Cavaliers Win: You’re Up, Cleveland Browns

The Cleveland Cavaliers have brought a championship to the city of Cleveland. As great as that is for fans, the city would come unglued if the Browns ever matched that feat.

Members of the Cleveland Browns were watching as the Cleveland Cavaliers ended the city’s 52-year title drought, won the National Basketball Association championship and sent all of northeast Ohio into euphoria. The Browns had better want a piece of this action.

A child who was roughly five-years-old doused me with a can of soda while celebrating the Cavaliers’ victory on Sunday night a couple of blocks away from the Quicken Loans Arena. One guy decided to use a streetlight pole in downtown Cleveland to complete some pull-ups. Cleveland fans danced and sang and yelled and partied outside past 1:00 am and 2:00 am and 3:00 am.

One thing those who have no ties to Cleveland should realize is that the Cavaliers are not Cleveland like the Browns are Cleveland. Those among Cleveland diehards in our 30s and 40s and 50s were not raised by passionate lifelong fans of the Cavs because the Cavs didn’t exist when our parents were younger. The Cavaliers were established in 1970, which makes them a toddler in comparison to the Browns and the Cleveland Indians.

As I sit here writing these words from downtown in the new city of champions roughly 16 hours after the Cavaliers won it all, I can hear car horns honking the celebratory rhythmic “Let’s go Cavs” mantra. There are still long lines to get into Cavaliers team shops. Strangers continue to share hugs and high-fives. Cleveland is, as of June 20, the happiest place in the world.

It is not an overstatement to say that I can only imagine what this region would be like if the Browns were to win a Super Bowl.

Browns cornerback Joe Haden gets that. Haden took to SI.com blog Monday Morning Quarterback to post his thoughts on the Cavaliers beating the Golden State Warriors for a piece that was published on Monday morning. The 27-year-old who was drafted in 2010 touched upon the greatness of LeBron James, his happiness for those living in Cleveland and the emotions he experienced while watching the Cavaliers win Game 7.

"But there’s something about the hope (James) brings, too. That’s important. When the Cavs were down 3-1, and they needed to win two games at Golden State to win the series, nobody gave them a chance. But LeBron believed—or at least he played like he believed. There’s a lesson in that for all of us in Cleveland. I know it’s a lesson that’s going to help me.So the Curse is dead. The Cavaliers are champs. Now we’ve got to work like LeBron and the Cavs to get ours. This is motivation for our city, and motivation for our team. I am just so ready to go win a championship right now."

Trust me, Joe, when I say that fans of the Browns are also so ready for you to go win a championship right now.

The Browns will not, of course, win a championship in February 2017. They will probably out of the playoff picture well before you begin your Christmas shopping. The Browns are in the middle of yet another reboot, one that included shakeups within the team’s front office and Hue Jackson becoming the team’s new head coach. Jackson would have to work miracles to make the current edition of the Browns prime-time ready between now and September.

The same was true for the Cavaliers back in the spring of 2014. It was then when the Cavs were essentially Kyrie Irving and some guys who didn’t belong in the starting lineup of a postseason basketball team. That all changed in July of that year when James announced to the world that he was returning to the Cavaliers.

Unfortunately for the Browns, the top football players of the time have no personal ties to Cleveland, nor do they possess strong desires to turn the Browns into a winner. Tom Brady isn’t giving the New England Patriots up to save the Browns. Cam Newton could care less about those of us in northeast Ohio. The Browns dropped the figurative ball by not drafting Ben Roethlisberger or Aaron Rodgers when those opportunities existed.

What the Cavaliers have proven is that one person can change the course of a franchise. The right coach or the right QB could make those around him better to the point that the Browns could go from NFL laughingstocks to a club ready to hang with the likes of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals in only a couple of years.

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam had better find that man and soon.

Sports are not what they were even a decade ago let alone what they were in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s when fans followed local teams largely because the majority of the games those fans watched involved local teams. It is now easier than ever for somebody in Cleveland to actively follow the Carolina Panthers, Denver Broncos, New York Giants or Oakland Raiders.

Those of you who have children know this. You’ve seen your child’s friends dabbing to mimic Cam Newton. Children from eastern Ohio have flocked to the Steelers because the team has been respectable, when not great, throughout the past 16 years.

The Cavaliers are cool. The Cavs are cool because of LeBron, because of Irving and because they are champions. No team in the NFL needs such a spark as do the Browns, and that is more true than ever now that Cleveland fans, particularly younger Cleveland fans, have tasted a championship.

No reasonable person is expecting the 2016 Browns to answer that call. Truth be told, the Cavaliers winning a title removes the sting caused by the reality that these Browns may end up being downright lousy. Such feelings will eventually evaporate. When that happens, the Browns will again be in danger of losing fans who contemplate moving on to other teams and/or to other sports.

To Joe Haden, Hue Jackson, Jimmy Haslam, Robert Griffin III and everybody else associated with the Browns: You’re up now that the Cavs have ended the supposed Cleveland Curse.

Get to work.