2016: The Year of Cleveland? | Teen Ink

2016: The Year of Cleveland?

October 14, 2016
By Anonymous

Ever since the date of May 15, 2016, the city of Cleveland has been on fire (except the browns who will not even be acknowledged in this article). It all started with Euclid, OH born MMA fighter Stipe Miocic, who won the UFC 198 title on the night of the 15th.

After his win, Stipe said, “Let's go Cavs... one championship down, got another one coming here.” This message was delivered just two days prior to the Cavaliers first game in the Eastern Conference Finals, against the Toronto Raptors. Ever since that night, there was an unspoken confidence that was shown in the Cavs, as well as the rest of the city.

The Cavs won the first two games of the series. Despite losing the next to games in Toronto, the Cavs never got shaken, as they demolished the Raptors in games 5 and 6, moving on to their second NBA Finals appearance in as many seasons.

The Cavs were shut down early, and lost the first two games. After winning the third game on June 8, they lost once again on the 10th. The Warriors held a commanding 3-1 lead and only needing to win one out of the next three games to clinch their second title in a row. The day after the game four loss, another spark was lit under the Cleveland fire, as the Lake Erie Monsters, a developmental league hockey team from the AHL swept the Hershey Bears in 4 games, winning the Calder Cup.

LeBron James and Kyrie Irving of the Cavaliers most definitely took note as they put up a historic performance in game 5, scoring 41 points a piece, as they almost outscored the entire Warriors team by themselves. Game 6 took place back in Cleveland, which was an off day for the Cleveland Indians who had been swept by the Kansas City Royals the day before, so many of the players tuned in and cheered the team on. Game 6 had the Cavaliers get out to an early lead, and they never looked back as LeBron James had another historic performance scoring 41 points again, and everybody knew that it all came down to one game.

The best two words in sports. Game 7. Going back to Oracle Arena in Oakland and winning for a third time in a row would be an extremely difficult feat, yet the Cavs took the challenge head on. Meanwhile, back in Cleveland, the Cleveland Indians took the first two games in a series against the Chicago White Sox, and ended up winning the third on Father's Day as a result of a walk off hit. But, all of Cleveland was locked in and focused on game 8pm tip off in Oakland. Cleveland led by one after the first quarter, but found themselves at the bottom for a seven point deficit that they'd have to climb over the course of the next 24 minutes. And that they did. With just under five minutes remaining, the game was deadlocked at 89 a piece. Clevelanders have found themselves in situations like this before, being so close to a championship but just letting it slip away. This was different. They were five minutes away from beating arguably the best team in NBA history statistic wise in a 7 game series that they found themselves down 3-1 in. Then, Cleveland worked its magic.

With a minute and a half still left to play, LeBron made one of the most iconic plays in sports history to date, as he ran out of nowhere to leap and block Andre Iguodala’s layup attempt, and pin it up against the backboard- a superhuman play. Had that layup gone in, the Warriors would've had the lead and the Cavs would be in an extremely tough situation. However, Kyrie Irving drilled a three point attempt right in the face of Stephen Curry with under a minute left, to break the 89-89 tie. It was all a blur from there, the Cavs winning the NBA championship and their first major sports title for the first time since 1964, a 52 year drought.

Although sounding like a storybook ending, the story does not end here.

The Cleveland Indians, who started their winning streak during the midst of the Cavaliers Finals series went on a winning tear. They ended up winning a total of 14 games in a row which gave them a huge lead in the AL Central division. The Indians rode this momentum all the way to the end of the year, as they ended up making the playoffs as the second seed in the American League. Yet many people still didn't see the Indians as World Series contenders due to the fact that they do not have the “star power” that teams like the Chicago Cubs or Toronto Blue Jays have on their roster.

In the divisional series, the Indians would take on the stacked roster of David Ortiz and the Boston Red Sox, in potentially his last series ever in the MLB. The Indians took advantage of the home field that they acquired on the last day of the regular season, as they beat Boston by a combined score of 11-4 in the first two games. This shocked everybody in the country besides the city of Cleveland, who still has that unspoken confidence from back in May. Now Cleveland sports has another tough challenge in facing the Toronto Blue Jays, who in fact was the team that broke the Cleveland Indians win streak back in the beginning of July.

If the Indians end up on top of this series and end up winning the World Series, would this be the greatest sports year for a city ever? I think yes. In fact, Cleveland has had the best year overall of any city worldwide. Along with all of the sports accomplishments, the city hosted the 2016 Republican National Convention, just weeks after the NBA Finals ended. Cleveland has been riding a high since the end of spring, and why does it have to end now? Both the Cavs and the Indians have turned their teams around so why not the Browns too? That one might be pushing it a bit. But there is no argument, Cleveland has been THE LAND of 2016.



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