The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Cavs to open camp for their 50th season
The Cavaliers are set to open training camp for their 50th season. Jeff Schudel looks back on his memories of attending their first home game at the Cleveland Arena in 1970.
The Cavaliers will embark on their 50th season on Sept. 29th when media day marks the beginning of training camp. The Cavs have gone through many changes in half a century, and so has the NBA.
The NBA now has 30 teams. It was a 14-team league in 1969-70 and a 17-team league in 1970-71 with the Cavaliers, Portland Trail Blazers and Buffalo Braves as expansion teams. The NBA included the Cincinnati Royals, San Diego Rockets and Seattle Super Sonics 50 years ago. Back then eight teams made the playoffs. Now 16 teams advance.
The Royals became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1972 and then the Kansas City Kings in 1975 before moving to Sacramento in 1985.
The Braves lasted eight seasons in Buffalo before being moved to San Diego for the 1978-79 season. They were renamed the Clippers and moved to Los Angeles in 1984.
The Super Sonics, an expansion team in Seattle in 1967, moved to Oklahoma City and renamed the Thunder.
The Rockets, a 1967 expansion team with the Super Sonics, lasted only four years in San Diego before moving to Houston in 1971.
It is somehow appropriate Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, previously named Quicken Loans Arena, was updated to a spectacular facility 50 years after the Cavaliers called old Cleveland Arena home.
I was there for the Cavaliers’ first-ever home game on Oct. 28, 1970 in old Cleveland Arena — seating capacity 11,000 for basketball.
I was a senior at West Geauga High School. Classmate Gary Schaefer and I were sitting behind one of the baskets. Tickets in those days were $2.50, $4, $5 and $6. I remember the Cavaliers cheerleaders handing out these little wine glasses with the swashbuckling Cavalier printed on it it wine and gold colors. I also remember it getting knocked off a shelf on my desk about 20 years ago and shattering on the floor.
The Cavaliers were already 0-7 and on their way to 15-67 after opening with seven straight road games, but no one in the arena cared as the Cavaliers warmed up on one end of the court to meet the San Diego Rockets warming up at the other end. The Cincinnati Royals played occasionally at Cleveland Arena in the years before the Cavaliers were born, but this was the real deal — Cleveland was in the NBA.
The Cavaliers lost, 110-99, on an entertaining night. Elvin Hayes scored 40 for Rockets. Bingo Smith and John Johnson each scored 19 for the Cavaliers.
Bill Fitch was the Cavaliers’ first coach. He famously said, “Just remember. The name’s Fitch, not Houdini.”
Fitch coached the Cavaliers through the 1978-79 season. They had 21 head coaches, including interim head coaches, through the first 49 years. John Beilein, hired May 14 to replace Larry Drew, who took over when Tyronn Lue was fired six games into the 2018-19 season, is coaching in the NBA for the first time after 44 years of coaching high school and college basketball.
The Cavaliers were 19-63 last season. Las Vegas has set the over-under for Cavaliers victories in 2019-20 at 24.5. In that regard, things have changed, but circled back to that first season. Beilein’s message to start his first season as head coach could be a variation of the quip uttered by Fitch:
“Just remember. The name’s Beilein, not Houdini.”
Browns upbeat
The Browns will know a lot more about themselves at the conclusion of their game with the Ravens on Sept. 29. But for now they are as upbeat as they were in training camp despite their 1-2 record.
Wide receiver Jarvis Landry said the Browns might look back failing to score at the end of the game with the Rams on Sept. 22 as the positive turning point of the season despite losing. He made sure to pass that sentiment on to head coach Freddie Kitchens.
The Browns had firstand-goal at the Rams’ 4 with 43 seconds remaining, trailing, 20-13. Baker Mayfield threw three incomplete passes and then threw an interception on fourth down.
The entire sequence was chaotic. It made sense to want to leave the Rams with precious little time to drive for a game-winning field goal if the Browns had scored, but the game ended and Kitchens had two timeouts left. Not using at least one of them to settle things down after an incomplete pass was as big a mistake as not calling a running play for Nick Chubb on one of the four chances. Kitchens was critical of himself for not calling a running play.
“I just think the emotions of how that game ended and having four opportunities from the 4-yard line and not getting it done, I think that’s discouraging in a sense for anybody,” Landry said Sept. 26. “I think as a team we were in situations like this last year, and we learned a lot about ourselves in those moments.
“This was a moment that I kind of took a step back and just was like, ‘This was one of those things that can catapult us to something different, something new.’ That’s why I really mentioned it to him.”
Landry has 10 catches for 161 yards and no touchdowns. • Odell Beckham Jr., despite being constantly double-teamed, has 19 catches for 288 yards, highlighted by an 89-yard catch and run for a touchdown against the Jets on Monday Night Football. He had six catches for 56 yards against the Rams last week.
Beckham and Landry, predictably, are tops in catches among the Browns wide receivers. Chubb with 11 has one more catch than Landry.
One reason the Browns have struggled is wide receiver Rashard Higgins suffered a knee injury in the first quarter of the season opener against Tennessee and hasn’t played since. He is listed as questionable for the game with the Ravens, but that could be wishful thinking. He was limited on Sept. 25 and did not practice the next two days.
Damion Ratley is filling Higgins’ role. Ratley started against the Jets and had two catches. He had three catches against the Rams last week. But it isn’t the same. Mayfield and Higgins have been working together since OTAs in 2018 when Mayfield was declared the backup quarterback by former coach Hue Jackson. Higgins was also on the second team.
“Obviously, anytime you lose a guy that I had chemistry with, it’s tough, but I think Damion has played great,” Mayfield said. “Obviously, he had a few catches last week — some big catches on third down. I think he’s done his job, and that’s what we ask everybody to do, whoever’s playing.”
Higgins caught six passes as a rookie in 2016 and 27 in 2017. He caught 33 of his 39 passes and all four touchdowns last year after Mayfield replaced Tyrod Taylor in the second quarter of the third game (Jets) of the season.
I didn’t know that
… Until I read my Snapple bottle cap:
Sloths move so slowly that algae can grow on them … Corn always has an even number of rows on each ear … The dot over the letter I is called a tittle …In 1900, onethird of all automobiles in New York were powered by electricity … Queen Isabella I of Spain, who funded Columbus’ voyage across the ocean, claimed to have bathed only twice in her life … Newborns can’t cry actual tears. That usually happens when they are between three weeks and three months old.