The goal was to not have to relocate if the hotel I chose was booked up for Saturday. I've not made a phone call yet, but I thought I'd solicit the opinions of others on here for what they've done or what had worked for you.
My expectation is that most hotels will have availability Saturday night outside of maybe a couple. I wouldn't lock anything in unless I was comfortable I'd use it or could cancel without penalty.
I'm more of a fan of Hotwire/Priceline anyway, but they are non-refundable once booked. Although Hotwire/Priceline won't tell you the hotel in advance, you can have a pretty good idea with just a little research. There's only about 4 or 5 hotels downtown with 4*+ ratings and maybe 4 more with 3-1/2* ratings downtown. Using sites like betterbidding.com or biddingfortravel.com, you can narrow down the hotels. Through research, you can make educated guesses, such as Renassiance is sold-out Saturday night, the Ritz Carlton doesn't do those discount sites like Priceline/Hotwire, nor has the Metropolitan at the 9. So based on what's left:
Saturday night...Hotwire has the following downtown hotels listed:
3-1/2* for $61 - Probably the Doubletree Lakeside
4* for $90 - Probably the Hyatt at the Arcade (booked it back before christmas)
4* for $91 - Almost positive that's the Westin (just booked it two weeks ago for same price)
https://www.hotwire.com/hotels/#!/hotel/results/Cleveland... Both Doubletree and Westin are probably 1/2 mile walks from arena, but I'd take a stab at the Hyatt for $90. Again, nothing absolutley guaranteed other than you get a 4* hotel room in downtown cleveland.