One came home from Florida after people whispered that he would and wasted little time in getting his team back on the fast track to success. The other came home from Florida after people whispered that he would, wasted little time in getting his team back on the fast track to success and in his third season, won his sport’s biggest prize. LeBron James trails Urban Meyer by one championship heading into the NBA Finals, which start Thursday night. They’re two of the most polarizing, powerful and popular people in sports, and both are not just from Northeast Ohio but have played leading roles in putting this sports-crazed state back in the national discussion for winning, not for curses or blunders or televised decisions. One is, in his own words, just a kid from Akron. One is a reforming madman from Ashtabula. James and Meyer have more in common than big bank accounts and closets full of Nike gear. They know the spotlight and the pressures that come with it. Meyer once admitted not only to texting recruits in church, but to leaving the field after a national championship win to do the same. He’s still recruiting like crazy and getting the best talent to follow him, but he swears he’s keeping things in the proper perspective. Ohio State was 6-7 in a tumultuous season before Meyer took over and won 24 straight, then lost three of four, then ran off 13 straight amid quarterback changes and long odds to win the national championship last season. Maybe it was Meyer’s best coaching job, and maybe it was the most meaningful given his Buckeye roots and the adversity his team encountered, but when the smoke and confetti cleared he talked up the Big Ten as a whole and preached about his players buying in and understanding that even more pressure and spotlight were coming. The best way for a Cleveland Cavaliers team full of guys who had been on a bunch of 25-win teams and not in many playoff games to adjust to what’s been a wild playoff run was to follow the lead of James. With 12 wins in 14 games heading into a Finals matchup vs. the No. 1 overall seed Golden State, that’s gone well so far. Ohio State was more than a touchdown underdog to Alabama last January and nearly a touchdown underdog to Oregon. From Day One, though, Meyer has made it clear that Ohio State will not operate as any kind of underdog, that standards will be both high and welcomed, that expectations and pressures come with the territory. He drove himself to exhaustion at Florida and has promised to at least pump the brakes this time around. When James went to Miami, he was the bad guy for the first time ever. He didn’t like it. He didn’t handle it well. A more mature, more self-aware and more focused James is back with the Cavaliers and though he’s still driving everything, he’s deflecting nothing. When it was suggested earlier in these playoffs that these young and built on the fly Cavaliers were the underdog when it came to winning the championship this year, James didn’t just scoff at the notion of being an underdog. He laughed it. He’s never the underdog, he said, and he’s fine with that. His was quite a journey to that comfort in being the marked man. A confident LeBron is a very dangerous LeBron. Last year’s Ohio State team lost a Week Two home game to a Virginia Tech team that wasn’t very good, and lost badly…
Continue Reading: Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James, Ohio State Buckeyes’ Urban Meyer on top of their games …
