Here’s a great story that you may have never heard.

 

When Sam Rutigliano was head coach of the Browns all those years – and even decades – ago, he had to go up to Art Modell’s office at Cleveland Stadium after home games and rehash the day’s proceedings with the owner.

 

As you might expect, when the Browns won, which they often did in the first six season of Rutigliano’s tenure, those meetings were great, joyous, celebratory. But when they didn’t win, those sessions were – newsflash! – just the opposite.

 

And when the Browns lost 14-12 to the Oakland Raiders on Jan. 4, 1981 in the 1980 AFC divisional playoffs – a game that, as we all now know, they should have won in those brutally cold conditions – the meeting with Modell was nightmarish.

 

But not as much as the game itself.

 

When the last question had been asked about why he ordered a pass into the end zone by Brian Sipe – a play called Red Right 88, which has become the forever moniker of the game — instead of a short field-goal attempt to win the contest after the Browns had driven deep into Oakland territory in the final seconds, and the last media person had cleared out of the locker room, Rutigliano went to a nearby room where his wife, Barbara, was waiting, and then they began the long, cold walk to Modell’s office upstairs.

 

As they got near one of the portals into the lower deck seating on the south side of the stadium, Rutligliano excused himself, walked down the runway and stood there for a few moments surveying the frozen field where one of the most famous games in NFL postseason history had been played.

 

“I thought to myself, ‘It will never be the same,’ ” Rutigliano said.

 

He was right.

 

The Browns did only minimal retooling physically in the offseason. Their only tweaking came mentally and emotionally as they pumped up their resolve to deliver a Super Bowl championship, let alone just a Super Bowl trip.

 

But the magic of 1980 was gone. The stars were no longer aligned in just the right way for the Kardiac Kids.

 

Instead of winning all those close games down the stretch as they did in 1980, they lost them in the waning seconds in 1981. As a result, the Browns’ record flipped upside down from 11-5 in 1980 to 5-11.

 

The Browns took a deep breath and gave it another shot in the strike-shortened 1982 season, finishing just 4-5 but getting the eighth – and final – spot in the AFC in what was called the Super Bowl Tournament. They got blown out in the first round by the Raiders, who by then had relocated to Los Angeles.

 

The 1983 Browns went 9-7 and just missed earning a wild-card playoff berth, after which Sipe bolted to the big money being offered by Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals of the USFL, where his head coach was Walt Michaels, a star linebacker for the 1950s Browns.

 

That was the final nail in the coffin for the Kardiac Kids.

 

Two years later, in 1985, a new head coach and a whole new group of Browns began a five-year effort to advance to the Super Bowl and win it.

 

They almost got there in 1986, when, again, the stars seemed to be all aligned in just the right way, but “The Drive” killed that. “The Fumble” did them in, in 1987, a slew of quarterback injuries did the trick in 1988 and age finally caught up with that group in 1989. In 1985, the run began by the Browns blowing a 21-3 third-quarter lead in the playoffs and lost.

 

Why this history lesson?

 

Because I heard a Cleveland radio sports talk show host say the other day that if the Cavaliers didn’t win the NBA title this year, they could come back next season and try again.

 

No!

 

No!!

 

No!!!

 

No!!!!

 

No!!!!

 

A thousand times no!

 

It doesn’t work like that, not in basketball, not in football, not in any sport. The stars all align themselves in just the right way, and the window of opportunity is propped wide open, for one season and one season only.

 

This is that season. Everything is clicking on and off the court for the Cavs.

 

You know that, and I do, too.

 

It’s so obvious.

 

But if it doesn’t happen, Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue might be compelled to think to himself as he stands inside the quiet and empty Quicken Loans Arena after the final loss, “It will never be the same.”

 

And he would be right.

 

Sadly so.