Your 2016 NBA Champion Cleveland Cavaliers: Game 7 and Victory Parade
Earlier this year, I saw the Believeland premiere. The documentary covered the failure of Cleveland's sports teams to win a championship for 52 years, and ended on the hopeful note that LeBron James was back in Cleveland for the Cavaliers. That movie got the ball rolling. Only three hours after Believeland debuted on TV, Clevelander Stipe Miocic won the UFC heavyweight championship. Then the minor league Lake Erie Monsters won the Calder Cup in front of the largest crowd to see a hockey game in Ohio history. And then, as basically anyone who is aware of sports knows, on Sunday, Cleveland won Game 7 of the NBA Finals over the heavily favored defending champion Golden State Warriors. Holy shit.
I opted not to go downtown for the Cavs watch parties. Instead M and I went to our favorite Lakewood bar, Deagan's, where a small intimate crowd of about 30 watched the game. There was a point in the game, where the Cavs were up 92-89, and LeBron was shooting free throws. He missed the first one, and you could hear the crowd start to deflate. Then he made the second one, and with just 10 seconds left everybody in the bar made this noise of hope and desperation of "oh god, we'll win if we just don't foul on the three point attempt!" It was a very long ten seconds, and then everybody was high fiving and screaming and crying and shouting and pounding back and pounding the bar. Everybody in sight had a "holy shit, did that just happen?" expression on their face. It was amazing.
As M and I walked home, there was a swarm of car horns and (highly unsanctioned) fireworks started going off. There were enough fireworks to make Tulip very unhappy, more than there are usually for Independence Day. We saw a man doing pushups in the street. People at a bar we walked past high fived me through the glass.
On Monday mornings my employer has an all-hands meeting. At this all-hands meeting, they cranked up Queen doing We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions and all of the several hundred people in the room sang along. Everyone who was on stage that morning was handed a Cavs shirt or hat.
I had long maintained that I was going to go to the victory parade if Cleveland ever won a title. Fortunately, one benefit of having a long tenure with the same company (14 years, when did that happen?) is having a lot of vacation days, so I had no trouble taking Wednesday (today) off for the parade. All I had to figure out was how to get there? With an initial estimate of more than 800,00 people expected to attend (post-parade estimates exceeded 1.3 million, or more than double my home state of North Dakota), I knew that driving was out of the question, with many streets closed down and parking being very limited. That also seemed to put a damper on busing it all the way downtown. The park & rides for the trains are filled by the home opener, this was going to blow them away. I considered biking, but wasn't completely sure where I'd be able to safely park my bike.
Ultimately I opted to bus it to the nearest train station. On a side note, that's the first time I have had reason to take the bus in Cleveland since 1997 when they released the special editions of Star Wars: A New Hope. The bus picked up near my house right on time at 7:38 am and I was in line at the train station by 7:50. The line at the station was long, but not unreasonably so. However, the trains headed downtown were already completely filled by people who'd gotten on farther out. The transit police told us to get on the empty train heading out to the airport, which would then turn around and head back downtown with us on it. We did, arriving downtown in a totally packed train around 10:15. As we came back from the airport we saw some stupendously long lines at the other park & rides, including one that I estimated off the cuff to be 1000 people long.
I scouted out downtown. The mall where the victory rally was to be held after the parade was already packed. Apparently people camped out overnight to get spots. I quickly decided that I had no desire to be near the rally. As expected, the starting point of the parade by The Q was a madhouse, so I moved to a somewhat empty spot on the route near Euclid & East 9th. I was had a good spot in the shade against a lamp post locked down by 10:50am, just in time for an 11:00am start.
As it turns out, there were so many people in the streets that it took the police a lot of time to push them back enough for the parade to get through. Fortunately, I had anticipated a long wait and came prepared. I had my hiking backpack with a CamelBak for water, I had my ridiculous hat for when the sun shifted and took away my shade, and I had a book to kill the time. I actually finished a mostly terrible book about baseball ghosts and curses just from waiting around.
Finally around 12:15 the parade reached my area. It was a lot of fun. Stipe Miocic led it off. The Lake Erie Monsters made an appearance with the Calder Cup. There were some marching bands, most notably the Shaw High School Marching Band and Dance Squad, who kicked ass and took names. They completely outshined St Ed's (unsurprising) and TBDBITL (who were phoning it in when they walked past me). Multiple cheerleading squards went by. There were many trucks mounted with giant confetti cannons, leading to a rain of wine and gold paper bits of various shapes. Jim Brown represented the 1964 Browns (aka, the last champion) and got the second biggest cheer of the day. Earnest Byner represented the last great era in Browns football. Machine Gun Kelly was the major non-sports figure in the parade. And of course, there were the Cavs. They were clearly enjoying the moment as the crowd serenaded even backups. LeBron of course got the biggest cheer of the day.
Once the parade passed by, I quickly saw that boarding the train back at Tower City was impractical as it was incredibly crowded. I walked across the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, had some lunch at Nate's Deli (just ok), and then caught the train at the West 25th station. I arrived just in time to catch my 5:05 bus back to my house, saving me a long walk. My bad knee hurt, my legs were basically dead, I was hot and sweaty, and it was totally worth every second.
Photos and a much more concise travel log from the parade are here. This live blog has some info on the parade.
I opted not to go downtown for the Cavs watch parties. Instead M and I went to our favorite Lakewood bar, Deagan's, where a small intimate crowd of about 30 watched the game. There was a point in the game, where the Cavs were up 92-89, and LeBron was shooting free throws. He missed the first one, and you could hear the crowd start to deflate. Then he made the second one, and with just 10 seconds left everybody in the bar made this noise of hope and desperation of "oh god, we'll win if we just don't foul on the three point attempt!" It was a very long ten seconds, and then everybody was high fiving and screaming and crying and shouting and pounding back and pounding the bar. Everybody in sight had a "holy shit, did that just happen?" expression on their face. It was amazing.
As M and I walked home, there was a swarm of car horns and (highly unsanctioned) fireworks started going off. There were enough fireworks to make Tulip very unhappy, more than there are usually for Independence Day. We saw a man doing pushups in the street. People at a bar we walked past high fived me through the glass.
On Monday mornings my employer has an all-hands meeting. At this all-hands meeting, they cranked up Queen doing We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions and all of the several hundred people in the room sang along. Everyone who was on stage that morning was handed a Cavs shirt or hat.
I had long maintained that I was going to go to the victory parade if Cleveland ever won a title. Fortunately, one benefit of having a long tenure with the same company (14 years, when did that happen?) is having a lot of vacation days, so I had no trouble taking Wednesday (today) off for the parade. All I had to figure out was how to get there? With an initial estimate of more than 800,00 people expected to attend (post-parade estimates exceeded 1.3 million, or more than double my home state of North Dakota), I knew that driving was out of the question, with many streets closed down and parking being very limited. That also seemed to put a damper on busing it all the way downtown. The park & rides for the trains are filled by the home opener, this was going to blow them away. I considered biking, but wasn't completely sure where I'd be able to safely park my bike.
Ultimately I opted to bus it to the nearest train station. On a side note, that's the first time I have had reason to take the bus in Cleveland since 1997 when they released the special editions of Star Wars: A New Hope. The bus picked up near my house right on time at 7:38 am and I was in line at the train station by 7:50. The line at the station was long, but not unreasonably so. However, the trains headed downtown were already completely filled by people who'd gotten on farther out. The transit police told us to get on the empty train heading out to the airport, which would then turn around and head back downtown with us on it. We did, arriving downtown in a totally packed train around 10:15. As we came back from the airport we saw some stupendously long lines at the other park & rides, including one that I estimated off the cuff to be 1000 people long.
I scouted out downtown. The mall where the victory rally was to be held after the parade was already packed. Apparently people camped out overnight to get spots. I quickly decided that I had no desire to be near the rally. As expected, the starting point of the parade by The Q was a madhouse, so I moved to a somewhat empty spot on the route near Euclid & East 9th. I was had a good spot in the shade against a lamp post locked down by 10:50am, just in time for an 11:00am start.
As it turns out, there were so many people in the streets that it took the police a lot of time to push them back enough for the parade to get through. Fortunately, I had anticipated a long wait and came prepared. I had my hiking backpack with a CamelBak for water, I had my ridiculous hat for when the sun shifted and took away my shade, and I had a book to kill the time. I actually finished a mostly terrible book about baseball ghosts and curses just from waiting around.
Finally around 12:15 the parade reached my area. It was a lot of fun. Stipe Miocic led it off. The Lake Erie Monsters made an appearance with the Calder Cup. There were some marching bands, most notably the Shaw High School Marching Band and Dance Squad, who kicked ass and took names. They completely outshined St Ed's (unsurprising) and TBDBITL (who were phoning it in when they walked past me). Multiple cheerleading squards went by. There were many trucks mounted with giant confetti cannons, leading to a rain of wine and gold paper bits of various shapes. Jim Brown represented the 1964 Browns (aka, the last champion) and got the second biggest cheer of the day. Earnest Byner represented the last great era in Browns football. Machine Gun Kelly was the major non-sports figure in the parade. And of course, there were the Cavs. They were clearly enjoying the moment as the crowd serenaded even backups. LeBron of course got the biggest cheer of the day.
Once the parade passed by, I quickly saw that boarding the train back at Tower City was impractical as it was incredibly crowded. I walked across the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, had some lunch at Nate's Deli (just ok), and then caught the train at the West 25th station. I arrived just in time to catch my 5:05 bus back to my house, saving me a long walk. My bad knee hurt, my legs were basically dead, I was hot and sweaty, and it was totally worth every second.
Photos and a much more concise travel log from the parade are here. This live blog has some info on the parade.