Sports

Where Does Cavs' Game 1 Collapse Rank Among Cleveland Heartbreaks?

By Jerry Beach Lindys Sports

Updated May 20, 2026 8:29 PM

It takes a lot to climb onto the list of all-time Cleveland sports collapses.

But by golly, the Cavaliers did it Tuesday night. Oh boy, did they ever.

The Cavaliers squandered a 22-point fourth-quarter lead against the New York Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals and fell, 115-104, in overtime. Cleveland took a 93-71 lead on James Harden's free throw with 7:52 left before being outscored 44-11 the rest of the way and never leading in overtime.

So congrats, Cavaliers, we guess? You have joined your Cleveland professional sporting brethren in all-time misery.

Here are the six biggest collapses in the history of what must be America's most hexed sports city.

6. The Drone (2016 World Series)

Like Tuesday night's collapse, this single event didn't immediately cost Cleveland a postseason series. And Trevor Bauer sliced open his right index finger while screwing around with a drone during the AL Championship Series, which Cleveland won to advance to the World Series.

But Bauer's struggles with his stitched-up digit haunted him and his team in the Fall Classic, when Cleveland squandered a three games to one lead and fell to the Chicago Cubs in seven games. Bauer posted a 5.87 ERA while lasting just 7 2/3 inning as Cleveland lost his Game 2 and Game 5 starts. He did get the final out in the top of 10th inning of Game 7, when Cleveland fell 8-7 as the Cubs ended their historic drought.

Perhaps defeat was inevitable, since this is Cleveland we're talking about. But Bauer, with his unique brand of immaturity, sure didn't help things. Suffice to say, no one in his old clubhouse is sad he can't find a job in Major League Baseball.

5.) The Collapse (2026 Eastern Conference finals)

Hey, maybe all of this ends up as an inspiring footnote for the Cavaliers if they overcome Tuesday night's debacle and beat the Knicks to advance to the NBA Finals without LeBron James for the first time ever.

But, again, this is Cleveland and that's not happening. Somehow losing a game in which they had a 99.9 percent chance to win is going to go down as an all-time what-if for the Cavaliers, who went all-in on trying to win this year by swapping Darius Garland for Harden with the hope he and Donovan Mitchell could get them over the top.

The Cavs had a 99.9% (!!!) chance to win the game with 7:49 remaining and lost.

UNREAL.

(via @espn, h/t @TrashTalk_fr) pic.twitter.com/ztyjP1kumq
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) May 20, 2026

Instead, the Knicks, somehow sprinkled by pixie dust, are going to make the Finals after Harden offered his usual brand of matador defense and poor shot selection down the stretch Tuesday night, while Mitchell was limited to three points during the collapse.

Now the Cavaliers are stuck with Harden, whose midseason acquisition almost certainly came with a winking acknowledgment they'd extend the mercurial 36-year-old. They will also inch closer to a potentially impossible decision with Mitchell, who is eligible for free agency next summer, when he'll be closing in on his 31st birthday.

Does Cleveland double down on Mitchell, who is unfairly blamed for only getting to the conference finals once in his first nine seasons yet has also only gotten to the conference finals once in his first nine seasons? What happens if they do, and his decline phase doesn't include an NBA Finals trip? What happens if they don't and the Cavaliers return to the NBA wilderness they occupied before and after James, whose ability to will his hometown team to the 2016 title and the only professional sports crown Cleveland has won in the last 60-plus years might be his most impressive feat ever?

4.) The Blown Save (Game 7, 1997 World Series)

This might have been the worst seven-game World Series of all-time. Cleveland, whose 86 wins were the fewest of any AL playoff team, and the Florida Marlins, the first wild card team to reach the Fall Classic, combined to post a 5.08 ERA.

But nobody in Cleveland would have cared if Jose Mesa could have recorded two more outs in the ninth inning to preserve a 2-1 lead and the city's first baseball title since 1948. Alas, he gave up the one-out single to Charles Johnson to send Moises Alou to third before Alou trotted home on Craig Counsell's sacrifice fly. Cleveland put runners on in the 10th and 11th but didn't score before Edgar Renteria's two-out walk-off RBI single won the title for the Marlins, who celebrated by dismantling the team.

Cleveland…well, yeah, the city is still waiting. And Mesa is likely still waiting to fight Omar Vizquel, his 1997 teammate who questioned his mettle in his 2003 autobiography. Mesa threw up and in at Vizquel the first time they opposed each other in 1999 and plunked Vizquel in consecutive plate appearances - in 2002 and 2006!

"If I face him 10 more times, I'll hit him 10 times," Mesa was quoted as saying in 2003. "I want to kill him."

Good times.

3.) The Interception/Red Right 88 (1980 AFC Divisional Playoff)

Because it's Cleveland, this list is six items long instead of five and the top three are all occupied by the NFL's Browns, who ended a seven-season playoff drought in 1980 and earned the AFC's top seed by going 11-5. Brian Sipe won the MVP while directing a team that earned the "Kardiac Kids" nickname by going 9-3 in games decided by seven points or fewer.

The Browns trailed the Oakland Raiders 14-12 in the AFC semifinals but seemed primed to earn another dramatic victory when they drove inside the Raiders' 20-yard-line with under a minute left, But head coach Sam Rutigliano declined to send out kicker Don Cockroft, who'd missed two field goals and both extra points on a four-degree day, and tried to win it with a second-down pass into the end zone.

But "Red Right 88" - so infamous it has its own Wikipedia entry - resulted in a Mike Davis picking off Sipe in the end zone. The Raiders went on to become the first wild card team to win the Super Bowl. They were the Marlins of their day.

2.) The Fumble (1987 AFC Championship Game)

There's no guarantee the Browns would have won the game and made their first Super Bowl if Earnest Byner scored instead of fumbling inside the 10-yard-line while rumbling for a potential touchdown with Cleveland trailing 38-31 and a little more than a minute left in the fourth quarter. Kicker Matt Bahr could have missed the game-tying extra point. John Elway could have done John Elway things and mounted a game-winning drive for the Denver Broncos. The Earth could have swallowed Cleveland Stadium whole.

But none of this makes the Browns' second straight AFC Championship Game loss to the Broncos - so infamous it has its own Wikipedia entry - any less painful.

The Browns appeared headed for a blowout defeat when they fell behind 21-3 at the half and 28-10 in the third quarter. But they offered hope at a cathartic victory by storming back to tie the game at 31-31 on Bernie Kosar's touchdown pass to Webster Slaughter with under 11 minutes left. The teams traded punts before Elway threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Sammy Winder with 4:12 left.

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The Browns responded by needing just five plays to march inside the Denver 15-yard-line. After a Kosar incompletion and another incompletion negated by Broncos linebacker Karl Mecklenburg being whistled for being offsides, Kosar handed off to Byner, who had an open path to the end zone before he was stripped inside the 10 by Jeremiah Castille, who recovered the ball with 1:12 left. The Broncos took a safety on the subsequent possession to burn clock and Kosar's last-second Hail Mary fell incomplete.

That the Broncos went on to lose to Washington in the Super Bowl, because that's what the Broncos did in the ‘80s, probably made this even more agonizing for Browns fans because Washington wasn't a behemoth unlike the 1986 New York Giants. Speaking of which…

1.) The Drive (1986 AFC Championship Game)

The Browns probably wouldn't have beaten the loaded Giants in Super Bowl XXI. But at least they would have gotten there without suffering the worst slow-motion collapse in history.

Yes, The Drive has its own Wikipedia entry, but do yourself a favor (unless you're a Browns fan) and watch Elway take over at his own two-yard-line with 5:32 remaining and drive the Broncos 98 yards for the game-tying touchdown instead. The first five plays were rushes and the Broncos didn't get over midfield until after the two-minute warning. Elway converted three third downs, including one inside the Broncos' 20-yard-line and one to set up the five-yard touchdown pass to Mark Jackson with 39 seconds left.

It's an absolute masterclass in surgical quarterback precision and a reminder Elway, who scrambled twice for 20 yards on the drive, was in many ways the prototype for today's mobile quarterback. It's also a reminder that no matter what your favorite team has done to hurt you, it's never done anything this torturous. Can you imagine Browns fans watching this unfold, knowing how it was going to end?

Lastly, it's also a nice reminder of what TV broadcasts and stadium experiences used to be like, before the powers that be decided everything had to be turned to 11 every single second of every single game.

The Browns won the overtime coin toss, but this was all over except for the final heartbreak. Cleveland went three-and-out and Elway completed a pair of passes for 50 yards to set up Rich Karlis' 33-yard field goal. Sure, the Broncos went on to get blown out by the Giants two weeks later, But for the Browns, this was a defeat that continues to stand out above the rest for a franchise and a city far too accustomed to sporting pain.

This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 8:03 PM.