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.
In the Cavs’ front office tonight, one simple question sums up the past week and a half of work on their coaching search and their increasingly futile efforts (or so it seems) to re-sign LeBron.
“Now what?”
As everyone knows by now, Tom Izzo announced at a press conference on Tuesday evening that he has rejected Reptile’s “framework” offer of $30MM over 5 years, unlimited use of a private jet, “on demand” baths in liquid platinum, a swimming pool filled with gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck, and who knows what else, to coach the Cavs.
CBS Sports’s Ken Berger wrote earlier that LeBron has now effectively locked the entire franchise into a cryogenic chamber until at least July 1. He argues that no “name” coaching candidate (and potentially no coaching candidate period) will ink a deal with the team until James’s status is known. Furthermore, even the team’s attempts to get back into next Thursday’s draft are handcuffed by not knowing for sure which players should be traded away, given that the centerpiece of the team is a question mark.
This last notion is one that I want to focus on—the reason being that I don’t totally buy it. (Of course, this may be because I have the luxury of being a fan / observer with no consequences attached to my thinking, aside from occasionally embarrassing myself in print on this blog. But hear me out.)
Consider the Cavs’ current roster for next year for a moment. Done? Good. Here’s my question: apart from Andy, should anyone on that list really be untouchable?
To me, the answer is a resounding “no.”
This is the cold truth that the organization has to face up to: the Cavs have to proceed as if they’re in a rebuilding mode, regardless of whether or not James comes back. Why? Because either way, it doesn’t change the fact that the current roster will still be deficient on a foundational level. Mo Williams will still be an undersized, streaky, score-first point guard who collapses in the playoffs. Antawn Jamison will still be a supposed stretch 4 who doesn’t shoot well from midrange or long range and acts as a complete sieve on D. Delonte West will be traded regardless of James’s final decision. Boobie Gibson will still be an awesome catch-and-shoot player who brings little else to the table. Glitch will still be, well, Glitch—although his continued flubs have me on the verge of upgrading him to something like Permanent Fatal Error.
The rest of the roster consists of two categories: capable role players (Moon*, Parker, Powe) whose value from a productivity standpoint is high in relation to their salary, and a couple of young guys who *could* grow into starters or sixth men (Danny Green and Sebastian Telfair) if they continue to develop.
(*Note: As we’ve stated over and over again, Moon’s advanced stats really suggest that he should be a starter, or should play starter’s minutes. But I’m lumping him in the ‘role player’ category because that’s the perception of him around the league, as far as I can tell.)
In fact, it’s arguable that the team’s most flawed players happen to double as their worst contracts. I would contend that Jamison has more value from a production standpoint than Mo, but I’m not concerned about comparisons. Antawn’s absolute value is somewhere far south of $28.4MM over the next 2 years, and that’s the issue. In either case, the player in question should still have value to other teams in the league. Dealing either (or preferably both) of them for some mixture of cap relief, draft picks, or younger players should really be a no-brainer.
This leads me to the other part of the equation: with or without James, the only sound solution for the Cavs is to get younger. Regardless of whether he was hamstrung from above or below, the Danny Ferry era proved conclusively that as executed, the “win now with veterans” strategy did not work. Repeating it would be disastrous. Finding lower-level veterans to fill in around your young assets never appears to be that difficult, and the difference in marginal value between a “really good” veteran versus an “average” or “decent” veteran is much smaller than the gulf between having a promising young core versus, well, not.
Finally, because of LeBron’s ability to play multiple positions, it’s pretty hard to argue that the Cavs wouldn’t be able to figure out where to upgrade. Although his ability to switch between playing 3 and 4 leaves the forward spots open to some potential redundancy if the Cavs were to try to upgrade there, both guard spots are gaping holes, and finding a legitimate center—i.e. one capable of guarding Da-Wight, which Andy can’t do—would also be a pretty clear victory.
Look, even though I now think he’s an asshole, a liar, and a complete prima donna, LeBron James is really, really good at basketball. More to the point, he’s both extremely versatile and phenomenal at elevating the play of his teammates. If Chris Grant and Reptile do the reconstruction right, it’s entirely plausible that the Cavs would still be a playoff team next season and a contender again another year or two after that. LeBron’s own play and The James Effect on his teammates are that huge.
So if they’re thinking about things clearly, the front office has to recognize:
1) The Cavs can’t win a championship with Mo Williams and Antawn Jamison as key components of their core
2) Assuming the right moves are made, trading those players now lowers the team’s ceiling for the next season or two but raises it dramatically after that
3) While some of the other players on the team are a good or great value for the money, it’s bad business to hold onto them if it kills a deal for a potential young star (even if it’s in the form of a high draft pick)
4) There are at least 3 positions (1, 2, and 5) where the Cavs could use a serious upgrade
5) All of the above are true with or without LeBron
Clearly, I’m simplifying here. There are other considerations, such as which type of players will be benefited by the new coach’s system. But Berger is right: it’s now a foregone conclusion that the coaching search won’t be concluded until July. With the draft now 8 days away, it’s potentially disastrous for the front office to freeze on trades until that same period. (Realistically, a good coach will figure out how to best utilize the abilities of the roster he’s given anyway. He can then work with the front office in the future to refine it.)
Reptile and Chris Grant may not have a clear view of LeBron’s plans, but there is enough else on their roster that’s definite enough to construct a strategy. Whether or not they choose to be imprisoned by James’s chess game is ultimately on them.
Here are three words I never want to hear in sequence again: Free. Agent. Summit.
It probably goes without saying that I’m referring to the fabled meeting of the minds first advertised by Dwyane Wade about a week ago—a not-so-secret session where the supposed best and brightest of the 2010 free agent class (James, Wade, and Joe Johnson) would hold court over what the future would hold for all of them when the Summer of Money officially begins on July 1.
First, Chris Bosh wasn’t mentioned as having a seat at the table. Then, a source made clear that the RuPaul of Big Men would be involved.
Then Amar’e—likely at the behest of his agent, the one and only Happy Walters—verified that he would be there. After all, how could a guy angling for a max contract be seen as outside of this particular circle?
In his upcoming Larry King interview, LeBron confirmed King’s intuition that he was the “ringleader” of the group, and by logical extension, the key note speaker at the most important conference since the G8.
Meanwhile, sports pundits such as Mike Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser advocated for other “major” free agents, such as Carlos “Last Time I Was in This Situation I Stabbed a Blind Guy in the Back” Boozer, to join the talks as well.
Then Tuesday, Wade’s agent denied the “summit” was happening in any kind of formal way, likely because such a meeting would be perhaps the only clear-cut case of player collusion in league history.
My point is, there have already been hundreds of stories written on this thing by hundreds of sportswriters. Most of them, from what I can tell, are viewing it in the most grandiose possible terms. Phrases like “a meeting that will determine the future of the league” or “a redrawing of the NBA map” are being used regularly.
And even though I began this entire post thinking I couldn’t be any more tired of hearing about this thing, recapping all of that just took me to a whole new level of exhaustion.
So in the usual JMID attempt to cut through the smoke screen and see if there’s any actual fire, here’s a brief primer on why the “free agent summit” is the most overhyped, overestimated non-story of the 2010 offseason.
Point 1A) The core group of these guys (James, Wade, Bosh) are friends
Point 1B) All three are now repped by CAA
CBS Sports’s Ken Berger covered the agency story at length right after it happened. Definitely worth a read if you want more of the gory details.
The gist, though, is this: because of their friendship and the joint affiliation of their agents, the three players at the top of every team’s list were going to be working in tandem anyway. Whether this ultimately happened in a conference room at CAA or via a series of conference calls, it’s not going to change the outcome. James, Wade, and Bosh will plan their attack together.
Point 2) The expansion of the ‘summit’ to include more players is inconsequential
Free agency is a line of dominos that begins with LeBron and Wade, then goes to Bosh, and then trickles down to the rest of the available free agents. Until those first two decide where they want to play, the rest of the market is going to be a glacier. It’s only logical. Are the Clippers going to call ahead and offer Amar’e a max contract if LeBron is still in play? Are the Bulls going to hammer out a deal with Joe Johnson if Wade’s signature isn’t on a contract in Mickey Arison’s office? Uh, no. So the idea that even if this summit were to happen, these guys are going to sit around and carve up the NBA landscape like they’re playing a game of Risk is completely ignorant of how business works.
Even if this meeting were to happen in its most grandiose, inclusive form, what’s going to happen? Is Carlos Boozer going to dial up Donnie Walsh and say, “So the guys and I all talked, and we decided that you’re going to sign me.” Walsh’s reaction would be something on the order of, “Uh, thanks Carlos. But I already have a high-scoring, high-rebounding power forward who can’t play a lick of defense that I could re-sign for less. I’ll get back to you.”
Look, deal-making is a two-way street. It’s ludicrous to think that the owners and GMs of the league are going to just have the courses of their franchise dictated to them by a bunch of over-excited employees with nothing to do but daydream until July 1st.
This is even more true when you consider that…
Point 3A) The number of teams with max cap space is a known quantity
Point 3B) None of these guys is taking less than a max contract
For whatever reason, a collective of sports pundits still seem to buy that some subset of these players will decide to take less money to play on a veritable All-Star team. This seems to be the real fantasy of the people talking up “the summit.”
To those of you who believe it, please, just stop. It’s getting embarrassing.
Regardless of whether or not they deserve max contracts, every big-name free agent this summer has a max ego. They have all convinced themselves that they can go somewhere else and make that franchise a champion. Obviously, it’s not going to work out that way. But perception, after all, is reality.
I don’t think that any player mentioned in connection to the summit has the self-awareness or the priorities to say, “What I really care the most about is winning. I can’t do it with just a bunch of role players, so I’m going to voluntarily turn down a max deal being offered to me by my existing team so I can jump ship to not only be a sidekick to one of these other guys, but be PAID like a sidekick to do it.” At least, not when we’re talking about a delta of tens of millions of dollars.
Don’t believe me? To review, here are the teams that are projected to be able to offer max contracts, along with the number of such contracts they can offer:
MIA: 2
NYK: 2
NJ: 1
CHI: 1
LAC: 1
WASH: 1
MIN: 1
OKC: 1
SAC: 1
Total: 11
TIER 1, a.k.a. Players who justifiably “deserve” the max:LeBron, Wade, Bosh
Total Tier 1 players: 3
TIER 2, a.k.a. Players who *think* they deserve the max:Joe Johnson, Amar’e, Boozer, Dirk, Rudy Gay, David Lee
Total Tier 2 players: 6
In short, even if you combine both of those two tiers, there’s too much money coming from too many sources for any of them to seriously consider turning it down in order to load up on one team. And that’s using a break-down that doesn’t even include the teams that can use the Bird Exception to re-sign their own free agent. So not only could Amar’e get a max contract from, say, Miami, he could get a BIGGER max contract to stay in Phoenix and play with Nash and a bunch of other guys that just got him to Western Conference Finals.
The bottom line is that unless you’re talking about the ’92 Olympics, the Dream Team concept is fiction.
Of course, if this huge meeting were to happen, some of these guys might be able to convince themselves in the moment that they’re willing to sacrifice, willing to try to be great. But then there’s this problem…
Point 4) When they leave the room, all bets are off
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotion ofa moment, in camaraderie, in talking about what ifs. But no contracts are being signed in that room. Which means that “the summit” has to adjourn, and everyone in on it has to go home.
This is the place where grand ambitions have a tendency to fade away—not in the moment among others, but in the quiet with your own thoughts.
These players are all grown men. Most of them have families, some of them large families. They have a lifestyle they’ve grown accustomed to. They know the world’s economy is fucked up, and they know the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement is going to make this offseason potentially the last enormously profitable one (for players) in the history of the sport.
It’s one thing for these guys to say while they’re in the room with their boys, “Yeah, screw it. I’m gonna be bold. I’m a man. I’ll take less money so we can play together on one of the great teams of all time.”
It’s entirely another for those same guys to go home and say it to their wives, the mothers of their children, and their agents—who, let’s not forget, are paid based on a percentage of what their clients make.
How many wives are going to say, “Great, baby, you take that pay cut to be 2nd or 3rd in command! The kids and I are really looking forward to uprooting ourselves and starting over in a completely new part of the country so we can cut back.”?
How many agents are going to say, “Absolutely, killer. I would love for you to garnish my own wages so that you can maybe get a couple of trophies for team achievement that mean nothing to my life. Please, by all means, take the mid-level exception and reduce your own stats in the process so you can cripple your next contract too.”
In short, the summit is a grand idea. But even if it were to actually happen, it’s still a fantasy land. Reality hits when the players leave that room. And reality takes the wheel in most financial decisions.
As I think about it now, some part of me wishes that this summit would happen—but only if the players were to stick to the promises they made each other in that room. I wish that some of them would sacrifice money for a chance at greatness, a chance at a dream they’ve all had since they were kids. Part of me wishes that they would defy what’s in their best monetary interest in order to create something truly special, truly memorable, truly inspirational. As a fan, that would mean something to me. It would mean more to me as grown man chasing after my own dreams. I expect it would mean even more to thousands of kids on blacktop courts in worn-out shoes hoping for a better tomorrow.
And the rest of me knows it will never happen.And in the end, it’s not the media blitz over “the summit” that upsets me. It’s knowing that even if the summit happened, the outcome would be no different.
To paraphrase a great philosopher on another topic, “Summit or do not summit. Both are equally worthless.”
I only wish some of these guys would prove me wrong.
As everyone knows by now, the Coldstone Mike Brown era ended last night just before midnight ET. Coldstone was fired in advance of the calendar flip that would’ve guaranteed his entire $4.5MM salary for the 2010-11 season, instead of just the half he’ll be paid for doing absolutely nothing for the next year, AKA “The American Dream.”
It’s going to be very interesting to see how the Cavaliers’ fan base remembers Mike Brown. Obviously, the majority of people in that category are stuck on his supposedly terrible offense and his poor in-game substitution patterns. Sadly, I think those two points—one part-fiction and the other a sad fact—will override some of his great accomplishments. Yes, everyone remembers LeBron’s “48 Special” in game 5 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals. But that was only one game. The Cavs won 12 that post-season, and most of it came behind a suffocating defense executed by a notorious list of second-tier talents brawling like every possession was the difference between the sun rising tomorrow or Earth being enveloped in a nuclear winter. The head of that beast was Mike Brown.
I tweeted this at some point last night, but I’m going to be especially interested to see how fans and the sports media react when “Mike Brown’s offense” starts mysteriously showing up in late-game and playoff situations wherever LeBron plays next year, regardless of whether it’s Cleveland, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, or anywhere else.
I will be similarly curious to follow Brown’s progress wherever he goes next. Remember, Coldstone is still one of the youngest head coaches in the league. As with young players, there seems to be a perception that the man simply can’t be any better in the future than he is now. This, to me, seems incredibly naive. The idea that offense is somehow such a different set of variables that a guy who was able to construct extremely effective defenses simply won’t be able to grasp it no matter how hard he tries or how many more years he coaches—it just doesn’t seem realistic to me. We’ll see what happens, though. I’ve certainly been wrong before.
Above all, though, I will remember Coldstone like President (Da-Wight) Eisenhower. For anyone who’s not a history buff, Eisenhower was widely regarded during his Presidency as a complete buffoon, a good ol’ boy who didn’t have the goods upstairs to justify the lofty post he had been elected to fill. Many years later, Eisenhower’s biographers discovered overwhelming evidence that it was basically all an act on Eisenhower’s part. He was actually extremely intelligent, extremely shrewd, and decided to play the fool for years because he found that it led the people around him to show their hands in a way that ultimately allowed him to take advantage.
For years, Mike Brown pulled a similar act as the head coach of the Cavaliers. My brother has theorized in the past that he chose to do it as a means of keeping pressure off the rest of the organization. He set himself up to be the fall guy so the media would always have an easy target. The problem is that if you do it for long enough in a pressurized situation without winning, um, you actually end up getting hit. Sunday night, Coldstone got hit. I genuinely wish him success in the future, though.
The question now becomes: Where do the Cavs go from here on their coaching search?
I’ll offer up just a couple of quick thoughts on this before I go tonight.
Many writers have suggested that we will all learn a lot about who LeBron is this summer. What does he really value—winning, money, fame, etc.
However, there is an equally dramatic personality test happening here in Cleveland, regardless of whether James stays or goes.
The subject of that test is Dan Gilbert.
Gilbert, as we all know, is a tycoon of a serious order. He didn’t luck into the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s now worth. He also claims that he’s executing the same business evaluation process for the Cavaliers that he uses to assess all of his other businesses, all of which seem to be doing very well.
Obviously, I’m not Dan Gilbert when it comes to the business world. But here’s one thing that I feel comfortable saying with relative certainty: in business, the key to success is not always having more resources than your competitors. Instead, it’s usually a product of creative thinking and/or recognizing assets that your competitors either haven’t identified or haven’t properly valued yet. This is how you take a business venture from an idea in someone’s garage to an IPO.
In my view, the Cavs’ front office has not done a great deal of creative thinking over the course of the past few seasons. Instead, they have continually made the decision to just throw more and more money at the problem of winning a title.
Now, it would be wrong of me to suggest that this is ALWAYS a losing strategy, even in the realm of professional sports. All you have to do is look at the Yankees or Red Sox to see that that’s not always the case. However, MLB plays by a different set of rules when it comes to financial resources. The Yankees and Red Sox can outspend practically everyone else in the league by a wide margin, which means that they can all but buy a title by just signing more of the best available free agents to higher salaried contracts than any other team. It’s a hell of a perk for living in a huge market.
The Cavs can’t do this—especially if the LeBron James gravy train permanently leaves town in just over a month. They’ve thrown the salary cap to the wind for the past several seasons, and they’ve failed to get results. Dan Gilbert has a ton of cash, and I believe that he wants to make the franchise a winner. But he also has to recognize that this just isn’t a sustainable strategy for the long-term. Hell, it wasn’t even successful in the short term.
Many other writers would have you believe that with the Cavs’ coaching search, the franchise is at a crossroads. Hypothetically, Gilbert can do what Mike has suggested he might in the past, which is try to woo a Hall of Fame coach by paying him an ungodly amount of money, i.e. offering Phil Jackson $15MM per year.
But is this really the answer?
It hasn’t exactly gotten the franchise a parade down Euclid when Gilbert has tried to use it on the personnel side of the table.
$20MM to Shaq to stiffen his way through 11 playoff games, all for the sake of a match-up against Da-wight that never occurred. $28MM over the next two years to watch Antawn Jamison miss long 2s and get smoked on defense by any legitimate power forward with a pulse. $26MM to Mo Williams over the next 3 years to bomb 3s throughout the regular season and then lose his nerve in the playoffs, assuming he’s even able to get there again.
The reality is that since at least the 2008-9 season, the Cavs lost their way as much from an operations standpoint as they did from a basketball standpoint. They started trying to think like the Yankees when they should’ve been trying to think like the Marlins or the Rays. Yes, Danny Ferry made some lop-sided trades, but the caveat was that they always involved taking on more salary. Well, at least indirectly, the salary eventually helped sink the ship.
The Cavs’ coaching search is going to be a pretty decent indicator of whether or not they are going to continue down the path paved by dollar signs rather than the one designed by creative thinking. I honestly have no idea how it’s going to turn out. But I hope that Gilbert is still smart enough to recognize that if he had to make the same choice in his other businesses (you know, the ones not involving keeping LeBron James happy), the answer would be pretty clear. That, or if it wasn’t, he’d be be out on the street.
I just have to get something off my chest briefly.
Tonight as I was finishing dinner, a preview of the evening edition of Sports Center came on. The final story they were going to run was this:
“Is LeBron James’s free agency being overhyped?”
This, to me, is just a hilarious paradox.
Let’s recap briefly. For the first two full days after the Cavs’ season officially ended, LeBron was the headline story on ESPN.com’s home page. This week—a full 41 days prior to when James can even officially declare himself a free agent—ESPN Insider has been running a feature called “LeBron Week,” in which a different staff contributor provides an in-depth article about some aspect of LeBron as a player, teammate, economic force, etc. ESPN.com also currently has a ridiculously intricate mini-site called “The LeBron Tracker,” a centralized hub for any and all stories related to the future #6’s every move, mention, and rumor between now and the inking of his next contract. In many cases, “stories” may be a drastic overstatement of the case, as that would imply that there is actual news or analysis happening in many of the articles LeBron Tracker links to. I would second-guess the validity of that statement when some of those articles include “Bulls Staffer: Get LeBron” and “[Osi] Umenyiora to King James: Stay in Cleveland.”
As I get older, I become more and more appreciative of people who are just willing to call things as they are. For instance, I would have no issue whatsoever with Kobe Bryant if not for the media campaign that’s constantly trying to convince me that he’s a good-natured, fun-loving guy whose main interests include smiling, cracking jokes, and sportsmanship. Nothing would put me in the guy’s corner faster than an interview where he admitted, “I pretty much hate everyone unless they’re helping me win. That includes the guys on my own team a lot of the time. They know it, I know it. And they know it because I have no problem telling them as much myself. Honestly, I would rather make one of my opponents look like a fool on national television than spend time with my family. That’s just how I’m wired. Get over it.”
Similarly, I have no fundamental problem with the daily tsunami of LeBron coverage because I understand the rules of the game. July 1, 2010 has become an event many years in the making. LeBron himself bears a healthy portion of the responsibility for that, and it’s not as if he didn’t know what he was doing as he spent full seasons flirting with media at every away game. I get that. I also get that there’s a minor eternity between now and that date (as of right now, 40 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes, and 3 seconds to be exact, according to the LeBron Tracker’s real-time countdown clock). Sports news needs to be generated from now until then.
The rest of the NBA isn’t doing the basketball media many favors. Both conference finals match-ups are basically over, barring something like Alvin Gentry striking a deal with Lucifer or Stan Van Gundy uncovering a magic lantern. Even if either series was competitive, the length of time between games is so substantial that it’s hard to generate enough stories about actual basketball to fill the gaps. Case in point, both series are currently part of the way through a 4-day interlude between games 2 and 3. The coaching carousel isn’t really in full swing yet. People cared about the draft lottery for about 2 hours. Trades are obviously out of the question right now. So what’s the giant, churning, 24-hour sports news machine supposed to do?
I understand all that. I have little interest (beyond humor) in seeing breaking rumors about LeBron supposedly house-hunting in Highland Park, IL, but I also have a tolerance for those stories because the beast needs to be fed. By no means is ESPN the only culprit in this, either. Every major source of basketball news—apart from the hardcore stat crunchers—is playing a part in the creation of Hurricane LeBron.
What I can’t forgive, though, is ESPN’s apparent decision to act like it’s powerless against this rising tide. “Is LeBron James’s Free Agency Being Overhyped?” YES! A thousand times over! By your news conglomerate! In fact, it’s become so overhyped that you’re now reporting on your own reporting of the story. Nerds like me have a term for that. It’s called meta-commentary. It belongs in post-modern literature, not basic cable sports coverage.
Is this “overhype” question something that ESPN’s execs should be discussing in their internal meetings? Absolutely. If their answer is yes, though, they should just pull back their coverage. If their answer is no, then they should just generate more pseudo-news about it. Have pre-schools in any major cities been contacted by James’s camp? Can someone hack into his wireless network and uncover which zip codes Savannah has searched on Weather.com’s 10 Day Forecast feature? For God’s sake, can’t anyone confirm where Maverick Carter has been mall-scouting?!
My point is, we’ve all got a long way to go with this LeBron thing before there’s even any actual news generated, let alone before it’s actually resolved. I implore all bloggers, staff writers, and major news websites to do whatever they feel they have to do. Report or don’t report. But please, don’t clue us in on your own internal evaluations of the coverage. If you need some time to think about it, by all means, take it. You’ve still got 40 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes and 33 seconds left.
