter the Magic woke up a little bit, but we still managed to play strong. I turned to my brother at one point and told him, I just want to be up by 15 at the half. Up by 12 with the clock expiring, Mo Williams launched up a truly amazing shot, sinking it from behind the half court line just as the buzzer sounded. I got my wish. The place went nuts. This is what playoff basketball is all about.

And
.....then
...........things
...................went
.........................downhill.

I really don't even want to talk about the second half. It was like watching the most fun two quarters of play imaginable, and then getting punched in the stomach repeatedly for the next two. If I had balls, I'd imagine that's what it would feel like to be kicked in them.

I don't know if it was that we got over confident, having come to expect easy wins, or what. Our defense got sloppy. Orlando's shots started falling. And we were in trouble. I understand we don't have an answer to Dwight Howard, but that's not an excuse. I officially HATE Dwight Howard. What kind of name is Dwight Howard anyway? He's like odd combination of a dorky Office character and a duck. We need to be able to stop that. Also, LeBron had 49 points. I'm so sick of hearing people say that LeBron carries this team, because we have a lot of other talent. But last night he did. Hey everyone not named LeBron, do you hear that, STEP UP! I thought we've moved past this and learned to play as a team. Take a look in the stands. Those free t-shirts everyone is wearing, and towels we're waving all say "One Goal". Let's act that way, K?

In a discussion with a friend this morning about the game, he said we need to defend the 3. And I agree. What it ended up coming down to is they made theirs, and we missed ours. When it counted most. Launching up a 3 pointer with seconds left and down by 1 infuriated me. We hadn't been hitting them all night. I don't care how wide open you are, if you are not 110% sure that ball is going in, don't take it. Drive the lane, draw the foul, take your shots. Make them both we win. Worst case scenario, tie it up, go into OT. Dwight Howard had already fouled out. (I refuse to see missing them both as a possible outcome). But alas...

So my takeaways from last night. It sucked. A lot. But maybe it was the wake-up call that we needed. We knew we weren't going to be able to coast through this round like we did the last two. No team has ever swept all the way to the finals. We had to lose a game at some point. The NBA was not going to lose out on all that extra revenue because we wanted another 4 game series and week off between games. Yes, it sucked that it had to happen in our house. But maybe now we'll realize that this isn't Detroit or Atlanta. I see us taking this series in 6 games. Before last night I thought we could do it in 5, but I think Orlando's got one more game in them.

As we pulled into to the driveway last night, already heartbroken, i-pod shuffle decided to put its two cents in on the matter. (Hey i-pod shuffle, screw you!) The Rolling Stones, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" began to play, and all my brother and I could do was shake our heads and sigh. But you know what? When life gives you lemons... you make LeBron-ade. Ok yea, that only half makes sense, but whatever. GO CAVS.