Throw the Hammer Down!

More awesome news!

I've joined the staff over at SB Nation's Cleveland Cavaliers blog, Fear the Sword! It's everything you loved about my writing here at Throw the Hammer Down, but with the backing of one of the largest sports media companies around.

BACK FROM THE GRAVE WITH SOME AWESOME NEWS!

Cleveland Jackson, the man behind Chris Grantland, has assembled a super team of writers to bring you the greatest piece of Cavaliers memorabilia ever assembled, CAVS ZINE #2

What exactly is Cavs Zine #2? Easily, it's simply the single most complete bible of Cavaliers fanship ever assembled. Seriously, look at this lineup of writers:

Scott Raab - Author of The Whore of Akron, writer for Esquire

Dawn Griffin - artist, cartoonist and transplanted CLE fan www.zfcomics.com

SPACE FUN MARS - www.igohardnow.com writer, artist and raconteur 

BOOSH - www.igohardnow.com writer and tall guy

Josh Flagner - co-founder www.morethanafan.net

Eric Knappenberger - the @CavsWitness guy on Twitter

Brendan Bowers - founder/proprietor of www.StepienRules.com  

Ben Cox - founder www.benblog.net and writer at www.waitingfornextyear.com

Mike Brenkus - cover artist and @cre8ive_juice guy on Twitter

Scott Sargent - co-founder of www.waitingfornextyear.com

Justin Meiser  - the @CONCEDE guy on Twitter - featured at www.yardbarker.com

Alex Raffalli - PodCAVS founder 

Robert Attenweiler - Founder www.Cadavalier.com, author (w/ Scott Henkle) of the play "Our Greatest Year"

Reshae Hanes - founder, www.CLEfoodgoddess.com 

Sam Drew - founder, www.SamDrewTakesOn.com 

And me! And I get to write about my two greatest loves, the Cavaliers and sandwiches! And it comes with a Michael Stanley flexi disc! Yeah, it's fucking awesome! And it's limited to only 300 copies!

How do you get one? Good question. Details will be unveiled soon. I'll have to come back from the grave one last time to announce how they can get them. 

Back when I started Throw the Hammer Down in February I really had no idea what I wanted it to be. I had found myself writing a lot about the Cavaliers, mostly inspired by the black eye that LeBron left Cleveland on his way out, and decided to branch out and actually try to make this whole basketball writing thing work. And it did. Over time, I brought on some great people to help out (thank yous are below) and got a pretty decent little readership together. And I appreciate all of it. I really did.

Today I was offered and accepted an opportunity to write for I Go Hard Now. I've been following the I Go Hard Now guys on Twitter for a while and have been having a blast talking Cavs, making fun of Samardo Samuels, ripping apart The Walking Dead and discussing seasonal Chipotle burritos, so I'm absolutely thrilled to have an opportunity to join the team and work with these guys. I've been spending this lockout thinking up ideas for pieces to write once the season finally starts back up and I know it's going to be incredibly fun working on those pieces with those guys.

Unfortunately, that kinda means the end of this little blog here. While I'm sad to see it go, I am pretty pumped for what lies ahead at I Go Hard Now.

Before I close this thing down for good, I do need to thank a few people.

thesecitywalls has been with me from day one here and was the first person I reached out to for help starting this off. She's been nothing but awesome, constantly finding the best game photos for each game (yes, even the 50+ point Lakers blowout) and providing a constant source of updates and content. Not going to lie, I'm kinda sad to be shutting this down because of how great she's been, but you all should go follow her ASAP.  I couldn't have kept this thing going without you, so again, thanks so much for all the time and effort.

ignescent designed the awesome, and I do mean awesome, logo for the site and was also the first follower way back when we first launched. I can't stress how happy I was when I first opened your email with the design you came up. Again, you all should go follow her ASAP.

And of course, I have to thank the I Go Hard Now guys for giving me the opportunity to write for them. There are, in no particular order:

@IGOHARDNOW

@MIKEYFIVEBUCKS

@TrizGallo

@_BOOSH_

@spacefunmars

@demeatloaf

@elastyk

And of course, I'll be keeping my personal Tumblr (which I may finally use for something now) so you can keep up with me there or at my new Twitter handle, @AngeloCLE. 

Thanks again to everyone who helped and read along the way. It's been awesome and hope to see you all over at I Go Hard Now in the future.

@AngeloCLE

The "Orange & Blue" Cavs take on The "Showtime" Lakers circa 1988

More rare, classic footage that was brought up tonight on Twitter. HT to BenCox83 for the video.

Mark Price Schools Rookie Allen Iverson

In talking with some fellow Cavs writers on Twitter tonight, I unearthed this incredible play where Mark Price completely owns Allen Iverson during his rookie season. I have no idea why this play isn't talked about more, but goddamn, Price still had it that late in his career.

And there goes the 2011-2012 NBA Season

The NBPA today voted down the owner's latest proposal, pushed to disband the union and are now headed to court to sue the NBA. What does that mean? Basketball won't be back until October of 2012, if we're lucky.

Review: The Whore of Akron by Scott Raab

To say that The Whore of Akron is a book about LeBron James would be a massive over-simplification and would be doing Raab's writing a great disservice. While James' decision to leave the Cavaliers and join forces with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in South Beach is certainly the driving force of the book, The Whore of Akron is a far more complex narrative than it's title would suggest. Despite the obvious hate and vitriol that moved Raab to document James' final season with the Cavaliers and his first with the Heat, The Whore of Akron is a work of love. It is a testament to the love and pride Clevelanders feel towards their city and a man's love towards his wife and child.

The Whore of Akron is largely a memoir of Scott Raab's own life. Raab is a born and mostly raised Clevelander (he spent a few years of his childhood in Los Angeles until his parents divorced) pushing the age of 60. Raab writes with a tone of urgency and seems to be fairly convinced that his time on the Earth is quickly counting down. Reading about his life, I'm not entirely inclined to disagree. Raab's had a rough, drug and alcohol fueled life and, as a memoir, The Whore of Akron reads similarly to the works of Charles Bukowski, specifically Ham on Rye.

Raab writes about his own life with an eye just as critical and cutting as the treatment he gives James. In fact, LeBron James enters into the story mostly as a foil to Raab himself. Throughout the book, Raab writes that the feelings one man feels towards another are simply a mirror reflection of his own feelings towards himself. Raab contrasts himself to James throughout and the comparisons couldn't be any more different. Whereas James is a mere year older than myself (he's currently 26), he's worth millions, is a world-wide brand and is poised to become the greatest and most successful athlete ever. Meanwhile, Raab spent his twenties drunk and high, bumming around some of Cleveland's seedier neighborhoods and doing other horrible things I won't spoil in this review. Suffice to say, Raab's had a colorful life and there were more than a few moments where I stared at the page stunned at something he's done.

While LeBron's sins (wearing a Yankee's cap to Progressive Field, quitting on his team and hometown during the final series against the Celtics, and The Decision) easily pale in comparison to Raab's, the comparison between how the two men have carried those sins with themselves is the most compelling part of the story. Raab's sins have obviously been an enormous burden on his life and he knows he'll never live them down. However, he openly admits that and has, seemingly, grown from them and in the meantime has always remained true and loyal to the things he values, his (second) wife and son, his hometown and his own sense of pride. Meanwhile, James seemingly has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself and his global brand and won't even admit he's made a mistake yet alone try to grow from one.

It's a very subtle and nuanced approach to covering The Decision and it's one I don't expect to go over very well with the ESPN crowd given the complexity of the argument. Also muddling the point is the language Raab uses throughout. Believe it or not, LeBron escapes the harshiest criticisms in the book (that honor goes to former Browns owner Art Modell), and I can easily see Raab being written off as a hateful, vitriolic hypocrite given his tone throughout the book.

But that's too simplistic of a view. Much like Raab uses LeBron as a foil, I couldn't help but read The Whore of Akron and view Raab in the same way he views James. I've always found Raab to be a boorish, hateful writer when it comes to his treatment of James and generally wrote him off as the literary equivalent of a shock jock. However, reading The Whore of Akron makes the source of this hatred clear, Raab's undying sense of loyalty and pride towards the city of Cleveland, which is a feeling I can absolutely relate to.

Raab writes about our mutual hometown with the same feeling of love that he uses towards his wife and son, which is especially pronounced when comparing these passages to the ones he uses to write about James. As he writes about different neighborhoods, I felt as if someone was holding a mirror up to my own personal emotions about them. He writes about the same Cleveland Heights and Lee road that I know, love and call home. He writes about Independence, which is mere minutes from where my parents live and where I grew up, in a way that brings me back to all the good times I had there as a child. And he writes about other suburbs in a way that makes me want to go explore them and know them as well as I know my stomping grounds.

It's these brief flashes of humanity and love sprinkled throughout that make The Whore of Akron such a compelling read. If this was simply an inside story on the buildup to and aftermath of The Decision, there'd be no point to read it. However, by taking the story of LeBron James and holding it up as a mirror into the life, failings and loves of a man like Scott Raab, The Whore of Akron transforms itself into an amazingly introspective study on what it means to be a man. It's easily the best love story to the city of Cleveland I've ever read and there are some truly genuinely moving sections within. In particular, there's a scene where a doped up Raab is hallucinating a conversation with James over some peach cobbler that is one of the most powerfully moving pieces of introspection I've ever read.

Simply put, The Whore of Akron is a must-read. While at it's heart it's a story of two NBA seasons, the basketball is secondary to a truly compelling story of man doing the best to live with his past and another man so concerned with his legacy and future that he's missed everything he's had all along. It's powerful stuff and easily at the top of my list for best books of 2011.

- Scott Rabb, The Whore of Akron

It's a cold Thursday night in Cleveland. Samardo Samuels is snuggling up on the couch with his iPad, getting ready for Big Bang Theory. Suddenly, he has an idea for a tweet. A tweet so good, it had to be sent out immediately. No time to think it over or second guess it. Oh no, it had to be dropped onto the internet as soon as possible. And so, it begins:

Meanwhile, I'm on my couch, waiting for news on the lockout because I'm a total sucker like that. I read a tweet so dumb that my mind shuts down for a moment. I read it again. Yes, it says what I think it says. Yes, it's both a humblebrag and offensively homophobic. I respond:

But I'm not the only one to notice the tweet:

Samardo responds:

We inquire further:

Samardo clarifies that he's not homophobic:

The Internet collectively scratches it's head:

Samardo yet again clarifies:

It suddenly makes sense. Samardo Samuels is a complete fucking moron:

But it turns out that we were all wrong. Turns out it that Samardo's (Verified) Twitter account had been temporarily turned into a fan page and someone else had sent out the offending tweet:

To prove it, Samardo immediately went back to Tweeting what he typically does, incoherent garbage:

The offending fan who hijacked Samardo's Twitter page is later identified:

Do yourself a favor and follow all the I Go Hard Now guys and everyone else involved with this on Twitter. Seriously, they're the best and I was literally in tears during this whole thing. I feel like this is also a good time to point out that all of these Tweets are going to be preserved forever in the Library of Congress. Thank's for being you Samardo!

Breaking News: 

Samardo Samuels is a big dumb asshole

I've been reading how Eyenga's been working a lot on his game over this extended offseason, but this isn't exactly what I was expecting...