With two days remaining until free agents can officially sign contracts, I wanted to take stock of the harsh realities that are starting to pile up for LeBron-hopeful franchises—in particular, the Chicago Bulls.
Since last week, the prevailing perception among pundits is that there’s been a huge momentum shift in terms of LeBron’s expected destination. A big part of this seems to have to do with the Shakespearean power struggle playing out behind the scenes in James’s camp. Windhorst tweeted tonight that, according to his sources, there is indeed a rift between LRMR and World Wide Wes, with Wes essentially being pushed out of the process by Maverick Carter. This is significant because Wes had allegedly been telling anyone who would listen since the playoffs ended that LBJ to CHI was a done deal.
Admittedly, the Bulls are still very much in the picture. But it seems to be down to Chicago vs. Cleveland in James’s head. However, some of the reasons that Chicago’s favored status has taken a hit act as a great reminder of how much more complex free agency and the business of the NBA is than what most of the talking heads have made it out to be.
1) Resistance from the Pre-Existing Star
Again according to Windhorst’s Twitter feed, one of the factors working against Chicago is that Derrick Rose hasn’t exactly welcomed the idea of LeBron coming to town. The lesser elements of the NBA analyst community are likely baffled by this. Why would Rose, a budding superstar, not welcome the opportunity to play with arguably the best player in the league in his prime?
To me, though, it makes perfect sense—especially when you factor in that one of the main reasons for Rose’s resistance comes not from Rose directly, but from his agent.
As we’ve pointed out over and over again on Mesa, the reality is that LeBron and Derrick Rose aren’t particularly complementary players. Both of them need the ball in their hands to be their best, both of them operate primarily on the perimeter with frequent cuts to the basket, both of them have high usage rates (27.2% for Rose last season, compared to 33.5% for LeBron), meaning they were the primary decision-makers on how their teams’ possessions ended. In short, they both excel, but having both is redundant and possibly harmful to each.
Now, either Derrick Rose has recognized this, or else his agent—who also happens to represent Joe Johnson—pointed it out to him. Shockingly, in “Rose’s” opinion, Johnson would have been the best max contract fit for the Bulls. In theory, i.e. if Joe Johnson deserved max money, I would agree. He’d provide another offensive weapon who was a three point threat (37.3% career), and would happily cede leadership and responsibility to Rose and Noah.
My theory is that Rose’s agent also happens to realize that if LeBron—a very similar player in many regards to his own client—comes to town, there’s a significant chance that Rose’s numbers take a hit. In addition, he also takes a demotion, in a way, because LeBron (as the face of the NBA) automatically assumes the leadership role. Which would in turn endanger the probability that Rose receives a max extension offer the summer after next. If he’s a good agent (and it’s Arn Tellem, so history and reputation say that he is), his responsibility is to look out for his client’s best financial interests. In this case, the best case scenario would’ve been for Johnson to join Rose. The runner-up scenario is that Rose continues to be allowed to do what he’s done the past two seasons. And the only way that happens is if LeBron stays away.
Does it makes sense? Absolutely. Is it something that anyone in the pundit-at-large community would’ve mentioned in talking about what a great fit Chicago is for LeBron? Never.
2) Disconnect Between Long-Term and Short-Term Pieces
Mike mentioned this earlier, but as important as the 2010-11 season is, LeBron’s next contract will (theoretically) be for 5 or 6 years (depending on if he re-signs with the Cavs or manages to swing a sign and trade). The most attractive personnel reasons for James to go to Chicago are, of course, Rose and Noah. Rose remains on his rookie contract through the 2012-13 season. That would cover either 50% or 60% of James’s commitment. Not bad.
However, Joakim Noah’s contract at present only runs through the 2011-12 season. He becomes eligible for an extension after this upcoming season. That would cover only 30% or 40% of James’s commitment. Not as encouraging—especially when you take into account that Bulls’ ownership has consistently tried to avoid paying the luxury tax.
Assuming something resembling the current CBA (e.g. no hard cap, no salary rollbacks) is adopted in 2011, Chicago will have to max or near-max a different player for each of the next three seasons: LeBron this year, Noah (via extension) in the summer of 2011, and Rose (via extension) in the summer of 2012. And for anyone thinking that Noah will not demand a huge deal, I would point out that Amir Johnson and Darko just cashed in for a combined $54MM over the next 5 years. If you think some team like the Knicks won’t go balls-out for a legitimate young center like Noah, you’re probably wandering around the desert in a peyote-induced haze.
For a recent example of how this type of domino-effect salary play works, look at Orlando. In the span of two seasons, they paid Rashard Lewis a max contract in free agency, then max-extended Da-wight and gave a sizable extension to Jameer Nelson shortly thereafter. The Magic are committed to roughly $44MM in salary between those three players for next season, with the annual amount heading north for each player through 2012-13. Their team payroll will hover above $80MM in 2009-10 and 2010-11. Admittedly, this is partially because Otis Smith ran buckwild with his owner’s checkbook and is paying a back-up center about $6.5MM / year, not to mention $35MM total over the next two for Vince Carter. But the three deals I mentioned at the top still make up the majority of that $80+MM figure.
The bottom line is that every good roster is on a time line. At a certain point, re-signing everyone becomes untenable. (With both Kevin Durant and Jeff Green eligible for extensions this summer, Oklahoma City is rapidly approaching this point, and it will be interesting to see how they handle it.) Unless your owner is willing to go into the tax, that is. Jerry Reinsdorf has resisted that strategy, and that historical resistance may be one of the aspects giving LeBron pause about a move to the red and black.
3) The Rest of the Roster
The other problem that follows from the point above is that even if ownership pays serious scrill to keep the core together, you of course still need complementary pieces to create a championship team. We’ve discussed this point ad nauseam in regard to teams (King Slickback, I’m looking in your direction) gutting their rosters to clear cap space. In honor of the fact that we’re bringing this up again, find the nearest dead horse and whale away.
Again, per Windhorst, LeBron is wary of the fact that the Bulls currently have no shooters whatsoever on their roster. Chicago was 28th in the league in 3P% last season (33%), and just traded away one of the only guys trying to pull them up in that category (Kirk Hinrich at 37.9% career), so it stands to reason that they’re going to decline even further this upcoming season unless they can get some marksmen through free agency.
However, since Chicago can’t make any complementary moves until they know if James will actually sign with them, there’s a heavy risk involved for James. Though we won’t know the cap figure until Thursday, the Bulls should have around $13MM to spend after LeBron hypothetically signs with them. Can they split that money up and still get more than one quality shooter? Or do they just go all in and try to use most of that chunk to try to lure Ray Allen under the assumption that one elite 3P bomber will be enough? Or do they botch the entire exercise, and then LeBron is stuck on a team where no one can reliably hit a three pointer?
Say what you will about the Cavs’ roster, but as Mike pointed out on our Twitter feed tonight, the front office recognized that the team needed to surround LeBron with dunkers, rebounders, and especially shooters. If Chicago doesn’t seem equipped to do the same thing, the star power of Rose and Noah loses some of its luster. And the “sure thing” that was a move to Chicago becomes an even bigger roll of the dice than when Uncle Wes was removed from the cockpit.
The point is that almost no one in the mainstream sports world was raising these issues at the start of the free agency period. But now, as it nears decision time, the less attractive elements of the equation seem to be looming larger for LeBron. Whether or not they’re literally a deal-breaker, we apparently won’t know until Thursday. But I assure you that if a lack of role players is part of what sinks the Bulls’ hopes for LeBron, I will laugh until I’m doubled over. Here’s hoping for stomach pain.
By the time anyone reads this article, LeBron’s second day of free agency meetings will have begun. He’s scheduled to hold court with the Clippers and Heat today, then the Bulls and Cavs Saturday. But Thursday was all about the NY/NJ metropolitan area—and shockingly, all sources from inside the Knicks and Nets indicate the meetings went “extremely well.”
Pardon me if I’m not sweating yet. And pardon me again if I go on to say that none of you Cavs fans reading this post should be sweating either.
As we here at Mesa have pointed out multiple times over the course of the past few weeks (via Twitter and in columns), generating excitement about a business prospect during a meeting falls somewhere between “producing saliva” and “crapping” on the scale of difficulty. I’m not even denying that the excitement in the room for the Nets and Knicks was genuine. But the reality is that unless one of these other teams walk out of the LRMR offices with a verbal commitment from James, the emotion in the room during a presentation is irrelevant.
Let’s also not forget that the pundits reporting about yesterday’s meetings were entirely basing their opinions on sources within the Nets and Knicks, most of whom probably weren’t even at the meetings in question. As a result, reporters and beat writers end up gushing in print about how great their chances of landing LeBron are—like this, for example. (Caveat: kudos to Rod Thorn for sounding like the voice of reasonable expectation in the midst of this blowjob of a report.)
Examining this situation rationally for a moment, consider this: what else are these partisan sources going to say? “You know, I gotta be honest, I thought our presentation sorta sucked”? “I’ll tell ya, LeBron seemed really disinterested”? “We couldn’t even get a meeting with Amar’e earlier than Monday and Rudy Gay already re-signed with Memphis. Why the hell would we have any chance at signing LeBron”? Something tells me that’s not going to fly if you want to remain employed by either of those organizations.
Second, what about any of LeBron’s media appearances since he was 16 would lead anyone to believe that he wouldn’t portray interest and enthusiasm in these meetings? Not only was the first of them led by one of his best friends and biggest role models, but this is a guy who declared that at one time or another he’s dreamed about playing for every team in the league, and that he’s been looking forward to this day (free agency) for four years. This is a mega-holiday for him. I’m convinced that today’s teams could give their presentations entirely in Korean, and LeBron would still be giddy.
Third, thanks to the information that’s out in the public realm about the Knicks’ presentation, I can say with knowledge that it was laughable. For starters, one of the supposed ringers the NYK brain trust brought in for the meeting was…Allan Houston, a guy whose greatest legacy in the league is as arguably the worst return on a max contract investment in NBA history. Houston missed a combined 94 regular season games in the 3rd and 4th seasons of that contract and retired before the start of the fifth. For that, the Knicks paid him over $20M per. My sources tell me that Donnie Walsh followed up his decision to include Houston in the meeting by flying to New Orleans to pitch the Saints’ brass on selling the Super Dome’s naming rights jointly to BP and FEMA.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Forbes got a hold of an actual piece of the Knicks’ presentation—a slideshow by a marketing consultant called Interbrand that claims LeBron has the potential to gross $2 Billion (yes, that’s a ‘B’) by playing the rest of his career with the Knicks. At the very worst, his signature on a Knicks’ contract would give him a 48.6% chance of grossing at least $1 Billion.
As Forbes’s Steven Bertoni points out in the article, “the report is light on the details of its methodology.” Having gone through the slideshow personally, I concur. The results seem to be based on…well, nothing tangible, other than the fact that James Dolan cut them a check to come to a specific conclusion. Interbrand claims that the findings were determined via a battery of computers running career projections based on a variety of factors, but the overall vagueness of the presentation creates the distinct impression of junk science (or technically, junk math. I wouldn’t want to confuse my junk).
Even funnier, the unintended take-away from this preposterous slideshow is that staying in Cleveland is actually a much more profitable decision for LeBron than anyone would have ever anticipated. Interbrand’s “study” shows that James’s maximum lifetime value in Cleveland is $1.176B, his lifetime average value is $699M, and his chance at making a billion dollars stands at 1.3%. By comparison among the other non-Knicks franchises included in the model (Chicago and Miami), Chicago would offer him a slightly higher maximum lifetime value ($1.233B), but a lower average value ($689M) and lower probability of grossing his first billion (1.0%). Miami is a distant fourth in all categories. In short, Cleveland is pretty clearly his second-best option behind the bumbling carnival side show that is the Knicks.
Considering that Dolan paid for this presentation, he may have wanted to suggest that Interbrand skew the findings even further than they’re already skewed. Telling LeBron he has any chance of grossing over a billion dollars by staying in his hometown, which is widely acknowledged by now to be neck-and-neck with Chicago as his chosen destination, isn’t necessarily a tactic I’d have recommended. But then again, this is why the Knicks have been an NBA afterthought for most of the past decade.
I also love the fact that the Interbrand “study” finds that LeBron has a 0% chance of making a bill in Miami because of “lack of fan avidity,” i.e. because no one living in Miami gives a shit about the Heat. I think it may be the only nugget of truth in the entire slide show. But that’s neither here nor there.
My final point as to why Cavs fans should remain calm: Pat Riley’s grand plan for wooing LeBron is going down in flames. According to reliable sources (and common sense, my favorite of all sources), Riley’s strategy hinged on getting verbal commitments from both Wade and Bosh to come to Miami before meeting with LeBron. As of now, that has not happened. Considering that Wade met with the Bulls today, and Bosh has been tweeting like a jackass about his meetings with Houston and New Jersey (with other meetings scheduled), it seems highly unlikely that King Slickback will be able to make that pitch as planned. Without commitments from those two players, the Heat have to try to sell James on living at South Beach with Mario Chalmers and Michael “Every GM in the League Thinks I Might As Well Be Made of Uranium” Beasley. Not exactly a strong hand, especially considering that if past history is any indication, the Heat might just retire James’s jersey even if he never plays for them.
In short, I still believe that the Cavs’ faithful have nothing to fear from the tri-state area, and all signs point to Miami and the Clippers being non-factors. Which means it will all come down to Saturday. Chicago Vs. Cleveland. Only time will tell if Dan Gilbert comes out of that match-up as the ownership equivalent to Craig Ehlo. But for today, at least, I believe we can all rest easy.
Since the Cavs broke off contract talks with Brian Shaw earlier today, I have no real news to discuss right now. Instead, I’m going to take this time to address a half hour of TV that thousands of sports fans watched tonight—ESPN’s Free Agent Summit. Or, as I like to call it, “4 Guys Ignore Reality for 30 Minutes.”
In case you missed it, the show consisted of ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser, Mike Wilbon, Dan Lebatard, and Bill Simmons discussing the ins and outs of the Summer of Money. The problem is that apparently, none of them understand anything about the salary cap, let alone some basic things about the players involved. But what do you expect from a guy who, as far as I can tell, now only watches golf (Kornheiser); a guy who’s too busy being friends with the players and coaches to actually report on them objectively (Wilbon); a South Beach homer (Lebatard); and a reality TV scholar (Simmons).
It would take me all night to try to address every mistake or misconception this esteemed panel proclaimed, so instead I’ll just try to hit a few of the high points. It’s the best way I can think of to try to combat the dumbing down of American basketball fans.
1) It’s fiscally possible for LeBron, Wade, and Bosh to all play for Miami without anyone taking a pay cut
A max contract for the above players next season will be 105% of their 2009-10 salaries, or $16,568,908 according to cap sorcerer Larry Coon. Also per Coon, Miami will have $27,596,072 of cap space after re-signing Wade. That leaves Miami roughly $5.4MM away from being able to accommodate three max guys. Even if they manage to shed the radioactive Michael Beasley (guaranteed $4.9MM for 2010-11), they’re still short.
Further, a sign and trade isn’t possible because Miami doesn’t have the assets to match salaries for a third max contract. As of this moment, the only other players besides Beasley that are even on their roster are Mario Chalmers ($854,389), Joell Anthony ($885,120), and Kenny Hasbrouck ($762,195, unguaranteed). It may be possible via getting a third team involved, but what third team is going to want to help enable that deal? Oh, maybe the Wizards, since they seem to just want to help other teams clear cap space. But even that seems doubtful.
Bottom line: this scenario can play out, but only if one of the three stars voluntarily takes a pay cut. There’s a minimal chance of that happening with so many other teams willing to dish out max money.
2) Dirk Nowitzki should be the next player mentioned in all free agent talks (behind the guys mentioned above)
The amount of time that the panel spent on this topic was just remarkable to me. To Wilbon’s credit, he admitted what makes this subject so ridiculous: Dirk’s not going anywhere. His opt out just means he gets to negotiate a longer, higher-dollar extension with the Mavericks. This is the same scenario as with Paul Pierce, who opted out of the final year of his Boston contract tonight.
Beyond the dollars and cents aspect, I got a good laugh out of the notion that Dirk is such an important player that he should be in on the alleged face-to-face talks with Wade, James, and Bosh. Just think about that room for a second: the three supposedly tight-knit buddies in the primes of their careers…and then the 32 year-old German guy. For the record, Dirk would probably be a welcome presence in that room from a personality standpoint, since as far as I can tell he’s hilarious. But he’s not repped by CAA and can’t know any of those guys very well, let alone the fact that he’s on the complete opposite side of his career. It’s a little absurd.
Kornheiser really took the cake on this one. He predicted that Nowitzki would end up in Miami when it was all said and done. Frankly, I was surprised that Kornheiser was even aware that Miami had a franchise, but part of his reasoning for Dirk’s move may have been projecting how well he would fit alongside the likes of Rony Seikaly and Glen Rice. So I’m holding back the credit.
3) High quality veteran players will take the league minimum to play with a “Super Team”
I say this over and over again, but this is my favorite idea in the entire free agency discussion. I especially like it when pundits spout this minutes or seconds after declaring how ridiculous it is to think that in this crucial final year before the new CBA, the big-name free agents will opt for less money. I agree with that statement. But the notion that the little guys—the ones who aren’t making any endorsement money or getting any other major perks—are going to have a different mindset on the same issue is just unrealistic.
Think about it: Tarence Kinsey and Dorell Wright—both low dollar role players in 2008-9—both got cited for traffic violations in Bentleys they’d bought that same season. It may be unfair to project that every guy in the league is living this far beyond his means, but I’m willing to bet that many of them are. Factor in their wives/girlfriends, kids, friends, and other expenses, and every dollar counts. Yes, chasing a championship is great, and some guys may take less money for the opportunity. But the notion that really high quality players who could easily command a bigger contract this summer—say, Ray Allen—are going to voluntarily opt for a veteran minimum contract…please.
4) The Nets will be shut out in free agency because “if you want to play in New York, why would you want to play for a team that stinks?”
Yes, the Nets were the worst team in the league last season with an abysmal 12-70 record. But they have the highly productive Brook Lopez, #3 pick Derrick Favors, and former All-Star Devin Harris. The Knicks were 29-53, traded their first round pick to the Rockets at last season’s deadline, and will lose their most productive player, David Lee, to free agency so they can clear cap space to chase a bigger star.
Bottom line: the Knicks had more than twice as many wins as the Nets last season, but they were still sub-30 wins. Does that mean they’re good, or just good by comparison? Plus, when you take the cool factor into account (Nets: charismatic billionaire owner, Jay-Z, upcoming Brooklyn move vs. Knicks: incompetent owner, decaying MSG as home floor), the Nets have to be considered a more appealing option. But maybe that’s just me.
5) LeBron will skyrocket to multiple titles as soon as he changes teams, because he’ll “finally have a say in who his teammates are”
A lot of preposterous comments were made tonight. But this one, from the Miami Herald’s Dan LeBatard (whom I normally like), may have been the crown jewel. I really wish that Woj had been able to call into the show so he could set the record straight on this, but obviously it didn’t happen.
If the reports that came out at the end of this season were true—and I have every reason to believe they were—no single player in NBA history has had as much say in the roster around him as LeBron James. We know that LeBron approved the Shaq trade. He supposedly told the front office to go out and get Antawn Jamison mid-season. Multiple deals that Ferry had constructed were allegedly vetoed by James, and thus, by Dan Gilbert. To blame Ferry for the failures of the roster is a near-preposterous exercise.
In fact, if LeBron does end up winning a title or titles with a team such as Miami or Chicago, it will be precisely because he does NOT have a say in who his teammates are (beyond the obvious initial choice made by the switch itself). If Riley couldn’t be strong-armed by Wade, he won’t be strong-armed by LeBron. And if Jerry Reinsdorf couldn’t be strong-armed by MJ, he won’t be strong-armed by LeBron. For James, an iron-willed owner and/or team president may be the best thing. The question is whether or not that’s what he really wants.
I could go on forever about more topics. For instance, the “summit” spent an entire segment analyzing who would be a better pick-up between Shaq, AI, Jermaine O’Neal, and Tracy McGrady, but the phrase “sign and trade” never came up a single time in any of the talk of the marquee free agents. However, I have better things to do with my life than continue to talk about all the ways in which the mainstream sports media once again missed the boat.
My advice: til signatures start going on contracts, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. Especially if Kornheiser, Wilbon, Lebatard, or Simmons is involved. Good night and good luck.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what everyone in the basketball world has been waiting for.
This Thursday, July 1st, officially marks the start of free agency. Given the activity on the rumor / spin mill since the Cavs’ season ended last month, it’s hard to believe that there’s another gear that this can all go to. But there is, and starting 12:01 AM on Thursday, we’ll all get to see what that’s like.
I for one am looking forward to it.
However, as much as I appreciate a good theater of the absurd—and really, is there any better description for this entire feeding frenzy around the class of 2010?—I’m looking forward to it for a different reason.
This is the week when we’ll finally start to get some answers about basketball in Cleveland. However, I want to heavily emphasize “some.”
Obviously, the franchise did nothing in last week’s draft—no picks, no trades, no significant moves of any kind. In fact, other than some clandestine coaching interviews that may or may not have happened, business has mostly ground to a halt since Reptile was rebuffed by Tom Izzo a few weeks back.
This week will be a different animal. Windhorst asserts that the front office hopes to have a coach in place before the start of free agency, regardless of whether or not Phil Jackson indirectly tries to cock-block the Cavs by dragging out his decision about returning to the Lakers. That, at least, will be something.
Theoretically, noted (metaphorical) hostage-taker LeBron James *could* make his big decision by this weekend, too. But I wouldn’t bet on it. If I’ve learned anything about James by studying him over the past 7 years, my guess is that he’ll drag this decision out all the way until he can officially sign somewhere on July 8th. If not longer. Remember, he’s been building to this moment since he signed his last extension at the end of the 2006 season. The idea that he’s going to just make a decision on the first or second day of free agency is naive, in my mind. He’s going to milk this thing for all it’s worth.
In other words, if you’re holding your breath for resolution on the James front, I’d suggest you wait another week before starting.
I’m no longer going to attempt to speculate on where he’s going to go when it’s all said and done. I doubt it will be Cleveland anymore, but I have no real evidence to base that on. Then again, I’m not sure that anyone else really does either. We’ve all been living in the LeBron spin zone for so long that it’s impossible to believe that anything being heard is the truth. (Sidebar: according to cap specialist Larry Coon, the Bulls are still likely going to be about $4MM away from being able to accommodate 2 max contracts after the Hinrich trade goes through, so don’t let any obnoxious know-it-all types tell you they’re a James Johnson trade away from having the space. They’re a lot closer than they were, but a $4MM difference is not insignificant.)
Unfortunately, we all know by now that James is the linchpin in the entire personnel game for the wine and gold. Coach or no coach, the front office won’t feel ready to make any roster moves until James has at last shown his hand. Which means that we’ve all got at least another week before any of the dominoes start to fall.
So take a deep breath. Even though the race begins Thursday, there’s still a lot of spectating to be done before anyone crosses the finish line.
Some of our readers (though probably not many) may remember that a few months ago I did what I called a “Cap Reality Series” on some of the teams in the market to try to land LeBron this summer.
That series turned out to be a waste of time. Why? Because it was based on a complete misconception of James’s mentality and priorities. The primary error was that I took him at his word when he said that he cared about winning championships above all else. Since that time James has mailed in a playoff series, refused to speak to the Cavs’ #1 coaching candidate, and made it clear through his actions that his main goal is to market himself to as many people as possible.
As a result, much of the evaluation I did was way off-base. And in fact, some of it is laugh-out-loud funny, like when I slammed the Clippers for thinking it was a good idea to go into this historic off-season having just fired their head coach and GM. I still think it’s a stupid move, but it’s a bit ironic considering that the Cavs ultimately ended up doing almost the same thing by firing Mike Brown and then letting Danny Ferry walk away at the end of his contract.
Suffice it to say that if I were to write those same posts again today, I would come up with very different results. In some sense, that’s what I want to do right now, but only in one case—and really, in one aspect in particular.
The case would be the New York Knickerbockers. The aspect would be their head coach, Mike D’Antoni.
When I wrote my Knicks Cap Reality post in February, I had this to say about D’Antoni:
Even more importantly, is it even possible to build a championship team when it’s being coached by Mike D’Antoni, perhaps the least defensively minded coach in recent NBA history? I’ve heard analysts say that LeBron would love to play for him because D’Antoni would let LeBron run all game. Not only does Bron not care about running all game, he’s openly said over and over again that he knows defense is what wins championships. So why exactly is the D’Antoni / New York combo such a great fit for him?
Last weekend, I started reading Jack McCallum’s 7 Seconds or Less, his book about the 2005-6 Phoenix Suns. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Suns granted McCallum full access to basically all team functions as a nominal “special assistant” to the coaching staff that year. He was in the locker room, on the practice court, on the team plane—basically, everywhere the team went from the first pre-season practice through the end of their playoff run.
McCallum provides a revealing behind-the-scenes view of the personalities on the team, from the players to the coaching staff. In fact, the coaches are in many ways the stars of the book. And of course, D’Antoni is the featured attraction among this set.
I now have a much better sense of why D’Antoni has been pitched as the ultimate “player’s coach.” I have to say that it sounds like he deserves the title. He’s almost relentlessly positive with his team, and at the same time, does a tremendous job of bonding with them. For instance, McCallum makes a point early in the book that D’Antoni has been known to play video games with the players prior to regular season games, and that the players absolutely love this. (He also happens to be pretty freaking hilarious, which is generally a great quality for whatever you’re doing.)
Above all, D’Antoni’s offensive system is (theoretically) most players’ dreams. As long as they adhere to the principles at its core, the players have carte blanche to operate as they see fit within that offense. It’s telling that at one point during their playoff series against the Lakers, the Suns are floated a page from a Lakers’ assistant’s scouting report that was left behind in a hotel room. The neon quote from the scouting report was, “In Phoenix’s offense, literally nothing is frowned upon.” Admittedly, this isn’t true. Isolation plays, for instance, would be frowned upon in the Suns’ offense. But D’Antoni and his coaching staff loved this quote so much that they would insert it into practices and huddles as a kind of tongue-in-cheek sign-off. (“OK guys, go out there, match their intensity, be smart, and just run the offense. Remember, literally nothing is frowned upon.”)
However, here’s the other element that’s worth mentioning: throughout the book, D’Antoni talks a good game regarding defense. He spends time and energy going over it in pre-game meetings, at half-time, in practice. He’ll pitch defense to his players as the key to winning games. In short, the man knows how to pay the concept lip service.
That said, in private, his answer to everything is that his team just has to score more. For instance, Amar’e goes down with a knee injury early in the regular season—the opening salvo in the history of knee injuries that has turned Stoudemire into a certified health risk. Not for a moment does D’Antoni suggest that maybe the team should try to fill the void left by Amar’e by defending better or changing their style of play in any way. Instead, he immediately decides that they just need to amp up their scoring.
McCallum also makes a point that D’Antoni’s mind is basically made up about basketball at this point. He knows what he believes, and what he believes is that fluid offense and quick quality shots are the best way to win games. It’s not that defense doesn’t play a part in D’Antoni’s game plan; it’s just a really small part. He also tends to apply it selectively to a few guys. In the 2005-6 season, Raja Bell and Shawn Marion were the guys who were expected to go out and play stellar defense night in and night out. The rest of the team? They should try. But you know, if it didn’t work out, just keep scoring.
In my opinion, this is the perfect storm for a coaching pitch to James. Not the defense-minded James who wanted to win multiple championships, AKA the James of February 2010, but rather the James who wants to put up gaudy numbers, be the center of the greatest show on hardwood, and ultimately, not be challenged by his coach, AKA the James of Now and Forever. D’Antoni can sell James the idea that he does care about defense, and the James of public record can believe him and feel secure knowing that he’s in good hands. In reality, though, both men will know what the story is: D’Antoni will inflate James’s offensive numbers to historic proportions, and if he wants to defend, by all means go for it. It’s James’s show.
This last trait is the most important one. Woj and Ric Bucher have been adamant that James essentially believes that any improvements he needs to make to his game are going to be best determined by him. Coaches aren’t going to teach him anything. This is exactly the type of mindset that D’Antoni would bring to the table. He will be LeBron’s friend. He will laugh and joke and talk with LeBron. He will urge him to shoot, to pass, to run, to put on a show. And yeah, ok, every once in a while, to defend. But by and large, he will let James operate as James wants to operate. I suspect this will even apply when LeBron suddenly decides late in games that he wants to stop the ball and go 1-on-5 (AKA the fantastically mislabeled “Mike Brown’s offense”). Will this run counter to D’Antoni’s instincts as a coach? Absolutely. But as far as I can tell, he’ll let it go in exchange for three quarters per night of D’Antoni offense.
What does this all add up to? In my opinion, it may make the Knicks the leader to sign James. I honestly believe that. Look, he’s not going to Jersey to play for Avery Johnson. I’m becoming increasingly skeptical that he’s going to play in Chicago for Tom Thibodeau. And I ultimately believe that he doesn’t necessarily want to try to make it work with Dwyane Wade in Miami, because he knows Wade would still be the Alpha Dog there. Under Mike D’Antoni, the Knicks seem to offer what the real LeBron James cares about: the spotlight, the money, the numbers, and free reign to do as he pleases on the court.
Can D’Antoni win championships with James, though? Time will tell. But I for one am beginning to believe that time may be the only thing preventing us from knowing that answer.
