Nikki Yeager

If you're not from Cleveland you don't have to read this whole post. It probably won't make any sense to you. I'm about to go on a sports rant and it's well deserved after the hell Clevelanders endured tonight. 

After all, our main celebrity left forever. Lebron is gone. 

Now this might not seem like a big deal. In fact, Twitter-ers everywhere are up in arms about how silly we Clevelanders are being. They say we're immature, we're overreacting, we're crazy. 

But before anyone else starts knocking our outrage think of this- What other city has been more trampled on, abused and neglected (especially in sports) in the last 20 years? We had the Browns stolen from us and then had to wage a vicious legal war on the city to retain the rights to the Browns franchise name and record. We had to deal with Art Modell screwing us big time. In basketball Michael Jordan came in with 'The Shot' and left the entire city crying for years. Oh, and just look at the stats about the Indians if you're curious about the last time we won anything significant. 

In short we're cursed. 

So when Lebron came around we rallied as a city. That's what Cleveland does- we support our players. When a game in on in Cleveland, everyone watches it. And those are season games, not just championships. Before the world was watching Lebron we already spent 80% of our sports news time talking about him. Back in the day, when he wasn't of king status yet, we already had billboards erected in his honor. We took him from the ground up and talked about him 24/7 in order to get the world to pay attention.

Go into Cleveland a week ago and ask anyone about Lebron. You could've asked the mayor of Cleveland or a homeless man on the street. Everyone was behind him as a player and as a person. A week ago if you tried to insult him you would've gotten a good kick in the side. 

We Clevelanders are the reason Lebron is where he is when he is. Sure, his sheer talent would have catupulted him to success eventually but we offered something different. We offered him complete unity as a city and a support system that was unbreakable. Other cities have sports fans. But Clevelanders are all sports fans. No one was out of the Cavs loop. No one from Cleveland ever loses their Cleveland heart.

That's just not how we roll. 

And now Lebron just ups and goes away. 

I get what all you New Yorkers out there are saying - burning jerseys does seem extreme. But other cities have it all. They have awesome restaurants, great clubs, free music, beautiful parks... passenger trains...jobs. Cleveland isn't big on any of those things. We have a heap of run down factories that haven't been working for the last 20 years and a long line of sports embarrassments. 

But we did have Lebron and we did have the Cavs. And that was our hope.

Now that's gone. We still have the Cavs and I'm still behind them 100 percent. But the celebrity WE made is gone. 

And I've decided Lebron gets no more mentions on my blog. If you're from Cleveland and you write on a blog, on a newsletter, in a newpaper, in the media... anything... I think we should just stop mentioning him all together. Why? Because we made him famous and the only way to take that away is to stop mentioning him. Let's just ban his name from everything, let's take his fame away. 

We gave him a huge ego, now let's crush it.

Or at least give it a little bruise.

Because that's a lot longer lasting than fire to jerseys.