The Cleveland Cavaliers Are NBA Champions

"I just need some time to process."

Those were the only words that I could muster Sunday night. I had just finished watching my hometown basketball team win their first ever championship, surrounded by over 20,000 delirious fans inside of an arena that was sold out for a team that wasn't even playing there. I walked out of the arena with friends who were wondering, "What do we do now? Where do we go? Bars? To the LeBron banner? Did you see that Kyrie shot? When do you think they're going to build a statue for LeBron?"

"I just need some time to process."

Outside the Q after Game 7

There was so much to think about. This was my favorite sports team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. This team was led by LeBron James, the prodigal son of the city who had been drafted by that team 13 years ago, only to leave for greener pastures. Then he came back -- no one leaves Cleveland and comes back, much less the best basketball player in the world. They had just become the first team to ever win after being down 3-1 in the Finals. They had done that against the team with the best regular season record ever, who also happened to beat them in the Finals last year. Oh, by the way, that team, the Golden State Warriors, were playing at home. And the Cavs won. If you pitched this plot as a movie, it would probably be deemed too unrealistic. Yet, it happened. In real life. Here we are.

"The Cleveland Cavaliers are NBA Champions" is a sentence that only used to be true when I was playing NBA 2k on my Xbox 360. Today, it is a factual sentence, and I'm trying to think about all of that, and how it happened. How the hell all of that happened. Aside from all of the LeBron story lines, to me, the most improbable thing about all of this was this NBA Finals series. It was so perfect for Cleveland, as a city. It was so perfect for me. And honestly, it was probably the only way that it could have happened.

Bill Simmons was right. He's written so many good articles over the years, but I feel like this quote has always stuck out to me the most. He was trying to describe to a friend what it was like to be a fan from a "cursed" sports team.

"Yeah, I get it. You’re not even that mad. You just feel empty inside. You head into every big game assuming you will lose, and when it happens, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You claim that you have your guard up, only deep down, that guard is lowered just enough that you’re hoping against hope that THIS game will be different. Only it never is. “I get it,” I said. I tried to explain to Steiny Mo that these things can turn only in the most dramatic of ways. It will never be a typical win. It will be a life experience. It will break you down in sections. It will take you to the abyss and back. You will have to be stripped of any and all hope, and then — and only then — will you see a light. That’s the way these things work."

Yeah.

There were so many times that these Cavs were counted out. Down 2-0, people were asking if it'd be a sweep. Should we trade Kyrie for Chris Paul? Does Kevin Love even belong on the floor? Then, the Cavs won game three. "OK," people said, "Golden State was going half speed. They'll wake up, win game 4 and make it a gentleman's sweep." Then Golden State won game 4. Questions about LeBron's legacy, Kevin Love's future rang louder than ever. Here we go again, I thought. How typical of Cleveland is it, to have the best team they've ever had, only to run into the best team the NBA has ever seen in the Finals. How typical of Cleveland to get so, so close, only to run into a level of greatness that was just a notch ahead of theirs. Just like Elway. Just like MJ. Just like that Browns team that moved, only to win the Super Bowl a few years later. So close. But never able to finish. Sigh.

But then, something amazing happened. Things started go in Cleveland's direction. Draymond Green was suspended for game five, and the Cavs won that game on the road. Andrew Bogut, a key big man for the Warriors, got hurt. Wait, I thought, this isn't right. We are the ones with bad timing and worse injury luck. What is happening? The series went to 3-2. "OK, well, Draymond is coming back, and Golden State will win in six." The Cavs came back home for game six, and won that game, too. "OK, well, Golden State is at home. Home teams are 15-3 all time in game sevens. No team has beaten them three times in a row at all over the past three seasons. No team has ever come down from 3-1 to win an NBA Finals." Every analyst continued to pick Golden State; FiveThirtyEight gave them a 65% chance to beat the Cavs in game seven. Everything pointed to Golden State to win the series, even after the Cavs had won twice and seemingly had all of the momentum.

I looked at the schedule. Game Seven was on Sunday -- Father's Day. I had to get back to Cleveland.

Growing up, the Cavs were always my favorite team. When I first started getting into sports, Cleveland didn't have a football team, as the Browns had just moved. The Indians were the hot ticket in town, being a perennial contender, but that also meant that tickets were harder to come by, so I went to their games less often. The Cavs, meanwhile, were awful. Always at the bottom of the league. What that meant, though, was that my dad and I could always go to a game. That's how a lot of my childhood was spent, scalping tickets outside of the arena. "Hey, we're just trying to get in the place." $20 later, we were in. No one ever came to the games, so that meant my dad and I could "jump" seats. We started in the upper deck, but would always move down as far as we could. Most of the time, this was the lower bowl.

To an eight year old kid, it didn't matter how good the team was. "Dad, Shawn Kemp touched my hand! I'm never washing this hand." Message to younger Brad: you're going to want to wash that hand. "Dad, can we just stay for the last minute?" The Cavs were bound for what was probably another 15 win season, but we always stayed. "Dad, we have to get there for player introductions. They are SO. COOL!" Nineties graphics were the best.

I became infatuated with the Cavs. I followed them for all of their worst seasons, buying Bobby Sura jerseys, imitating Darius Miles' celebration during my middle school basketball games and making signs for Smush Parker in meaningless February games. Then, I saw them draft LeBron. Finally, some hope for the Cavs! My dad started working as an usher for the team, which was so typical -- "I get to watch the games in great seats, and I get paid!" He would start bringing home rally towels and t-shirt promotions from the games when they started becoming competitive. I went into high school. The Cavs even made it to the NBA Finals one year. LeBron left, which sucked, but that was OK, because it meant we could hop seats even easier when I came home from college. When I would call home from college, or come back to visit, we would always talk about the Cavs first. Draft picks, upcoming games, new jerseys, whatever. Didn't matter. We loved the Cavs. "One of these years, it's going to be different," he used to tell me. Yeah, OK, Dad.

My dad died in 2012 from a heart attack. I went to a Cavs game the weekend after he died, got two tickets and hopped seats for a February game featuring two teams who wouldn't make the playoffs that year. I started in the upper bowl, jumped to the club level, and finally jumped to the lower bowl, ten rows off the court. The Cavs won in the last minute. Perfect. I haven't jumped seats at a Cavs game since.

'

"Scalp & Jump" -- beginning seats at the top, moving towards final seats at the bottom. Cavs vs. Mavs, January 2012.

LeBron came home. Dad would have loved this, I thought. Dad always loved how amped up the city got for competitive games. "To the Q!" he'd proclaim before heading down to usher a big playoff game. I watched from my new city, Washington DC, as LeBron started on his quest to give Cleveland a title. They struggled. They got better. I watched as many games as I could, following their every move. All the way to this game seven.

Game Seven was on Sunday -- Father's Day. I had to get back to Cleveland. To the Q. I rented a car and made the six hour drive to Cleveland, on a perfect weather day. I soaked in everything the city had to offer -- every bar downtown was packed, people were chanting in the streets, and the Q sold out for an away game. Sitting down, as the game started, everything hit me. The Cavs had one chance to win a championship, on Father's Day, and there I was, sitting in a section that my dad probably had directed people to at some point while he worked there.

The game started. It was a quintessential game seven. Cleveland was down 8 in the third quarter, 4 points down in the fourth. So close. It was a tie game with four minutes left. I've seen this movie before. I know how this ends. The Cavs will lose in a close game, and we will spend the next three months debating what we have to do to get over the hump. Then we'll start again next season, hoping that it'll finally be the season. But again, something amazing happened -- Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, two of the best shooters ever,  couldn't make anything. Kyrie Irving made a stepback three. LeBron made a clutch free throw. Golden State missed their final shot. It was over. I hugged my friends so hard that we had an accidental dog pile on each other. "We Are the Champions" came over the loudspeakers. People openly wept in the stands. The Cavs had won the championship.

To the abyss and back. "One of these years, it's going to be different."

I woke up the next morning and made the drive back to DC. The whole way, I listened to Cleveland sports talk radio, and heard stories of why this was so important to people. I probably listened to more grown men cry on that six hour car drive than I have total in my life to that point. Why did people care so much? Why do I care so much? It's just a game. It's just sports. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.

But it does matter. Sports can provide hope. Sports can bring people together. Sports can make strangers hug each other in streets, as I saw in Cleveland last night. What other form of entertainment can do that? They can form some of the most powerful relationships you have in life -- for me, that was between me and my dad. Sports can help us forget the toughness of the world around us (I realized yesterday that I hadn't thought of Donald Trump in over 24 hours!) and make us believe in real life fairy tales. What the Cavs did in this year's NBA Finals should have never happened. They shouldn't have taken this series to five games, but they did. They shouldn't have won game six, but they did. They definitely shouldn't have won game seven, but they did. Sports can make years of despair and disappointment worth everything in one night. That's what happened for the city of Cleveland Sunday night. That's pretty amazing.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are NBA Champions. It doesn't really matter. Except that it really, really does.

This year, it was finally different. They did it.

Let's Go Cavs.

BD

Days 14-18: Habitat For Humanity, Diamond Head, End of Trip Reflection

This will be the final blog post for the Hawaii Community Service 2015 trip. But first, a quick aside:

Throughout the course of the trip we had "car challenges," where members of each car would play against each other in various sorts of competition (most Hawaiian shirts spotted, guess the song, etc.). One day, the two other trip leaders decided to look through my (very admittedly) rough past of Facebook...or as they called the pictures, "great action shots!" They predictably found some gems, told me about it, and we laughed at my high school level of awkwardness. I thought that was the end of it. Nope. They decided to share the pictures with the kids on our trip and make the "car challenge" of the day the following: re-create Brad's awkward pictures to the best of your abilities. The results are below:

Great impersonations, if I could say so myself. They really captured the intensity of the pictures, especially trying to find the pickle in the Christmas tree.

Clever kids, huh?

Anyways, on to the trip.

Our final community service project involved working for Habitat For Humanity. Normally, when people hear of Habitat For Humanity, they hear of the glory of the organization -- going to build sites, making houses, and presenting them to underprivileged families. When I heard that we were working for Habitat, this was my expectation as well. But what we learned was that there's a TON of background work that goes into making Habitat work, one of which things includes their ReStore.

Here's how the ReStore works: Habitat takes in old or used goods, refurbishes them, and then sells them back to the public at a discounted rate. All the money they earn goes towards funding materials for making the houses, and the cycle continues. For the two days that we were at the ReStore, that's what our task was. We walked into the warehouse of the ReStore and were told that we needed to clean and reorganize the store, because frankly, the place was a bit of the mess.

Over the course of two days our kids rose above and beyond what they were expected to do. They were literally doing everything that they could -- assembling furniture, moving it, disassembling shelving, moving that, cleaning windows, sorting doors, labeling paint. You name it, they were doing it. After we left on our second day, the store owner said something that really stuck out to me: "You guys did as much work in two days as the military guys who come in here do in two weeks."

Wow.

After Habitat, the trip was beginning to wind down, and we were in the homestretch.

On our last full day of the trip, we traveled to Diamond Head State Monument, home of Diamond Head
Mountain. Understanding that it would be a bit warmer than the seasonal average, we loaded up the vans with plenty of water and headed out to the monument. Once we got there, we saw our task. Hike up this giant mountain? It's huge. It's famous. This is crazy. As we set off, there was only one thing on our minds: we have to finish. We had completed all the other tasks of the trip, no matter how hard, so we could surely get through this.

We got through it. And the views were amazing.

We could see the entire island, from the metropolis of Waikiki to the outskirts where we had worked with the Boys & Girls Club earlier in the week. The road to get to the top of the mountain was difficult, but was absolutely well worth it.

After the hike, we spent one last day at the beach, enjoyed dinner at Jimmy Buffet's and then went back to the hotel to reflect on this eighteen day journey we had all made together. We reflected two ways: one, we completed "The Memory String" activity, where one person starts with the ball of string, says their favorite part of the trip, then wraps part of the ball around their wrist before throwing it to someone else in a circle, where the activity continues. This goes on until everyone has part of the string around their wrist, and the string is cut so everyone has a makeshift bracelet to remember the trip by. In this activity, memories of the past two and a half weeks came pouring out, including some of the following:

• the time when a little boy, Amaru, refused to let go of one of our trip members when we were about to leave the Boys & Girls Club
• the bonfire at the Nature Preserve at Eco Maui
• swimming through waterfalls at Eco Maui
• memorable car rides, jam sessions, and inside jokes
• the time Brad ripped his pants while lifting a couch at Habitat For Humanity (conveniently left out of the previous description)
• favorite meals, including an authentic Hawaiian luau
• reminiscing of Waimanalo Beach and all of the other amazing scenery of the trip

After we completed The Memory String, it was time for Paper Plate Awards. Paper Plate Awards works the following way: you draw another trip member's name out of a hat and are given a paper plate. You are given a half hour to decorate their paper plate with an award that is unique to them. Go.

After a half hour we presented each other's paper plates. Tears were shed, laughs were had, etc. For only a few dollars, everyone had given and been given something incredibly moving, powerful and personal to them. I, for one, know that I will be keeping my paper plate and memory string for a long time to come.

Rewarding work. Unforgettable experiences.

As I sit typing out the final words of the blog on this trip, I'm reminded of those two ideas I had for this trip in my initial blog post. I think it's safe to say that this trip exceeded those expectations, no matter how ambitious or hyperbolic they sounded at the time.

I'm also reminded of a Disney movie -- Lilo & Stitch, cliché as that may be.

In an early scene of the movie, Lilo, a name that we actually gave one especially endearing little girl at the Maui Boys & Girls Club, tells us:

"Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind...or forgotten."

In one of the movie's final scenes, Stitch, our lovable and furry protagonist, drops this gem on us:

"This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It's little, and broken, but still good. Yeah. Still good."

Over the course of the last eighteen days, all the members of the WestCoast Connection H1 Community Service trip found a new Ohana. All on their own. No one got left behind, or forgotten. And for that, we are all much better for the experience.

For the final time, mahalo for reading and aloha'oe!

BD

Days 10-13 : B&G of Oahu, Pearl Harbor, Beachin’

From the second we landed, we could tell Oahu was different.

Sure, it was still in Hawaii. The weather was pretty much the same. But Honolulu was noticeably different. There were more cars. There were more people. There was a line to get our luggage, and then again to get our rental car. There was an actual interstate. What?

As we began our travels from the airport to our hotel in Waikiki (a beachfront neighborhood in Honolulu), we came to collective realization: we were in the city. While we were geographically close to where we began our trip, Honolulu felt like we were an entirely separate entity.

This is all relevant because it meant that our work would change. The first leg of our community service in Oahu centered around the Boys & Girls Club, which we had previously worked with in Maui. However, this time the work would be different. Being “in the city”, specifically a big city, carries a certain set of difficulties for everyone, but especially kids. We knew, just like in Maui, that the kids were going to need everything that we had -- but this time, it might just look a little different.

And it did. In Maui, the B&G Club was very lax -- come and go as you please, get there when we get there…they worked on “island time.” That’s not how things work in Honolulu, where a tight ship is run and kids have very clear expectations all the time. While debriefing, we found that a good number of kids actually preferred the structure. But don’t take it from me, let’s hear it from the kids!

“I liked Honolulu better because it was more organized.” - Anonymous Trip Member #1

“I felt like I got to know more kids because it was very clear when everything was going to happen.” - Anonymous Trip Member #2

“Honolulu was chill, just in a different way than Maui.” - Anonymous Trip Member #3

“What are you talking to me about? When’s dinner?” - Anonymous Trip Member #4

Just like in Maui, the kids and staff were great. Over the course of the two days that we were there, our kids once again rose to the challenge and creating great programming for the children of Oahu and made some amazing relationships, having a great time along the way.

This was a big moment of realization for me. “Different” often carries a stigma, that deviating from the path was a bad thing. But different isn’t always bad. It actually it’s not even often bad. It’s just...different.

Oahu is different. But in a good, unique way. I’ve been so impressed with our kids’ ability to code switch, to a certain extent, and show the ability to diversify their talents to meet the needs of two very different populations of kids. For me, it was one of the coolest things to see on the entire trip.

In the words of the philosopher Wiz Khalifa...work hard, play hard. We worked our butts off to get ready for and at the Boys and Girls Club, so it was time to play tourist. That started at Dave and Busters for some dinners and games, where once again the trip members learned that it is not wise to square off with yours truly in any sort of competitive event.

Day Twelve of our trip involved exposing our kids to a day at Pearl Harbor. This excursion was one that I had circled at the beginning of the trip, but I was surprised to find out that a lot of our kids had not been taught about Pearl Harbor in school (yet). “What happened here?” “Was it the end of the war?” “I think it was the Japanese.” These questions made me even more excited to show the kids my nerdy side at this historical site.

The tour was amazing. After getting out to Pearl Harbor, the tour started with a short movie that explained the build-up to Pearl Harbor, the actual event itself, and its consequences. We then took a ferry out to the USS Arizona memorial, the largest ship sunk on December 7, 1941. The USS Arizona is still fairly visible underneath the water, as we learned Pearl Harbor’s waters were only about 40 feet deep. The memorial itself was built perpendicular to the USS Arizona, and included a view of some of the visible parts of the ship, a list of those killed at Pearl Harbor, and those crew members who survived but then were cremated after their death and returned to the ship to be with their crewmates. We took a ferry back to shore, and went into a small museum that essentially was the synopsis of the video but in much, much more detail. I can tell I’m getting old because I absolutely loved this museum. (Note: These last five words have never been said by me at any previous point in my life). I was worried the kids would be bored like I was at museums at their age, but was excited to hear so many of them talking amongst themselves after we were done about how interesting they thought the day was and how happy they were that we took the time to go out and learn more about Pearl Harbor.

America.

The highlight of Day Thirteen was 100% Waimanalo Beach. Waimanalo is a beauty, soft-sanded beach that’s about 10 miles from our hotel in Waikiki, but was the perfect getaway. It has been rated the #1 beach in America as voted on by such experts as the Huffington Post and Dr. Beach. If I'm going to trust anyone with my beach-seeking needs, I'm not going to look any further than someone named “Dr. Beach.” Sidenote: How cool would it be to have this guy’s job? Just goes around, looks at beaches, then calls it a day. I think I need a new career path.

The beach itself was absolutely incredible and 100% lived up to the hype. In the background were the beautiful mountains of Oahu; in the foreground, water bluer than I have ever seen in my life, and in the distance, neighboring islands and craters off the Hawaiian coast. Our kids enjoyed their time at the beach, throwing a football back and forth, burying themselves in sand and overall just being kids and having a great time.

We are in the homestretch of our trip now, with community service at Habitat For Humanity and a hike up the famous Diamond Head mountain the only things in between us and the mainland.

Mahalo for reading and aloha ‘oe!

BD

Days 6-9: Eco Maui, The 4th, Aloha to Maui

The idea of “community service” with teenagers is an intricate business. While many of their peers are lounging by a pool, playing video games, or sleeping and dreaming of the best Kik message ever, we are pitching the idea of work to our kids. What? In Hawaii? Work? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

The work, we told the kids, would be hard -- probably the hardest work we would do. We’d be working in the humid rainforest of Hawaii, cleaning up a nature preserve that hadn’t been touched in years. The work, we promised, would be difficult, but very much worth it. With this message in hand, we traveled away from tourists and into the heart of Maui.

We were met at our hotel by Nature Jay, aka J-Bird, who has run Eco Maui for over twenty years. Nature Jay ran us through the itinerary of our day, as outlined above, and we piled into our cars and headed out. We arrived about a half hour later at a privately owned nature preserve in Hawaii, which ranges over 40 acres of land. The land is privately owned but open to the public for observation and exploration.

Nature Jay explained to us that there’d be two types of service we’d be undergoing -- surveying and excavation. We began our service by going to Twin Falls, two waterfalls right near the entrance of the preserve. This was the “surveying” part of our service -- checking out the waterfall, making sure it was operational and not flooded in (spoiler alert: it operated at a high level). Just to make sure, we headed into the water and posed for some pictures under the falls -- because someone has to make sure that tourists can act like tourists, right?

After our surveying, the hard work began. We began working on the Nature Center, which had been created years ago but had been long overrun by inactivity and plant life. It was time for some excavation.

As I checked out my surroundings, familiar thoughts ran through my mind: teenagers. Dirt. No Phones. Oh, no.

Boy, was I wrong.

Our kids dove headfirst into the work. Armed with nothing more than construction gloves, water bottles, sunscreen and a lot of heart, amazing things started happening. Kids were working in teams of two to move heavy plants. They were working in teams of up to 10 (!) to pull up old plastic tarps that had been stapled in and covered in plant growth. They were moving bricks, digging holes, and sweeping away debris like they’d been doing it for years. Maybe they have. If that’s the case, thanks a lot parents!

We worked on the site for two “hours of power” before Nature Jay took us to a private spring which overlooked a beautiful waterfall. It was time to cool off, take more pictures, and make sure that the tourists were being accommodated.

The work continued on Day Seven, as we still had work to do at the Nature Preserve. We knew that we needed to finish, otherwise we wouldn’t leave the Nature Preserve with enough time to open up on schedule. Before we got back to work, though, we needed to survey some waterfalls. Actually, a lot of waterfalls. Five to be exact. Spending time observing, appreciating, and cooling off in these waterfalls was the perfect break before we got into our work.

As we finished up on the work we started on the previous day, we began retrieving chairs from a nearby shed. Why? Our guide, Nature Jay, told us that the culmination of our hard work would be a bonfire using the space we had worked so hard to clean up the previous day.

Now, I’ve been trying to update this blog with pictures to show you all what I’ve been writing about but I’m purposely leaving any and all pictures out of this section because there is no possible way a picture could capture the beauty of being out in the middle of a Hawaiian forest, with only a campfire and the bright stars as illumination for our night. At the bonfire, we all enjoyed s'mores and sodas before our reflection activity -- pick a song that describes what this experience meant to you. This was mine.

We spent the Fourth of July (Day Eight of the trip) relaxing and maximizing our time as best as any Hawaiian could -- brunching, beaching, and fireworks. The fireworks were especially beautiful, set over the water in the nearby town of Laihana.

On the Fifth of July, we spent the day getting organized and then taking a short (~45 minute) flight into Honolulu, our second and final destination on our service trip. Once into Honolulu we checked into the hotel, and checked out the local shops before settling in and gearing up to work at another Boys & Girls Club, this time on Oahu.

It’s crazy to think about already being halfway done with this amazing trip. As promised in the original post of this blog, the work has been rewarding (to say the least) and the experiences have been unforgettable. We are so excited to be in Oahu and continue working hard, playing hard, and living the aloha way.

Mahalo for reading and aloha ‘oe!

BD