There is a special place in offseason Hades reserved for NBA teams that win 66 games and do not win the championship.
Let us hope the Cleveland Cavaliers come up with a couple of air conditioners.
It's an exclusive club, with just three members.
1. The 1972-73 Celtics, who were 68-14 and lost to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals, then just the second round.
2. The 2006-97 Mavericks, who were 67-15 and lost to the Warriors in the first round.
3. The 2008-09 Cavaliers, who were 66-16 and have just lost to the Magic in the Eastern Conference finals, which is now the third round.
The Cavaliers are, no doubt, dazed and confused. "How could this happen to us?" they are probaby asking. But if you watched that series, you can easily understand how it happened. Now. The whole thing looks so logical. Now. Anyone can see that the Magic were the better team. Now.
But few people saw it coming.
I was definitely not one of them. Oh, I came away from the Celtics series very impressed with the Magic. I thought they had a much better chance of winning a game or two - no more - against the Cavs than the battered Celtics did. Going six against the Cavs was still the max in my mind. The fact that Orlando had twice defeated the Cavs, including a 19-point win without Jameer Nelson? Pish and posh, said I. That was then, and the Cavaliers are obviously much different and better in the now.
For Cleveland had not just defeated Detroit and Atlanta; the Cavs had mauled them, winning all eight games, by an average margin of 16 points. LeBron James was busy being LeBron James while the Cavs as a team appeared to be in perfect sync at both ends of the floor. Yes, the Magic appeared to provide some individual matchup problems for the Cavs, but I thought Cleveland was simply not about matchups, that it was about playing off LeBron at the offensive end while functioning as a smothering defensive unit when the ball changed hands.
How very wrong I was.
The Cavs vs. the Magic turned out to be LeBron and the 11 Dwarfs vs. a Real Team. It took a defensive slip-up (is there a reason to be guarding anybody standing near midcourt when there is one-tenth of a second left?) and a miracle shot by LeBron to avoid an Orlando sweep. That memorable LeBron display of virtuosity in Game 5, as entertaining as it was, never should have taken place. By that time, we had already established which was the better team, and it was not who most of us originally thought it was.