Ranking Joe Burrow’s best Cavs tweets

Before Burrow was throwing the football in Cincinnati, he was sending tweets about the Cavaliers.

The NFL season is officially in full swing. That makes it as good of time as any to look back at Cincinnati Bengals star quarterback Joe Burrow’s infamous tweets about the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Athens native wasn’t shy about his love for his state’s lone NBA team.

Let’s get into which ones were his best.

No. 10 - Iman Shumpert disrespect

The 2016 Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors was a classic, but not because of anything Shumpert did. He went 1-9 from the field with two assists and a turnover in the win.

Burrow’s take was understandable in the moment. It does however ignore Shumpert’s crucial four-point play in the second quarter of Game 7 just five months earlier.

No. 9 - Falling for Andrew Wiggins

Burrow was tweeting through the good and bad times for the Cavs. This first tweet came from the night of the draft lottery that the Cavaliers inexplicably won again.

Burrow seemed to have no interest in Jabari Parker which was a good choice in hindsight. Wiggin’s draft look has aged well.

It didn’t take Burrow long to talk himself into Wiggins even though he wasn’t featured in LeBron James’s coming home letter. Reports about a swap with Kevin Love and another impressive Summer League performance from Wiggins came out the day before this tweet. Burrow wasn’t the only Cavs fan that felt this way.

The Cavaliers made the right move in the end even if Burrow might not have thought so.

No. 8 - The Deron Williams experiment

The 2017 NBA Finals weren’t as lopsided as they’ve ended up being remembered as. The Cavs blew a lead in Game 3 which cost them any chance of making the series competitive. Getting run off the floor in the minutes LeBron was on the bench was a big reason why.

The lack of a second-unit point guard hurt this team all season and returned to bite them on the biggest stage. Williams, who was picked up on the buyout market, wasn’t ready for the moment, leading to Burrow questioning his loyalty.

No. 7 - The Kyrie trade

Some were in denial over the Kyrie Irving trade. Burrow wasn’t. He was on the right side of history.

No. 6 - Return of the king

Burrow might be the biggest Matthew Dellavedova fan in the world as evidenced by many of his other tweets and the video below.

There was at least one fan excited by this move in an otherwise awful season.

No. 5 - We still aren’t over 2009

Burrow is completely right. The series loss to the Magic in 2009 is something that I’ll personally never get over. LeBron had one of his best seasons that year and this Cavs team fit perfectly around him — given the era — in a way that’s lost to history.

This was the only team from James’s first stint that was ahead of its time in how they embraced the three-ball with a versatile lineup. This led to them having a franchise-best 11.9 net rating with the second-ranked offense and the best defense that season. Everything was set up for an all-time great Finals matchup with Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Magic got in the way of that.

Orlando was a team from the next decade. They embraced having four shooters on the court around Dwight Howard. This included stretch four Rashard Lewis and Hedo Türkoğlu. The Magic shot 40.8% from three as a team that series which led them to victory.

At the time, many thought LeBron and Kobe would have another opportunity to face off in The Finals, but that never happened. The Cavs took all the wrong lessons from this leading to a less impressive team the following year and James’s exit after that. This loss somehow stings even more in hindsight.

No. 4 - Darkest before the dawn

Burrow took every loss from the 2016 Finals hard. This tweet from the night of Game 4 encapsulated what everyone in Cleveland was feeling.

The Cavs hung around in the first half but were run off the floor in the second. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 38 points in the second half alone. Golden State won the final two quarters 58-42. It seemed over.

No. 3 - The oracle from Athens

It didn’t take Burrow long to talk himself back into the Cavs. This was tweeted the day Thompson said that this was a “man’s league,” LeBron responded by laughing, and then later conducted an interview with sunglasses leading to the meme.

This tweet proved to be 100% true. Burrow was seeing into the future. We just didn’t know it at the time.

No. 2 - Delly saves the world from an alien invasion

Having dreams about Dellavedova saving the world from an alien invasion is a sign that you’re in too deep. This is the behavior of a sicko.

My favorite part about this tweet is that it’s from 12:40 PM. That likely means he was still thinking about it several hours after being awake. That’s how you know it was a good dream.

No. 1 - He’s back

Burrow found his old jersey and posted a picture in it less than hour after James announced his return. He was ready for this moment and celebrating like every other Cavs fan.

The composition of this picture is phenomenal. The extra small mirror, the jersey made for a child, the phone peaking out of the very bottom of the frame, the screenshot from Snapchat, and the look on his face are all great. There’s a reason he’s continued to use this picture in posts.

Burrow and the Bengals open up their season Sunday afternoon against the New England Patriots.