No professional sports team in Cleveland had won a championship in 52 years prior to the Cavaliers’ incredible comeback against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. Now that the drought is over, can one of the city’s other franchises follow suit?
Try not to laugh, but Joe Haden is hoping the Browns will be next.
“The Cleveland curse is over. We’ve finally got a champion in northeast Ohio,” Haden wrote in a guest feature for The MMQB. “Over my seven years as a Brown, I got so tired of hearing about the curse, about no team in the city winning a championship since the Browns won in 1964. But you’ve got to go out and end it, not just talk about ending it. And that’s what the Cavaliers did.
All shots at the Browns aside, Haden actually wrote a very captivating account of witnessing the Cavs win it all. He sat courtside during Game 6 and witnessed a vintage performance from LeBron James. He was then at a Cleveland bar during LeBron’s triple-double on Monday night.
“The emotion in the streets downtown … just unbelievable,” Haden wrote. “People flooding the streets, throwing toilet paper and celebrating, screaming. Insane. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never anything close. But that’s probably to be expected when you haven’t won a title for so long.”
Haden added that watching the Cavs erase a 3-1 series deficit and somehow win Game 7 in the toughest road venue in their sport should serve as motivation for his team.
“There’s a lesson in that for all of us in Cleveland. I know it’s a lesson that’s going to help me,” he said. “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.”
You’ll have to excuse us for being skeptical, as the Browns are not in the situation the Cavs were put in when LeBron returned. Basketball is a more individually-dominated sport, and the Cavs have the best player in the game. The Browns would do well to get to .500 in the next few years, especially if they’re relying on a career revival from this guy to get them there.
You can’t blame Haden for showing some optimism, but that doesn’t make it realism just yet.
