Saturday, February 7, 2009

Memorable Cleveland Reversals



After LeBron officially registered his 31st double-double on Wednesday night (21st overall in that category, well behind Chris Kaman and Andrew Bogut), it got us thinking about some other memorable about-faces that have unfolded in recent Cleveland sports memory.

Keeping with the theme, CursedCleveland.com would like to take back our patently racist story about the Buckeyes recruiting too many white guys. I'd like to do so many things differently than I originally had with that piece. Like add some insensitive Asian humor, and maybe even go after the Jews. Hindsight is after all, 20/20. That is unless you have alzheimers
.

So here's just a few of Cleveland-related reversals, in honor of LeBron's double-double performance.

BOTTLEGATE - The year was 2001 and Browns fans will forever remember the unforeseen tragedy that culminated with fans lobbing guided missiles in the shape of plastic beer bottles towards the field at Cleveland Browns Stadium. All because the referees overturned a Quincy Morgan catch after a review that arguably should have never been allowed, because a successive play had been run. The hilarious scene that ensued drew the following comments from team President Carmen Policy:

"Those are plastic bottles and I don't think they carry much of a wallop..I don't think this is an example of life and limb being at risk. No one got hurt."

I know what you're thinking: Refs originally thought Quincy Morgan had actually made a key catch in an NFL sanctioned football contest?

RICKY DAVIS' ALMOST TRIPLE DOUBLE - In March of 2003, the Cavs were already in full-scale sabotage mode (Why Jim Paxson didn't get GM of the year for this retroactively, we'll never know). They were playing the Utah Jazz on a night Milt Palacio went off for 20 points and Jumaine Jones exploded for 23. But the headline of the night was "Get Buckets" Davis attempting to get a fraudulent rebound by missing a shot on the wrong basket to complete a triple double. Apparently he didn't realize at the time that you actually miss shots unintentionally, like the King, to get credit for an offensive board. Interesting tidbit, DeShawn Stevenson was having none of it and fouled him. Perhaps that's where his on-going feud with the Cavaliers started.

PHIL SAVAGE FIRED..THEN UNFIRED - In December of 2005, an internal conflict between John Collins and Phil Savage led to reports that circulated on the Browns flagship WTAM 1100 that Savage had been fired after just one year as GM. (They were apparently arguing over which SWAC game Phil would be permitted to scout). Romeo Crennel had allegedly backed Savage in this clash of non-football minds, eventually leading to Collins' forced resignation. It marked the first and last time one of Romeo's schemes actually worked.

Are we missing any others?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

BSmith HATES coming up with witty headlines

Anonymous said...

I think Katzenmoyer was a Jew, if that helps.

Or maybe he hated Jews. Either way.

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