Still reflecting on Anderson Varejao: While We’re Waiting…

“Home is where the heart is, and my heart will forever be in Cleveland.” – Anderson Varejao

Happy Tuesday WFNY!

Well, this is officially my first ever WWW without Anderson Varejao being a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. We started this little project we called Waiting For Next Year in 2008. For the last couple years, since Phil Dawson left, Andy was the longest tenured Cleveland athlete. I think the only Cleveland athlete who was in Cleveland when we started the site and who has continuously played for his Cleveland team is now Joe Thomas. Joe was drafted the year before we launched the site. LeBron James, of course, was on the Cavaliers when we started the site and is on the team once again, but we can’t just forget those four years in between.

It’s hard as a fan to say goodbye to athletes who spend so much time playing for teams you love. Especially players who wear their emotions, effort, and hustle on their sleeve like Anderson Varejao. I know better than to get attached. When I was a kid, it was understandable to see invested in professional athletes. As a now 36 year old adult, having strong emotional feelings tied to professional athletes feels weird. But as a fan, I loved Varejao. He is perhaps my favorite Cavalier player of all time. It’s hard to see him leave Cleveland and now play for another team.

Varejao was traded to Cleveland in 2004. I was just 24 years old, still trying to figure out how the post-college world works. I was struggling to learn how to be an adult. Varejao, too, was trying to learn how a foreign landscape works. He was adapting to a new country, a new language, a new league, and now a new team. While I was living on bologna sandwiches for lunch and dinner, just struggling to get by, I could turn on the Cavs game each night. And while I loved watching LeBron James play, I always paid special attention to when Varejao came in the game. After losing Carlos Boozer to the ultimate betrayal, the Cavaliers didn’t have an obvious replacement. But from the first moment he got playing time, Varejao showed a certain spark of energy and life on the basketball court. It was an easy thing to fall in love with as a basketball fan.

It may be a forced parallel, perhaps more coincidence than fact. But I always say it as a parallel in my mind. Varejao coming into his own as a basketball player while I was coming into my own in my own life. When LeBron James left, it was Anderson Varejao who could have decided to leave as well any time he wanted. But he never asked for a trade, he never complained, never bemoaned the situation he was left in. The losses kept piling up, higher and higher. But Varejao’s effort and persistence never faded, nor did his love for the game. I’m sure it wasn’t easy putting on a happy face night in and night out, giving 200 perent of himself for a team full of misfit players that was probably going to lose most nights. But he did it. He did it for us, and he did it for himself, and he did it for the love of basketball.

Varejao spent much of the post-LeBron era injured. One heartbreaking injury after another. There were times in those seasons where Varejao flashed moments of true basketball brilliance. He developed a midrange shot, he was tenacious on the glass, and he was a complete nuisance on defense. There were times he looked like a truly great player, capable of being an NBA All-Star. Those moments would be fleeting, however, as each one was crushed by yet another fluke injury. Varejao could have forced his way out of Cleveland. But he chose to spend the prime years of his career in Cleveland, on a losing team, often all by himself rehabbing his latest injury. And again, he didn’t complain. He didn’t pout. He made the best of it. And the next season, he would come back and try it all over again. I don’t know how anyone can’t love that quality in a human being.

It’s not been easy for me to deal with Varejao’s departure. I can’t lie, I’m not happy about it. I’m not sure the minor team improvement that Channing Frye can bring was worth giving up a player who meant so much to so many. It drives me nuts that a team that might go down as the best in NBA history can find use for Anderson Varejao but the Cavaliers can’t. I also can acknowledge that I can’t be objective about any of this. I’ve never been good at properly measuring Varejao’s value to the team, and that hasn’t changed today.

I of course hope the Cavaliers win the title this year. I hope Channing Frye makes a significant difference to the bench production. But if the Cavaliers do win an NBA Championship this year, there will be an ever so slight part of me that will be sad that Andy won’t be there to celebrate with us all. That part won’t sit right with me. I’ll get over it, of course. But that emotion will be there, I promise.

So this is goodbye to Anderson Varejao, one of my personal favorite players ever. I’ll end this by sharing once more the piece I wrote when the community of Cavs writers and bloggers ranked Varejao No. 9 on our list of the greatest Cavs of all time. It was a blast to be able to sit down and really write out why Andy meant so much to us as Cavs fans and to the Cavaliers organization itself. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written for this site because for once it really came down to simple heart and not trying to be analytical about basketball. It’s going to be quite a while before I get used to not seeing Varejao’s presence around this team, organization, and region. Thanks for everything, Andy.

*****

New music of the week

This week’s music selection sees us do a 180 away from the world of hip hop and back into my own personal wheelhouse. If there’s one style of music that resonates perhaps the deepest within me, it is of course music influenced by punk, particularly with a 90s aesthetic thrown in.

Which brings us to Seattle’s latest in a long line of great, sludgy, loud, aggressive punk bands, So Pitted, who released their Sub Pop Records debut “neo” last Friday. I don’t know much about So Pitted other than they are from Seattle and their band name comes from a pseudo-famous YouTube video:

While I may not know much about this band’s history, I do know a thing or two about Sub Pop Records. The Seattle label is where Nirvana released their debut album “Bleach” all the way back in 1989. But Sub Pop is probably more famous for being the first to really champion the “Seattle sound”, which soon became infamous as “grunge”. It was Sub Pop who recognized something huge was boiling in the scene in the late 80s and it was Sub Pop who was instrumental in getting the press to notice. Before long, “grunge” was taking off and Sub Pop was developing a certain aesthetic in sound (thanks to producer Jack Endino) and image (thanks to photographer Charles Peterson).

Sub Pop is a different label today, catering to a wide variety of sounds. But they still do dirty, noisy, punk rock well. So Pitted recently opened for Metz and Bully on tour, and it’s a logical fit. Like Metz, So Pitted too is burdened with the Nirvana comparisons, but the comparisons are inescapable in the sound and feel of the band. That’s a good thing. Nobody is saying So Pitted aren’t original. Their element of lo-fi noise mixed beneath the loud, wild leads separates So Pitted from the likes of Nirvana and Metz, but that Nirvana influence is nothing to be ashamed of.

I love this album. It’s loud, it’s heavy, and it hits just enough of the nostalgia center in my brain to make me feel good. This is exactly my kind of album, I hope you guys enjoy it as well.