CLEVELAND -- Maybe somebody is trying to teach me to be less cynical.
For the second year in a row, I went to a team's training camp and listened to all the usual preseason optimism about how everybody was going to have a great year and things would be dandy. And for the second year in a row, I had to contain my skepticism until I saw it all work out with the team in question holding up the Larry O'Brien trophy. (Side memo to the league's other 29 teams: I'm now accepting bids to cover training camps this fall.)
In October 2005, I was at the start of camp in Miami, where the Heat had several new players on hand swearing they were going to share the ball and were only in it to win a championship. I quietly chuckled to myself, and I wasn't the only one, until those same Heat players were dancing around on the court in Dallas 8½ months later.