LeBron

With a crowd of about 20,000 paying attention to a game of basketball, sound is inevitably a factor. The crowd had just witnessed their team squander a five point lead lead in a matter of minutes, though; the detested Detroit Pistons had, once again, taken the lead. They say that silence can be more defining than noise, and this situation proved that cliche to be absolutely correct. 20,000 people, every one of them silent, every one of them waiting for the inevitable to happen: for the Cavaliers to lose, for the series to be over.

Thankfully, the Cavaliers were playing with the best basketball player on the planet. If anybody was capable of salvaging the game, it was LeBron James; the crowd just didn't know it yet. One of the most ballyhooed high school basketball players ever, LeBron graced the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was a junior in high school... when he was the 2003-2004 NBA Rookie of the Year... when he was an NBA sophomore... you get the point. The amount of hype and attention that he received was unprecedented. Time for him to prove his worth.

With little under ten seconds to go, James drove the basket and tied the game with a layup that made the Pistons defenders look like an intramural team trying to stop a varsity team. The game was tied with two seconds to go, and the crowd collectively lost its fucking mind. Before the possession started, you could hear somebody with court side seats sneeze from the nose-bleed section.

After the game was tied, the crowd reacted like they were at a concert. Strangers hugged each other. People that didn't care for sports screamed at the top of their lungs. It was pure euphoria, audible energy that transformed the entire crowd.

What proceeded was arguably the most dominating playoff performance in recent years. LeBron absolutely took over, scoring something like 25 of his team's last 27 points. With every bucket, the crowd went insane. It was like a twenty minute roller-coaster ride, but a lot more intense. The man held his audience in the palm of his hand, capable of manipulating them in a way that I had never seen in my life. To this day, I have never seen anything like it.

The most telling thing about the experience was the way I felt when I woke up the next day: my voice was completely shot, and I was experiencing a severe adrenaline hangover. I felt strangely confident, though. I had witnessed history.