The Cleveland Cavaliers Are Using the NBA Playoffs to Disrupt Your Narrative

I struggle when the Cleveland Cavaliers are in the NBA Playoffs. Not because I don’t enjoy it, and not because it forces me to cling on to a towel because I need something on which to displace my stress. I struggle because I want to remember everything about every game, an impossibility if you don’t have an alien brain like LeBron James that allows him to remember a play from 10 years ago just by closing his eyes.

I want to remember how the Cavs went on a 10–0 run. I want to remember the shot in the middle of the third quarter that broke an offensive drought. I want to remember LeBron’s reaction on the bench when Tristan Thompson levels an enormous block. This is impossible, of course. Only Scarlett Johansson is capable of using more than 20 percent of her brain. But I try to soak in every moment anyway.

One of the best things about the NBA playoffs, especially when you’re deeply invested in a team like I am with the Cavs, is the narrative that’s weaved through each individual game. The Internet, and Vines in particular, have made it easier to remember the overarching story of every game, the introduction, the conflict, the climax and the solution.

In the Cavs surprisingly competitive first round series against the Detroit Pistons, there’s been an episodic feel to each individual game. In Game 1, there was a mixture of “Oh god what if the Cavs lose in the first round will the city burn to the ground with anger where will I take my family for safety?” followed by Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving quickly quelling those fears by showing up in ways we all dreamt they would when the Big 3 was initially brought together.

In Game 2, we marveled at the barrage of 3-pointers that buried the Pistons in the second half and chuckled at Stanley Johnson’s postgame notion that he’d rented a room inside LeBron’s head after a double digit loss. But Game 3, Game 3 felt like the climax, the part of the book that, after you’ve finished and placed it back on your bookshelf, is the 500 words or so you’ll always remember.

LeBron’s vicious dunk to open the Cavs scoring. LeBron’s bucket at the buzzer just before halftime, the type of shot overshadowed by others bigger than it in stature yet just as important. Tristan Thompson taking Andre Drummond’s shoes, coat and lunch money on the offensive glass. J.R. Smith purchasing, and subsequently becoming owner of Detroit with a Comerica Park-sized 3 in front of a couple Motown Bros.

But this Kyrie Irving dagger, a shot that defied both physics and time constraints, was the perfect ending. Birthed out of a moment of brilliance involving a sharpie and a whiteboard, it was bigger than simply securing a probable first round sweep when the Cavs retake the court on Sunday. It brought pure, unadulterated joy out of LeBron James, taking another narrative, that the Cavs locker room resembles a socially awkward 21-year-old making small talk on his first Tinder date and smashing it into a thousand pieces.

Narratives do one of two things. They continue on in the shape they’ve already taken, or they’re twisted and shifted into something else entirely. The Cavs have used these first three games of the 2016 playoffs to mold their regular season storylines into something unrecognizable. And I’m totally here for it.