You’re kidding right? How many people actually believe the Mantis is closing forever? 4? 5? Um, hello does no one remember this tweet from Cedar Point in July?
Hey @KingJames – come back to the @cavs and we'll rename one of our coasters, "King James!" Ball in your court, sir. RT, #Ohio!
But then I put on my Google Search hard hat and dug a little deeper:
And I found this quote from Bryan Edwards, the PR Manager at Cedar Point talking about how they would rename the coaster- “We haven’t really determined to what degree we would do it,” Mr. Edwards said. “It could be just a fun weekend renaming, or rename a coaster for the season, or perhaps at the end of the year, rename one permanently”
“A fun weekend renaming.” “Perhaps at the end of the year.”
That’s all you need to read right there, guys. Anything big happening around October 19th? Anyone have a season starting around then? Any big athlete making a return? The Cavs season starts October 30th. What better way for Cedar Point to gain some publicity and good PR than to have the renaming of their coaster coincide with the beginning of arguably the most anticipated season in Ohio sports history? You think that’s just a coincidence?
Pretty sure little ol’ Bottlegate.com just scooped everyone in America.
My guess is it’s called “Return of The King” and I bet Lebron is even in attendance.
At first glance you’d probably think “Shut the hell up, Mike. You homer.” But let’s look a little deeper. Obviously if this were an Olympic year and not the FIBA championships, Team USA would be heavily favored. But this isn’t the “Dream Team” and it’s definitely not the “Redeem Team.” With the losses of Paul George and Kevin Durant plus the heavyweights such as Lebron, Dwight Howard, Kevin Love etc not suiting up for the Red White and Blue; this becomes a much more interesting matchup. If benches were included, Team USA would beat the Cavs. But since we’re talking just starting 5, the lineups look like this:
In player vs player matchups I took each player’s average stats vs. the team of the guy they’re going against from the 13-14 season. Example- Lebron’s stats vs Houston (James Harden’s team) Clearly this doesn’t mean that Harden was guarding Lebron all game, but it’s the closest thing we’ll get to true head-t0-head stats.
Kevin Love vs. Denver: 28 PPG, 13.75 REB, 4.25 AST, 1.5 STL, 0.5 BLK
Winner: Kevin Love. Not even close. Best power forward in the NBA. Faried would have barely made the team if Love had tried out for Team USA this year.
Anthony Davis vs. Anderson Varejao
Anthony Davis vs. Cleveland: 23.5 PTS, 10 REB, 2 AST, 1.5 STL, 5.5 BLK
Anderson Varejao vs. New Orleans: 4 PTS, 9 REB, 0 AST, 1 STL, 1 BLK
Winner: Anthony Davis in a massacre. To be fair, Anthony Davis’s best game against the Cavs came when Varejao didn’t play. Imagine Davis to be around 20 and 10 if he and Varejao faced off today.
Final Tally-
Team USA- 2 wins 1 tie
Cleveland Cavaliers- 2 wins 1 tie
Team USA would have a definite advantage in team shooting and interior defense. But who guards Lebron? Who guards Love? James Harden is literally the worst defender in the NBA and Kevin Love abused Faried and the Nuggets in every game they played last year. Those two huge advantages overshadow whatever favorable matchups Team USA would have against the Cavs.
But according to the final tally this would be a tie, right? Not so fast, my friend. When you have the best basketball player on the planet… along with the best power forward in the league your starting five has a chance to be as good as any team of players assembled. It’s actually kind of a no brainer. Like, I didn’t really NEED to spend two hours looking up stats and matchups for each player because I could have just told you “Cavs win. Easily.” But now there’s proof and numbers to back me up. So congrats Cavs fans, your local team is better than your country’s national team.
PS- This graphic was circulating around the internet in the Spring. I’d say they pretty much nailed it.
Ever since the news broke about the deal involving Kevin Love and the Cavs, I’m sure myself along with every other Cleveland fan had the same thought: “What will go wrong that doesn’t allow this trade to happen?” Well after waiting and waiting, Kevin Love is officially your newest member of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
So in hindsight the Cavs traded 2 relatively unknown commodities in Wiggins and Bennett and a future draft pick for the best power forward in the NBA. Is that bad? Did we break it?
I’m just picturing Love ripping down a defensive rebound and throwing one of his patented long outlet passes to a sprinting Kyrie Irving. Kyrie takes three steps inside the halfcourt line and throws an alley oop to some guy named Lebron James who throws down a monstrous two handed dunk in front of 20,562 deranged, screaming fans. This takes all of 2.6 seconds. And will happen over and over and over again. Holy shit I’m dizzy.
Serious question though. Where do you start and end the parade? Maybe start on East 9th, go up Euclid, weave around and end at the Q? Thats probably the best route, right?
Bottlegate 