Canada starts its pre-season! And, about the NBA Finals...

With a pair of games Monday and Tuesday evenings, the CFL has started its pre-season in preparation for opening night on June 25th! The Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeated the second-year Ottawa Redblacks (I refuse to write REDBLACKS every time this year - I felt like I was yelling at my readers!) 37-10 on Monday, and last night the Winnipeg Blue Bombers upset the Toronto Argonauts by a touchdown, 34-27, on the strength of too many Argo turnovers. I've noticed that the CFL, having only two pre-season games, uses its starters more than its neighbors to the south - listening to the first half last night, there was a real sense of playing a real game of football, not a uniformed scrimmage, although LOTS of men got into the action. 

Of course, I only listened to the first half of the Canadian game because there was a MUCH more important event going on just south of Toronto a few hundred miles! I know the ball's the wrong shape (and the court's wooden and much more indoors), but you've GOT to admire the work of LeBron James and what's left of the Cleveland Cavaliers, already distant underdogs to the Golden State Warriors before superstar Kyrie Irving went down...remembering the loss of Kevin Love in the first round of the playoffs...and of Anderson Varejao in December for the season...and then to have Iman Shumpert re-injure his shoulder in the first quarter last night and have it mostly useless the rest of the night...and yet somehow, they're leading the 67-win Warriors two games to one after winning last night! Normally, I'd be a Warrior fan - I grew up in NorCal, and remember the last Warriors title, forty years ago; they play a beautiful brand of basketball, and I have as much admiration for them as any team I've watched play. But if the Cavaliers somehow won this series? No team with at least 65 wins has ever failed to win the Finals, let alone to a team fourteen games below them, let alone to a team missing its 2nd and 3rd best players, let alone to a team whose now-second best player is an undrafted Aussie from St. Mary's University who looks like an accountant and has to show his ID to get into the locker rooms!!

Essentially, LeBron James is willing a team of castoffs and second stringers to a title riding his coattails. On Jimmy Kimmel's show last night, he referred to the series as being "tied up 1-1 between Golden State and LeBron James", and he's not that far from the truth. Matthew Dellavadova has been literally unbelievable, JR Smith and James Jones have played over their heads, Timofey Mosgov and Tristan Thompson have had their coming-out parties in this playoff series...but it's all because of The Man. It's fascinating to hear the distinction the announcers give Curry and James: Curry is "the MVP", but LeBron is "the best player in the world".

Yep. That's about the size of it. And if he wins this series more or less by himself, to bring that mystical title to starving Cleveland? 

There would be no words for it. Unprecedented. And he's halfway there.