I’m not a fan of the city of Cleveland or the Cavaliers. I’m not even a fan of basketball or the NBA at all.
But what the Cleveland Cavaliers and the scoreboard operators did last night during Golden State Warrior free throws was both clever and entertaining. In Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers put the Pittsburgh Steelers’ logo up on the big screen to incite boos. They did it to distract Golden State Warrior free throw shooters.
#cavaliers throw up #steelers emblem to stoke boos during #warriors free throw. It worked. #nbafinals pic.twitter.com/KJXeezyeWJ
— Bob Redell (@BobNBC) June 10, 2015
According to an Ohio Sports Columnist, they also showed Ben Roethlisberger on the screen.
you’re in the nba finals, do you really need to put a pic of roethlisberger up to get people to boo #cavswarriors
— Bud Shaw (@budshaw) June 10, 2015
According to one of our Facebook fans, putting a logo to draw boos and noise from the crowd during free throws is a common practice for the franchise:
Dave Bryan, a Steelers Depot writer, would be the man to whom she is referring. He took offense to it:
“The city of Cleveland hasn’t celebrated a major professional sports championship since 1964, so I suppose a lot of the Cavalier fans aren’t used to basketball as theyre just bandwagoners. Besides, being as most of them are probably fans of the Cleveland Browns as well, they’re more accustomed to booing their own team.”
A commenter on the article also called it an example of Cleveland’s “little brother syndrome.”
While that may be at least partially true, the arrogance of Steelers fans is on full display here. Just like Patriots fans, everything always has to be about jealousy and the superiority of their favorite team.
Look, I know that they are showing their hatred for your team, but you have to find this at least a little bit funny. I think that if it was the Ravens’ logo up there, I would still think it was hilarious.
Having said all that, did it work in the Cavaliers’ favor?
It appears so.
According to Basketball Reference, in Games 1 and 2, the Warriors converted 90.9% and 76.0% of their free throws respectively. Last night, they converted just 58.3%.
That is totally worth any criticism that the organization might receive from it.
