Plain Dealer announces new Cleveland Cavaliers coverage team

The Northeast Ohio Media Group, which owns and publishes the Cleveland Plain Dealer, has put together its team to cover the Cleveland Cavaliers this upcoming season. This is exciting news. If you come to a Cleveland Cavaliers blog, chances are you are a big fan of the team and seek out multiple different sources of Cavs knowledge. Fear the Sword can't have guys covering every game, and are thus pretty reliant on the guys and gals on the local beat to help bring you guys great coverage.

I can't stress it enough: Click on their websites, read their articles. Most of these guys, from Sam Amico to Bob Finnan, work really hard and do their best to give you guys a good look at the Cavs.

The Plain Dealer is the hometown newspaper of the Cleveland Cavaliers. With LeBron James and company in the fold, covering the team at that paper is one of the better jobs you can get in print media nowadays. With that in mind, we should congratulate Chris Haynes, Joe Vardon, and Chris Fedor for their new gigs running the NBA coverage for the upcoming year.

Chris Haynes will be the Cavs beat writer:

Chris comes to Cleveland from Portland, where he is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for Comcast SportsNet Northwest.

Previously he covered the NBA for Slamonline.com. In Portland, Chris has built a reputation as the go-to NBA writer, the one who breaks the big stories. NBA reporter Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports says "there is no NBA team beat writer that breaks more news than Haynes." Chris has a bachelor's degree from California State University in Fresno.

Haynes recently wrote this positive piece about Dion Waiters in the context of the young player's drive to be a starter for this Cleveland Cavaliers team.

Joe Vardon will focus on LeBron James. Vardon has roots at the Toledo Blade, which I love, and has been a smart and fair political reporter covering Ohio politics. I think he will do a good job.

Finally, Chris Fedor will move from covering multiple sports for the media group, and become an NBA jack-of-all-trades. I can't say I know a lot about him. Being from and living in Toledo isolates me from a lot of this stuff. I look forward to getting to know his style and hopefully learn about basketball from him.