A Cavs title, a pregnant wife and a shirtless kid: Ten years later, I still remember it all

Ten years ago tonight, my oldest son celebrated the Cavaliers’ championship by running shirtless through the house, screaming at the top of his lungs.

He was 11 years old.

My wife was pregnant with our youngest son, who wouldn’t arrive until three months later. Today, that baby is 9.

Somehow, that doesn’t seem possible. Time has a funny way of doing that.

The Cavaliers’ championship came on June 19, 2016. Cleveland fans know the details by heart. LeBron James‘ chase-down block. Kyrie Irving‘s three-pointer. Kevin Love somehow staying in front of Stephen Curry. A 3-1 comeback against a Warriors team that had won 73 games.

It remains the only time a team has overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals.

But this isn’t really about the game. It’s about what happened afterward.

I waited 47 years for a championship from one of my teams. Forty-seven.

My kids waited about a decade. Not exactly the same burden.

Still, when that final buzzer sounded, they celebrated like they’d been carrying the weight of Cleveland sports history right alongside the rest of us.

I remember sitting there with my family, trying to process what had just happened.

And I remember something else: It was the only time in my life that I teared up after a sporting event.

Not when the Browns made the playoffs. Not when the Indians reached the World Series. Not after any championship in any sport. Just that one.

Maybe it was because I never truly believed I’d see it.

Maybe it was because of all the years covering the Cavs, writing about the Cavs and watching them come close only to fall short.

Or maybe it was because sports are rarely just sports. They’re markers in our lives.

We remember where we were. Who we were with. How old the kids were. What the house looked like. The worries we carried. The dreams we still had.

I was covering the Cavs when they won it all, just in a different way.

Fox Sports Ohio had laid me off from the beat before the championship season. To their credit, they kept me around to do television work, and I remained close to the team.

Still, it wasn’t the same. Life was changing. Career paths were changing. Everything seemed uncertain.

In a strange way, that made the championship even more meaningful.

Ten years later, life looks a lot different. The kids are older. Two are grown. The little boy who was still in the womb during Game 7 is now heading toward double digits.

I’m not traveling with the Cavaliers. I’m running a website, chasing page views, editing stories, writing headlines and trying to keep a small business moving forward in a media landscape that seems to change every five minutes.

Some days feel like a sprint. Others feel like a grind.

Then I pulled an old book off the shelf this week. It was a collection of columns I wrote during that championship season.

As I flipped through the pages, I found myself smiling. Not because of the basketball. Because of the memories. Because of the people. Because of the realization that an entire decade has passed in what feels like the blink of an eye.

The older I get, the more I realize that championships matter. But they aren’t really what stay with us.

What stays with us are the moments surrounding them.

A shirtless kid running through the house. A pregnant wife laughing at the chaos. A father trying to hold back tears. A city finally getting its moment.

Ten years later, I can still see all of it. And that’s probably why it still feels like yesterday.