The gravity of the situation

Every playoff race has its moments. Tuesday night, the Indians had their moment.

Jason Giambi’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning might have been the single most important hit for the Indians as a franchise since Tony Fernandez lofted an extra-inning solo shot over the right field wall at Camden Yards in Game 6 of the 1997 ALCS, providing the Tribe with the run that sent them to the World Series.

Yes, it was that important.

Sure, there have been other memorable hits in memorable games since 1997. In 2001, Omar Vizquel lined a three-run triple into the right-field corner, driving in the tying runs during the Indians’ epic 12-run rally against Seattle. In September 2007, Casey Blake all but sealed the division title with an 11^th-inning blast against Detroit. In the 2007 playoffs against the Yankees, Travis Hafner wrote the final verse of what has become known as the “Bug Game” with an extra-inning RBI single.

But none of those hits carried the gravity that came with the situation Giambi faced when he stepped into the batter’s box with a 4-3 deficit to the last-place White Sox, two outs, Michael Brantley on second and the smog wrought by a Chris Perez blown save still thick in the air.

It was a fork in the season road. The Indians were wedged in between Tampa and Texas in the wild card standings, one game’s worth of room on either side. Hundreds of miles away, those teams were winning their games. And the number of games left on the schedule was slipping away like fall’s evening daylight. The Indians had five more games after Tuesday.

A stumble, a slip-up, a several-day swoon, and the season could be over.

Everything about the 15 minutes leading up to Giambi’s at-bat had been migraine-inducing. Perez had coughed up two home runs in the top of the ninth, the first blowing the save, the second giving Chicago the lead.

The single that put Brantley on base was sandwiched between swinging strikeouts by Yan Gomes and Mike Aviles. On Aviles’ second strike, he swung wildly – as he often does -- then grimaced and shook his head, as if to say “Why did I swing at that?”

That was the story of the ninth inning to that point. The Indians were watching opportunity slip through their fingers. They were complicit in their own demise, but there was nothing they could do about it. It’s as if they had been taken over by some self-destructive compulsion.

If Giambi strikes out, if he lofts a lazy fly to the outfield, if he beats one into the ground to second, everyone – including the players in the clubhouse – goes home remembering the Perez flameout and the swinging hack-fest in the bottom of the ninth. The players leave the ballpark with their heads low and come to the park Wednesday with perhaps more tension than they would have otherwise. More pressure to right the ship, to make the perfect pitch, to get the hit, drive in the run.

Baseball is a sport that gives you a lot of time to think. And sometimes thinking can be your worst enemy.

If Giambi makes the final out, Tampa is two games up for the first wild card position. The Indians are tied with Texas and potentially a one-day swing from finding themselves back in the chase pack and no longer steering their destiny – not a good place to be with nary more than a weekend to play.

Giambi was the fulcrum upon which all 156 previous games teetered as he stepped into the batter’s box Wednesday night against Chicago closer Addison Reed. He waved at the first pitch, which caused our throats to tighten just a bit more. He took the second pitch, a ball.

When Reed left a slider high and dry on the third pitch, Giambi heaved his still-beefy 42-year-old shoulders into motion, lumberjack-chopping the night air and making solid, square contact. When the ball left his bat, it was instantly apparent he had sent it on a season-saving flight to the visitor’s bullpen beyond the right field wall.

And for a few moments, 21,000 in attendance on a cool late September night sounded like the crowds of 42,000 from years past.

Maybe Giambi didn’t put the Indians in the playoffs with his heroics, but he very well could have kept the window from slamming shut under the crushing weight of tension, pressure and lament.

After the celebration had died down, Giambi told reporters that he made Perez give him a hug. It was a pick-me-up for an embattled teammate who, largely due to his own actions, is finding it increasingly difficult to pitch well in front of the home fans. But it was symbolic of everything that was made right by Giambi’s home run.

The season could have started to spiral out of control on Tuesday. Perez could have all but punched his ticket out of town. We, as a city and fan base, could have taken a turn down the familiar path of blame and bitter resentment. It could have all been yet another dark, depressing chapter in Cleveland sports.

But it wasn’t. It was all salvaged, rebuilt and buffed to a mirror-shine by Jason Giambi and his timeliest of timely hits.

A carousel of insanity

You’re a Browns fan. You hate owner Jimmy Haslam, the slimy, crooked huckster who is trying to stave off a federal indictment by playing dumb about his company’s rebate fraud scandal.

You hate CEO Joe Banner, the squinty-eyed, lock-jawed little Napoleon who got run out of Philly and views the Browns gig as one big ego trip.

You hate GM Mike Lombardi, the sniveling, shadow-lurking weasel who has a vastly overinflated opinion of himself as a talent evaluator.

You hate them all. And if you have any interest in giving the Browns a fighting chance to chip away at one of the most firmly-entrenched losing cultures in professional sports, you’d better hope that you get to hate them for a long, long time.

For 15 years, the Browns have been on a nauseating, ever-spinning carousel of high-level turnover – really, a carousel of insanity – and it has to stop.

Wednesday’s trade of Trent Richardson to Indianapolis is symptomatic of everything that has been wrong with the Browns since 1999. You can agree or disagree with the move itself – for what it’s worth, I’ve seen enough of Richardson to agree with Jim Brown’s original assessment of  “ordinary.” Not bad, but certainly not the franchise-caliber game-changer you’d expect to get at the third overall pick. But what makes the trade so troubling is the underlying causes, which stab right at the heart of why the Browns have been so bad for so long.

In 14 seasons since the club’s 1999 relaunch, the Browns have been led by six distinct leadership regimes. Six different brain trusts, with six different leadership philosophies, in 14 years. Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark from 1999 to 2001, Butch Davis from 2001 to ’05, Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel from ’05 to ’08, Eric Mangini in ’09 (the only year he was in charge of the entire front office), Mike Holmgren and Tom Heckert from 2010 to ’12, and Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi for the past year.

The math whizzes can quickly figure out that 14 divided by six is 2.33. That’s right. The average tenure for a Browns leadership regime since 1999 is two years and four months. If you don’t include the just-launched Banner-Lombardi regime, the average balloons to a rocksteady two years and 10 months.

It’s a suicidal level of turnover. In any other industry, the Browns would have gone out of business quite a while ago.

It’s because when new leaders come in, they’re brought in because the old leaders, at least in the sample size they were given, didn’t perform at a high enough level. No brain trust comes into a situation like the Browns present thinking that the old regime did anything resembling a good job. Is it realistic to ask that of them?

New leaders will always arrive with their own ideas and philosophies, which are usually starkly different from what came before. That’s why they were hired. They think differently. They’re supposed to be a breath of fresh air. They’re supposed to strip away what hasn’t worked and replace it with a system, and talent, that does work.

Those factors are compounded in the ego-driven world of professional sports. No roster architect worth his seven-figure salary wants to win with the last guy’s players. Then, then previous guy gets all the credit as the “real” brains behind the success. In the world that Banner and Lombardi occupy, that doesn’t compute.

To peek inside their heads, Banner and Lombardi – and every president/GM who has come before them – haven’t come to Cleveland to win games. They’ve come to Cleveland to realize a vision. The wins will come as a byproduct of that vision being realized.

It likely makes you want to put your shoe through the screen to read that, but – welcome to the world of big business.

This is why it is painfully essential that Haslam not follow in the footsteps of former owner Randy Lerner, caving to fan and media pressure for change as the losses mount.

No matter what you think about Haslam, Banner or Lombardi, they need to stay here for the balance of a decade, or longer. They have to be given the space and time to see their vision through to fruition.

The majority of fans and media, and apparently Lerner, seemed to operate under the pretense that it’s better to cut bait with a leadership team that isn’t producing immediate wins than to continue on a treadmill to nowhere for years on end.

But all that does is produce an ongoing stream of executives making short-term moves to save their jobs, with no attention paid to the overarching problems that continually plague the franchise.

As the losing seasons continue to mount and the region-wide frustration with the Browns reaches a boiling point, the pressure to win now grows ever more urgent, leading to a snowball effect. If the latest brain trust can’t reverse the losing in Year One, we want them gone. Because it’s been long enough, and we, as a fan base, are simply fed up to the back teeth.

Again, this is the problem with perpetual reboots. Every few years, the Browns bring in new leaders who want to start from square one. They can only be held accountable for what happens on their watch. But beyond the gates to the Berea complex is an entire region enduring the sum total of 14 years of losing with no end in sight. We end up with the divergent goals of a leadership regime that wants to craft an organization in its own image, from the ground up, and a fan base that is beyond desperate for someone to end the losing as soon as possible.

This is bigger than the latest 4-12 season. This is bigger than an 11-game losing streak to the Ravens or going two-and-a-bazillion against the Steelers over the past decade. Turnover is the fatal, systemic flaw that is leading to all the other problems that are destroying this franchise, eroding the fan base and suffocating what was once one of the great football towns in America.

Do Banner and Lombardi have the answers? Do they comprise the brain trust that can finally turn the Browns around? Only time will tell. But that’s exactly it – time. More time than any previous regime since 1999 has received.

You might hate Haslam. You might detest Banner and loathe Lombardi. And maybe they aren’t the perfect football brain trust. They do come with a very prominent set of questions attached. But these are the guys who found the seats when the song stopped in this latest game of musical chairs. And we have to move forward with them for a good, long while – even if the wins don’t come this year, or next, or the year after.

The phrase “stability for stability’s sake” carries a negative connotation when it comes to the Browns and their various leadership regimes. But without stability and consistency, you have what the Browns have become.

The Browns very much need stability – and for stability’s sake.

It's still worth it

Is Cleveland a bad baseball town?

Apparently, we don’t like what we see in the mirror at the moment.

Heading into play Friday, the Indians were 78-68, 1.5 games out of the second wild card spot, 3.5 games out of the wild card lead, and in a deep but still-scalable six-game hole in the division.

They’re in the midst of a series in Chicago against the last-place White Sox. The remainder of the season includes three games against the third-place Royals, a four-game home series against the last-place Astros, two more games against the White Sox and four games to close out the season against fourth-place Minnesota.

This is exactly what we wanted in March, right? September finally matters for the Indians, and it’s one of the softest September schedules the team has ever faced.

We should be oozing confidence as a fan base. We should believe that the Indians not only could make the playoffs, they should make the playoffs. They should be able to tear through the remainder of the schedule at an .800 clip and, at the very least, end up on the doorstep of the top wild card spot.

But we don’t believe that. We’ve voted with our attendance at Progressive Field, where four-figure and low five-figure weeknight crowds are still the reality of the situation.

The first playoff-contending season in six years, and the Indians might as well be 20 games out to look at Progressive Field on most game nights. Much like the team stock that former owner Dick Jacobs issued in the latter part of the 1990s, people just aren’t buying it.

It’s not the economy. Not when the perennially-inept Browns also make a perennial killing at the season-ticket sales window. Not when nearly every decent restaurant in town has a 45-minute wait on a Saturday night. People still buy what they want to buy.

It’s not endemic hard feelings toward owner Larry Dolan. Maybe the fans really are cooler toward Dolan than they ever were toward Jacobs. It’s tough to follow an act like what the Indians put on the field from 1994 to 2001. But fans aren’t staying away in droves to spite Dolan.

The biggest culprits in the short-circuiting of the Tribe’s attendance are the numbers 6 and 27.

That would be the Indians’ combined record against the Tigers, Red Sox and Yankees. The three highest-profile teams on the schedule, and the Indians completely wet the bed against all of them.

In other words, this team might make the playoffs, but nobody believes they have chances of making much noise once they get there. In a city that hasn’t seen a championship trophy in 49 years, the prospect of making the playoffs just isn’t enough to excite the fan base, because all it means is more heartbreak and embarrassment if they do get there.

In baseball, the small-market war cry is “Just make the playoffs, and anything can happen.” That’s true, but when you are all but assured of seeing at least one of the teams that combined to beat you 27 out of 33 games this year, the dreams turn to nightmares in a hurry.

If the Indians were in or near first place, if they had battled the Tigers to a draw this year, if they had the look of a 95-win team that could do some damage in October, chances are the hometown stands wouldn’t be a field of green silence. But that didn’t happen. We have the situation we have. Far from hopeless, but with enough negative warning signs to scare off the region’s emotionally-battered fans.

So is it worth it for this team to even make the playoffs, with the odds so heavily stacked against them once they’re there?

It depends on your definition of “worth it.”

If you just want the ring, you’re fully within your right to feel that way. Forty-nine years – with three teams for most of those years -- is a long enough drought for any city. Nobody in this space is going to tell you to just be happy with making the playoffs.

But then you really take a look and see how bad it can get. And in baseball, the postseason droughts  can reach legendary status.

The Indians themselves went 41 years without a playoff game. The Pirates are working on ending a 20-year drought that included no winning seasons from 1993 until this year. The Royals haven’t made the playoffs since winning the World Series in 1985.

The Orioles broke a 15-year playoff drought last year, and the Nationals broke a drought that dated to 1981, when they were the Expos.

Bear in mind, we’re just talking playoffs. No mention of the Cubs’ 105-year World Series title drought, the Red Sox’s 86-year “Curse of the Bambino,” the White Sox’s 88-year drought that ended in 2005 or the Tribe’s drought, at 65 years and counting.

World Series title droughts have their own poetic verse. They almost always involve episodes of failure and foreboding under the bright lights. They become so well-known, they get reduced to names and phrases: Bill Buckner. Steve Bartman. The Black Sox. The black cat at Shea.

Curiously, in a town that loves to attach “the” to every sports misadventure, the Indians’ meltdown in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series never really received a widely-accepted nickname. Even the main antagonist of that fateful ninth inning, Jose Mesa, has become little more than a minor sports villain in local lore. It would take 100 Jose Mesas to equal the rage inspired by one Art Modell or LeBron James.

The lack of resentment toward Mesa is a curious anomaly – good for Mesa, and probably good for our collective blood pressure, but still curious -- because he scraped closer to a World Series title than Modell ever did to a Super Bowl title or LeBron to an NBA title during their time in Cleveland. If you’re going to get mad at someone, it’s probably going to be the likes of Mesa. Those are the rules of the game when a world championship is at stake.

But playoff droughts? Failing to even make the postseason for years and decades? Those are just pathetic. Playoff droughts don’t make villains or tragic characters. They simply produce an endless, numbing parade of forgettable players and forgettable teams. 

The Indians have been playing baseball in this town for 112 years. They have made the playoffs in 10 of those seasons. That means roughly 92 percent of the time, an Indians season has ended on the last day of the regular season.

Regardless of how much of a buzz they’re able to create around the region, regardless of their record against other contenders, regardless of whether they make the playoffs with room to spare or squeak in on the last day of the season, it’s better for the 2013 Indians to become the 11^th Tribe team to make the playoffs than the 103^rd Tribe team to miss the playoffs.

There have been enough dark Octobers in our past. There will be more dark Octobers in the future. This year – even if it’s for a moment – we can have October baseball again. Maybe it won’t possess the electricity of 1995. Maybe it won’t possess the magic of 1997. Maybe it won’t become a surprise ALCS gift dropped in our laps like 2007. But it beats the all-too-familiar alternative.

Et tu, Kyrie?

Where have we heard this before?

The Cavaliers’ franchise player is cornered on the subject of his future by a press corps eager to stoke the flames of intrigue by further-moistening the already-sweaty palms of a fan base that knows “fate” as the filthiest of four-letter words.

The player does nothing to allay the anxiety of the fans. He plays it coy, sidestepping the question with ambiguous generalities, such as: “I’m only focused on right now. I’ll worry about the future when it gets here.”

LeBron James tap-danced like that for seven years as a Cav. He now plays for the Miami Heat. Kyrie Irving tried on his tap shoes this past Saturday when reporters questioned him on his future plans at a basketball camp he was conducting in Independence.

Irving can sign a max extension next summer – five years and about $80 million – and the Cavs will almost certainly offer it to him. The only reason “almost” is even worth discussing is due to any unforeseen catastrophic injuries that could threaten his career, life-altering criminal charges or an irreconcilable falling-out with Cavs management. The statistical equivalent of being flattened by the remnants of a satellite falling to Earth, but you at least have to put it on the table.

In other words, he’s getting the offer. Now, whether he’ll accept that offer?

“Right now I’m a Cavalier,” he told the assembled reporters. “This is where I am. All that future stuff, I’m not really worried about. I’m living in the moment right now and I’m just trying to get better with the teammates I have now and make the playoffs for Cleveland. That’s the only thing I can do right now is give it my all as it stands right now and that future stuff, I’m not really worried about it.”

When you read it, the Cleveland parts of your mind start to squirm. You see all the negative space around the words – everything that wasn’t said.

Has he been taking advice from LeBron? Is he planning to hook up with LeBron? Is he planning to hook up with LeBron in a place other than Cleveland? Is Kyrie going to be another burgeoning superstar who ditches Cleveland right as he’s rounding into championship form?

Nobody can give you a cure for that bellyache. If Irving wants out of Cleveland at some point, he’s going to get out, one way or another. That’s how the game is played. When it comes to stars and superstars in the NBA, they get what they want. GMs can be strong-armed, coaches can be fired, rules can be manipulated.

Star power is the fuel that drives the NBA. The owners don’t run the league. Their best players do.

However, despite all of that, and despite the fact that New York-based radio gabber Brandon Tierney tweeted a few weeks ago that Irving is not long for Cleveland (which, to be fair, was rebuked by Irving himself), there are some concrete reasons to not panic just yet.

First of all, the Cavs hold Irving’s rights for three more years. That’s important not just due to the competitive window that Irving could allow, it’s also because it gives the Cavs a breathable window to make any decision that might be necessary.

If Irving were to turn down or table an extension offer next summer, or try to negotiate an early opt-out that would drastically shorten his commitment to the Cavs, the Cavs would have from the summer of 2014 to, at least in theory, the trade deadline in February 2016 to decide what to do. If they decided to trade him, they’d have ample time to shop around and find the best deal.

Yes, that approach could backfire if Irving keeps suffering nagging injuries, or is felled by the aforementioned career-threatening injury, but nowhere does it say that the only guarantees in life are death, taxes and NBA players staying healthy.

And that’s if he were to turn down an extension next summer. While Cleveland sports has a well-documented history of setting negative precedents, it is unheard of to this point for an NBA player to decline an extension coming off his rookie deal. The whole reason the media questioned Kyrie about his future is because the Wizards’ John Wall – one of Irving’s contemporaries in rising crop of young NBA point guards -- recently inked a five-year extension.

Even LeBron extended with the Cavs once, in 2006. When a player is only three years into his career, he still has to wade through so many checkpoints to get to unrestricted free agency – his base contract, teams options, qualifying offers – that it’s easier to take the money sitting right in front of him, even if the team isn’t positioned to make a Finals run at the moment.

It is possible for Irving to be planning an exit strategy from Cleveland as we speak. It is possible that he’s eyeing star-laden rosters and warmer climates, dreaming of rings and bling on South Beach, or Hollywood Boulevard. It’s also possible that Irving is quite happy in Cleveland – right now – and has no overt intention of leaving unless circumstances force his hand. To that end, there is a lot of pressure on Dion Waiters, Tristan Thompson, Anthony Bennett and Andrew Bynum to become the supporting cast LeBron never had here.

What we do know is seven years of LeBron made us, and the Cavs, smarter, more streetwise and a heck of a lot more clinical about the NBA, their superstars and their culture of entitlement. No more talk about family and loyalty. This is a business. Every party acts in its own best interest.

Dan Gilbert has said it, and Chris Grant has repeated it, in so many words: The Cavs are not going to let themselves be held hostage by one player again. If Irving turns down an extension or tries to negotiate an escape hatch after two or three years, he’s obviously not committed to the Cavs over the long haul, and as such, is not a reliable franchise cornerstone.

No more waiting around to see if his loyalty increases. No more letting your best player coast all the way to free agency while you have your fingers and toes crossed, hoping that he re-signs. That’s a recipe for disaster. That is the summer of 2010 all over again.

If Irving balks, Irving gets traded. That’s the bottom line. And, yes, it sucks. Because all we want in this town are great players that are motivated to stick it out and try to win us our first title since the height of Beatlemania.

But that emotional response gets in the way of good business. It’s better to punt away a good player for draft picks than to lose him for nothing. And when a Cleveland player turns down an extension, it’s not because he wants more money. He wants more money from a team in a bigger city.

As soon as they discover an ocean of oil under Cleveland and we can start building zillion-dollar skyscrapers like a Great Lakes version of Dubai, that will change. Until then, we have our reality.

Of course, this is all pre-emptive. There is a season of basketball to be played between now and next summer, and for the first time in three-plus years, the Cavs look like they might be worth watching, even for casual fans that tuned the team out as soon as LeBron skipped town.

Kyrie’s words are actually quite wise: Enjoy now. Let tomorrow brings what it brings. Most likely, it will bring a five-year contract extension, negotiated with little drama. But if it doesn’t, the Cavs have a backup plan.

That’s more than we could have said for them during the last superstar’s reign.

The mouthpiece

Since the Browns debuted their underwhelming sequel in 1999, Bernie Kosar has been the team’s most conspicuous extra.

He’s never been given even a supporting role in the organization, but despite his lack of any official football-governing capacity, he’s been active and involved. He frequently appears on local radio and TV stations from the start of training camp through the end of the season, offering his analysis and opinions. You can find him at the stadium on many a Sunday, chatting with players, coaches and executives, obliging media requests – doing anything to stay close to the game he lived and still loves.

The fans reciprocate Kosar’s devotion to the Browns and football. Despite never leading the Browns to the Super Bowl, despite the fact that his career prime lasted all of two years – he was never the same after his elbow was injured in the 1988 season opener – despite the fact that he is quite possibly the fourth-most-accomplished quarterback in Browns history behind Otto Graham, Frank Ryan and Brian Sipe, the fans have elevated Kosar to folk-hero status.

Part of it is his local ties, having grown up a Browns fan in Boardman, Ohio, just outside Youngstown. Part of it is the fact that he declared for the 1985 supplemental draft specifically so the Browns could select him. And part of it is grasping at the strands of what little we have had to cherish about the Browns over the past quarter-century.

Other than the Kosar years, it’s been quite ugly, which makes those gritty Browns teams that were thrice eliminated by Denver on the Super Bowl’s doorstep look all the more legendary.

That’s why Browns Nation is so quick to circle the wagons around Kosar, deflecting criticism and assailing detractors. And now it’s happening again.

Kosar has been the primary color commentator on Channel 3’s preseason telecasts since 2007. Despite the fact that his concussion-induced slurred speech and his appearance – often appearing something like haggard or sleep-deprived – drew criticism and jokes, Kosar’s intellect has remained unquestioned. He is extremely knowledgeable and perceptive about football, and can break plays down like a coach reviewing game film. You are a better fan for having listened to Kosar talk football.

But there is that other part to Kosar. The part that might explain why, despite his very obvious football acumen, he has never been given the opportunity, by any of the revolving-door Browns regimes, to take a more prominent role in the organization.

It’s the part that has dealt with post-concussion brain trauma, an embattled personal and business life, and the effects of alcohol abuse. It’s that aspect of Kosar that should have people stroking their chins after his behavior during last Thursday’s Browns-Rams telecast, wondering aloud if it might be in the best interest of Kosar and the team to keep their relationship strictly casual moving ahead.

In ripping the quality of the Rams receiving corps, he was stating the obvious. Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt are not walking through the door in St. Louis. Those salad days went limp and brown a long time ago.

And maybe Kosar was simply delivering a raw truth when he knocked the play of Rams third-string QB Kellen Clemens. His first name isn’t Roger. His last name isn’t Winslow. The only way he’ll get into any hall of fame is with a purchased ticket. That’s not breaking news.

Maybe he was just trying to be funny when he mocked an apocryphal story about Clemens autographing the mitre of Pope Benedict XVI, which was tied to a true story about Clemens' daughter receiving a blessing from the pope, relayed by Kosar's broadcast partner, Jim Donovan.

And maybe Rams coach Jeff Fisher was just being a big crybaby about all of it during his postgame remarks, when he said he "lost a lot of respect" for Kosar. Fisher's team did lose, after all.

Besides, what's the big deal? So many talking heads mindlessly gush superlatives and sing high hosannas to athletes, it's refreshing to have someone in the booth who gives you his blunt, unvarnished opinion.

But every facet of that argument sidesteps the fundamental truth that Kosar was working on behalf of the Browns. One would assume that, like every other team broadcaster in sports, he was on the payroll, therefore acting in the capacity of a team employee on a team-sanctioned broadcast.

When Kosar made his remarks on the air, he wasn't just speaking on behalf of Bernie Kosar. He was speaking on behalf of the Browns organization. That changes the rules a bit, and mandates a bit more respect be shown the opponent. It's not an afternoon talk show. It's a game telecast.

Joe Banner, as is often the case, gets cast as the bad guy for reprimanding Kosar. But that's Banner's job. If he thinks his organization's reputation has been sullied, he needs to take steps to make it right. He's the one who has to meet face-to-face with other team executives at league meetings, not Kosar.

Kosar wasn't removed from his perch. He'll remain the team's TV color guy for the remainder of the preseason. But after that, Banner will have another decision to make: Defining Kosar's role with the team moving forward. And that's a prickly topic.

Kosar would likely jump at the chance for a role that allows him real authority within the Browns organization. Plenty of people around Northeast Ohio think it's a travesty that the Browns have never given him that chance. But football head knowledge is only part of the equation.

Kosar has always been an opinionated person. But there is a time to express an opinion, a time to soften the blow and time to keep your mouth shut. Navigating that hair-trigger minefield can mean the difference between focusing your attention on your job, and lost man-hours cleaning up public relations blunders and attempting to repair your organization's reputation.

It's not outside the realm of possibility to question whether Kosar's personal and professional history, which have not been kind to his brain, have clouded his judgment to the point where you can't trust him to make the right call with regard to decorum.

Heck, it's hard enough for some people to hold their tongue when they haven't been subjected to repeated brain trauma. Remember the email that ultimately cost Phil Savage his job?

Banner has to decide whether he wants Kosar representing the Browns in any official capacity after the preseason ends. Knowing that Banner is generally unsentimental and extremely bottom-line driven,  Browns fans and Kosar loyalists might not like what they're going to hear.

But perhaps it's for the best. Kosar will still be free to appear on local TV and radio, talking football while speaking on behalf of himself, and only himself. The Browns will be able to protect an image that has already been dragged through the mud way more than necessary over the past decade-plus, and still isn't out of the woods, as Jimmy Haslam continues to deal with a large number of justifiably-angry trucking companies down in Tennessee.

If you can't say anything nice  … save it for afternoon drive time. 

The comfort zone

Brandon Weeden left a five-year baseball career behind and returned to football, ostensibly because football is his comfort zone.

Though Weeden was a second-round pick of the Yankees in the 2002 MLB Draft, his baseball career never took off. In a second round that included Joey Votto, Jon Lester and Brian McCann, Weeden was one of the comparative duds, never rising above Class A.

He bounced around several different baseball organizations, struggling to climb the minor-league ladder, attempting to master pitches other than a fastball – only to end up as a farmhand in his mid-20s, riding the bus for the A-ball High Desert Mavericks, then an affiliate of the Royals.

The High Desert Mavericks play their home games in Adelanto, Calif., located in San Bernardino County, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It’s a place where ERAs go to die in the heat and thin air.

Weeden racked up more than 2,800 passing yards in a season – second in the state of Oklahoma – while in high school, so a college football career was always a reliable second option as he toiled away in the minors. By the time he quit baseball after the 2006 season, returning to the place where he had last achieved any real athletic success had to have sounded pretty appealing.

Dodging pass rushers and hitting receivers in stride 30 yards downfield? Piece of cake compared to keeping the ball in the yard at a place that has only slightly more atmospheric pressure than the Moon.

So Weeden enrolled at Oklahoma State in 2007 and made the football team as a walk-on. The adjustment wasn’t easy, but he progressed from redshirt to backup to starter to record-breaking NFL prospect.

He re-wrote the school’s record books as a senior in 2011, setting single-season records in total passing yards, completed passes and completion percentage. In the process, he was named a finalist for the Manning Award – the top quarterback-specific award in college football – and won the Fiesta Bowl in January 2012.

Weeden was most definitely back in his comfort zone. There were probably more than a few moments when he wondered to himself why he wasted half a decade playing minor-league baseball.

Then the Browns made him the 22^nd overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. And Weeden, who had gone from no-name baseball farmhand to the golden-armed big man on Oklahoma State’s campus, was about to get another serving of humble pie.

Maybe in a parallel universe, Weeden ends up in a more fortunate situation, like Ryan Mallett, another big-armed quarterback who was drafted by the Patriots, and is now being groomed as a possible successor to Tom Brady on one of the league’s most successful teams.

But Weeden ended up in Cleveland, with an organization that has turned losing, instability, turnover, and ruining careers into a way of life over the past 14 years. An organization constantly and desperately searching for saviors upon which to place the crushing burden of eradicating a losing culture, restoring the team to prominence, and ultimately winning the city’s first major pro sports championship in half a century.

Brian Sipe couldn’t do it. Bernie Kosar couldn’t do it. Kenny Lofton, Albert Belle, Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez couldn’t do it. LeBron James didn’t want to do it. And here was Weeden, in the next wave of Marines to storm the beach.

He wasn’t in Oklahoma anymore.

As a 28-going-on-29 rookie, Weeden quickly discovered that football wasn’t his comfort zone. Winning football was his comfort zone. What Weeden had here was a mutant product comprised of the remnants of several failed roster reboots, led by Pat Shurmur, who coached more like a programmed computer, as opposed to a carbon-based life form who could think, feel, react and adjust.

Weeden rebounded from an abysmal debut against the Eagles to have a halfway-decent rookie season. He threw for almost 3,400 yards while completing 57 percent of his passes. He threw 14 touchdowns, but they were outpaced by his interceptions (17). His QB rating was a modest-but-not-humiliating 72.6.

And he did it all while playing in an ultra-conservative offense ultimately aimed at shoehorning him into a Colt McCoy mold. In a setup designed to benefit undersized, scamper-happy QBs who can dodge, dink and dunk, Weeden was a bullwhip-armed, stone-footed, ship’s mast of a QB. He was coached to look underneath first, play the percentages, and take very few risks downfield.

You might as well try to teach a dog to meow. It went against everything in his DNA, both in a metaphorical football sense, and in a very real genetic sense. Big guy, big arm, tiny offense. The fact that Weeden even put up the numbers he did is a minor miracle.

We know what happened from that point. The Browns limped to their fifth straight season of five wins or fewer. New owner Jimmy Haslam bulldozed the front office and coaching staff. Out went Mike Holmgren, Tom Heckert and Shurmur, in came Joe Banner, Mike Lombardi and Rob Chudzinski.

Chudzinski and new offensive coordinator Norv Turner pledged to install an offense that will play more to Weeden’s strengths – a vertical passing attack that embraces the idea of home-run throw and treats the 20-yard out pattern as a staple instead of a seldom-seen change of pace.

But the playbook only matters if Weeden can make it happen on the gridiron. In the NFL, the quarterback is the player who most influences his team’s level of success. A great QB, or QB who gets hot at the right time, can lead his team to great things. Joe Flacco proved it this past winter, as the Ravens won the Super Bowl. An underperforming QB can short-circuit the best-laid plans of coaches, and undermine rock-solid performances by the line, backs and receivers.

Teams with good QBs put the ball in the end zone. Teams with bad QBs don’t. It’s really that simple.

That’s where Weeden is now, as he enters his second year. He appears to have better tools at his disposal, with a pass-friendly offensive scheme, an offensive line anchored by Pro Bowlers and better talent at the receiver position than perhaps at any time since the Browns rebirth.

But the pressure is still there. Weeden still has the expectations of a battered franchise and hopes of a desperate city on his shoulders. And now, he’s no longer a rookie. The kid gloves are off. It’s time for Weeden to render a verdict on himself.

Weeden came back to football because it was always his first love. It was always the place where he felt most capable of success. Or that’s the story. Now we get to really see how comfortable Weeden can be manning football’s most demanding position while attempting one of the most challenging tasks the NFL can offer to a player, coach or executive – turning the Cleveland Browns into a contender.

Hopefully he’s not wishing, at some point, that he was back in Adelanto, watching home runs sail over the fence.

The big letdown

Monday night’s Indians-Tigers game was one of those moments that often lead to other moments. One of those moments that you -- down the road however far – realize was the finger that flicked the first domino.

It’s only the first week of August. There is still a lot of baseball left to be played. The Indians were still only four games out as of Tuesday morning. They’re in the thick of the wild card chase. They still have another series left against the Tigers, at the end of the month in Detroit.

And yet….in those moments of postmortem lucidity, when you look back at what this season ultimately became, you can’t help but think you might finger Monday’s game as the point when the division slipped away. The point when the Indians went from a fight for homefield advantage in the division series to, at best, the wild card and a first-round date with the Red Sox, who won six of seven against the Indians this year.

The Indians came into this week absolutely needing no worse than a split with Detroit. Maintain your three-game deficit, and the division is still quite winnable. Let Detroit take three of four, and their lead swells to five games. Let them come into your house and sweep four games from you, and their seven-game cushion all but signals the end of the division race.

Jhonny Peralta’s 50-game doping suspension, Miguel Cabrera’s bum hip and the good fortune of sidestepping Max Scherzer, Detroit’s ace-du-jour, in the rotation would seem to work in favor of the Tribe chances of at least clawing out a split. But the concrete evidence of the season series to date (a 9-3 Tigers advantage), and the Tribe’s often-combustible bullpen, can rot wood faster than you can build a raft out of it.

Monday’s game was a winnable game. More than that, it was a game they should have won. It was a game they needed to win. It was an important confidence-boosting toehold to carve in the midst of the torrential, scalding lahar the Tigers had poured out upon the Tribe thus far this year.

When the Tigers took three of four from the Tribe in early July, you could make the case that Detroit had successfully gotten in Cleveland’s head. The Tigers’ beefy offense is enough to send shivers down the spine of just about any opponent. But the way the Indians melted like Velveeta in the microwave in losing eight of their last nine to Detroit would seem to indicate another level of intimidation.

But that was a month ago. Plenty of time for the Indians to clear their heads and reset themselves for a final push in the last two series against Detroit.  And through eight innings, it looks like the Indians had smacked the cobwebs out of their skulls. Corey Kluber looked masterful in holding the Tigers off the scoreboard through seven-plus. Joe Smith finished off the eighth, and the Indians entered the ninth inning with a 2-0 lead.

On came Chris Perez, the Tribe’s always-volatile, often-polarizing, never-a-dull-moment closer. Somehow, since returning from a DL stint in late June, he had managed to convert 11 straight save chances, all the while dealing with the fallout from drug charges, stemming from the reported undercover delivery of marijuana to his house in early June.

But toking up was among the least of Perez’s problems Monday night. The sporadic nature of save chances, combined with a thin setup corps, had forced Terry Francona to go to Perez perhaps a bit more than he would have liked.

Monday was Perez’s eighth appearance in 11 days. That included two sets of back-to-back-to-back games. He was credited with either the save or win in every game he had appeared in since July 27 against Texas.

Perez’s command tends to fade in and out from pitch to pitch, batter to batter. You could call him “effectively wild.” But as soon as he threw a few pitches to Prince Fielder, Detroit’s leadoff hitter in the ninth, you could tell that the recent workload had taken a toll.

Perez did manage to snap off a crisp slider to Fielder, but his fastball looked fat and flat, and prone to drifting. Fielder, with one of the best hitter’s eyes in the game, managed to stay with an outside fastball and deposited it just inside the foul line in deep left for a leadoff double.

Perez always makes your stomach dance to his beat, but there was something wrong beyond the protracted angst typically wrought by a Perez save.

One batter in, and you could easily see that didn’t have it tonight, and he wasn’t going to find it. Not with an exhausted arm, against this heavy Motown artillery.

Victor Martinez followed with a sharp single to left. Fielder looks and runs like an elephant, but he was able to rumble home with the run that broke the shutout.

Every brain wave you could possibly send in the direction of the third-base dugout at Progressive Field was imploring Francona:

“Get Perez out of there! Get him out NOW! You can’t squeeze this save out of him! Don’t try! This game is too important tonight – go against the book and take him out!”

But as the old saying goes, managers who listen to fans are doomed to sit in the stands with them, and Francona would have to be the one to look Perez in the face and tell him “I can’t trust you to finish this game off tonight.”

Perez has 124 career saves and an all-star appearance that say he can close the game out. What message does it send to the team if Francona pulls Perez with the save still intact? What message does it send if he inserts Cody Allen with the save still intact, and Allen blows it?

There are so many ways it could go wrong. But it was going wrong – horribly wrong – with Perez out there, flailing away at Detroit’s heavy lumber with his exhausted chicken wing.

Perez walked Andy Dirks. Still nobody out. Allen was warming up in the bullpen at a furious pace. But the save was still out if Perez could wriggle off the hook somehow.

But Perez didn’t have a deeper reservoir of energy or resolve to tap. Not on this night. When Alex Avila deposited a three-run homer in the stands to put the Tigers ahead by the final margin of 4-2, it was a realization of the inevitable.

If Monday’s game indeed flicks the domino line that ends the Tribe’s hopes of a division title, we might look back and realize it was Francona, in a rare instance of bad judgment, who cost the Indians their shot.

Francona likes to pride himself on managing with his head, not his heart. But perhaps Francona’s heart won out on Monday, and he couldn’t bring himself to quick-hook his all-star closer when the game was still in hand. Perhaps he was concerned about wearing the goat horns if he left the game in Allen’s hands, and Allen failed him.

There really was no sunshine-bathed route for Francona to take. Every path had thunderclouds. But the darkest path was to let an exhausted Perez continue to twist in the wind toward the inevitable outcome.

Francona tried to squeeze one inning too many out of Perez, and he got burned. Hopefully the scorch-marks aren’t still visible in late September, but as Yogi Berra was once purported to have said, “It gets late early around here.”

Meet the new Shaq

At the end of June 2009, the Cavs acquired a former Lakers center. He was, at one time, widely regarded as one of the best – if not the best – centers in the game. But at the time the Cavs acquired him, those days were long past.

When he arrived on the Cavs’ doorstep, there were questions about his durability. Even in a best-case scenario, the Cavs would have to remain extremely vigilant about capping his minutes, conserving the wear and tear on his ravaged joints, carefully milking whatever ability remained in his bones and muscles for maximum effect over the span of 82 games and playoffs.

And even if they did all that, he was a near lock to miss games, weeks, and perhaps months, due to the simple fact that his body was already permanently damaged.

But the price was right, because on a good night, he could still show flashes of brilliance, still remind you why he won those championship rings in L.A. And even if he couldn’t do it night to night anymore, the prospect of him at his best was still tantalizing enough to take the risk and bring him aboard.

And there was that little matter of LeBron James. He could become a free agent the following summer, and the Cavs had to pull out all the stops to try and show him that Cleveland is a place where he could win championships and continue to build his legacy.

It was the story of Shaquille O’Neal four years ago. It’s the story of Andrew Bynum now, after he agreed to a two-year, $24 million contract with the Cavs Wednesday evening. $6 million is guaranteed, and the second year is a team option.

Shaq’s caveat was based on age. He was 37 at the time the Cavs traded for him. Bynum comes to town at the green age of 25, but with the knees of an 80-year-old. Over the course of his eight-year career, both knees have been operated on multiple times. He has suffered ruptured ligaments, bone bruises, cartilage damage and one would assume significant scarring within both joints.

Despite the fact that Bynum was the starting center on two Lakers world championship teams in 2009 and ’10, despite the fact that he had his best statistical season in 2011-12, averaging more than 18 points and 11 rebounds per game, his knees paved his path out of L.A.

With two healthy knees, Bynum is a Laker for life. But last summer, with Bynum’s contract set to expire within the year, the Lakers decided they didn’t want to commit franchise-player money to a player with such damaged knees – a player who has played in barely more than 60 percent of possible regular season games over the course of his career. So after some complicated negotiations, they moved Bynum to Philadelphia as part of a four-team trade that brought Dwight Howard to L.A.

Bynum never played a dribble of basketball for the 76ers. He was diagnosed with bone bruises in both knees before the start of training camp, further injured his left knee during a now-infamous bowling game over the winter, and ultimately had arthroscopic surgery on both knees in March, ending any chance he would have had to suit up for the Sixers.

By the time Bynum declared for free agency after the season, the Sixers, and their fans, enthusiastically showed him the door. The Sixers had given up veteran cornerstone Andre Iguodala and promising young center Nikola Vucevic to get Bynum. Bynum gave them nothing in return.

Bynum’s attitude often further complicates matters. He has a long history of immature behavior. He swears during live interviews. He’s been known to jack up random three-pointers during games. He’s dished out a few violent fouls that can only be described as punk behavior – most notably in the 2011 playoffs, when the Lakers were on the verge of being swept by the eventual champion Dallas Mavericks.

With the Lakers trailing by a few touchdowns late in the game, Bynum blatantly threw his elbow into the rib cage of then-Dallas guard J.J. Barea, as Barea was driving to the basket. Barea crumpled to the ground and Bynum was swiftly ejected, throwing off his jersey as he was escorted to the locker room.

None of that is so bad that it’s unforgivable. Bynum committed a far greater infraction when he put off a knee surgery to attend the 2010 World Cup after the Lakers won their most recent championship. Bynum had already played through a torn meniscus in his knee for the duration of the playoffs. The delay in seeking medical treatment after the season (he didn’t have surgery until the tail end of July) caused him to miss the start of the following season.

Missing games due to knee injuries is one thing. Missing them due to irresponsibility is another.

This is the package that is Andrew Bynum. He’s immensely talented, and he’s accomplished a lot in his career thus far, but between knees that Sixers doctors reportedly referred to as “degenerative” and a history of sideshow-acting, most of the league views him as more trouble than he’s worth.

So why did the Cavs want this guy? Are the Cavs that desperate?

Desperate? No. Scavengers? Yes.

Seven-foot, 290-pound, 25-year-old centers with an all-star appearance and two NBA titles on their resume don’t hit the open market all that often. Seven-foot, 290-pound, 25-year old former all-stars and NBA champions willing to give the Cleveland Cavaliers the time of day? Virtually unheard of.

The only way a talent like Bynum ends up in a town like Cleveland of his own free will is if fate throws a monkey wrench into his career. For the Cavs, Bynum’s knee injuries, his waste of a season in Philly and his threadbare market value comprised a perfect storm of sorts. Bynum needs a chance to resuscitate his career. The Cavs were reportedly the only team willing to give him $6 million guaranteed to give him that chance.

What do the Cavs get out of it? The opportunity to just maybe give Kyrie Irving the one thing LeBron never had in seven seasons as a Cav: A legitimate second all-star for a teammate.

And if this all works out while the situation in Miami starts to decline, the Cavs can finagle the numbers enough to extend Kyrie, pick up the second-year option on Bynum and still have enough space left to offer LeBron a max deal next summer. That would be the most perfect of perfect storms: A “big three,” right here on the North Coast.

For $6 million and no guaranteed salary past this season, Bynum is worth the risk for a Cavs team that has to pull out all the stops in order to try and make the playoffs with room to spare this coming season. If Bynum can once again achieve the heights of his Lakers career, he is arguably the best low-post scorer in the game. He has an extremely rare combination of Brahman-bull strength, upper-body coordination and a feathery shooting touch that allows him to fight through defenders, spin around them and flick the ball over them.

It should be noted that Bynum’s career-best 2011-12 season came with Mike Brown at the helm. Bynum and Brown butted heads at the outset of Brown’s short Lakers tenure, but after Bynum bought into Brown’s defense-begets-offense philosophy, Bynum was a force. Brown has brought out the best in Bynum before; the Cavs are counting on him to do it again.

But in order for that to happen, Bynum’s knees have to let it happen.

The knees that drove him out of L.A. and out of Philly are the knees that made him desperate enough to sign with the one team willing to give him another chance. This is the fact of life in Cleveland. Unless they’re drafted, star players come here with warts, or they don’t come here at all.

Four years ago, the Cavs tried to squeeze one more year out of an aging Shaq in an effort to win a championship and keep LeBron. It didn’t work out in the end. But give the Cavs credit: They keep trying, they keep looking for creative ways to pad their talent, in a market where the means are limited.

Three years to the day after “The Decision,” the Cavs, with a franchise history much longer on heartbreak than triumph, were willing to sign Bynum, warts and all, and dream of a pathway, however uncertain, to better days ahead.

The gatekeeper

Joe Banner. You just don’t like the guy.

Maybe it’s his demeanor. He just seems abrasive and blunt when he appears in front of the media. Maybe it’s his hardball management style. When he took over as CEO of the Browns, he made it clear from the outset that the organization would be run his way, with his judgment final, and if you don’t like it, go suck an egg.

Maybe he lost you when he brought former Browns executive Mike Lombardi back to town, to reign as the top football executive in the organization. Or maybe it’s because, despite your reservations about Lombardi, he actually isn’t the top football guy. Banner is, because he reserves veto power over all decisions, including who gets signed and who gets drafted.

Maybe you chalk that up to Banner having a massive Napoleon complex, eager to bask in the glow of his own organization-building awesomeness.

Or maybe you just don’t like the fact that Banner looks like every school principal who wrote you a detention slip during your formative years. With his narrowed eyes, perpetual sneer and craggy complexion, he looks kind of like an angrier, more spiteful version of comedian Lewis Black – without the comedy.

You don’t like Joe Banner. But you might learn to like him, or at least accept him, in a crisis-alliance sort of way. Because Banner, with his absolute leadership style, is the one person standing between the Browns organization and the tempest surrounding Jimmy Haslam and Pilot Flying J.

Remember the many valleys and sinkholes of the Randy Lerner years (How could you forget)? Remember how we all wanted a more involved owner? Someone who would pace the sidelines like Jerry Jones in Dallas? Someone who wouldn’t be afraid to get his hands dirty running the organization, to shake things up when complacency set in and the losses piled up?

Now, you don’t want any part of a more-involved owner. As Haslam continues in his seemingly-futile effort to furiously scrub the scandal-stains off his company, you don’t want him and his federal-investigation circus anywhere near the delicate sapling that is the rebooted Browns organization.

Thus far, Haslam has been able to deny any involvement in his company’s alleged rebate fraud activities. He has denounced the reported criminal activities as the actions of a few bad apples in Pilot’s sales department, who are now ex-employees. But as investigators continue to get persons of interest to cooperate with the investigation in the name of punitive leniency, there remains the distinct possibility that the fingers will point all the way to the top.

If Haslam is directly connected to the criminal activity, either through knowledge or action, and subsequently indicted on federal charges, you most definitely do not want him anywhere near the Browns.

Of course, if that happens, that might be right about the time the NFL steps in and seizes control of the Browns, if Haslam hasn’t sold the team beforehand. But that’s another discussion topic.

Haslam is too much of a lightning rod to make more than the occasional on-field cameo appearance. He does not belong in front of the microphones in the capacity of Browns owner right now. If Haslam can emerge from the scandal unindicted, not in prison and with his company intact, that might be the time for him to resume rebuilding his profile as Browns owner. And those are a lot of very iffy “ifs.”

For now, Cleveland being the bizarro-sports town it is, we want Haslam to act the part of Randy Lerner, the most shriveled of shrinking violets. We don’t want there to be a reason for him to expand his involvement in the Browns organization at the moment. We want him, and his scandal, to stay firmly planted in Tennessee.

Banner, for all the reasons you’d cast him as a villain in any movie, is the guy who can keep Haslam away. You might not like his steel grip on the organizational throttle, his need to be in control at all times or his brusque demeanor. But those qualities are also useful for maintaining order and enforcing standards, both of which are critical to building a well-run organization, and subsequently a team that can take the field and win.

If Banner keeps the organization organized, clearly defines roles, demands excellence and either shapes up or ships out those who aren’t performing up to snuff, Haslam doesn’t need to set foot in the Browns complex in Berea, save for the occasional status check-ins. And that’s a best-case scenario right now.

Like it or not, Banner is rapidly becoming a very pivotal figure in Berea. Haslam owns the legal property that is the Cleveland Browns, but this is Banner’s organization, Banner’s team. And Banner has to own it, grow it and protect it. Unfortunately, that means protecting it from the owner himself at the moment.

After an acrimonious departure from the Eagles organization, which included a falling out with Eagles owner and one-time best buddy Jeff Lurie, Banner came to Cleveland to prove he could build a winning football organization himself. Of course, every new figurehead who has walked through the doors in Berea over the past 14 years has wanted to prove that. But for Banner, the stakes are now higher than what he signed on for.

There really doesn’t seem to be an in-between for Banner anymore. He’s either going to go down in history as a failure, another chewed-up, spat-out victim of the Cleveland curse, or as one of the great executives the Browns have ever had.

Either he’s going to successfully protect the Browns from the trials and tribulations of an embattled owner, while building the type of organization the Browns haven’t had since the late 1980s, or he’s not, in which case the Browns could very well end up as collateral damage in the instability wrought by the Pilot scandal, and Banner’s tenure will go into the history books as another Browns disaster.

You might not like Joe Banner, but you’re relying on him now. He has the future of your football team in his hands.

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.