英语访谈节目:骑士队为克里夫兰城带来52年来的第一冠

JOHN YANG:And now we some perspective on all of this from Greg Swartz. Greg Swartz writes about the Cleveland Cavaliers for The Bleacher Report. He joins us from Toledo, Ohio. And Kevin Blackistone is a sports writer for The Washington Post. He's also a regular contributor at ESPN and teaches sports journalism at the University of Maryland.

Greg, Kevin, thank you both for joining us.

Greg, let me start with you with may be a simple question, but how big a deal is this in Cleveland?

GREG SWARTZ, Bleacher Report: I think this is a bigger deal than anybody could have imagined.

You look at our history as a sports community, everybody knows it's been 52 years, but really, for the Cavaliers, 46 seasons. They have own been to the NBA Finals — this is now the third time, obviously the first time that they have won it.

This is a big deal not just for Cleveland, but for Akron, for Northeast Ohio, for all of Ohio just to finally, finally say, hey, we got one, we're champions. It is something that hasn't been done in a very long time, and it's a tremendous feeling right now in Northern Ohio.

JOHN YANG: Kevin, you have been watching sports and writing about sports for a long time.

KEVIN BLACKISTONE, The Washington Post: Yes.

JOHN YANG: How many droughts are there like this? Compare this to previous droughts? And what droughts are left for big sports cities?

KEVIN BLACKISTONE: Well, obviously, you have the Chicago Cubs. That's probably the longest drought going. The Boston Red Sox got over their drought at the turn of the millennium.

Even if you didn't have the entire history of Cleveland, just what LeBron James was able to do transform the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise into a championship team, what he's done there just in the past two years since arriving is amazing in and of itself.

So, this is a huge deal, not just in Cleveland, but nationally. This is an amazing sports story.

JOHN YANG: Greg, Kevin just talked about the LeBron James departure and then the return. Six years ago, he was the most hated man in Cleveland, I would imagine. Can you have imagined back then this happening now?

GREG SWARTZ: No, no. I will remember that night forever in 2010, when he made his decision.

That was — man, that was your girlfriend breaking up with you. That was somebody stealing your dog. That was every, like, bad thing that could happen to you, your heart being ripped out. And at that time, nobody could have thought he was going to come back, just four years later, still in his prime, and really did deliver a championship here in year two.

I think it's just phenomenal, because you look at it, his last two years in Cleveland, they won 66 and 60 games. The four years that he was gone, they had the worst record in the entire NBA. And now the two years that he's back, two finals trips, one championship.

And you can make the argument he's still arguably playing the best basketball of his career after that finals performance. So you're not only happy about the present, but you look at the next couple of years, and they look pretty good as well.

JOHN YANG: Well, Kevin, let's look at that.

Two years since he's back, he takes them to the title.

KEVIN BLACKISTONE: Right.

JOHN YANG: Takes them to the championship series twice, takes them to the title.

Where does this put LeBron James now in the game of basketball against Michael Jordan, against all the others?

KEVIN BLACKISTONE: Sure.

Well, Magic Johnson tweeted out last night that it puts him in the category of the top five players all time in the NBA. And I would say that is absolutely the case. Let's forget about the fact that he led in every category in this finals, points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocked shots, of all the players that were playing.

And let's forget that two games he scored 82 points games combined to force this game seven. But let's just look at the fact that he carried a rookie head coach in Tyronn Lue to this championship.

A year ago, he took David Blatt, another rookie NBA head coach, to this championship. When he was with Miami, he won championships with Erik Spoelstra as a head coach, who, when he got there, had just been a head coach for a couple of years in this league and was vastly unknown.

And when he was originally in Cleveland, most of the time, he was there, he had Mike Brown, who, when Mike Brown arrived there, was a rookie head coach in the NBA. That's just how dynamic it is a talent it is that you have in LeBron James, not only as a player, but also as a leader.

And you're talking about someone who has developed these leadership skills despite his upbringing, coming up in a single-parent household, as everyone knows the story, socioeconomic problems, shoving them here and there in Akron where he grew up. And he's such a mature individual, one of the most mature, well-spoken, smartly spoken athletes that we have in pro sports today.

JOHN YANG: And, Greg, you say it's not just Cleveland. It's the whole region. Talk about the region's attachment. And his high school games in Akron would be on ESPN.

GREG SWARTZ: He is fully immersed in the region. I attended the University of Akron. He was on campus all the time in the summer. I would go to the rec center. He would be working out with his trainer. I would go past the James A. Rhodes Arena, he would be in there playing pickup basketball with Chris Paul.

He would be sitting there talking to some of his buddies. And you just would walk by him on your way to class. He doesn't just talk about Akron and Cleveland and profess his love in words. He's there, he's involved, he's hands-on. He still lives just right outside of Akron. He still loves the community very, very much.

JOHN YANG: Greg Swartz and Kevin Blackistone, thanks for being with us.

KEVIN BLACKISTONE: Thank you, John.

GREG SWARTZ: Thank you.