Hue Jackson is copying Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlinâwait, what?
May 16, 2016Ball Played: Starters? Where the Indians are going they won’t need starting pitching
May 17, 2016Happy Tuesday WFNY!
Finally, after nine excruciating days of no Cleveland Cavaliers basketball, LeBron James and company get back on the court tonight as the Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Raptors begins. This almost feels a bit like watching your college football team play in a bowl game, where the time off is so long youâve almost forgotten who plays on the team and what they look like.
All of the experts are in complete agreement. The Cavaliers are going to move past the Raptors and it should be another pretty quick series. So why am I so nervous about it? Well, the TL;DR1 version is simple, I am a Cleveland sports fan. Being nervous about outcomes when my team is a heavy favorite is built into my DNA.
I remember the last time the Cavaliers swept the first two rounds of the playoffs. It was 2009. They swept the Detroit Pistons in the first round. They swept the Atlanta Hawks in the second round. Is this sounding painfully familiar yet? They then ran into an Orlando Magic team that had been thoroughly tested in their previous two rounds. The Cavaliers just could never really get their rhythm back and the Magic ran away with the upset before losing to the Lakers in the Finals without offering up much resistance.
Yes, it bothers me a lot that the Cavaliers swept the exact same two teams in the same order this year and are once again playing a well tested team who is showing signs of playing their best basketball right now. It shouldnât. But it does. I hate what a lifetime of sports disappointment has done to me. To me, it makes it even worse that this series is starting the same week as Believeland premiered on ESPN. It would be the most fitting thing ever for the Cavaliers to lose in another horrific upset the exact same week as a documentary about the pain and suffering of Cleveland sports fans airs. Itâs almost poetic.
And then we have the Oklahoma City Thunder winning Game 1 against the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals Monday night. That series is far from over, but wouldnât it also be just the most Cleveland thing for the Thunder to actually eliminate the Warriors, but the Cavaliers to not get there? Weâre talking about a Thunder franchise that LeBron is 20-8 against in his career, including the playoffs. LeBron has won 10 of his last 11 games against the Thunder. The Cavaliers with LeBron James havenât lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Ever. The Cavaliers with LeBron last lost to that franchise January 16, 2007 when they were still the Seattle SuperSonics. So yeah, from a certain narrative point of view, I can vividly see the Cavaliers losing to the Raptors only to have to watch the Raptors lose to the Thunder in 5 games in the NBA Finals.
I donât want to be this way, though. I am so envious of fans who are just supremely confident in their teams. They bet their friends on their teams. They project nothing but confidence in their teams. I want that. On paper, thereâs just no way the Cavaliers should lose this series to the Raptors. Yeah, the Raptors went 2-1 against the Cavaliers this season. But one of those games was without Kyrie. And in the other loss the Cavaliers gave up a late 4th quarter lead. Maybe those are excuses. Maybe theyâre just explanations. I donât know. But the Cavaliers are a different team right now. They have locked into their lineups, their rotations, the ball movement, their identity. Everything. The Cavaliers are clicking in a way we havenât seen all year. I should be confident.
Iâll admit I am somewhat playing up my anxiety for the sake of this article, but I do think there are some things the Raptors can do that are going to give the Cavaliers a lot of problems. And it starts with Kyle Lowry. Kyrie may be saying the right things about his matchup with Lowry, but he needs to back it up on the court. Lowry has devoured Kyrie and the Cavaliers this season, averaging 31 points and 8.3 assists per game in three matchups. That cannot happen in this series. Kyrie has watched as Lowry lit up the Cavaliers for 23 and 43 points in the two games Kyrie played against the Raptors. The Raptors rely on Lowry for success. Lowry shot 44.8% from the field in wins this season, but only 38.3% in losses. Against the Cavaliers? 66%. If this series is going to be as short as everyone seems to think, then somehow the Cavaliers must find a way to make life more difficult for Lowry.
Ok, ok, enough doom and gloom from me. Life is all about learning from your mistakes. Rather than viewing the coincidence of having swept the Pistons and Hawks as an omen, instead let us view it as a learning opportunity. A teachable moment, if you will. This is the Cavaliers chance to face their ghosts of 2009 and overcome it. It took the Boston Red Sox having to erase an 0-3 deficit to the New York Yankees for them to finally break their curse and win a title. Maybe this is the Cavaliersâ opportunity to exorcise their own demons and heartbreak.
We have been waiting all season long for the Cavaliersâ season to actually begin. That moment is now. The first two rounds of the playoffs, the regular season, they were all formalities. But this is where it all begins. Finally, we have real stakes and something on the line. These next few weeks are going to be quite a ride. I canât wait to see how it all plays out!
*****
New music of the week
Ok, last week we I talked about Radiohead. It made sense for me to do. It was sort of a lifetime achievement moment for me and my relationship with Radiohead the band. Their new album, âA Moon Shaped Poolâ is important on several levels, but mostly because itâs their best work since âAmnesiacâ, an album which ended a ridiculously great string of albums (The Bends -> Ok Computer -> Kid A -> AmensiacâŚ..to quote Dave Sterling, âHow the f___ could s___ be so good? It isnât f___ing fair.â). So I felt I needed to talk about that album.
But it actually was not my favorite album to come out last week. Look, I love the new Radiohead album. The new Deftones album is amazing. I like the new Weezer album more than any Weezer album since Pinkerton. I still listen to Futureâs EVOL a ton….it’s great. Big Ups and The Thermals both put out awesome albums. Bob Mould put out another consistent classic. There have been a lot of really good albums in 2016. But I havenât really geeked out or truly fallen in love with an album in 2016 yet. Until now.
None of those previously mentioned albums even come close to the new Nothing album, âTired of Tomorrowâ, for me. This is my favorite album of 2016 so far, and itâs not even close. I love this album on a completely different level.
So who are Nothing? Iâm not positive, but Iâd imagine I talked about their last album, âGuilty of Everythingâ in this space when it came out in 20142. They are a band from Philadelphia that was born, quite frankly, out of an awful lot of hardship. Some of it was self-inflicted, some of it was just messed up things that have happened. But frontman Dominic Palermo has had a very hard life.
Initially part of the Philly hardcore scene, Palermo served a stint in prison for aggravated assault and attempted murder after stabbing someone in a fight. Upon his release from prison, Palermo more or less withdrew from the music scene and disappeared for a while. When he came back, he had a new sound and a new identity. âGuilty of Everythingâ seemed to talk a lot about Palermoâs past and seemed to be his way of dealing with everything he had gone through.
With the title âTired of Tomorrowâ, one might think the new album is wholly depressing. And why shouldnât it be? Since âGuilty of Everythingâ came out, Palermo has been mugged and beaten to the point that he almost lost his ear, and after beginning to somewhat reconcile with his father, when his father tragically died in a bicycle accident. Death and destruction seems to follow Palermo everywhere3. But despite it all, there is actually hope found in âTired of Tomorrowâ.
Musically, this album is astounding. From the crushing opening wall of guitars on the lead off track âFever Queenâ to the heavy breakdowns in tracks like âVertigo Flowersâ and âEaten by Wormsâ to the quiet and introspective piano driven closer âTired of Tomorrowâ, the album is journey through ephemeral twists and turns of overdriven shoegaze, razor sharp leads, quiet whispers, and foggy psychedelics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iCbpuA_gEg
The thing that I love the most about this album is that journey. This album doesnât stay in one place or in one feeling or emotion for very long. Every single note seems to lead to the next logical destination. No one song on this album can sum up the overall feel of the album as a whole because every song is so different in either tone or approach. This isnât necessarily a collection of songs, but itâs more about the album as a whole and the experience of listening to it sequentially.
Nothing else Iâve listened to in 2016 has made me feel quite as much as this album has. And for that, I love it to pieces. I hope some of you will check it out and fall in love with it yourselves.
*****
Thatâs it for me. Enjoy the Cavs game tonight and have a great rest of your WFNY week! Go Cavs!
- Too Long; Didnât Read, for those smart enough to stay away from places like Reddit and forums [↩]
- Because Iâm not completely lazy, I looked it up. I didnât feature it, but it did get honorable mention in what was actually my first ever WWW when we switched up formats: http://67.227.153.34/~wfny/2014/03/while-were-waiting-welcome-to-the-new-www/ [↩]
- If you want to read more about Palermoâs interesting past, check out this interview with Palermo on Noisey. [↩]
73 Comments
I’m always tempted to call them “records”. If I had my way, that’s what I would call them. But to me, “records” applies more strictly to vinyl than “album” does.
What’s Nick Gilbert up to tonight?
I’m curious as to what you think the narrative on Nirvana is now and what it may have been had Cobain not
been murdered by Courtneykilled himself.hi ANDREW … that’s interesting. to me , an “album” is a 12″ vinyl disc , while a “record” would be a 45 rpm single ( vinyl disc).
album (LP) = 33-1/3 rpm vinyl disc
record = 45 rpm vinyl disc
Holy lord Andrew SNAP OUT OF IT…..
2009 Cavs starting roster v Orlando; Delonte, Mo, LeBron, Andy and Z
2016 Cavs starting roster v Toronto; Kyrie, JR, Kevin, LeBron and TT
Also, Magic were on PED’s.
I reverently call them “pieces of vinyl.”
We referred to them as albums, and 45s.
Grunge killed Hair Metal.
I hate Nirvana.
After a quick check, apparently we have no picks in this draft.
Surely we can’t be out of Grant’s second-round picks.
Just sayin…
https://media.giphy.com/media/lpLWBoCnX1IkM/giphy.gif
Looking back on that series now though we did some pretty dumb things. Putting LeBron on Rafer Alston to try to “slow down the offense” instead of using him on one of their wings that was breathing PED-fueled fire (Lewis, in particular) was dumb. I have more faith in Ty Lue coordinating a winning defense than I did in Mike Brown… Particularly with more defensive assets (Shump, TT, Delly, even JR) beyond LeBron than Mike Brown had available.
… Although I shouldn’t forget that Brown had Sasha Pavlovic whose offense WAS his defense, so that was special.
I’m between where B-bo and Allen P seem to be. One hour I’ll be all like, “The Cavs look great, they’re going to crush Toronto” then I’ll be like “Oh god, Cleveland things, NOOOOO!” and basically just repeat those two things over and over.
I own two and a microphone.
I…think…I have more faith in Lue…? Probably? Regardless, the personnel is certainly superior defensively to what Brown had out there in ’09.
http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1283713/tumblr_mcx3trvIkp1qaa8d1o1_500.gif
I don’t follow the NBA and know little about the teams or league. However, the go to team for my teenage sons on Xbox? OKC. Go to player? Westbrook. Toughest pair of shoes to find in London House of Hoops? Lebron Elites? Kobe anything? Kyrie Red Velvets? Nope. KD anything. Can’t keep them on the shelf.
That Cavaliers team that you’re trying to insinuate wasn’t very good went 66-16. That was a great team. One of the best Cavaliers teams of all time. Any team is beatable.
“it was that time when i lost my job and was very desperate”…nz569 until i started with my PC and earning 89 d/hr … last month little over 28 k ,,,, my monthly income …
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66 regular season wins is great, best in the franchise history, nothing to sneeze at…. now allow me to sneeze at it.
2009 was LeBron beginning into the height of his power playing 81 of 82 games averaging 37.7 minutes a game with a slash line of 28.4PPG/7.6RBPG/7.2APG. The next closest player in PPG to him was Mo at 17.8 and then Z at 12.8. He was carrying the next two closest players to him as well as the rest of the team where the numbers really fall off a cliff.
Boston was on that team’s heels the entire season as well winning 62 games without LeBron. So remove LeBron from the 09 Cavs “team” and where do they really end up?
All I am really trying to say is that the 09 season should make you respect the hell out of LeBron more than defend the entire roster.
I agree Courtney did it…I just dont think, if Cobain were still alive, that they would be looked upon as glowingly as they are. I think, if Cobain were still alive, there would have been a few records that weren’t “good”, a few trips to rehab, media coverage would lead to people being weary of hearing about them, possibly a breakup of the band (lets face it Dave Grohl is way too talented to be “just” a drummer)…essentially, whats happened to Guns and Roses/ Axl. Busy day at work so Im just streaming some ideas down real quick, dont have time to really flesh it all out, but thats the bulk of the reasoning behind my statement