Now that the Cavaliers have locked up the NBA Championship, only one question remains: What are we going to do with the Larry O’Brien Trophy?
If you’re not a basketball fan, the Larry O’Brien Trophy is given each year to the team that wins the NBA playoffs, which began Saturday and will run for the next couple of millennia.
The Cavs have not actually clinched the title. We’re just funnin’ with you. But it’s an interesting concept, isn’t it?
Unlike the Stanley Cup, which has visited more places than the Travel Channel and been touched by more hands than Paris Hilton, the Larry O’Brien Trophy has a staid history. It gets a few smooches in the postgame locker room, maybe witnesses a tear or two, gets to ride in a parade, and then goes into solitary confinement, usually under glass at the winning team’s arena.
The trophy is too pretty to spend most of its time like Bubble Boy. Designed and constructed by Tiffany (the jeweler, not the singer), it consists of 15 pounds of sterling silver with a 24-karat gold overlay.
The NBA’s hardware, portraying a regulation-size basketball hovering over a rim and net, is less than half as heavy as the 35-pound Stanley Cup, which makes it even better-suited for travel.
Hockey’s ultimate prize was, of course, named after Lord Stanley of Preston, and was first awarded in 1893. Since then, the Stanley Cup has been all over the world, from Red Square to Tokyo to Afghanistan, where just last month U.S. and Canadian troops staged a gawk-a-thon.
The cup hasn’t spent a lot of time
in war zones, but that doesn’t mean it has led a placid life. To the contrary. Tradition dictates that every player on the winning team gets custody of the cup for a day, and many players have shown remarkable, ah, creativity.
On a dare, the cup was kicked into a Canadian canal in 1905. In 1924, it was temporarily forgotten by the side of the road when the players who had it stopped to fix a flat tire.
Stanley has ended up in at least three different swimming pools — in Dallas, in the Czech Republic and, last year, in the one behind Mario Lemieux’s mansion in Pittsburgh.
One player christened his child in the Stanley Cup. Another took it to the movies, filled it with popcorn and sat there with his kids, chomping away. One player fed his dogs from it. A player who owned a farm fed a cow.
Hundreds of folks have sipped alcoholic beverages from the cup — which undoubtedly explains much of the above.
Reclusive cousin
In the Beacon Journal’s electronic library, which dates back 25 years, there are 1,808 stories containing the phrase ”Stanley Cup.” Number of stories containing the phrase ”Larry O’Brien Trophy”? Seventeen.
Seventeen hundred? No. Seventeen.
Clearly, it’s time to pump Larry up.
Granted, the late Mr. O’Brien wasn’t particularly flamboyant by contemporary standards, but he was at least as outgoing as Lord Stanley of Preston, and he certainly got around.
His was the office that Richard Nixon’s ”Plumbers” vandalized at the Watergate. More to the point, he presided over the league from 1975 to 1984, when the NBA was transformed from a national footnote — even the playoffs were broadcast on tape-delay, late at night — into the behemoth it has become.
As usual, we will need LeBron to take the lead. Look at it this way: If he can arrange to collect his Most Valuable Player trophy at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, as he did in May, what’s to keep him from grabbing Larry’s trophy and giving it a grand tour of his hometown?
Tour of Akron
So here’s the deal: The day after the Cavs beat Los Angeles in Game Seven at the Q, LeBron will drive Larry’s trophy to St. V, where it will be featured in a special assembly for which students will receive a summer-school credit.
Because St. V is right around the corner from Luigi’s, that’s our next stop. The gang at Akron’s legendary pizza parlor can certainly figure out how to rearrange a few of those bowling trophies to create temporary space.
Next: a spin down the hill at Derby Downs, perhaps in the first Soap Box Derby racer equipped with a sidecar.
From there? Well, any grand tour of Akron has to include a blimp ride. (Larry’s cup is only 2 feet tall, so perhaps we’ll need a booster seat.)
The carhops at Swenson’s can take turns using Larry as a hood ornament while dashing around with their Galley Boys.
If swimming is good enough for Stanley, it’s good enough for Larry. Therefore, on the eve of the Bridgestone Invitational, we give it a quick dip in the pond at No. 16.
And in the fall, the Larry Trophy crawls into Zippy’s pouch for the football team’s home opener against Syracuse.
The grand finale takes us to Strickland’s, whose employees will create an ice cream cone exactly the same size as the trophy, and we’ll gather ’round to see whether Shaq can finish the whole thing.
After that, I’m fine with LeBron just keeping Larry in his basement in Bath Township, somewhere near his recording studio, his sports bar, his two-lane bowling alley and his 26-by-63-foot theater.
What? You’re worried that this kind of talk will jinx the Cavs? Surely you jest.
You can’t jinx something that’s already jinxed.
If the Cavs aren’t already jinxed, how do you explain those 39 nonchampionship seasons since the franchise began?
Planning the itinerary for the Larry O’Brien Trophy is the perfect counter-jinx.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or .
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