CLEVELAND -- The knights of Arthurian legend went a-questing for the Holy Grail. Diogenes the Cynic wandered ancient Greece carrying a lantern in broad daylight in search of an honest man.
Something more elusive? A new Cleveland Cavaliers season ticket holder at Quicken Loans Arena.
Former Cavs ticket holders? That should be a snap because, even if they aren't being 100 percent honest -- the Cavaliers have had nine home games, nine sellouts so far in 2010-11 -- there surely are folks still bitter enough over LeBron James' abrupt free-agency departure to claim that they have given up on the club.
But finding someone who made his or her "buy" decision after James bailed? Might as well look for (to put it indelicately) the rat swimming
toward the sinking ship.
Yet you can find them. Gino and Tanya Viccarone and their kids bought four pretty pricey seats, season-tickets purchased for the first LeBron-less edition of Cavaliers teams since 2002-03. Seven rows off the court, a short towel-toss or glare from the visiting team's bench.
That will come in handy Thursday night when James returns, playing his first game back at The Q as a member of the Miami Heat.
"My biggest decision was that I've got three kids who play sports, and I didn't want them to think that a team relies on one person," said Viccarone, a lifelong Cleveland resident and longtime Cavs fan. "I wanted them to see that, after that All-Star leaves, you still have a team."
The Viccarones live in Columbia Station, southwest of downtown Cleveland. He owns a heating/air conditioning business, and their kids Sarah (17), Emily (14) and Jacob (12) switch off and fit in Cavs games where their busy schedules allow. Every jilted fan is different, but this family of five seemed to represent a large bloc of Cleveland sports loyalists.
"This wasn't a smart business play on my part, but I don't regret any bit of it," Gino Viccarone said. "The guys at work told me, if we can't make it, they'd come down with their families.
"We're a family that turns on SportsCenter at 5 [o'clock] in the morning and it doesn't go off. LeBron had a thousand reasons to stay and zero to leave. This city would have done anything for him. For him to do that, I didn't want these kids to think it's about that. It's about the team, and you don't let your team down. We've had the best time this year coming to the games, watching these guys try to get it together."
Like a lot of locals, the Viccarones also have enjoyed watching James and his new teammates in south Florida trying to get it together as well. The Heat's 9-8 start, prior to its victory over Washington on Monday, had created barely any separation from the 7-9 Cavs team that stepped on the floor Tuesday against Boston. It created a new spectator sport of sorts in northeast Ohio.
"You mean the fact that they're not kicking everybody's butt?" Tanya Viccarone said. "Oh yeah."
The psychologists and the Germans call that schadenfreude
(
shahd-n-froi-duh), the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. On the street, that goes by the less lofty label of payback, which will be on everyone's minds when James, the kid from Akron,steps onto the floor Thursday.
Nothing would be sweeter for the folks who savored James' talents for seven years than for the Cavs to win. It's been said that even an 8-76 season would be tolerable if Cleveland's lone remaining victory came in this first crack at the Heat. Coach Byron Scott is being urged to treat this game the way Jim Tressel preps Ohio State for Michigan, rightfully valuing it double, triple or 10 times more than any other game on the schedule.
Hoots, hollers and heckling figure to reach epic proportions in the stands, while some worry the emotions could boil over. A mere handful of passionate or overimbibing customers could turn things ugly for everyone, and even former slugger Albert Belle -- a notorious villain from Cleveland's past from his days with, and later without, the Indians -- was urging maturity and tranquility.
A story in the
Cleveland Plain Dealer recalled Belle's rancorous return after he signed a $55 million free-agent deal with the Chicago White Sox that included batteries hurled onto the field, taunts, invectives and fake and real money thrown at Belle. As befitted Belle, he threw an upright middle finger back at the agitated fans.
"It's very hard to predict what will happen," said David Gilbert, head of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission. "Even the group in The Q might not be representative of the whole community -- that's going to be a group with a lot of pent-up passion in that bulding. But I think that, in many ways, despite what might manifest itself at the game, it's a non-story anymore. Once it happened, people were clearly angry and upset about the way it happened. But the sun came up the next day, Lake Erie still had water in it, the buildings downtown were still standing and I think now a lot of people have said, 'Enough.' "
Gilbert, in the weeks leading up to James' decision to leave Cleveland, had been one of the proprietors of a web site,
www.morethanaplayer.org, dedicated to keeping the player in town. Since he left, the site has gone dormant. Other sites have turned into hating or baiting destinations, and Gilbert admitted that for many residents, "a Miami loss is as nice as a Cleveland win" through the first month of the season.
Whether the vitriol at The Q gets cranked unhealthily high remains to be seen.
"Chaos," is what one fan, Uche Adigwe of Cleveland, expects. "Pandemonium" said his friend, Vick Searcy.
"This is a hostile city," Searcy said as he headed back to his seat after halftime of the
Cavs' 106-87 loss to Boston. "I think LeBron is going to be very emotional on and off the court. I think he'll have a very good game. Thirty points. He'll come out with something to prove."
Some longtime media observers fear, if not the worst, something unseemly and maybe even messy, and plan to work the Miami game in clothes that won't be ruined. Other folks have tried to counter-program, urging disgruntled fans to simply cheer louder for the Cavs while silently shunning LeBron. Or to turn their backs to him during the visiting team's introductions. Or to exit the arena bowl before his name is announced, waiting in the concourse.
Good luck with all that.
Cavs owner Dan Gilbert
has urged fans to stay classy, vowing to remove those sporting crude signs or spewing lewd language. A beefed-up security crew at The Q will be on the alert for folks who "work blue," as the old nightclub comics used to call it.
"Grumpy is good," a Cavs spokesman said about signs and messages directed at James. "Angry is fine. Disrespectful, even, is OK. But we want to stay away from profane and obscene."
Said David Gilbert (not related to the team owner): "I'm sure hoping it isn't a circus. But I would almost expect that he'll be roundly booed every time he touches the ball. On the flip side, I hope that [former Cavs center] Zydrunas Ilgauskas gets a tremendously warm reception. That's an interesting dichotomy: Two guys who become free agents and end up signing with the same team, both of them who were a big part of the Cavaliers, but now they're viewed very differently here."
It won't be an easy night to navigate emotionally for Cleveland fans. This is, after all, their moment-of-truth time with James. There is no Tweeting and running now, no Jim Gray to serve as go-between. James will face them. Presumably, he will hear them.
For a lot of them, it will be tempting to let him have it, the way Diogenes himself -- the naked philosopher in a barrel -- once lipped off to Alexander the Great when he came to visit for standing in his sun.
Then again, nothing would validate "The Decision" -- for James and his inncr circle, certainly -- more than an ugly scene driven by Cavs fans. They started down that dubious path back in May, when they still had and wanted him around, booing him lustily in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Boston during his "quit" performance. Dan Gilbert's statement in Comic Sans to season-ticket holders when James left swung some public opinion in the player's favor, too.
Going too far would similarly backfire, which is why many are advocating moderation in vituperation Thursday.
"My son has a really nice shirt. It says something like, "[Michael] Jordan didn't have to leave to get a ring!" No foul language or anything," Tanya Viccarone said. "All I want to do is sit here and give him the stinkeye all night long."
After which, of course, James can take that stinkeye back with him to South Beach.
