Gilbert talks Cavs

From his latest blog:

Looking Back on the Cleveland Series
I’m very disappointed that I wasn’t healthy enough to help them through the First Round. It was a very disappointing year for me personally, but as far as team success, they should walk around with their heads held high. When I got hurt, the critics said they weren’t going to be able to make the playoffs and I think they proved everybody wrong.

I know they’re disappointed at losing in the First Round to Cleveland, but they had a great player over there in LeBron, and they did a great job.

It was an entertaining series. The hype and drama behind it was bigger than I expected (but, I didn’t expect DeShawn to call LeBron “overrated,” either). To each his own. That’s how he felt and we had to stand by him. They had their own little problems off the court I guess, so he had to do what he had to do and we had to stand by him as a team and get him as comfortable as possible and help him. I think we could have helped him a little bit more. We could have trapped LeBron a little bit more than we did to get the ball out of this hand and let everybody else beat us the whole series, but we played him straight up and he straight up killed us, like he did during the regular season.

But, it was entertaining. On the days I wasn’t playing, I enjoyed the hype. I know a lot of critics and sports analysts were killing us, I heard the Charles Barkley thing, but at the end of the day, they were watching. And at the end of the day, that’s all you want for your series are the viewers.

Everybody was focused on the Shaq and San Antonio series, and all of the sudden, people say a few things back and forth and the whole world is watching Cleveland-Washington. You had entertainers showing up, and you had entertainers making diss tapes. I’ve been in this league, I’ve been around the league, I’ve been watching the league for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never seen anything this wild in a series in my life.

But let’s get one thing straight. Everybody thinks everybody hates everybody, and they do a little, but only to the extent of, “I hate your fans, I hate your team.” You don’t really hate them though. It was more like, they’ve been beating our butts the last couple years, we hate them. And they like us because they’ve been beating our butts. It’s like the bully mentality. We hate the bully, but the bully loves us!

It was amazing though, the whole city of Cleveland was into it. A couple of us were in the mall in Cleveland and a guy came up to us and was like, “I know somewhere you guys haven’t been before …” And it caught us off guard. We were thinking he was going to be like, “The Gap!” So we just were like, “Where?” And he goes, “The Second Round!” And he just took off running. We were like, what is this? This is crazy.

But that is really a Cavaliers town. I love cities like that. They support their team, they’re not the bandwagon jumpers. Some of my Halo players showed up at the game wearing my jerseys and they got peanuts, cans, beers thrown at them. They needed an escort out of the arena because they had my jerseys on! But I like stuff like that. It shows that you’re down for your team. I’m a fan too. If I had one team, I’d be a diehard fan. I’d have the body paint and everything on. If you’re going to be about sports, you might as well give it your all.

Luke Walton paged me after Game 6 and said, “Why don’t you take off that Easter outfit.” I didn’t have white! So I had to wear some clothes that I usually wear on my Miami trips. The only thing I had that was close to white was beige. So I got clowned for wearing it, and I got fined $10,000 for it because I didn’t have a jacket on. But that’s OK. I had to go with the theme. I liked what the city did with the White Out. This by far was the best playoff performance that the organization has put together out of all the years that I’ve been here.

Is that too much quoting? Sorry Gil! I'm sure everyone who reads this will click through to yours anyhow.

I love the perception he got from the city. I've never felt like Cleveland was that much of a Cavs town. Even at the playoff games, I feel like the crowd is too sedate. I swear, we stand and cheer more during timeouts, while the scoreboard is telling us to, than in game, when we should be deafening the players.

He also talks about how he's gone if the Wizards don't bring back Antawn Jamison. Of course, Jamison would be an amazing fit on the Cavs. Look back on the conversation about using Boobie vs Z to screen for Lebron. What if you used a big who could shoot the 3? Best of both worlds. We'll save an discussions about offseason moves for the offseason, but it's something to think about and hope for.