NBA Finals Predictions 2016: Cavaliers in Six

Sanders pictured with actor Danny Glover, known as one of Hollywood's biggest supporters of the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. It's an Oakland thing.

Let's close out this amazing month with some whimsy.

NBA finals: Bernie Sanders=Golden State, so Donald Trump=Cleveland? (because the GOP convention is going to be there?)

In any case,  /r/NBA (the NBA community on Reddit) seems to be grudgingly behind superstar Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Golden State Warriors heading into the final series (here's their top-ranked meme regarding this). Don't ask me why, that's just how it's breaking there. I'm just reporting it to you.

One of the top-ranked Lebron James memes on /r/NBA. It is based on this movie scene..

Television sports history: if you're interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend ESPN's 30 for 30 production Believeland, which I saw a few days ago, about the history of being a fan of the Cleveland teams of the various sports, specifically the heartbreak associated with how they lose championships in absurd fashion at the last minute.  The last championship they won was in Dec. 1964, and everything since then is agony upon agony.

The program does a nice job of tying in the agony of Cleveland fandom with the decline, fall, and attempted restoration of Cleveland as a great American city, a topic I'm very much into.  I got to spend some time there back in 2004, on a cross-country road trip, taking pictures all over the downtown. It's a fascinating place, with a unique history.  There is a lot more to Cleveland in American history than people realize (hint: guess which American city is historically most associated with the petroleum industry? Yes, even more than Houston.)

As it would happen, the Republican national convention this year is in the arena in which the Cavaliers play their home game in downtown Cleveland, namely the Quicken Loans Arena, commonly called The Q, which opened in 1994 as Gund Arena.

Gund Arena, now the Q, was part of a wider effort at the renovation of downtown Cleveland after a long era of decline. It replaced Richfield Coliseum which opened in 1974 and was demolished in 1999 (during which time the Cavaliers were mostly awful).

The Q seats around 20,000 people, depending on the configuration, which is pretty much the standard for arenas across the NBA. The Moda Center seats almost the same number of people (compared to Memorial Coliseum's 13,000), and by comparison the largest arena in the league, Madison Square Garden in New York, seats less than 22,000.

Construction broke ground April 27, 1991.  It opened on Oct 17, 1994, almost exactly one year before the Moda Center in Portland (built 1992-1995).  Like the Moda Center, it is home not only to an NBA franchise but a minor league professional hockey team as well.

Quicken Loans arena in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The historical center of Cleveland is along the Cuyahoga River near its mouth on Lake Erie.

Cuyahoga River basin showing the location of the cities of Akron and Cleveland. (source)

But Trump is aiming to give his acceptance speech not in the NBA arena but in the bigger NFL football stadium in Cleveland, as Obama did at Mile High in Denver in 2008.

Conclusion: Trump's playing a whole different game than Sanders.

Unfortunate incident at a zoo at the other end of Ohio.

NBA finals prediction: on a pure hunch, I'm picking the Cavaliers to win in 6. I know, I know, that means they win two games on the road. Moreover,they fail to let down their fans, and all of the city of Cleveland, and all of the wider world who for some reason don't like Golden State, by actually winning at home in Game 6 on Jun 16.  The entire arena is in shock of disbelief, even worse than the times that the Cleveland teams screwed the pooch at the last minute. Did this actually just happen!?

During the  the English Civil War (1642–1651), the term Cavalier, or Royalist, referred to the supporters of King Charles I (d. 1649) against the Roundheads, or Parliamentarians.