When I walked into the local convenience store just after 7 o’clock Thursday morning, I scant eight hours after the Cavaliers had gone into Little Caesars Arena and defeated the Pistons 117–113 in Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinalsto take a 3–2 lead in the series, my friend, John, the clerk who loves all the Detroit teams, was waiting on me.

“So, I guess you guys are all set and ready to finish out the series Friday night and move on,” he said to me, in a matter-of-fact fashion.

“No, that is not the case at all, absolutely not the case,” I said. “This series is far from over, and the Cavaliers have as much pressure to win Game 6 in Cleveland on Friday night as the Pistons. The Cavs need to win the game and close out the series. They can’t afford to go back to Detroit for Game 7 on Sunday and expect to win. They stole one game already in Detroit. It would be a lot to ask them to steal two. No, this thing is far from being done.” 

And I meant every word of it.

What I also wanted to tell him, but didn’t because I just didn’t want to get into all of it, and we would never have been able to finish the conversation because he would’ve been waiting on other customers, was that I’m from Northeast Ohio. I was born and raised there and lived most of my life there. As such, then, I have gone through all the Cleveland sports situations, the ones in which the local teams got so close to the finish line that it seemed only a matter of time before it was a done deal, then things went haywire and the seemingly impossible happened. Much of that, as we know all too well, involved the Browns.

You know all those situations — OK, nightmares — so I don’t have to recount any of it, no let alone a good portion of it or even all of it, to you. It’s too painful anyway, right?

Perhaps ol’ John is right on point. Let’s just hope and pray that he is.

Steve King