why would it do much of anything? i'm not saying lebron played a great game, but he had a decent 24/10/12 game and his team got manhandled through bricks and horrible defense. it's not like we don't have a career's worth of evidence to say lebron knows how to win, especially first round series in the east. it will just mean indiana was better and this cleveland team was weak.
yes but this whole season, every media person said lebron will carry the team to the ECF at the very least and to not even get out of the 1st round?! what would that say?
Obviously, LeBron getting eliminated in the 1st round is something we should be rooting for. Pretty much rules out any chance he stays. If he goes elsewhere, Rockets may be considered the favorite.
well i think the media tends to live on reputations for a long time. and obviously lebron has given them good reason with 7 straight finals runs. and in a weird way, i think jordan's 6 [not really] straight [/not really] titles plays into it. it feels like the best player always wins unless met by a superforce like the warriors. but lebron and jordan have been the best players in the league without making the finals plenty of times. they just happened to have long end of career runs on really good teams where their greatness put them over the top so we forgot they could lose to non-title teams. now lebron's team has fallen back to earth. not that kyrie would help them by being injured right now, but injured kyrie or traded kyrie, all the same they traded an elite scoring guard for, at this point, nothing. 25 efficient points that aren't scared of the playoffs is a tough hit to take. and a bunch of role players either got older or got traded for young/unproven players who were traded for a reason. the natural cycle of all title teams that don't have the spurs front office is taking hold. now the cavs are just another team. they have the best player, and given nba history when it comes to best players and recent history when it comes to lebron, it makes them as good a pick as any to win the east, but i don't think there's much difference between the teams in the east. toronto is the best but has to be knocked a little for their playoff failures, but the other 7 teams all have issues. in a weird way, i don't think there's much difference in the odds of the cavs losing in the conference finals or the first round. they're good enough to beat all 7 teams and bad enough to probably lose to everybody but milwaukee. an indy team playing like they did today is better than the cavs unless lebron just goes crazy.
Except that this scenario would require that the Rockets not win a championship this year, because there is zero percent chance LeBron would go to a team that just won it all, especially after he just got wiped out in the 1st round for the first time ever.
This game proves that Westbrook should not have just won MVP, but also DPOY. He did a great job holding down Oladipo last year.
