About Cleveland Cavaliers NBA Basketball

From 1992–1994, the Cleveland Thunderbolts gave the city its first taste of Arena Football League action. And while the taste was but a tease at the time—the team disbanded at the end of the 1994 season—AFL fans eventually would see a return to revelry in 2008 with the arrival of the Gladiators, a team that bounced around the country like a rock band on pogo sticks before diggin’ in their cleats at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. In their first official season, the Gladiators introduced themselves in grand fashion by advancing to the franchise's first-ever conference championship game—a tough loss, to the eventual league champion Philadelphia Soul, that’s since stood as the squad’s humbling reminder of the unending effort required to achieve league dominance.