This is why the Cavaliers are terrible January 27th, 2011 by John Krolik I semi-accidentally triggered a “why are the Cavaliers THIS BAD?” discussion with my last post. In the comments, there was a lot of talk about how the Cavs’ epic futility has occurred because they built their team around LeBron, and the team is now hopelessly rudderless without him. There is a grain of truth in that. The Cavaliers arranged their talent around LeBron, because that was the best/only option really available to them. However, that glosses over the fact that LeBron prevented the Cavaliers from accumulating talent. He did not do this by being evil or failing to commit long-term to Cleveland in order to convince Trevor Ariza to join the team. He did this by making the Cavaliers significantly better very fast, and very good for a number of years. This gave the Cavs fewer chances to add real talent through the draft, and the Cavaliers blew the chances they did have. Think of team-building as a very basic mathematical concept. Trades are made when each team is getting something of theoretically equal value — therefore, a trade can only rearrange the overall talent level of a team to best suit its goals. Free-agency is nice, but big free-agency opportunities are few and far between — remember that Shaq is the only max free-agent signing to have won a championship with the team that signed him. (To date, that is. Yes, the Heat have a chance of joining the Lakers as the only team to craft a dynasty through free agency. And remember that they got Caron and Odom in the Shaq trade, traded Caron for Kwame, and flipped Kwame’s contract for Gasol — the initial capital all came from that Shaq coup.) And as I’ve said before on this blog, teams that spend money in free agency are the ones that already have solid talent “cores” — teams are not good because they spend money. Teams spend money because they are good. The Cavs’ big post-LeBron acquisitions were Mo Williams, Shaq, and Antawn Jamison. They got those players for almost nothing, because the teams those three players played for did not feel they were worth paying the remaining value of their contracts. There are reasons for that. On a fundamental level, the only real way to really and truly add talent is through the draft. This is a fairly basic concept. If you do not have good players or prospects, other teams will not trade you good players or prospects. If you do not have good players or prospects, it makes little sense to spend money on free agents. The only reliable way to acquire good players or prospects is through the draft. Even a team like the Celtics, which was seemingly built on trades, relied on the draft. They drafted Paul Pierce, bought the draft rights to Rondo, traded a top-5 pick for Ray Allen, and traded Al Jefferson (considered an all-time steal at #14) for KG. With very, very, few exceptions, team-building always comes back to the draft. With that in mind, let’s take a look at who the Cavaliers have used their post-LeBron draft picks to acquire: 2003: Jason Kapono, pick #32 overall. Lost to Charlotte in the expansion draft. 2004: Luke Jackson, pick #10 overall. For more on that, read my full writeup. http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=2761 2005: No picks. (Effectively) traded their 1st-round pick for Jiri Welsch (click here for more: http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=2771 and their 2nd-round pick for Anderson Varejao. 2006: Shannon Brown, pick #25 overall. Eventually traded away as a throw-in to the Ben Wallace trade. Daniel Gibson, pick #42 overall. With Andy out for the year, Boobie is the best player on the team. This was a great pick. 2007: THIS FIRST-ROUND PICK WAS ALSO TRADED FOR JIRI WELSCH. 2008: J.J. Hickson, #19 overall pick. That’s been a roller-coaster ride. 2009: Christian Eyenga, #30 overall pick. Starting to look like a rotation player, maybe. Team also got Danny Green, who they later cut. 2010: Pick traded for Antawn Jamison. Note: if anyone has an easy way to keep track of where all the Cavs’ 2nd-round pick went, I’d appreciate it, because it’s hard to keep tabs on exactly what the Cavs spend their 2nd-rounders on. Also, I am aware that the Cavs still have the rights to Sasha Kaun. I mean, yikes. Eyenga, Gibson, and Hickson are the only rotation players the Cavs have managed to draft post-LeBron, and Jamison is the only rotation player, current or former, that the Cavs managed to get for a traded pick. That’s a miserable showing for six years of drafting. Oh, and the Cavs took their big free-agency shot at Larry Hughes. Again, part of this is because LeBron made the team too good to fast. The Thunder got to rebuild with four top-five picks in three years, starting with the Durant draft in 2007. If the Cavs had the #3 pick in 2005, they would’ve gotten Chris Paul or Deron Williams. In fact, lets’ do this exactly (no CP3 over Deron): The Thunder drafted Jeff Green #5 in 2007: if the Cavs had the #5 pick in the 2003 draft, LeBron and Wade would’ve been Cavaliers from day one. And Deron Williams would have joined them when they drafted him 3rd overall in 2005. (Shaun Livingston in 2004 would have been a tough break, but no cheating.) Think about that for a while. By not carrying his team to a respectable record for the first two years of his career, Durant prevented himself from having to make an uncomfortable exodus to greener pastures later on. He really has done everything right, hasn’t he? If they’d sucked in 2004, they might have actually snagged Dwight Howard. Now that’s the kind of young core that would have kept LeBron here forever. Instead, their success forced them to have to look for a Kobe-like minor miracle in the late lottery or full-blown Ginobili miracle in the later picks, and those aren’t easy to come by. Why do the Cavaliers suck? It’s not because they built around LeBron. It’s not because they didn’t build around LeBron. The Cavs acquired an asset who wouldn’t have fit around LeBron without having to give up significant talent this off-season. His name is Ramon Sessions. You have been basking in his glory. The Cavaliers suck because the draft is the best way to acquire significant assets, the Cavaliers acquired one significant asset through the draft in the last seven years (Boobie is maybe .5 of a significant asset — what teams would give up a #1 pick for him? Consider that the #15 draft pick is an average 1st-round pick), and that significant asset left last summer. That’s why this team is historically terrible. That’s the story here, folks. Nothing less, nothing more. Until next time. http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=4027
yep, I've been saying this all along. went to contend too quick too fast. in the cavs framework model their goal was to win a championship when lebron is like 23 or something. and that obviously didn't work. presti knows how its done, boys. it didn't really matter about those 2005 or 2007 drafts, because they would fall too late to get anyone decent. but 2004, man, they took luke jackson? whoa, just whoa.
I agree with most of what the writer says, but the Larry Hughes mistake doomed the franchise. The Cavs were up to bat, had fastballs thrown down the middle of the plate at them and they struck out. Yes, they drafted poorly over the years. Yes, it might have helped if they were terrible a couple of years in order to get higher draft choices. But that one major mistake in free agency nuked them. The other thing that held them back was Mike Brown, who had no business being an NBA head coach.
Here is their win record before drafting Lebron, 22 wins, 32 wins, 30 wins, 29 wins, 17 wins, in the years before drafting LeBron. They wasted several of their picks on completely worthless guys. 1999 Drafted Trajan Landon picked over Corey Maggette, Ron Artest, Andre Kirilenko Drafted Andre Miller also, but they traded him and his rookie scale contract for Darius Miles and Harold Jamison, about 3 seasons later. 2000 Traded Jamal Crawford for draft rights to Chris Mihm(crappy 7fter) over better Cs in Jamaal Magloire and Joel Przybilla 2001 Drafted Desagna Diop over Joe Johnson, Zach Randolph, Brendan Haywood, Troy Murphy, Richard Jefferson 2002 Drafted Dajuan Wagner over Nene, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Wilcox, Caron Butler Drafted Boozer in the 2nd round, but screwed up. They should have locked him for 4 years with a 2 year team option. It's just comedy how they manage to waste their lottery picks every year and miss better players drafted right after them. --Edit-- P.S. I forgot to include the LeBron draft and the 2004 draft. They were still in the lottery after drafting LeBron and missed some great borderline stars like Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, Biedrins and JR Smith. Al Jefferson and Biedrins could have been nice backups to Z and Boozer. Either Smiths would have been great players off the bench, too. 2003 Drafted LeBron James. no brainer 2004 Back to the Lottery Drafted Luke Jackson over Andris Biedrins, Josh Smith, Al Jefferson, J. R. Smith in the next 8 picks
BS. Cavs suck because they've had horrible management. They drafted in the lottery 3 years straight before drafting James. Not only that, it's not like drafting James was some sort of big gamble or a masterfull stroke of player evaluation. No, the Cavs had the #1 overall pick in a year in which the most hyped player ever coming out of high school since Lew Alcindor entered his name into the draft. It wasn't rocket science. Like BetterThanEver pointed out, they missed out on much better players before and after drafting James. And their FA signings and trades leave something to be desired. Shaq in the twilight of his career may have been their best FA/trade of all. And letting Carlos Boozer walk was comical.
Well, you can say that if they didn't suck so badly, they wouldn't have gotten LeBron in the first place.
Yup. Even the Clippers managed to have Elton Brand and Blake Griffin fall into their lap for years of consistent suckitude. It shows some teams more than others just plain lack the ability to build around their good fortune, or build PERIOD. The Spurs knew EXACTLY what to do with Tim Duncan coming to town. The Cavs and Clippers and Knicks under Isiah woulda wasted Tim Duncan.
they had 7 years where they were one of the 2-3 teams in the national spotlight all the time. one bad year, who cares.
I'd say all the years before 2003 were MASSIVE successes. If they picked anyone better and sucked less, they'd never have gotten LeBron. Every bit of suckitude was totally worth it. If they actually drafted Maggette etc, they'd never have gotten LeBron. But man, 2004 was a major bust. if only they had gotten josh smith...
Maybe Maggette would have done something, but he didn't break out for 3 years. 2000, Przybilla had injury issues and was in constant foul trouble. His performance didn't get better until he got to Portland in 2005, LeBron's 2nd year in the league. 2001 was a bust also, Joe Johnson was not very polished. He didn't break out until 2003, Lebron's rookie year. He scored around 6-9 pts, had no 3pt shot, and couldn't defend. They would have still sucked until then. 2002 was a major bust. They drafted Carlos Boozer. He played for a year with LeBron. They did exercise their team option to keep him for another year at the rookie scale. They let him become a restricted free agent and go to Utah. They didn't match. Maybe they would have still sucked enough with Stoudemire over Boozer for another year to get LeBron. Stoudemire would have been tied down with a 4 year guarantee contract, at least. The Cavs couldn't mess that up.
The Cavs spent too much time trying to edge themselves slightly up bit by bit trying to keep Lebron, it ended up creating a mess of a roster that had no real objective but "keep lebron". Right now Orlando are doing the same thing, and will in all likeliness end up in the same place.
The Cavs are really in a terrible situation. They have a bunch of role players without a star and they have few young players who will develop. This is a lost season for them anyway. The best they can hope for is good luck in the draft lottery. They will have the most ping pong balls.
Hmm. It's funny. It's almost like these words could describe another team. I just can't put my finger on who...
Its kind of funny how they are back were they started before Lebron. I've always thought to myself they screwed up when they passed up on Josh Smith and took Luke Jackson. He would of been Lebron's Pippen right there.
Unfortunately I think that other team you have in mind won't have nearly as many ping pong balls in the draft lottery as the Cavs...
