The road to Anthony Bennett

What have we learned about Cavs GM Chris Grant on draft night? He might take a guard, he might take a forward, he might take a center. But he will never, under any circumstances, be predictable.

In this article, penned a year ago, I took note of the fantasy-sports culture that has grown up around draft prognostication. In the weeks leading up to the NFL and NBA drafts, fans absorb mock drafts, scouting reports, soundbites and tweets to the saturation point. By the time the draft rolls around, the advance intelligence has delivered us a consensus-designated group of prospects that so-called “experts” have rubber-stamped as appropriate selections if your team should hold a top pick.

If your team reaches outside of that sphere to make their selection, doubting Thomases flood message boards, Twitter feeds and call-in shows with a collective reaction that is anywhere between sweaty palms and outright anger.

In 2011, three picks after taking Kyrie Irving first overall, Grant passed on Lithuanian center Jonas Valanciunas to take raw Texas power forward Tristan Thompson. Last year, Grant left North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes, Connecticut’s Andre Drummond and Kansas’ Thomas Robinson on the board to take Syracuse combo guard Dion Waiters, who didn’t even start for Jim Boeheim in his sophomore season.

The picks were largely panned at the time. In both cases, our fears have calmed to an extent, as Thompson showed marked improvement from Year 1 to Year 2, and Waiters finished among the rookie leaders in scoring this past season.

Which brings us to Thursday night, and what is supposed to be the last high draft pick the Cavs will have – or need – for a long time.

For the second time in three years, the Cavs owned the top pick. The trouble is, the top of the draft was so murky, even the people who analyze the draft for a living had a hard time figuring out who should be in the conversation for No. 1. Rumors persisted that the Cavs would try to trade out of the spot, rather than use the pick.

If the Cavs did keep the pick, the threads of available intel seemed to indicate that the players in the conversation for No. 1 fell into two classifications. If the Cavs wanted to go big, they could select Kentucky’s Nerlens Noel or Maryland’s Alex Len. If they wanted to go for a wing player, the best candidates were Kansas’ Ben McLemore or Georgetown’s Otto Porter.

Most fans and media types seemed to agree, based on a collective hunch more than anything, that big was the way to go. Noel is recovering from surgery to repair an ACL torn in February, Len is recovering from a stress fracture in his ankle, but in this dartboard of a draft, you’re probably best-served slinging your darts at the guys with size.

So at about 7:30 on Thursday night, we settled in and waited for the pick. Noel or Len? Len or Noel? If Grant threw us a curveball, it would likely come in the form of Porter or McLemore. But few among us were thinking any farther outside the box than that.

Then David Stern stepped to the podium. This was his final draft as NBA commissioner, so he was having some fun with the selections.

“With the first pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select….”

(Dramatic pause. Sly glance toward the crowd, just to get the notoriously-cantankerous New Yorkers at the Barclays Center grumbling.)

“….Anthony Bennett, from UNLV!”

And, with that, the legend of Chris Grant, riverboat gambler, grew.

In Cleveland, whether we realize it or not, we’re getting used to this. There is a gut-check moment, a furrow of the brow. You meditate for a second. Then you come to a conclusion. Some are cool with it. Some hate it. Some reserve judgment.

Bennett has been compared to former UNLV standout Larry Johnson. The man they called “Grandmama” carved out a pretty productive career for himself after the Charlotte Hornets made him the first overall selection in 1991. He played a decade in the NBA with the Hornets and Knicks, scoring over 11,000 career points and grabbing over 5,000 career rebounds, before back problems forced a premature retirement in 2001.

Like Johnson, Bennett is billed as an undersized power forward. He’s 6’-7” and listed at 240 pounds. Like Johnson, Bennett is a scorer. In 27.1 minutes per game in his lone (freshman) season at UNLV, he average 16.1 points per game, shot 53 percent from the floor, and with a 37.5 percent conversion rate from beyond the arc, he is a true “stretch four.”

Bennett does come with some areas of concern, apart from his stature. After having postseason shoulder surgery, he’s reported to have put on about 20 pounds. He’s not known as an adept defender, and his low-post game needs work. Considering the fact that he’s going to be playing against seven-footers in the NBA post, he’s going to have to get creative about finding his shot near the basket, which means his post game might need a lot of work.

And then there’s the question of redundancy. Why draft an undersized power forward when you have already put two years of time and resources into developing Thompson? Thompson and Bennett are very similar, in terms of physical dimensions. Or does the arrival of Bennett in Cleveland signal the arrival of Thompson on the trading block?

So, in the end, why Bennett? This might have been what Grant was thinking:

The Cavs need more scoring around Kyrie Irving

More than anything, the Cavs need to avoid a LeBron James redux. In his seven years in Cleveland, LeBron became increasingly fed up with the constant need for him to shoulder the brunt of the scoring burden, night in and night out. Mo Williams became a legitimate second option during LeBron’s final two years here, but he disappeared in the later rounds of the playoffs, and the offense regressed to all LBJ, all the time.

It’s the main reason he left to hook up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. And if you let the same dynamic develop around Kyrie, it’s only a matter of time before Kyrie is planning his exit strategy.

The Cavs need more go-to scorers around Kyrie. More teammates who can shoulder the scoring load on a given night. Waiters has shown some potential to develop into that kind of load-bearing scorer, but the Cavs need more. Bennett appears to have the tools to become that kind of scorer, as does Russian sharpshooter Sergey Karasev, selected by the Cavs at No. 19.

The more scoring options available, the better the foundation of the team, and – at least in theory – the more secure Kyrie will feel in building his career here.

Defense is team, offense is individual

So, why would a team that just re-hired their LeBron-era defensive stickler of a coach draft a player who has a poor defensive reputation? Wouldn’t a rim defender like Noel, or a human wall like Len, be a better selection for a Mike Brown team?

The answer is, Brown’s defense doesn’t rely solely on individual defensive acumen. Just like the Spurs teams of his mentor Gregg Popovich, Brown’s defense relies on levers and pulleys, blocking and tackling. On the defensive end, the players are coached to operate as a five-man machine – trapping along the sideline and baseline, rotating from the weak side to double-team, flashing to the perimeter to bother a guard before recovering to the post to contest a shot.

Defense is primarily based on effort and technique. A great offensive player can be taught to play defense. Offense is primarily based on talent. A great defensive player can’t necessarily be taught to become a great scorer. In fact, many great defensive players focus on defense because they can’t score. Defense is the only way they stay in the rotation. Ben Wallace, who won four Defensive Player of the Year awards with the Pistons before his cups of coffee with the Bulls and Cavs, is a prime example.

So, what is the better route? Teaching Bennett to defend, or teaching Noel to put the ball in the hoop? If you believe in Brown’s philosophy, it’s the former. And if Bennett resists playing defense, you can bet Brown will staple him to the pine until he rethinks his priorities.

Thompson and Bennett aren’t all that redundant

If anything, putting a scorer at the four frees Thompson to focus on rebounding and defense in the paint, effectively becoming a center. With Bennett in the fold, Thompson no longer has to morph into a 17 PPG/10 RPG all-around force. If focusing on defense and rebounding means he can become a hard-nosed interior defender who can grab 11-12 rebounds per game while his offense consists mainly of dunks and stickbacks, there isn’t any pressure for him to become more than that.

Ultimately, the goal is to develop a roster and playbooks that takes advantage of everyone’s strengths, while neutralizing individual weaknesses.

But having said that, I still think there’s a significant chance the selection of Bennett increases the possibility that Thompson will be involved in a major trade later this summer.

Bennett’s advanced stats check out

Grant doesn’t get the headlines that noted stat-head GMs like Houston’s Daryl Morey and Oklahoma City’s Sam Presti get. But Grant loves himself some metrics. And Bennett’s advanced stats grade out well, which certainly didn’t hurt his cause.

Bennett’s player efficiency rating at UNLV was 28.3, meaning that in stat-head-speak, he did a great deal to help his team win. A PER of 15 is considered average in the NBA, and a PER of 30 is MVP-level production. Of course, you have to adjust for the fact that UNLV competes in the Mountain West Conference, which isn’t exactly a basketball powerhouse. Bennett probably won’t jump to the NBA and start posting 28.3 PERs out of the gate. But the advanced stats say he is an impact player.

A little bit of Sergey

As mentioned, the Cavs did make another first-round selection. It turned out to be a brilliant non-move, as rumors persisted in the hours leading up to the draft that the Cavs would have to burn assets and trade up to the low lottery to have a chance at Karasev,

But Dallas shuffled the mid-round deck several times, and ultimately, Karasev was there for the taking at 19.

Karasev is a 6’-7” swingman known primarily as an outside shooter. He comes with the rap of average-at-best athleticism, but scouting reports seem to indicate that he has a developing handle, and might be a smoother athlete than you’d think.

Currently 19 years old, he averaged 16.1 PPG playing for Triumph Lyubertsy in the PBL, the top basketball league in Russia -- a league that employs ex-NBA players such as Primoz Brezec and Lonny Baxter.

The Cavs will have to buy out Karasev’s contract with Triumph Lyubertsy in order to sign him, but reports say the Cavs’ decision-makers don’t think that will be an issue.

A crying shame

Since the summer of 2010, LeBron James has been dead to the Cavaliers.

Any and all references to LeBron’s contributions to the franchise have been obliterated at Quicken Loans Arena. Other than the banners hanging in the rafters that commemorate the 2007 Eastern Conference title and the Central Division titles in 2009 and ’10, any vestige of the LeBron Era has been erased by a very bitter organization, likely at the behest of Dan Gilbert, who still finds it hard to refer to LeBron by name.

While the Cavs were busy wallpapering over any evidence that LeBron once wore their team’s uniform, LeBron has been creating a new legacy in Miami, where he has won two additional MVP awards, and now two NBA titles.

LeBron was a villain to the nation when he kicked Cleveland to the curb on national TV three years ago. But since then, he’s regained his throne. He’s back to reigning as one of the most popular – and now one of the most decorated – athletes on the planet.

Attitudes soften, particularly for the vast majority of people in towns that had no skin in the game. Now Cleveland, once a sympathetic character in LeBron’s production, is becoming a lone pocket of LeBron-spite in a nation that is once again learning to love and celebrate LeBron.

LeBron is positioned to go down in American sports history as an icon. He’s positioned to go down in local history as a scoundrel. And it’s a crying shame, because Northeast Ohio is one of the few places where LeBron’s legacy should truly matter.

He’s the best basketball player our region has ever produced by a wide margin. He was drafted by our local team. He led that team to its only Finals appearance to date, and its only two 60-win seasons. In 43 years of play, the Cavs franchise has won 12 playoff series. Eight of those series wins came on LeBron’s watch.

No player has mattered more to the Cavs franchise, or to the Northeast Ohio region. But if the present prevailing attitudes stay anchored in place, we’ll never acknowledge it. The best player in Cavs history, and one of the several greatest players to ever wear a Cleveland uniform in the approximately 140-year history of professional sports in this town, will stay frozen in time as a pariah. The Cavs will find themselves in the uniquely terrible position of being completely estranged from their greatest alumnus.

The question of how to repair that relationship is a dicey one, however.

From the outside looking in, it’s easy to tell Clevelanders to suck it up and get over it. LeBron gave us seven years of his career, he gave us some great memories, and then moved on to the next phase of his career. He’s won two titles in Miami, so no one can question whether it was the right move. As for “The Decision,” broadcast on national TV? It was certainly self-aggrandizing and ill-advised, but it’s not like LeBron shot puppies or clubbed baby seals in front of the nation. At some point, we’re making too big a deal out of it.

It’s true ... to a point. But for a fan base that wants nothing more than a single world championship parade down Euclid Avenue, the fact that a native son left, and did so in the fashion he did, then justified it by starting a dynasty in his new town, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. LeBron is doing for Miami what we wanted him to do for us. Miami’s dream-come-true was supposed to be ours. And we promise we would have stayed until the final buzzer.

LeBron gets rings, Miami gets parades, and we get a 50-year championship drought that doesn’t appear to show signs of ending anytime soon.

So, to the rest of the country – it might be a simple as “get over it” in another city that hasn’t been pushed to this level of dysfunction by sports. Here, it’s another shot to the collective groin in a city that has received way too many over the years.

The high road is a hard road to take, and maybe a road that we’re not ready to take just yet.

The only way this situation might get completely rectified is for LeBron to return to the Cavs. For LeBron to give us another stretch of contending basketball while he still has some decent tread left on his tires – and then, when he takes off the Cavs uniform for good, he does so on amicable terms, whether he’s won us our long-sought championship or not.

It’s a mouthful to ask: LeBron returning with some prime years left, teaming up with Kyrie Irving, who is more than seven years his junior, and once again lifting the Cavs into the NBA’s stratosphere. But knowing that the Heat’s roster – particularly Dwyane Wade – figures to be in an ever-increasing state of age-related decline over the next several years, and the fact that the NBA’s new escalating luxury tax penalties are lining up to slam high-payroll teams like the Heat, the Cavs, with a young, low-cost and financially-maneuverable nucleus might be far from the worst option for LeBron, should he decide to test the free agency waters in 2014 or 2015.

Admittedly, there is some selfishness at work. I’m not too prideful to admit that I miss the buzz that surrounded the Cavs when LeBron was here. I miss deep playoff runs. I miss analyzing playoff matchups. As much as I want to believe Kyrie is capable of piloting the Cavs to that type of success himself, I know it would be a near-certainty if LeBron came back.

But taking it a level or two deeper, the relationship between LeBron, the Cavs and the region needs repaired. It’s too important of a relationship to have the events of the summer of 2010 stand as the final chapter. LeBron deserves to be revered in his home region, not reviled. And we deserve to have a superstar’s legacy worth celebrating.

But that’s not going be his Miami legacy. It has to be our own.

A farewell to bowties

The world loves its yearly dose of Nick Gilbert.

It’s become an annual ritual, at the conclusion of every abysmal post-LeBron Cavs season – three in all. Cavs owner Dan Gilbert rounds up a contingent of famous Clevelanders and heads to New York. At the center of the contingent is Gilbert’s son, Nick.

A 16-year-old who suffers from a disease called neurofibromatosis, Nick Gilbert has used his series of 30-minute turns in the spotlight to raise awareness about his disease. Which was kind of the original reason for Dan Gilbert to put his son in the Cavs’ chair for the 2011 lottery. Nick gets to ham it up like all teenagers love to do, a worthy cause gets some much-needed publicity, and maybe the Cavs sell a few extra t-shirts.

But, things happen. And things happened for Nick Gilbert. He posed a philosophical question to the world on the subject of likability. Then the lotto balls turned a midseason trade with the Clippers into the No. 1 pick that would become Kyrie Irving. And Dan Gilbert, with his marketing radar ever-rotating, apparently made a silent declaration that his son would become the Cavs’ Mr. Lottery from that day forward.

Last year and this year, everyone in the Cavs contingent wore thick-rimmed glasses and bowties to match Nick’s trademark lottery look. To be fair, results are results. Last year, the Cavs were a coin flip (ironically, a flip they won) away from winning the lottery. They ended up picking fourth, where they took Dion Waiters.

Tuesday, Nick Gilbert got to celebrate in front of the cameras again. For the second time in three years, he was on the stage for a Cavs draft lottery victory.

Hey, it’s fun. It’s worthwhile. And maybe, as his father has repeatedly said, Nick is a walking good-luck charm.

But it’s also getting old. Father and son Gilbert both said as much on Tuesday.

Nick Gilbert was 14 at the 2011 lottery. He’s 16 now. It’s going to be a lot less fun if college-age Nick is still popping up to represent the Cavs at the lottery, still sporting the bowtie and glasses. Once Nick is fully an adult – it’s just going to be creepy.

The solution for that, as anyone with ties to the Cavs organization mentioned this week, is to make sure the Cavs are not back in the lottery for a long time.

The burning question is, how can they do it?

The news of the Cavs lottery victory was met with a very Cleveland response among the fans and media, as countless armchair pundits started concocting scenarios in which the Cavs could get rid of the first overall pick, hours after winning it.

It’s because the 2013 draft is, according to widespread opinion, going topless. There are no apparent franchise-changers in the draft this year. The top prospects all come branded with large question marks.

Kentucky center Nerlens Noel, at the top of a lot of draft boards, is recovering from ACL surgery, and likely won’t be ready to play until December. Even with two healthy knees, he’s going to need some substantial muscle gain and some kind of offensive game to succeed in the NBA.

The top wingmen prospects – Kansas’ Ben McLemore, Georgetown’s Otto Porter and Indiana’s Victor Oladipo -- all have size and skill issues that are worth red-flagging. Anthony Bennett of UNLV has an NBA body at 6’-7” and 240 pounds, but he’s a textbook ‘tweener who might be too slow to play small forward and too short to play power forward.

In short, all of the top prospects in this year’s draft are either projects, or have some kind of physical limitation that is worth noting. That alone shouldn’t chase the Cavs away from using the pick. But GM Chris Grant also has to consider his team’s situation.

The Cavs have lost 166 games in three years since LeBron left. They’ve finished with the league’s second-worst record once and third-worst record twice. That’s a lot of losing for ping pong balls. In the process, through a series of trades and careful financial management, Grant has amassed an extensive collection of draft picks and cap space.

With Irving blossoming into a star, and Waiters, Tristan Thompson and Tyler Zeller rounding out a solid – at times impressive – core of youngsters, it would appear that the time is now for Grant to make some impact moves to put the Cavs back on the NBA map.

Rookies generally don’t make the kind of impact the Cavs will need next year. But if the Cavs were to trade the No. 1 pick, they can’t force-feed a trade in the name of getting their hands on whatever veteran players they can find.

It’s still the first overall pick. It still has to pay big dividends, no matter how Grant uses it. Therein lies the inherent problem with the Cavs’ current situation.

Knowing that his team needs to make a big splash for win-now talent this offseason, Grant will almost certainly hunt big game. He’ll call Minnesota about Kevin Love. He’ll call Sacramento about DeMarcus Cousins. But both of those franchises are undergoing regime changes, and neither figures to peddle major assets in the near future. The Timberwolves even sent Love to represent the team at the lottery, perhaps an olive branch from new GM Flip Saunders to his star player, who had developed a strained relationship with the club’s former leadership.

Grant will make phone calls. The odds of those calls yielding the type of blockbuster trade he’s looking for? Virtually nil.

Grant could fall back and take a more conservative approach, perhaps pawning off the first pick for supporting-cast players and/or future picks. Assets are assets. But if this draft is as weak at the top as all the scribes and talking heads think it is, what incentive does a team have to pay the price to move up? If the distance from Porter to Oladipo is barely noticeable, the teams sitting between Nos. 6 and 10 aren’t much worse off than the lotto’s big winners in the top three.

The next month could consist of Grant exhaustively exploring every avenue that doesn’t involve phoning in the first overall pick to David Stern on draft night, only to stare down an endless series of dead ends.

Ultimately, Grant might have to use the pick and simply take who his scouts and metrics say is the best player on the board, which is likely Noel. Certainly, you could do worse than take Noel at 1. He could be in for a rather steep learning curve in the pros, but he’s a tremendous defender who averaged nearly a double-double for Kentucky this past season, and blocked shots at an unreal clip -- almost four and a half per a game. A Year Three or Year Four Nerlens Noel, with 30 pounds of added muscle and some clue of what to do at the offensive end, could be a force in the league.

But as far as making the playoffs in 2014, Noel probably isn’t going to help much, if at all.

The good news is, the fate of the No. 1 pick isn’t necessarily tied to the moves the Cavs need to make in order to bolster the roster for a playoff run next season. Grant could take Noel, Porter or anyone else at the top of the draft, and make short-term moves later in the summer – or even later on draft night.

Once the first pick is accounted for, the Cavs will still have Nos. 19, 31 and 33 to utilize in subsequent trades. They also have three potential first-rounders in 2015 (their own, Memphis’ and Miami’s), and a Sacramento first-rounder that is still floating around out there, provided it gets used before 2017.

Using the first overall pick on a longer-term project player isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the additional bartering pieces Grant has at his disposal. And using the first pick on a high-upside player is always better than trading it for pennies on the dollar in the form of players with less upside.

That’s as long as Grant somehow, some way, spends the remainder of the summer making the moves to ensure that Nick Gilbert, and the rest of his dad’s band of merry lottery men, can retire the bowties and glasses for good.

Silent turnstiles

The Indians probably owe their very existence in this town to their die-hard fans.

In the decades of the mid-20^th Century, when losses outpaced wins on a yearly basis and postseason contention was a 35-year fantasy, someone had to form the small rind of humanity that barely clung to the dugout wall at Cleveland Stadium. Somebody had to be in that crowd of 3,000 on a chilly April night.

If you polled 100,000 people on who was at the Stadium to witness Len Barker’s perfect game 32 years ago, some percentage would actually pass a lie detector test. They were honestly there.

Various ownership groups at various points toyed with the idea of moving the franchise to Minneapolis and New Orleans. If the Gateway project had died on the vine in the early 1990s, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area would have likely made a play for the franchise.

But somehow, through all the strain that decades of losing, coupled with regional economic decay, put on the relationship between the Indians and the city of Cleveland, the franchise stayed put and hardy fans kept showing up in small, but passionate, numbers.

Then Jacobs Field opened in 1994, and the team started winning. Not just winning – winning with drama, brashness and arrogance. For a city that had, for so long, meekly submitted to its circumstances, it was a seven-year catharsis as the Indians made the walk-off home run a calling card, winning two pennants and six division titles in the process. Albert Belle might have departed in free agency after the 1996 season, but his pitcher-melting scowl was the team’s iconic image for the duration of the era.

And the fans fell in love. Did they ever. Tickets were harder to come by than they would have for a Beatles reunion tour circa 1976. Between 1995 and 2001, the team sold out 455 straight games. The Indians like to remind you of that every now and again, in case you’ve never noticed the giant “455” among the retired numbers in the right-field mezzanine at the now-named Progressive Field.

For the balance of the ‘90s, Tribe games were the place to be. Even if you didn’t like or understand baseball all that much, it’s what your coworkers would be talking about at the water cooler, so you paid attention.

It was the best of times for the Tribe. They might not have won a World Series, but they won just about every other conceivable accolade. And the turnstiles nearly spun off their hinges in the process. It paved the way for some fat payrolls as the 1990s gave way to the new century. For the first time ever, the Indians’ payroll eclipsed $90 million.

But as quickly as the love-fest started, it ended. Dick Jacobs sold the team to Larry Dolan in 2000. GM John Hart bolted town shortly thereafter. The team started to operate much more like a small-market outfit – bargain-conscious, spend-thrifty and, ultimately, talent-deprived. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Cleveland fans so used to winning and the accompanying spoils.

Some might say the fan base has yet to fully come around. Sure there have been some spikes in performance. The Indians won 93 games in 2005, losing out on the playoffs after a final-week meltdown. They held a 3-1 series lead over Boston in the 2007 ALCS, before crumbling to pieces and losing the series in seven games.

But consistent success – and even more fundamentally, franchise players to sustain consistent success – has and have eluded the Tribe. The 2005 and ’07 seasons remain their only winning seasons since 2001.

The fans have voted with their apathy. And maybe “apathy” isn’t a strong enough sentiment. This fan base is resistant, and maybe outright refuses to believe, that any uptick in performance by the Tribe is more valuable than fool’s gold.

Once again, we’re back to the Cleveland Stadium era, with the hardy few occupying a sea of otherwise-empty seats. As they were for much of last year, the Indians are dead last in Major League Baseball in attendance.

The so-called “casual” fans -- the fans that make the difference between a crowd of 10,000 and a crowd of 35,000 -- simply don’t trust this organization anymore. Even after a winter-long spending spree that brought quality veterans Nick Swisher, Mark Reynolds and Michael Bourn to town, even after landing intriguing pitching prospect Trevor Bauer in a trade, the Indians are still background noise to a fan base that had once learned to fall in love all over again.

We have to make mention of the obligatory difference in circumstances between then and now. Then, the economy was in better shape. Then, we weren’t in the midst of a massive Innerbelt construction project that limits access to downtown. Then, the Indians weren’t competing with a casino for the public’s disposable income.

But that’s all antimatter in the end, because if the fans truly believed the Indians were a title contender, they’d show up. Nobody around here needs any prompting to remember the significance of the year 1964.

Yes, these 2013 Indians are dealing with the skid marks left over by flameouts in 2011 and ’12. Those were first-place teams around this time, too. They were both sucking wind by July and completely out of contention by September. But they’re also saddled by a 13-year legacy of distrust between the fan base and the club’s ownership.

They’re paying for the sins of years past, for two winning season in 12 years, for the heartbreak of ’05 and ’07, for the disastrous C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee trades. For the broken-down body of Travis Hafner, seemingly right after the club signed him to a massive extension. You can’t blame Hafner’s physical breakdown on the organization, but it get lumped in there with everything else, fair or not.

They’re paying for an endless string of quiet winters while the Tigers and White Sox spent handsomely to improve their clubs. The Indians do deserve credit for the biggest spending spree in franchise history this past winter, but one offseason of spending simply isn’t enough to reverse over a decade of little to no spending, and often making fruitless decisions with what money they did have – the Kerry Wood signing comes to mind, in addition to Hafner.

It’s not fair, because this is possibly the most talented team the Tribe has put on the field since the Jacobs-Hart era of contention ended after the ’01 season. So far, all of the Tribe’s offseason additions have contributed. Terry Francona is proving nightly that he’s still one of the best managers in the business.

This team, far more than the teams of the past two years, and maybe even more so than the ’07 team, has the ability to play contending baseball all year long. This is a playoff-caliber team.

But the Tribe’s reputation is in shambles around the region. It didn’t get that way overnight, and it’s not going to be repaired overnight. The only thing the players can do is keep winning, keep providing evidence to the fans that this team is for real. Beyond that, it’s a waiting game. We’re going to find out in August and September, and in the coming years, if the bridge between the Indians and the ticket-buying public can once again stand as strong as it did more than a decade ago.

The right hire

You always think you can do better than Mike Brown. Maybe that’s why fans around town have been resistant to the idea of Brown returning as head coach of the Cavs, which reportedly will be made official on Wednesday. Brown and the Cavs agreed to a five-year deal on Tuesday.

Brown’s coaching style is far from Showtime, which is perhaps why his brief stint on the Lakers sideline seemed to have an oil/water dynamic to it. He preaches defense as the be-all, end-all in the game of basketball. In Brown’s system, the offensive opportunities you get are predicated on converting defensive stops into points. Offense is still the end, but defense is the means, and to Brown, the end justifies the means.

His offensive sets are generally lacking in creativity. He tolerates stand-and-dribble stagnation for way too long at times. He lets the offense stall out. He relies on star players to freelance their way to points, as opposed to running intricate play sets.

In short, offense simply matter less to Brown. He’s primarily concerned with keeping the other team off the board. He figures if that happens, it will lead to transition points, and the offense will take care of itself.

For five years, it was a maddening approach to basketball for a fan base that wanted to see LeBron James unleash the full wrath of his talents on the opposition. For a fan base that wanted to see what the most talented player in the history of the game could be like in the hands of an offensive visionary. Or at least a coach who would run the offense through a point guard and force LeBron to move without the ball.

That’s why you always think you can do better than Mike Brown.

In 2010, with the Cavs reeling from a stunning second-round playoff dismissal at the hands of the Celtics and LeBron’s free agency merely weeks away, the Cavs brass thought they could do better than Brown, too. They fired Brown, and Dan Gilbert set about wooing Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, a flirtation that lasted for about a week, before Izzo pulled back and returned to East Lansing, probably because he sensed that LeBron’s defection was likely.

Brown’s termination was a last-ditch effort to appease LeBron by attempting to hire a big-name coach – an effort that failed miserably, and was probably doomed to fail from the outset.

But even after LeBron made his departure official, the Cavs still thought they had an improvement over Brown. A week before “The Decision,” the Cavs hired Byron Scott, a coach who took the Nets to the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003, a coach who is credited as a major influence in the development of Chris Paul into an elite point guard.

When the Cavs drafted Kyrie Irving in 2011, we all thought they had the perfect coach to groom him. Scott was a former star guard with three rings as a player, who had been in the huddle with the likes of Paul and Jason Kidd as a coach. If anybody could speak the same language as Kyrie, surely it was Scott.

Scott was fired last week after 166 losses in three years. Kyrie has begun to develop into an elite point guard, but his repeated injuries, lack of defensive intensity and early-season admission that he takes plays off at times would seem to indicate that he doesn’t yet have a full grasp of what it takes to become great in the NBA.

So where would the Cavs look to find the coach who can get the most out of Kyrie and the other youngsters on the roster? Nobody outside the Cavs organization wanted to look at Brown. The dreamers among us wanted the Cavs to go all-in on Phil Jackson. But Jackson reportedly doesn’t want to coach anymore, and even if he did, he’ll turn 68 in September and has proven everything he could possibly prove in his career. What are the odds the Cavs would get more out of him than the Browns got out of Mike Holmgren?

Fifty percent of semi-retired Phil Jackson for two or three years isn’t enough to vault the Cavs into contention. He was a “be careful what you wish for” candidate, no matter what the record-setting resume might say.

The Cavs thought differently about Brown. After having one of the best defenses in the league for the balance of the LeBron years, the Cavs -- albeit in a rebuilding phase with a much younger roster -- regressed mightily in the three years Scott ran the team.

Dan Gilbert and Chris Grant, always good friends with Brown, perhaps started to realize what they were missing. They were missing a defensive mindset, but more than that, they were missing a team identity. Brown, if nothing else, can forge that identity.

The irony is, as soon as the Cavs fired Brown and LeBron defected to Miami, the Cavs set about building the type of team that could have used Brown's steadfast focus on fundamentals. Brown, at his heart, is a teaching coach, and he's at his best when molding wet clay. That was the state of the team at the outset of his first tenure, and it's the state of the team now.

From 2005 to '08, Brown was the right coach for the Cavs. Thanks in no small part to Brown's tutelage, LeBron is now one of the league's best defenders. LeBron would never have become a dominant two-way player if not for Brown.

Brown's defense set the stage for the Cavs run to the Finals in 2007, with a roster that was nowhere near Finals-caliber. In subsequent years, he took an eclectic mish-mash of players who were anything but great on-ball defenders -- Mo Williams comes to mind -- and molded them into a top-three defensive team.

Under Brown, the Cavs were an excellent interior defensive team, despite the fact that he was working with the slow, aging and plodding legs of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Ben Wallace and Shaquille O'Neal. The special sauce to his interior defense was Anderson Varejao, who figures to be the only holdover from Brown's first tenure after Daniel Gibson most likely departs via free agency this summer. Varejao blossomed into one of the best help defenders within Brown's help-and-recover system, which Brown learned while serving as an assistant under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

Brown is simply one of the best defensive tacticians in the game. But the Cavs job evolved away from him over the final two years, highlighting another of his weak areas.

Where Brown has shown a shortcoming, other than in his offensive playbook, is in his management of large egos. He isn't a dominant enough personality to rein in the likes of LeBron, and he certainly didn't exert a commanding presence with Kobe Bryant, or any of the Lakers' complement of stars, during his year and five games at the helm in L.A.

By the 2009-10 season, the Cavs were full of veteran egos, and the coaching job was best-suited for a psychologist-coach -- one who could play politics, massage egos and rebuke challenges to his authority by world-famous superstars. Brown couldn't hold that type of team together. The same was true in L.A. It cost him both jobs.

But the idea of the Cavs getting back to that point, with a contending, veteran, star-laden roster, is strictly a matter of "if." If Kyrie continues to develop into a superstar. If LeBron at some point finds himself in a Cavs uniform again. If Grant can pull off a major trade to land impact veteran talent.

The Cavs have to hire a coach for the team they have right now. A team with a talented, but very young and still fairly raw backbone.

You always think you can do better than Mike Brown. But here's guessing Gilbert and Grant realized, over the past three years, that it's an assumption based on image, and a dash of familiarity breeding contempt.

Brown hasn't won a championship as a coach. But there are only four active coaches who have. What Brown does have is a virtually-unbroken record of success in six seasons as a head coach. He's won 65 percent of his games (314-167 career record), and has two 50-win seasons, two 60-win seasons and a Finals berth on his resume. His teams have finished with a winning percentage above .600 in five of the six seasons -- the lone exception being the 45-37 Cavs of 2007-08 (.549). You could try to give LeBron the lion's share of the credit for those numbers, but even LeBron can't lug a team that far without a system that works.

If you can do better than Brown, you can't do much better. And for a battered Cavs franchise still looking for post-LeBron daylight, Brown might prove to be the best possible hire they could have made.

Identity crisis

Byron Scott’s coaching record in three Cavs season was 64-166 – a .278 winning percentage. It is the worst winning percentage for any Cavs coach who patrolled the sideline for at least one full season.

It’s worse than Bill Fitch (.412), who presided over a half-decade of expansion-era futility in early ‘70s, before the Miracle of Richfield gave the franchise its first taste of respectability. It’s worse that Bill Musselman, a Ted Stepien hire (.287).

It’s worse than Randy Wittman (.378), John Lucas (.298) or Paul Silas (.473).

The NBA is a business driven by wins and losses, and if you’re a coach who has too much of the latter and not enough of the former, you’re not going to hang onto your job.

That’s the simplest explanation for why Scott was fired on Thursday.

Even though the Cavs were most definitely in a rebuilding mode, where talent acquisition and player development takes precedence over winning for winning’s sake, wins still equal progress. If a young team wins games, it means the players are doing enough right to get leads and hang onto them until the final buzzer.

Scott’s teams raced out to leads, but repeatedly fell apart in the fourth quarter – most infamously after holding a 27-point second-half lead against Miami in late March, a loss that certainly rubbed the fan base the wrong way, and probably didn’t win Scott any additional support in the Cavs inner sanctum.

Way too often, the Cavs were caught with a collective deer-in-headlights stare when the time came to prove their mettle and put a game in the win column. And if you peel back the onion layers on Scott’s tenure, that’s the real reason why the Cavs will be searching for a new coach this spring.

It’s three years post-LeBron, and the Cavs are still searching for an on-court identity. Scott tried to install some form of the Princeton ball-motion offense, but too often, Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters were left to freelance. Tristan Thompson seldom, if ever, had plays run through him. The center position was an offensive black hole once Anderson Varejao was lost for the season.

Scott tolerated random barrages of three-point chucking, even when the shots weren’t falling. Big men seldom tried to establish position on the left block. In short, the playbook might have had plays worth running, but the offense lacked a rudder.

But the offensive woes were nothing when compared to the utter lack of defensive presence Scott’s teams exhibited. Even when Varejao was healthy and snagging 15-20 rebounds a game, the team defense was shoddy. The Cavs defended the paint with nary more than a swinging saloon door. Kyrie received ample flack for his lack of defensive instincts, but his problems were symptomatic of a larger condition. Perimeter players frequently used poor judgment, gambling on steals in passing lanes, playing off their man for fear of getting burned, but leaving way too much operating space in the process.

The defense was quite simply a fundamental train wreck. And it was getting worse, not better.

Mike Brown (who ironically might emerge as a candidate), understood the basic concept of defense creating a product that is better than the sum of its parts. A team with overall mediocre talent can win games, make the playoffs, and even advance deep into the postseason, if they play great team defense.  If you need any evidence, I present to you the 2007 Eastern Conference champion Cavs, with a starting lineup of LeBron James, Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlovic, Drew Gooden and Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Yes, that team got to the NBA Finals on the coattails of an epic Game 5 performance in the conference finals by LeBron, and Bucky Dent-esque performance from Daniel Gibson in the Game 6 clincher, but that team, with those players, won 50 games and three playoff rounds because they played defense at a high level. That was not a 50-win roster, let alone a conference championship roster.

You want the quickest way to return the Cavs to respectability? It’s probably by stopping the other team from putting the ball in the basket. And it’s something that Scott’s team simply wasn’t doing.

Everyone in the Cavs front office knows it. If Dan Gilbert’s statement to the media on Thursday is any indication, the next Cavs coach will be a defensive stickler:

“It has been our strong and stated belief that when our team once again returns to competing at the NBA's highest levels it will be because we have achieved our goals on the defensive side of the court.”

Of course, this isn’t all on Scott. Young teams are highly inconsistent and frequently stumble backwards as often as they stride forward. Compound that with injuries, which relentlessly assailed the Cavs over the past three years, and Scott wasn’t put in the best position to succeed.

But the basketball truism says defense travels with the team. So does a well-orchestrated offense. The backups play the starters in practice every day, so the guys coming off the bench are as grounded in the system as the guys who run onto the floor amid smoke and pyrotechnics during the opening introductions.

Maybe Scott was burned out by coaching the team through loss after loss. Maybe there was friction in the locker room. Maybe Scott’s personality is more tailored for coaching a self-starting veteran team instead of a young team that needs constant maintenance. Whatever the reason, if he had a grand vision for what the Cavs could become, it was never realized. It never really hatched out of the egg, for that matter.

The Cavs now embark on an extremely important offseason. They need to find a coach who can reach this team’s collection of impressionable young players and put them on a path to becoming a well-oiled offensive – and especially defensive – machine.

They need to add more talent, and not all of it straight from the draft. There isn’t much value in making this team even younger. GM Chris Grant probably needs to orchestrate at least one major veteran acquisition this summer.

When the Cavs take the floor with their new coach and their tuned-up roster next fall, they need to be a playoff team from the first game – and a fairly strong playoff team at that. At this stage, after three years of putrid basketball, squeaking in as the eighth seed on the last day of the season doesn’t cut it. The Cavs need to become an above-.500-and-rising team, capable of competing for a middle seed, and maybe even make some noise in the race for homecourt advantage in the first round.

And to do that, they need an identity. Dan and Chris, it’s your move.

In the back of your mind

Whoever plotted and carried out Monday’s bomb attack near the finish line of the Boston Marathon did their homework. If you’re going to attack a large sporting event, it’s hard to find an event more vulnerable than a marathon.

The vast majority of sporting events take place within the confines of a venue. Stadiums, arenas, even golf courses, have gates and gatekeepers. Security officials can keep a reasonably close eye on who comes in and who goes out. Bags can be checked, metal detectors can be installed, suspicious items can be confiscated.

Marathons take place in the streets. In the case of very large marathons, like Boston’s, hundreds of thousands of spectators line the streets to watch tens of thousands of runners. The crowd condenses near the finish line, as spectators pack into any available space to watch the winners break the tape, and watch friends and family members cover the final few hundred yards to the finish.

They stand five and 10 deep or more. They climb onto benches and light pole bases to get a better view. Children sit on the shoulders of their parents. It’s a celebration. It’s also a nightmare for anyone in charge of ensuring public safety.

With countless people packed into a small space, the opportunity is readily available for a person with nefarious intentions to hide in plain sight, plant a device, and slip away down an alley or through a building. That is reportedly what happened Monday, as the perpetrator (or perpetrators) allegedly dropped shrapnel bombs in garbage cans lining the race’s home stretch on Boylston Street, near Boston’s Copley Square. Two bombs detonated in rapid succession around 2:45 p.m., about an hour after the winner had crossed the finish line. Two more explosive devices were reportedly found nearby, undetonated.

The explosions injured hundreds of spectators, many critically or seriously. As of Tuesday morning, three people had died.

The attack was a manifestation of physical violence, but we know that terrorism is, at its bare essence, psychological warfare. It doesn’t matter if the perpetrator is of foreign or domestic origin, the intent is clearly stated in the root word: terror. And when we’re jolted out of our relatively peaceful American existence by an attack like this, the terrorists accomplish their mission. We may go on with our daily lives as usual, but our hearts beat a little faster, we tread into unsure situations with more caution, we worry more about the safety of ourselves and our loved ones.

You can’t fly on a plane anymore without the suggestion of 9/11 slithering around somewhere in your gray matter. It’s because you now know there are organizations out there capable of hijacking planes and flying them into buildings. Though you also know our national airline security procedures are much more sophisticated than they were prior to Sept. 11, 2001, the “what if” still lingers.

You can’t see your kids off to school without thinking, at least now and again, about Columbine or Sandy Hook. You can’t watch your college student depart for the new semester without remembering Virginia Tech, even if it’s only for a few minutes before you chase the thoughts away and get on with your day.

Now the same thing has happened in the sporting sphere, and to the running community in particular.

I am a runner. I’ve been running in organized races since 2009, and have six half-marathons to my credit since 2011. I’ve never run a full marathon and have no plans to, and even if I did, I wouldn’t come close to qualifying for Boston – a race prestigious enough that you can’t merely sign up for it. You need to post a “Boston qualifier” time at another sanctioned race in order to even toss your hat in the ring for the Boston Marathon.

But the shockwaves from Monday will almost certainly reverberate at races throughout the country from here forward. Next month, I’m registered to run the Flying Pig half marathon in Cincinnati, and two weeks later, the Rite Aid Cleveland half.

No other race has publicly responded to the events in Boston as of yet, but I’m anticipating much tighter security at next month’s races. I’m anticipating a much more prominent police presence, complete with bomb-sniffing dogs. I’m anticipating mailboxes, trash cans and other sidewalk collection devices to be locked down, removed or otherwise guarded.

I’m anticipating a zero-tolerance policy regarding unattended bags and coolers. If you want to see a pack of runners approaching from up the street, you had better take your belongings with you, even if you’re only moving 100 feet.

At the finish line, I’m anticipating far more stringent crowd control – security shooing people away before large crowds can develop and a drastic increase in the amount of restricted area. Metal detectors? Not out of the question.

Runners, usually herded through the finish-line corral quickly in order to prevent bottlenecks, might be sped along even faster, receiving a terse warning from race security if they linger for more than a few seconds.

All in all, I anticipate the runner’s high of the finish line to be replaced by something more white-knuckled, much like what has happened to the experience of flying. It used to be a luxury. It used to be a fun way to travel. Now, you proceed through the TSA checkpoint, proceed to your gate, get on the plane, fly, get the off the plane, collect your bags and get out of the airport as quickly as possible. Most people do not count flying as an enjoyable experience anymore.

Monday’s bombing was designed to shed blood and kill, and it did. But more than that, it was designed to plant the seeds of fear and doubt in our heads. And it did that, too. For runners and spectators alike, races will be more controlled, more policed, burdened with more procedures and more rules, more inconveniences, more things you’re not allowed to do, bring or say, and overall, deliver an experience that is all the less enjoyable.

That’s what the perpetrators of Monday’s attack have taken away from us. Terror attacks won’t make us hide under our beds, but they fill our lives with more fear and more rules. That contributes to the degradation of our society as much as anything. And that’s exactly what terrorists want.

Not time for the axe ... yet

No one needs to rehash the gory details of the Cavs’ performance over the past three years. Since LeBron departed in 2010, the team has lost a lot more than it’s won, and has seemingly found itself cornered by the injury bug at every turn.

Even with the constant injuries to Anderson Varejao, Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters and others, the losing is by design, for now at least. The Cavs have spent two years trying to build a nucleus through the lottery, and will add another lottery pick to the roster in a couple of months. You gather lotto balls by losing games, and you lose games by stripping the roster down, playing youngsters and packing the bench with low-cost (read: not very good) veterans.

When you have two rookies and two sophomores in the everyday starting lineup, the undrafted Alonzo Gee rounding out the starting five, and a bench that has, for the entire season, employed the likes of bald-treaded Luke Walton and chucker-extraordinaire C.J. Miles, it’s simply not a team designed to win.

The Cavs’ fortunes took a minor upswing when the team acquired Marreese Speights and Wayne Ellington in January. Combined with December free-agent signee Shaun Livingston, they gave the Cavs their first real bench since the final years of LeBron, and the team ended February 7-5, its first winning month in a long time.

But the injury bug bit yet again, Speights’ attitude took a nosedive, and the Cavs are presently crawling down the home stretch of a third straight season that can’t end fast enough.

Through all of the post-LeBron teardown and rebuild, the man patrolling the sideline has been head coach Byron Scott. He’s now a man under fire, and many among the fans and media say deservedly so.

The team is losing. The losses aren’t giving way to wins with any consistency. The team’s defense has been lukewarm at best, nonexistent at worst. And the defense seems to keep redefining the reference point for “worst.”

As Jason Lloyd noted in the Akron Beacon Journal, an early February Dan Gilbert tweet about the Cavs reclaiming their defensive identity, and rumblings from the player ranks, have done nothing to increase Scott’s  apparent hold on his job.

This week, Tristan Thompson went public with emphatic support for Scott, but is his attitude indicative of the rest of the locker room, or is he a rogue loyalist? Outsiders can only speculate.

To an objective observer who hasn’t tried to root for this team the past three years, firing Scott is the pinnacle of injustice. When Scott agreed to become the head coach of the Cavs, LeBron hadn’t yet defected to Miami. He signed with the Cavs primarily because the job carried the possibility of coaching a contender.

When LeBron took his talents to Hurricane Alley, nobody could have faulted Scott for pulling a Billy Donovan and backing out a week later. Donovan was the coach of the Orlando Magic for less than a week in 2007, before backing out and returning to the University of Florida.

But Scott stayed. He embraced the rebuilding project. He stuck it out with a team that he knew had no chance of making the playoffs, let alone contend for a title, in the near-to-medium future.

The question is on the tip of any objective observer’s tongue: Who could have done better? Who could have taken this roster and put it in a position to win more games? Phil Jackson isn’t walking through that door. Nor is Gregg Popovich.

Irving and Thompson have improved – some would say dramatically -- from their rookie to their sophomore years. Prior to his knee injury, Dion Waiters had played his way into the outskirts of the rookie of the year conversation, winning rookie of the month honors in February. On an individual level, the players who were drafted to comprise the backbone of the future have improved on Scott’s watch.

But it hasn’t translated to wins. And wins are the barometer of success or failure in the NBA. As long as the Cavs keep losing, the individual improvement of young players will only matter to a point.

The stage is being set, but at some point, the curtain has to go up.

That time is next season. With up to four top-five picks on the roster by then, Irving and Thompson entering their third years, Waiters and Tyler Zeller entering their second years, and the cap space to make a major move, the 2013-14 edition of the Cavs should enter the season as a playoff contender. 

I’d go so far as to say, with a healthy Irving emerging as one of the league’s superstars, the Cavs should contend for a top four seed in the paper-thin Eastern Conference. It’s not too much to ask the Cavs to recover a lot of ground in one year. A jump from the 25-win range to the 45-win range in one year isn’t outlandish, given the teams they’d have to hurdle.

It’s not fair to make Scott the fall guy for the smoking crater that has been the last three years of Cavs basketball. But it is fair to pull the plug on the “losing for lotto balls” portion of the rebuild after this season. It is fair to demand a Cavs team that makes the playoffs with room to spare next spring. And if those things don’t happen, it is fair, at that point, for Grant and Scott to start facing a lot of questions as to exactly when we can anticipate this rebuilding project to start bearing fruit.

If Grant makes the moves he needs to make this summer, Scott deserves at least the 2013 portion of next season’s schedule before he faces a serious threat of losing his job. If Grant doesn’t make those moves, his feet should be the ones on the hot coals, right along with Scott’s.

The Cavs were put in this situation by the defection of one player. Digging out of the situation has been a team effort. If the Cavs are once again one of the league’s bottom-feeding teams next season, Scott might indeed get the axe. But if the Cavs are once again a league bottom-feeder next year, bad coaching is likely only the tip of the iceberg. The Cavs, at that point, would have much more serious and systemic problems on their hands.

Credit where credit is due

For the first time in at least five years, we’re on the doorstep of baseball season with a reason to be interested, beyond the essential fact that it’s the start of the season.

For the first time in five years, the Indians might – maybe, possibly – have a decent chance at contending for a postseason berth.

And it’s because, for the first time, Larry and Paul Dolan opened their family’s wallet and spent real money. Lots of it. Last summer, I penned this article, outlining the many management-level blunders that have occurred on the Dolans’ watch, and questioning whether they were competent stewards of the Indians franchise anymore.

I questioned whether anything could save the Dolan regime, other than spending significant dollars on the 25-man roster. Apparently, the Dolans didn’t see much of an alternative, either.

They spent $56 million on Nick Swisher, $48 million on Michael Bourn, $7 million on Brett Myers and $6 million on Mark Reynolds.

Not only that, in an offseason when many of us expected the Tribe to offload multiple core players, they only jettisoned one, and it was a productive trade at that, sending Shin-Soo Choo to Cincinnati as part of a three-way deal with Arizona that netted the Indians outfielder Drew Stubbs from the Reds and elite pitching prospect Trevor Bauer from the Diamondbacks, among others.

Was this offseason an excuse for unbridled elation? Probably not. Was it a much-needed sign of life from a team that has been flatlining since 2008? Most definitely.

No one is trying to pretend that the Indians are poised to take the American League by storm starting next week. No one is trying to pretend that the AL’s balance of power shifted in any type of tectonic fashion. The Indians can only hope to have a puncher’s chance against league heavyweights like the Tigers, Angels and Rangers.

Given the canyon that exists between the Tigers and the rest of the AL Central, the ground rules pretty much state that the Indians are eyeing, at best, one of the AL wild card berths. But in baseball, all you need are inroads to the postseason. You can take your chances from there.

And let’s not pull too much wool over our eyes regarding the Indians organization as a whole. This offseason’s spending spree serves as a Band-Aid over the systemic problems that continue to plague the organization. The farm system still has a woeful lack of franchise-caliber talent. The signings of Swisher and Bourn were necessitated by the fact that no cavalry is capable of riding in from Columbus should the big-league lineup falter.

But despite all that, the Indians approach Opening Day 2013 with a positive vibe in tow. Terry Francona is now in the manager’s office. There will be new jerseys in the team shop at Progressive Field, bearing the names of known players who aren’t limping toward retirement, as were Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe last year.

The buzz is back. The team has an accomplished manager with a leader’s personality, new toys to play with, and to top it all off, the Yankees will be the home-opener opponent on April 9. It’s all enough to make the turnstiles click, even if the chilly weather continues into April.

Of course, if the Indians start the season 2-10, that feeling could evaporate in a hurry. But for now, on the precipice, we can overlook the patchwork starting rotation, Chris Perez’s strained shoulder, Jason Kipnis’ injured elbow and unremarkable spring, the threadbare farm system, and focus on the good.

For the first time in quite a while, there’s a reason to watch. There is a reason to go to the ballpark and check the team out, if only to satisfy a case of initial curiosity. We’ll know soon enough whether this team is going to be worth watching for 162 games. But at the very least, the Indians have the fan base talking baseball in the final weeks of March.

It’s progress, and that alone is better than what we’ve seen out of this team in recent years.

An inside job

The Browns are one of the NFL’s pillar franchises. Years of modern-era losing haven’t changed that.

Yes, the Browns entered the NFL in 1950, 30 years after its inception. Yes, the Browns played their first four seasons in another league. Yes, Cleveland had a handful of other NFL franchises prior to the Browns – most notably the Rams from 1933 to 1945.

And yes, the current Browns aren’t even the original Browns. We don’t need to pick that that scab right now.

But with four NFL titles and 11 NFL Championship Game appearances prior to the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, in addition to a clean sweep of All-America Football Conference championships in all four years the league existed, the Browns are held in the same historical esteem as franchises such as the Packers, Bears and Giants, all of whom entered the league in the 1920s and are, essentially, among the league’s founding franchises.

The idea of the Packers ever playing home games in a dome is ludicrous. The Bears may play in a renovated Soldier Field that looks something like a UFO landing on the Parthenon, but the Monsters of the Midway still play in the elements.

The Giants? Same story. New stadium, still outdoors, and will likely always be outdoors. The NFL didn’t make a dome a condition when they awarded Super Bowl XLVIII to the New York market. MetLife Stadium, the home of the Giants and Jets, will host the game on Feb. 2, 2014.

So why do the Browns need a dome?

This week, incoming Browns owner Jimmy Haslam met with Cleveland city council members to, among other things, open the door for discussion on ways to improve Cleveland Browns Stadium as a revenue-generating venue for the region. Among the topics Haslam broached was the possibility of placing a retractable roof on the stadium, allowing year-round use of the facility, and possibly making Cleveland a more attractive destination for large-scale events that need the space provided by a domed stadium.

It’s a touchy subject in Cleveland, a city that prides itself on an old-school football ethos. Tough players and tougher fans braving the late-season elements in our wind-whipped lakefront freezer box. It’s how we’ve enjoyed (and not enjoyed) football since football was first played in front of an audience in this town.

But that viewpoint is at odds with the pragmatic need to get more dollars out of a facility that sits essentially vacant for well over 300 days a year. Cleveland Browns Stadium has the potential to become a much more prolific money maker for the region, but its lakefront location and exposure to the elements severely limit the breadth of its usefulness.

As it is, Cleveland doesn’t have a lot in the way of prime exposition and event space. That outlook will certainly improve once the new convention center opens, but the city will still lack a venue to attract major spectator events that need a controlled environment and more seating capacity than the 20,562 seats that Quicken Loans Arena can offer.

That’s where a domed Cleveland Browns Stadium would fit into the picture. These are among the events a dome would allow Cleveland to pursue:

The Super Bowl. Obviously, this would be the king crab to catch. It’s the premier single-day sporting event in the world, and brings with it two weeks of related activities and events for the host city. In the event Cleveland could land a Super Bowl, it would likely be a one-off event, like it was for cities such as Detroit and Jacksonville. But for the only NFL city to neither have hosted a Super Bowl nor have had a team play in a Super Bowl, it’s time for a football town like Cleveland to take a long-overdue turn reaping some benefits from the NFL’s title game.

The Final Four. Much like the Super Bowl, it brings with it a slew of related events. In addition, Final Four cities often host a regional final bracket the year before, as a dry run for the following year. So landing a Final Four could bring two Marches’ worth of events to Cleveland.

A minor college bowl game. If Detroit can host the Little Caesars Bowl, why couldn’t Cleveland attempt to launch something similar? It wouldn’t attract marquee programs, but for a 3 p.m. time slot on ESPN2 a few days after Christmas, you could attract a six-win Big Ten or Big 12 school to face off against a school from the MAC or Conference USA. If there is one thing we’ve learned over the past decade or so, it’s that you can never have too many bowl games.

The Big Ten Championship Game. Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis will host the game through 2015. After that, if Cleveland wanted to take a turn hosting it every few years, it would likely need a dome. Given the size of the Ohio State fan base in Northeast Ohio, and the frequency with which OSU figures to play in the Big Ten title game over the years, it would be a logical fit to have Cleveland in any rotation for the game.

The MAC Championship Game. Detroit hosts it right now because Detroit has the facility to host it. Cleveland is the home of the MAC’s headquarters and has hosted the MAC basketball tournaments since 2000. It would seem that if Cleveland had a facility capable of hosting the MAC football title game, the conference could make a fairly airtight case for moving the game here.

Cleveland State football. It’s a subject that gets bounced around in assorted forums from time to time. Could and should Cleveland State take the necessary steps to alter its charter and field a football program for the first time since the school was formed in 1964? If Cleveland had an indoor venue with an artificial surface that could stand up to the wear and tear of back-to-back Saturday-Sunday football weekends without turning into a mud pit, the city would have an ideal stage on which to launch CSU football.

Other local rivalry games. The annual John Carroll-Baldwin Wallace game? The St. Ignatius-St. Edward Holy War? Playing them under the bright, covered lights at Cleveland Browns Stadium could add some spotlight appeal to the regions other big games.

A spectrum of other events. A covered stadium could also put Cleveland in the running for political conventions in presidential election years, stadium concert tours (for the few bands that still have them), stadium rodeo tours, WrestleMania and other events.

In reality, the movement to put a dome on Cleveland Browns Stadium has very little to do with the Browns. Whether they put a good or bad product on the field, they’ll be good or bad whether they play in the open air, under a dome, on grass, on artificial turf or in a parking lot.

This has everything to do with acknowledging that while the Browns might be the primary tenant of their stadium, their games are, or should be, only one category in a catalog of events that could, take place at the stadium.

Cleveland isn’t Green Bay, or Chicago, or New York, or Philadelphia. What we need out of our stadium is different from those cities. We’re a post-industrial rust belt town with a shrinking population and negative national reputation. We’re fighting an uphill battle against more attractive destinations for revenue-generating and profile-enhancing events. Our civic leaders need to fashion better tools to make that happen. A domed stadium is one such tool.

Making it happen will certainly cost money – possibly between $100 million and $400 million. The sin tax that built the stadium and still pays for its upkeep expires in 2015, so financing the project could mean another appeal to voters. However, since Haslam is taking the lead on this, at least in the idea phase, perhaps there is a chance that he’ll front some of the cost. We can hope. We can dream.

If the dome ends up becoming a reality, we’ll all miss the snowy, windy late-season games on the lakefront. It’s part of our football heritage. But times have changed, and poetic vision of frozen turf and snowflakes dancing around the heads of 70,000 fans steaming the frigid air with their collective breath has to give way to the dollars and cents of the matter.

Cleveland needs money. A domed stadium can generate more money than a stadium without a dome. It’s more spreadsheet than Shakespeare. But that’s where we are. And that’s why we, as a region, should find it in our best interest to put down our scarves and hats, and support a move indoors.

The burden of stewardship

The legendary baseball innovator Branch Rickey once noted that a baseball team in any city is a quasi-public institution.

The quote -- included in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary series "Baseball" -- was in reference to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn for Los Angeles in 1958. Rickey said that in Brooklyn, the Dodgers were "public" without the "quasi."

But I'm more concerned about the first part of Rickey's quote. Any sports franchise in any town is indeed quasi-public. Though Rickey was speaking about the special connection the Dodgers had with Brooklyn, the only true "public" major league sports franchise in North America is the Green Bay Packers, owned by shareholders. Every other sports franchise toes the line between private business and public entity. They are privately-owned, for-profit enterprises that are held in the same esteem -- or higher esteem, in most cities -- as publicly-funded institutions.

To boot, most teams now play in publicly-funded and owned facilities.

Pro sports teams are about as public as you can get while still having a private owner. The ownership group has to answer to no one regarding how the team is run. Yet in a very real sense, the owners are stewards of a public entity. If the team is not successful, fans don't show up at games, which hurts downtown game-night business at bars and restaurants, necessitates fewer game-day employees inside the stadium, and results in a far-smaller injection of revenue into the local economy than if the team had been contending.

Losing also takes a psychological toll. As the years of losing mount, fans become more jaded and less willing to believe that any sign of success is more than a temporary radar-blip that will be gone within a few weeks or months. Any hope of a buzz-creating pennant race is short-circuited and replaced by, at best, cautious optimism. And cautious optimism doesn't sell tickets.

Welcome to the world of the Cleveland Indians under Larry Dolan and his son Paul. They purchased the team in 2000 from Dick Jacobs for $323 million. Since 2002, when the so-called "Era of Champions" was formally imploded and the Dolan regime put their thumbprint on the franchise, the team has managed two winning seasons and one playoff appearance. That would be exactly the same number of winning seasons and playoff appearances the Lerner family managed in 13 seasons of owning the Browns.

This season doesn't look like it will reverse that trend. The 2012 Indians, supposedly the team that was going to turn the corner toward contention after showing some flashes of promise in 2011, have been all but scuttled on the rocks. An 11-game losing streak has plunged the team nine games off the pace in the AL Central as of Sunday. Unless Manny Acta's crew has a few miracles up their sleeve, the Indians are headed for their fifth straight .500-or-under season.

But the problems go much deeper than that. Years of nearly-fruitless drafting have rendered the farm system all but impotent. The system can crank out the occasional Jason Kipnis, a quality player with all-star upside, but the last true franchise-caliber position players to come through the Indians farm system were Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez 20 years ago.

The trading hasn't been much better. If you can't draft a organizational backbone, you have to trade for it. To that end, two of the most pivotal recent trades -- the 2008 trade of C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers and the 2009 trade of Cliff Lee to the Phillies -- have three and four years later yielded a grand total of Michael Brantley thus far. You can attribute some of it to bad luck, like Carlos Carrasco's Tommy John surgery and the ongoing severe arm problems of the recently-released Jason Knapp, but for the trades two Cy Young Award winners to yield an signle starting outfielder between them is a horrendous development.

The end result at the big-league level is predictable: A roster that simply lacks the firepower to keep up with the well-endowed White Sox and Tigers for 162 games. A fan base that does not believe in the product, and is voting with their wallets, planting the Indians at the bottom of baseball in attendance all season long.

Whenever Mark Shapiro or another member of the Tribe brass appears in the media, they have a list of reasons why the team is performing poorly at the gate: It’s a bad economy. Small market teams have to deal with some harsh realities. Their latest focus group says they need to offer more deals with parking and concessions. The success of the ‘90s was due to a perfect storm of circumstances that aren’t likely to be repeated.

The trouble is, the “small market blues” argument only holds so much water. When you consider the ease of getting in and out of Cleveland by car – as opposed to just about any larger city with more traffic – the Indians can draw from as far away as Canton, Sandusky and Erie, Pa. for a midweek night game during the summer. They have a pool of about 3 million people within a two-hour car ride who can realistically attend games. When you combine the Cleveland, Akron and Canton markets, it is the 18th largest metropolitan conglomeration in the country.

The “bad economy” argument is only so watertight, too. Yes, the economy is far worse than it was in the mid-‘90s. Yes, more people are financially strained and have far less in the way of disposable income. But that ignores the biggest number of all: 48.

That would be the number of years since the last Cleveland championship in any major-league sport. The fans of this region are so hungry for a ticker-tape parade, if they think one of their teams has a real shot at winning a title, the turnstiles will click. But you have to give them a reason to believe.

That brings us back to the Dolans and the question of whether they are good stewards of the Indians franchise anymore.

The fans seem to be done with the revolving-door rebuilds. If this offseason brings another purge of veterans for prospects, the fans are only going to become that much more jaded and cynical. Joe Casual Fan doesn’t want to hear about three-to-five years from now anymore. He’s been hearing about it on almost all Cleveland sports fronts for the balance of the past decade.

The only way to reverse the downward spiral is for ownership to commit tens of millions of dollars to improving the 25-man roster. An infusion of cash has to come from somewhere that will allow the Indians to invest heavily in the current product. After years of minimal results from the farm system, I really don’t see any other way for the team to lure the fans back en masse.

That has been a primary problem with how the Dolans have run things since 2002. They are solely reliant on what the team makes at the gate to sustain the on-field product. That’s fine, as long as the team is drawing. But when a team gets as far off the tracks as the Indians have, ownership needs to have a reservoir of rainy-day funds. Something has to jump-start success, and it’s not going to be the fans. That’s not the way it works in business. The proprietor has to bear the risk, make the investment, and get people interested in what they’re selling.

In modern times, multi-billionaires make the best team owners. The local-guy-made-good is a touching story, but if the local guy isn’t sitting on the type of fortune that will allow him to dip into the coffers for some well-placed acquisitions, the chances of enduring success go way down. At this point, I don’t see any way for the Dolans to rescue the Indians other than opening the checkbook and spending.

The ‘90s were indeed a perfect storm for the Indians. A robust economy, a new stadium and a team contending for the first time in 40 years. But the stars shouldn’t need to align that perfectly for the Indians to enjoy an era of contention again. The Indians should be able to contend even when the economy is sagging. They should be able to outspend a couple of bad moves here and there. And they should be able to put whatever resources are necessary into the farm system to minimize the number of bad moves that they need to outspend.

If the Dolans can’t make that happen, they should acknowledge that they can no longer do right by the Indians franchise, and the fans who haven’t seen a World Series victory in 64 years, and sell the team to owners who have deeper pockets and a desire to keep the team in Cleveland.

Sometimes, the burden of good stewardship is recognizing when you can’t be a good steward anymore.