Cavaliers Insider: Case of the missing historic basketball solved
by Jodie Valade/Plain Dealer Reporter
Tuesday March 31, 2009, 8:47 PM
A young excited fan, not a greedy one, possesed the game ball from the game in which Zydrunas Ilgauskas scored his 10,000th point. An understanding Ilgauskas told the fan to keep the ball.
The Case of the Missing Ball has a feel-good ending, after all.
After The Plain Dealer reported Monday that the ball Zydrunas Ilgauskas used to score his 10,000th career point March 21 was MIA because of a greedy fan, media and Cavaliers supporters unleashed full-court pressure to force the culprit to cough up the ball.
A young boy's mother called the Cavaliers on Tuesday and explained that her son had taken the ball simply because he was excited when it somehow landed in his lap after the game.
Ilgauskas merely told the boy, whom he said was 7 or 8 years old, to keep the ball.
"Knowing all the circumstances, I felt bad for him," the 7-3 center said. "He took some uncalled beating for it in the last couple days. For me, it was always about the journey, not the ball. So now I want him to have a piece of it. I don't really need the ball anyway."
Ilgauskas, who also became the Cavaliers' all-time block leader March 22 when he passed John "Hot Rod" Williams' 1,200 blocks, said he didn't have a spot in his trophy case reserved for the ball, anyhow.
"It's not a record-breaking ball or anything like that," he said. "I did what I had to do, you can't take that way from me. I'll always have that. It'll make one person happy, so that's all that matters."
Told that Tuesday night's game against Detroit was his 700th career game as a Cavalier -- which ranks third behind Bingo Smith (720) and Danny Ferry (723) -- Ilgauskas offered a prediction.
"I'm going to get that game ball now, for sure," he said.
