We're #1! We could be...Cleveland.

[May 30th, 2007]

Hours after the Portland Trail Blazers landed the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, team General Manager Kevin Pritchard told media that the draft was "bigger than the Rose Garden" and "bigger than Portland."

Really? Getting to choose between potential superstars in college freshmen Greg Oden and Kevin Durant is bigger than the whole city? When WW spoke to Pritchard two days after last week's draft lottery, he stuck to his guns. "I'll still say that it's bigger than this office, it's bigger than this organization, it's bigger than this city.... I think it impacts so many things that we can't possibly explain."

Maybe we can.

A glimpse into Portland's future could lie 2,450 miles east in Cleveland. Four years ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers were the NBA's worst team. "People had sorta forgotten about the Cavs," says the Akron Beacon Journal sportswriter who covers the Cavs, Brian Windhorst. Then in 2003 the Cavs won the top pick, giving them draft rights to that year's young phenom: 18-year-old LeBron James.

Life after LeBron has been good to the Cavalier franchise—now in the Eastern Conference finals—and, by extension, to Cleveland.

In James' rookie season, average home attendance jumped from last place in the then-29-team league to ninth (a leap of 6,791 fans per game). That resulted in the largest single-season door revenue increase in league history, more than doubling from $13.4 million to $29.6 million in ticket sales. TV exposure also rose: Cleveland had 25 national games spread across cable and network channels—more than in the previous 10 years combined. (Just think, 25 shots of Portland's city skyline; 25 shots of the tram!)

The impact has extended well beyond the team's bottom line to Cleveland businesses.

"It's just a positive vibe throughout the whole city," says Kris Nicoloff, a manager at Cleveland's Boneyard Beer Farm, a bar and grill near the Cavs' Quicken Loans arena. "Especially in this area. There's a good sense of community down here when the team is doing well."

Nicoloff says revenue on Cavalier game days increased as much as 30 percent after James' rookie year. (The Cucina Cucina people must be kicking themselves for shutting down outside the Rose Garden!)

"The bars can't complain, because he's got more cheeks in the seats than [Cleveland Browns quarterback] Bernie Kosar ever did," says 26-year-old "diehard Cleveland sports fan" Ben Vodila. He's seen other changes since LeBron's arrival. "You could scalp [tickets] for two bucks," Vodila recalls of the bad old days. "Now they go four or five times face value for playoffs."

It helped that James, who grew up in nearby Akron, had long been the local golden boy. "His being 20 miles away was a huge thing for us already," says Tom Willard, a manager at Geiger's Clothing and Sports, a family-owned business with four Cleveland locations. But after the draft, there was merch to be moved: In James' rookie season, Geiger's sold nearly 350 LeBron jerseys, ranging in price from $35 to $135. The stores hadn't sold a single Cavs jersey the previous year, Geiger says.

Although neither of the Blazers' potential picks is a hometown hero, the team can hope for a similar impact—especially given its rich NBA history and substantial head start on the pre-James Cavs.

"I don't know that you're going to see a lot of new fans," says Windhorst. "But what you will see is a lot of old fans—maybe you'd call them lost fans—returning to the games and getting excited again."