Lebron chokes again

but what if his value is lower the next summer? being the #1 overall pick who no one has seen gives you that extra allure that you lose when people actually get to see your game. straight up, love isn't worth an overall #1 pick, but he was also largely the only big piece available so maybe you overpay a little.

already being on the team is huge. you're not just a random team in free agency and you can offer an extra year. and by all accounts, lebron and love didn't get along and he still signed with them. that's the benefit of being the home team.

that's not a bad idea. but i think we can agree there's a time value to championships from a legacy perspective. lebron getting one in the next 3 years is a much bigger deal than if he gets one as the 2nd option in 6 years. he's not going to come back just to sit around and wait to build if he doesn't have to. maybe that hurts years 5 and 6. but if you have a chance to build a legit contender in years 1 and 2, you have to try it. the fact that golden state lapped the field may retroactively mean that that was a bad strategy, but you can't plan for that.

 

The eye test is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, because I thought that the Heat came together extremely well after the first season. They flowed beautifully on offense and defense for the two years they won the title and they had some streak of like 25 straight wins or whatever. They were a machine, both in terms of winning games and how they looked on the court. IMO, they lost in James' final year there because Wade broke down physically.

PER is a bad measure of this, since it's been well-documented that shooting more, even inefficiently, increases your PER. Obviously Wade's and Bosh's shot attempts would drop when teamed with two other stars.

 

well i'm not comparing him to shumpert. obviously he is better than shumpert and should make more. my point was that iguodala wasn't some value pick up for gs. he's getting paid.

you're underrating thompson. the guy has a 61 TS%. he can't create his own shot obviously but he finishes what he's given. he and dellavedova run a very good PnR. and he grabs offensive rebounds in bunches, which by virtue of their scarcity are more valuable than defensive rebounds. there's a reason he had 8.7 WS this season. because he's pretty good. an all-star or superstar? no. but a really good player. if nba teams spend about 10% above the cap next year, the average win would be worth 2.4M. that makes an 8.7 WS guy worth $20.9M.

 

The thing here is that it's not just that GS came along. It's simply that the Cavs aren't that good. Take GS out, and they still lose - albeit perhaps not as badly, but they lose all the same.

There's no point to keep arguing, but the Cavs are basically screwed for the next 5-10 years. No amount of "small" adjustments can push them over the edge past GSW, OKC, or Spurs.

 

yeah i mean there's just no way to get the shots as a 3rd option to have a 25 PER like bosh did the year before.

and i agree with mac2yao. wade and lebron were virtually the same player stylistically so they didn't just mesh perfectly in the 1st year, but once the pecking order was established they fit as well as i think any two players like that could for the next 3 years.

his PER has definitely been pretty constant for his whole career (even at 19 years old amazingly), but he did go way up in WS/48 last year with lebron. in a career of similar seasons, it was definitely his best year so at the very least it wouldn't seem lebron has held him back. though i will say the chemistry seemed to get a lot better at the end of this year and in the playoffs.

i think bosh and love are just kind of weird players. they're big guys but they're not excellent post players. you can't just throw it to them in the post to essentially balance out lebron + wade/irving on the perimeter. love occasionally hits a jump hook but most of the time it just feels like he gets the ball to keep him happy and not because he's great at it.

and bosh was mostly the same. bosh could face up and then get to the line in toronto, but somehow every time he tried it in miami it felt awkward. certainly at big moments it felt like a possession wasted that should've gone to lebron/wade if you wanted someone to face up from 17 and drive. to some degree it probably feeds on itself. they start to realize they shouldn't do the things they used to do and so even when they get a chance to do it, they aren't good at it.

maybe that's on lebron, but it just feels like a realization of where they are in the pecking order. how many truly great 3rd scorers have their ever been? off the top of my head, i can't think of any. kareem was declining when worthy came up. parish wasn't scoring like bird/mchale i don't think. rodman didn't need shots. kobe/shaq didn't have one. allen/garnett/pierce didn't have anyone scoring like crazy by the time they got to boston. odom didn't dominate scoring. draymond is a good offensive player but he fits in at 14 ppg. when you have a jordan/pippen, kobe/shaq, lebron/wade/irving, you just don't have a 3rd guy fitting in really well with a lot of scoring. bosh at 18 or 19 ppg is probably as well as you can fit.

and even when bosh and love can shoot, which should be viewed as a valuable big man skill to spread the floor, when they do people just say they've been relegated to 3 point shooters even though it probably should be a big part of a 3rd option's arsenal.

 

What do you do if you are the Cavs GM? Do you start over with your roster; trade Kyrie and or Love? Have to get rid of Iman and his 10M dollar contract right?

 

The Cavs GM will do whatever Lebron wants!! :grin:

In all seriousness, the plus side is they do have assets. If they want to move Kyrie or Love, they both could bring back real value... even if not as much real value as they might have earlier in the year or previously.

BUT, are there a ton of other points out there available? the Clippers aren't trading CP3 for Kyrie, absent their hand being forced. Jeff Teague might work as a swap... he's a better defender for sure, but does he move the needle?

Rockets can give them PBev and Ariza... lol!

 

There's no starting over unless they're willing to call an end to the LeBron James era. There's no way he sticks around for a rebuild, and I doubt they want to lose even a year of James. They'll milk James, on court and for revenues, as long as they can.

They might explore trade offers for Love or Irving, but only in win-now moves. Like someone mentioned a Paul-for-Irving deal--that's the type of trade the Cavaliers would probably look for (even though I doubt the Clippers do that specific deal).

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;I've tried to work on his jumpshot with him but it's just not good.&quot; -Paul Silas on LeBron James (LeBron's first <a href="https://twitter.com/NBA">@NBA</a> head coach)</p>&mdash; SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SiriusXMNBA/status/740213545221132288">June 7, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Lebron is their GM so he is going to do whatever he wants.

 

But it got pretty good in Miami. He even shot over 40% from 3 one season.

 

The Lebron nuthuggers are awfully quiet this series. No one is coming to his defense at all unlike previous years(Tmac_1). They're actually giving up on him all of a sudden? Perception is totally different when a team wreak havoc through a weak conference with no adversity to prepare them against a team that went through it all.

 

yeah, that's why his current horrible shooting is so weird. not only did he shoot 3's well, he got good at mid-range 2's (i think decently above the league average). so i'm not sure why he can't shoot now. silas coached him right out of high school so of course his jumper wasn't good back then.


it's really what lebron needs to do to stay at a high level for 5 more years. learn how to shoot a 17 footer off a pick and roll. it doesn't have to be nash-level, just "the defense has to respect it" level. practice that all summer and then practice it some more and then once it's good, practice it some more. there can't be any excuse for why you couldn't get good at shooting again if you were good for 3 or 4 years just recently. not only does it help the offense, but it just reduces wear and tear when you can use 5 possessions a game just shooting a jumper and not having to get to the basket.

the rest of the top 5 would be something like perfecting a jump hook/floater from the post, perfecting the quick baseline spin from the post when people overplay him to the middle (and going quicker in the post in general), actually catching and shooting open 3's instead of always having to dribble (steve francis syndrome), and i guess getting ft's up to the high 70's.

 

that doesn't seem like a crazy number of turnovers for 2 games for no one to have done it.

for perspective, curry has 9 and is actually averaging more turnovers per minute.

 

Percentage of LeBron's field goal attempts that came as jumpers and his effective field goal percentage on all jumpers:

 

Usually shooting is skill to last the longest when you age except since he left miami his jump shot has gone.