Last week for my vacation, I took a trip to Haiti. Stayed in an all-inclusive without air conditioning in a room with 7 other guys and no hot water. Worst travel agent ever, right? Actually, I would suggest exactly the opposite.

Don’t get me wrong – Haiti is, end to end, the worst third world craphole on the planet. This is not hyperbole – this is an objective evaluation of the situation down there. It’s the poorest country in this hemisphere, owns the third most dangerous slum (Cite Solel) in the world, and has no functioning government to speak of. But unlike a normal vacation, where you go somewhere nice, live above your means for a while, and come back depressed about your mundane existence, Haiti makes you appreciate literally everything about your life. Simple things like being able to drink the water, safely walk the streets not lined with mountains of garbage and rubble, air that doesn’t smell of feces and death, the ability to go to a market and get food, hot running water, paved roads, having walls in your home made of, well, wall stuff, instead of canvas, plastic, or scrap metal, healthcare (government mandated or otherwise), and not needing an armed guard to protect your possessions.

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There's nothing like a redemption story. It's a yarn older than the written word, more beloved then a tale of true love and continues unabated in every form of entertainment today. It's nice to believe in the power of redemption evens when it's mostly just a dramatic device contrived as an efficient if not accurate way to convey complexity either the writer, the reader or both can't fully understand.

Witness, if you'll excuse the reference, the common theme of LeBron James' capturing of his long sought after NBA Championship. Nearly every sportswriter with a breathless thought has defined the Miami Heat's triumph as the personal triumph of James as if he were a member of the Lost Tribes of Israel who suffered long and hard and made it out of the desert alive.

Some suffering. James is one of the richest athletes on the planet. He lives a life of opulence and privilege borne of his outsized athletic skills. That was true before the playoffs started and remains true today and for the foreseeable future.

But attaining the championship he previously couldn't is more a result of attrition than redemption. It was just James' turn in the barrel. The Heat's path to the finals was clear and easy, relatively speaking. The Oklahoma City Thunder's was harder and longer and their fatigue and inexperience showed in the end.

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Feeling some unsettling optimism brewing for the imminent NBA Draft and the Cavaliers’ pair of first round selections? No worries. There’s a cure for that. With the Cavs, Browns, and Indians reaching the playoffs just eight times out of a combined 36 seasons this century, the only thing more common than early first round draft picks in Cleveland are the eventual regrets surrounding them. Sure, Kyrie may have turned the tide a year ago. But to get here, he had to ride the wake of some disastrous lottery misfires.  And so, in honor of the ashes from which a phoenix must rise, here are the 10 Worst First Round Picks by Cleveland teams since the year 2000… updated dutifully for 2012!

Pre-Draft Warm-Up

So, dredging up some horrible Cleveland draft picks—sounds like shooting fish in a barrel, right? Well, not if you consider that I had to narrow the substantial list of candidates down to a mere Top 10.

From 2000-2011, the Cleveland Indians, Browns, and Cavaliers selected a total of 36 players in the first rounds of the MLB, NFL, and NBA drafts, combined. Today, just SEVEN of those men (19%) are playing in Cleveland: Joe Thomas, Joe Haden, Alex Mack, Phil Taylor, Kyrie Irving, Tristan Thompson, and Lonnie Chisenhall. Obviously, the Browns have also added a couple fellas named Richardon and Weeden who will begin their careers in September, and the Indians have a couple kids a few years from doing the same. But in terms of established value for 12 years worth of high picks, this is the lot we've got.

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A few weeks ago, while at the Indians game with some of our fellow writers at The Cleveland Fan, there was a point in the game where we looked around and seemingly everyone in our group was busy looking down and tapping away on some kind of device.

Being the only person in the group without a smart phone made us realize how much technology and social media has changed the way we watch and interact during sports events. We can be at home on the couch, at the stadium or the arena, and still interact with a community of Indians, Browns and Cavs fans across the country and around the world through Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. (And that doesn’t even take into account the numerous high-quality fans sites devoted to Cleveland sports).

That got us thinking about some of the biggest Cleveland sports moments in our lifetime in the pre-blog and social media era, which we are defining as anything before 2004. Because while Syknet may have become self-aware in 1999, sports blogs didn’t become prevalent in town until 2004, the same year Facebook was created, and Twitter did not launch until 2006.

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