Next up for Spurs: A date with the champs

CLEVELAND — On summer days as a teenager growing up in northern Indiana, Gregg Popovich and his friends would often make the half hour drive up Lake Michigan to engage in afternoons of blissful hopelessness.

Their destination was Wrigley Field, home of their beloved Chicago Cubs, a team that had not won a World Series since well before any of them were born.

There in the famed bleachers, Popovich learned annual lessons about unrequited faith and perpetual heartbreak and the long suffering sports can bring.

That’s why the Spurs coach was on board with the city of Cleveland when the Cavaliers brought an NBA championship to a similarly winning-starved lakefront city last June.

“For every city, it’s great when you win a championship,” Popovich said. “But they have been through so much. It’s like full circle and that kind of thing. It was great they were able to do that.”

Saturday at Quicken Loans Arena, the Spurs face the Cavs as champions for the first time.

More Information Tale of the tape: Kawhi vs. LeBron Comparing NBA Most Valuable Player candidates Kawhi Leonard of the Spurs and LeBron James of the Cavaliers (with per-game and season averages): LEONARD JAMES Points 25.1 25.6 Rebounds 5.7 7.8 Steals 1.8 1.4 Assists 3.1 8.1 Minutes 33.3 37.0 FG pct. 49.0 51.2 3-point pct. 41.6 37.5 FT pct. 91.0 70.0 Source: basketball-reference.com

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Before LeBron James came home and delivered a victory parade, it had been 52 years since Cleveland had tasted a professional sports title.

The way it arrived, with the Cavaliers storming back from a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals to stun the 72-win Golden State Warriors, has become basketball lore.

The history means little to the 33-9 Spurs as they arrive on the shores of Lake Erie for their first “barometer game” since producing a 29-point rout over host Golden State in the season opener.

The Cavaliers enter Saturday at 30-11, the top record in the Eastern Conference. They are something else, too.

“They’re the champions,” said Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs’ All-Star forward. “We want to come out and show we can compete against them.”

That’s a designation few believed the Cavs would ever earn, especially after James absconded to Miami in 2010.

The four Finals berths and two titles that followed with the Heat — with one of those championships at the expense of the Spurs in 2013 — burned the citizens of Cleveland like an afternoon on South Beach sans sunscreen.

Spurs guard Danny Green was a member of the Cavaliers’ summer-league squad that fateful July when James left town, seemingly taking Cleveland’s championship hopes with him.

Green was inside the Cavaliers’ practice facility at the time James announced his decision.

“I remember how quickly the mood turned,” Green said. “You could tell that night how different the city was right after. It was dead. It was like a zombie town.”

With that memory in mind, Green celebrated a little inside when the Cavaliers pulled off their immortal comeback against the Warriors last summer.

“The city with that history, the stuff they’ve been through, it was good to see,” said Green, who played 20 games in Cleveland in 2009-10. “It was good for sports and good for the city.”

Spurs forward David Lee has a different history with the Cavaliers.

He was a member of the 2014-15 Warriors team that defeated the Cavaliers for a championship.

Lee acknowledges a visit to play the champs feels different than another game in late January.

“I try to approach each game in the same way,” said Lee, who is expected to start in place of injured center Pau Gasol. “But of course, you want to play against the best teams in the league, and I think we are two of the best.”

The Spurs have a way of running into James in big moments.

They were the team that denied James his first shot at a championship in 2007, executing a devastating sweep of the Cavaliers in the Finals.

In 2013, James got his revenge with Miami — with an unforgettable assist from Ray Allen — winning a seven-game thriller of a series for his second championship.

The Spurs returned the favor a season later, with a brutal five-game Finals victory that was the most lopsided in NBA history. A month later, James returned to Cleveland.

At the time, it had been seven seasons between championships for the Spurs. San Antonio celebrated as if it were the first.

“We’re a little spoiled here,” Green said.

In Cleveland, they know from title droughts, and the joy that comes when they are finally demolished.

The baseball fans in Chicago, including Popovich, now know the same.

When the Cubs came back from a 3-1 deficit last fall to win their first World Series since 1908 — defeating the Cleveland Indians, no less — Popovich celebrated like a kid again. The feeling has not worn off.

When the Cubs visited the White House last week, as the final pro sports team to make the trip during Barack Obama’s presidency, Popovich made a point to watch the coverage.

“I wanted to get the last look at those guys,” Popovich said. “That was a pretty special group right there.”

Saturday night in Cleveland, the Spurs face another group of special, unlikely champions.

jmcdonald

@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN