Dear Kyrie,
I took some time to process my feelings on your leaving before writing this, and found it surprisingly not as difficult as I expected it’d be. I guess we all kind of knew it was coming — these last few months were just a slow bleed out before the final blow.
After the reports came out of your unhappiness in Cleveland, that you were going days without talking to anyone in camp, and had this torrid relationship with the man creating the shadow you felt helplessly trapped in, I wanted to believe it was all heretic. Just pundits grasping at rumor straws to fill the silence of an unusually inactive off-season. I was confident the next Woj Bomb was going to come in “April Fools!” fashion, saying the whole thing was fabricated by a salty housewife in the Bay waiting for her next cookbook tour to start.
But it wasn’t.
You ran off to Asia on your Nike tour while it was all unfolding, presumably obligated to make a social media showing of your time there during what was otherwise frustratingly full of crickets. Each report that didn’t get a rebuttal from you made it harder for us to continue creating them on your (the City’s?) behalf. Each day we didn’t get a reminder of the player we’d grown to love the last six years made it harder to stand tall and defend your corner. Each over-analyzed cryptic message with all the hypothesized hidden meanings and far-fetched theories became easier to believe.
Declaring your desire to leave early on made it easier to detach. To prepare. It really helped lessen the inevitable blow.
Thanks for that.

No one knows what the future will hold, all we have is our present and the memories of our past. When I look back on our time together I’ll remember the happy times, the joy that brought me to tears, and fullness that you and the rest of that 2016 team gave our deprived city. It really was special, what we had.
But it’s time to move on. Time to tighten the grip on what we — the fans, not you and I — have now and give this King-led team all of our current heart.
It’s not goodbye obviously, it’s see you later. On October 17th at your old home court. You in your new threads and new number, surrounded by your new teammates who I earnestly hope are the wingmen you’ve been looking for. I hope you thrive in Boston, that you find that unoccupied pedestal you deserve. And that you never make it out of the Conference Finals while on it. I want you to be happy, just not as happy as you were with us.
Thanks for a good ride, Ky. I won’t hold it against you for leaving, but don’t be surprised if your new number gets “new number, who dis?” in return.
CLE Forever,
Sarah
