September 27, 2010
A Promise for the 2010-11 Cavs

The Cavs had their official “media day” today, and to call it ‘sobering’ would be an understatement.

No one has been more firm in their stance that the Cavs’ rebuilding is ultimately a good thing for the franchise than we here at Mesa. But it’s one thing to talk about that stance in the immediate days after LeBron’s departure. I’m discovering now that it’s entirely another thing now that training camp is here. 

The realization fully hit me at some point last week when I checked the Plain Dealer’s Cavs page. After all these years of pre-season feature articles centered on LeBron’s quest for his first title, the Cavs’ projected strengths and weaknesses against the other would-be East contenders, and other lofty topics, the top story was about the potential impact of…Ryan Hollins.

Ouch.

By no means am I changing my position. The Cavs need to do what Oklahoma City has done over the course of the past few years:  use the draft and under-the-radar trades to create a core of young players excited enough about the prospect of playing together for the long haul that the lure of a big free agent contract in another city is minor.

It’s just that, here in the first year of the strategy, accepting the immediate reality is going to take some getting used to.

As much as I want to believe that Byron Scott’s commitment to up-tempo basketball will help soften the blow and at least make the team entertaining, I’m still a wins-and-losses guy at the end of the day. Moral victories in sports don’t mean much in my personal belief system. And as much as I’d like to believe that the WP48-projected ceiling for this year’s team will come to fruition, I’d be lying to you if I said that I sincerely think it will. 

From that standpoint, there’s no getting around it:  the Cavs are going to be an undeniably, significantly worse team than we’re used to.

On one level, this may sound dangerously close to the type of fatalism you can get from any number of other Cleveland sports blogs. On another, it’s exactly what we always try to do:  acknowledge reality instead of hiding behind generalizations and preconceptions. And the reality is that, even if executed perfectly, rebuilding the team from the foundation up is going to take at least three or four years. In all likelihood, we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that at least the next couple of seasons could involve a level of frustration we haven’t known since at least the Paul Silas days.

I’m sure the more pessimistic elements of Cleveland would point out that I should be used to this by now because of the other teams’ failures.

I’m not. This is different.

In the case of the 21st century Indians and Browns, neither team has ever had enough sustained success for expectations to remain at a high level for an extended period. The Tribe has only made the playoffs twice since 2000. The Browns rode to the post-season once in that same time span. In theory, both teams are already in the midst of ‘rebuilding,’ but until I see a significant shift in wins and losses, it’s hard for me to buy into it. That’s not pessimism, it’s just the facts.

By contrast, the Cavs have battled into the post-season every one of the last five years, including a trip to the Finals. We (as a fan base) had also had the luxury of arguably the greatest player in the game on the roster that whole time. Year in and year out, the team always felt like it was on the verge. Barring a catastrophic injury you could print the playoff tickets on the first day of training camp. 

Now, the things swirling around the team are doubt, uncertainty, and absence.

Yes, it will be a very different Cavs’ season this year.

However, despite the different atmosphere, the lowered expectations, and in some cases, the anger and depression circling the franchise, the Cavs have another indisputable advantage over the Indians and Browns:  they just don’t need nearly as many players to turn themselves around.

Oklahoma City / Seattle won 20 and 23 games respectively in 2007-8 and 2008-9. Last year they won 50. For the next 5 years, they have to be considered in the conversation as Finals contenders.

So as bleak as the state of the Cavs may look at the start of training camp, I promise to try to trust the plan in place and maintain the long-term view. I hope that at least some of you will do the same.

-T

12:47pm  |   URL: http://www.josemesaisdead.com/post/1203019032/a-promise-for-the-2010-11-cavs
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FILED UNDER: NBA Cavs LeBron Byron Scott Oklahoma City Thunder Cavaliers 
September 24, 2010
Once More, With Feeling

Talk about a no-win situation.

As you may have heard by now, Mo Williams was the subject of a what has become a controversial article by Yahoo! Sports’s Marc J. Spears. In it, Mo describes being so depressed and confused by LeBron’s departure that this summer he honestly considered retiring from basketball. At age 27. With 3 years and $26.3MM left on his current contract.

Since the article came out, Mo has been the subject of more attention—and more ridicule—than I expected. So much so that he felt compelled today to declare that he had been misquoted and taken out of context by Spears. In short, Mo decided he needed to call Spears a liar to try to regain some level of respect.

In my opinion, this is a really unfortunate turn for everyone who cares about sports and what’s happening in the minds of the people who play and coach them.

Today all athletes—even those at the college level (and in some cases I’m sure, the high school level)—take media training. The main objective is to scrub their potential interview responses of anything that could be seen as offensive or ignorant.

I understand this, especially in light of the unprecedented reach of new media. Nobody wants to look or sound like a jackass when there are contracts and endorsements at stake. Even if it ends up robbing us of interview like this, one of my favorite of all time.

Do I like losing them? Absolutely not. Do I understand the logic? Definitely.

However, the public reaction to Mo reveals that there’s also a more unfortunate side to this practice. Mo is being crucified for allowing himself to be honest while in the public eye. But his honesty didn’t involve bigotry, ignorance, vulgarity, arrogance, or immaturity. In fact, the Spears interview showed that he has a thoughtfulness, a self-awareness, a mental and emotional depth that most of us never knew or (likely) expected. 

In a word, Mo became interesting and relatable.

For granting the public this look inside his head, he was treated like an outcast on an elementary school playground.

You can bet that every pro basketball, football, and baseball player (since, let’s be honest, those are the only sports that are going to get enough run for this to matter) has taken notice—and then declared, “Man, I gotta make sure not to do what THAT guy did.”

In short, it’s going to be a rarer and rarer occurrence to hear an athlete say anything beyond the pre-scripted talking points we’re all so tired of hearing.

“No, this game isn’t more meaningful to us. We just wanted to get a win.”

“I don’t worry about that kind of thing. I just focus on knowing the game plan, going out and executing.”

“We know they’re a great team, but we believe in ourselves and know that if we work hard and play as a team we’ll be all right.”

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Good thing “the fans” and the pundits have been so hard on Mo.

There’s a great irony in all of this: namely, as the average person’s access to pro athletes and coaches continues to increase via 24/7 sports coverage, Twitter, blogs, etc., there will be less and less actual content of interest out there to find. Press conferences and interviews will be the equivalent of those stuffed animals that randomly spew one of a set number of phrases every time you pull a string.

In many cases, we’re already there.

So even if it makes me look like some kind of pussy, I wish Mo had stood by his comments. More importantly, I wish the reaction to those comments hadn’t been so negative.

Most of all, I hope that a few months from now, when everyone starts complaining again about what hollow role models pro athletes are, how all they do is talk about contracts and championships, how—with a precious few exceptions—every interview is basically the same, I wish everyone would look back at this Mo Williams incident and realize exactly why we’ve reached that point. 

There’s a lot of blame to go around. But I for one can point almost none of it at the athletes themselves. And more than any emotions Mo expressed, THAT is the saddest thing about this entire incident.

-T 

1:01am  |   URL: http://www.josemesaisdead.com/post/1177867367/once-more-with-feeling
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FILED UNDER: NBA Mo Williams LeBron Cavaliers Marc J. Spears 
August 3, 2010
Mesa Vs ESPN’s “Future Power Rankings”

Throughout this week, ESPN’s Chad Ford (of T.I.T. fame) and John Hollinger have been serially releasing their “future power rankings” of the 30 NBA teams. The concept is simple and interesting, if inexact: create an overall rating for every team’s cumulative prospects in the 2011-12, 2012-13, and 2013-14 seasons.

Ford and Hollinger attempt to do this by ranking each franchise in five categories—Players, Management, Money, Market, and Draft. “Players” means the players currently on the roster and under contract for any or all of those upcoming seasons; “Management” means the quality of the front office and its decision-making; “Money” means the owner’s willingness to spend; “Market” means the appeal of the city or region in which the franchise is located; and “Draft” means quantity and likely quality of picks in future drafts.

Each category is weighted differently, but together, they create a total possible point total of 1,000. Players account for 400 possible points, Management for 200, Money for 200, Market for 100, and Draft for 100.

Not surprisingly, the Cavs check in near the bottom of the list—specifically, at number 28, ahead of only Minnesota and Charlotte.

However, this is not because the Cavs, in Hollinger’s and Ford’s joint opinion, rank poorly in all categories. Instead, it’s because the categories in which they are strong are, in the system devised, two of the least valuable overall. For instance, Gilbert’s checkbook is good for 7th place in the league in “Money,” and the Cavs’ draft prospects place 2nd. Unfortunately, those two high ranks qualify the franchise for a grand total of only 219 points.  In “Players” they rank 29th (good for a mere 45 points), “Management” they rank 26th (45 points), and in “Market” they rank 27th (22 points).

I don’t entirely disagree with some of the assessment. (In all likelihood, the parts contributed by Hollinger.) As I’ve written before, I find it entirely possible that Cleveland is, to most players, the least desirable location in the league. In that sense, ranking 27th in “Market” may be generous on Ford’s and Hollinger’s part.

That said, the inherent problem is that the entire list is based on perception—and much of the perception informing the analysis isn’t particularly in touch with reality. For instance, I think it’s ludicrous to state that the Cavs have the 5th worst front office in the NBA, especially considering the circumstances they’ve been forced to operate under for the past 3-4 years. (A point that I am currently considering for the epitaph on my tombstone.) I’m not even going to bother to link to my previous post as to why—I’ve had to do it too many times already. If you don’t know, turn off your Bill Simmons brainwashing and email me.

As usual, the roster is also being drastically underrated—a misrepresentation made even worse by the idea that the Cavs “lack trade assets.” I fully suspect Chad Ford is steering the boat on that particular argument, since he’s written it several times over the past year-plus. Somehow he seems to have missed the fact that the Cavs and Rockets were the only two teams who managed to put together sign-and-trade offers for “Lap Dog” Chris Bosh that the Raptors were interested in consummating. Not to mention that the Cavs are now flush with draft picks and a massive trade exception from the LeBron deal. But what am I thinking, other teams are never interested in picks or, essentially, the ability to trade away contracts without taking salary back. I’m being silly again.

By far my favorite swing-and-miss in the analysis, though, is the mythical power of the Dan Gilbert letter. Not coincidentally, it also comprises the overwhelming bulk of Ford’s and Hollinger’s written break-down of the numbers.

The argument in play is that Dan Gilbert’s 21-gun wake-up call to LeBron the night of “The Decision” has damaged the franchise’s rep with players as long as Gilbert owns the team. By blasting a guy who “made him hundreds of millions of dollars over the past several years,” the argument goes, Gilbert showed his true colors. No free agent will ever want to ball for the Cavs as long as they have such a fork-tongued tyrant at the helm. Hence, the Cavs’ future is so bleak.

There are just a few tiny problems with this argument.

First, as we all know, there weren’t any high profile free agents clamoring to come to Cleveland anyway. Most recently, the Cavs offered Matt Barnes a two-year contract worth ~$3.5MM per—more than double what he ultimately accepted to play for the Lakers ($1.7MM), and by far the biggest contract he’d ever been offered in his career. (The fictional one the Raptors offered doesn’t count.) Didn’t matter. He turned it down.

Did Barnes make that choice because he was afraid he’d be yelled at by Dan Gilbert? Uh, I doubt it. Dude’s got multiple neck tattoos. Considering he grew up in Sacramento and went to UCLA, living in LA and playing for a title might have had more to do with the choice.

Again, this is the entire reason Chris Grant and company are planning on rebuilding the team through trades and the draft. Hard to believe that the 5th worst front office in the league would be able to recognize its strengths and weaknesses and adjust its plan accordingly, but hey, I guess even a broken clock is right two minutes a day, right?

Second, all this talk about how terribly Gilbert treated LeBron after he chose to play elsewhere completely ignores how absurdly well he was treated while he was playing for Gilbert. Under his watch (and more importantly, on his dime), the Cavs:

  • Completely renovated their practice facilities to the tune of tens of millions of dollars
  • Moved Cleveland Clinic Courts to Independence to minimize the commute from LeBron’s house
  • Routinely invited LeBron’s entourage to take the team charter to road games
  • Created jobs within the organization for LeBron’s friends (see: Player Liaison Randy Mims)
  • Mandated that film sessions be kept short to accommodate LeBron’s attention span
  • Remade the roster according to LeBron’s urgings (see: Shaq, Jamison)
  • Fired the coach and GM with whom LeBron was unsatisfied—without a guarantee he’d even return to the team if it happened
  • Offered him the richest possible contract extensions the league would allow

And these are just some of the things that are either true or have been reported. I’m sure there were countless other concessions made in a desperate attempt to keep James happy for the past half-decade since Gilbert assumed ownership. Personally, I don’t care what the guy says about me when I embarrass him on national TV to go to another team; five years of the above kind of treatment sounds like a good deal to me.

Look, professional athlete is perhaps the only job in the world where your former boss’s opinion of you literally does not matter. Did LeBron need a letter of recommendation to get his new job with the Heat? Uh, no. Anywhere else, people in executive positions change jobs. Assuming you stay in the same or a similar industry, your former boss could somehow end up at a new company and once again have an effect on your future. Not in pro sports. It’s not as if Dan Gilbert is going to suddenly sell the Cavs, go buy the Spurs, and then freeze LeBron out of contract. Who the hell cares what Gilbert thinks of you after you vacate the team?

Third, perception is a shifty thing. Right now, few players reportedly want to play for the Cavs. My guess? The problem isn’t Gilbert; it’s that few if any players really believe the Cavs are going to be any good right now.

Think about it this way: if Donovan McNabb thought the Raiders were going to be a Super Bowl contender this year, would he have told the Eagles not to trade him there this past off-season because the team is owned by a tyrannical mummy? I highly doubt it. On a more close to home front, look at how Eric Mangini somehow transformed over the course of a season from being perceived by fans and players as a maniacal dictator (when the team was 1-11) to exactly the type of tough but admirable head coach the Browns have needed since their resurrection (when they ended the season on a 4-game winning streak, including a victory over the Steelers at Heinz Field). 

Is anyone ever going to totally forget the Dan Gilbert letter? No, it’s going to be a part of Cleveland sports and NBA lore until an asteroid hits. But you can bet on the fact that when the team starts winning and Gilbert’s checkbook stays open, its perception in the basketball community is going to be completely different. And you can say the same thing about the franchise as a whole.

Trust me, I’ll be more than happy to point this out to Chad Ford in 2014 when the Cavs are surging and the Mesa team has courtside seats.

-T

11:00pm  |   URL: http://www.josemesaisdead.com/post/901690097/mesa-vs-espns-future-power-rankings
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FILED UNDER: NBA LeBron Cavaliers Dan Gilbert Free agency ESPN Cleveland 
July 28, 2010
Goodbye Delonte West, You Were Never Even Allowed to Prove You Didn’t Sleep with Gloria James

Since we didn’t really address it when the trade to Minnesota happened Monday, I felt that I needed to jot down a belated goodbye note to Delonte.

In many ways, Delonte is an embodiment of what we here at Mesa keep writing about: sports and the athletes who play them are much more complex than most people understand. The man is struggling with a serious mental disorder—one for which there is no real “cure,” only imperfect treatments that can take a variety of twists and turns. Further, both the disorder and parts of the treatments directly conflict with the lifestyle and requirements of an NBA player. A consistent routine can’t realistically be established when you’re traveling for 41 or more games a year; the spotlight is no place for a person with these difficulties, especially when it comes with a battery of reporters; and even some of the medications in play have significant physical side effects, such as decreased energy levels, drowsiness, and the potential for weight gain.

Despite all that, it’s an incredible credit to Delonte that he was such an important part of the Cavs’ success between his acquisition at the trade deadline in 2007 and his unfortunate legal problems at the end of summer 2009. I for one will never forget the sight of Delonte (6’-4”, 180 lb) battling Hedo Turkoglu (6’-10”, 220 lb) all over the perimeter during the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals while LeBron was content to stay on Rafer Alston. The fact that he’s even managed to make it to the NBA at all is an incredible achievement, and part of me will always wonder how much different this past Cavs’ season could’ve been with West starting at 2 instead of Anthony Parker.

Despite all this, I think many NBA fans fail to see Delonte as anything more than a joke or a disappointment. That evaluation is way, way, way off. I think it’s largely a symptom of the way that professional athletes are viewed in our culture:  not as men and women with real lives and real problems, but as characters put on our TVs and blogs and newspapers for our entertainment—and worse, our judgment. For instance, many fans don’t want to acknowledge that a good NBA team can appear to “slack off” or have difficulty when playing a game on Christmas day because those players all have the same kind of holiday/family stress we all deal with; they just have to work throughout it. Many fans don’t want to hear excuses about injury or illness when a player turns in a sub-par performance, despite how willing those fans would be to use that same excuse if they had a bad day at their own job.

In short, too many fans demand that because our pro athletes are being paid super money, they should be superhuman. Delonte can, in many ways, be seen as the emblem of just how absurd that idea is. 

Since I keep getting asked by my friends about this preposterous affair Delonte is alleged to have had with LeBron’s mother, I feel like the best parting gift I can give to my man D-West is this: a complete breakdown of what utter crap that rumor was, via Deadspin. Beyond basketball, it’s a sobering lesson in how easy it can be to crucify someone via the internet based on nothing but smoke, mirrors, and a few well-placed emails.

So from all of us at Mesa, here’s to you, Red. I hope you can somehow manage to put the chaos of the past year behind you, emerge from your private struggles, and return to your 2008-9 form on the court. Honestly, even if it happens in Miami, I can’t be mad at you for it. Just do us all a favor and make LeBron actually guard someone.

-T

5:33am  |   URL: http://www.josemesaisdead.com/post/870578915/goodbye-delonte-west-you-were-never-even-allowed-to
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FILED UNDER: NBA Delonte West LeBron James Gloria James Cavaliers 
July 27, 2010
Sessions + Hollins - Delonte + Telfair = ???

I was on the verge of writing another column for tonight, one that may have been more fun, when Minnesota Timberwolves GM David Kahn and Cleveland Cavaliers GM Chris Grant burned the phone lines down to the ground, finally, and finished a deal that had been obvious to just about everyone once it became clear that “Razor” Ramon Sessions was on the trading black. 

Razor and Ryan Hollins … welcome to Cleveland. 

Delonte West, we will miss you deeply. Sebastian Telfair, we hardly got to know you.

I could definitely write a long column about my appreciation for Delonte’s game, especially as I witnessed it during the 2008-9 season. I’m not going to do that, however, because I want to keep our focus on the Cavaliers on the future instead of the past. 

From the Cavs’ perspective, this trade accomplishes two very important things. Number one, Sessions gives the team another creator on offense. Number two, Hollins - at 7’0” - is a center. The Cavs had either zero or one of those prior to this trade, depending on where and how Byron Scott decides to play Anderson Varejao.

Telfair’s contract expires at the end of this coming season, at $2.7M, and Delonte is owed only $500K if waived before August 3rd (as numerous other media outlets have undoubtedly already reported).

Sessions is owed $12.3M through the 2013 season. Hollins is owed $4.8M over the next two years. 

In other words, for Minnesota, this was a salary dump. 

(For some reason, Kahn also felt compelled to give a 2nd round pick to the Cavaliers in 2013 as well.)

As uncomfortable as I feel about the notion of Cleveland now having Milwaukee’s backcourt, circa 2007 - an irrational feeling that isn’t based on anything - I’m positive about the deal overall. Sessions did not have a very good season last year, playing in Kurt Rambis’s forced attempt at the triangle offense, but he was pretty damn good the year before he became a free agent.

Sessions isn’t a very good shooter - 51.3% TS, .3 3PA per 36 min at 18% - and is only about average in turnovers when compared with other point guards. His advanced stats, on the other hand, have been above average, especially in the aforementioned pre-free agent year, with a PER of 17.6, a WP48 of .201, and a 2 year Adjusted +/- of +1.86. 

I can’t remember seeing Hollins play enough to make any kind of accurate assessment of his game. Last season, he played 16.8 minutes per game and was not even close to good by any statistical measures (11.0 PER, -.147 WP48, and a -7.91 APM). 

Well, at least Hollins is a body. 

Sessions is 24-years-old. Hollins is 26.

Despite the depressing nature of Hollins’s career production so far, I still believe this deal makes the Cavaliers a better team. As much as I want to believe the good Delonte is still out there and will come back one day, his situation in Cleveland was probably too strained for it to make sense to keep him in town. Good Delonte is a better player than Razor Ramon, but good Delonte may not exist anymore, and none of us will ever know what kind of stresses his mental health had on the team behind closed doors. 

If we accept then that Delonte had to either be traded or released, the Cavs basically got Sessions, Hollins, and another asset - a 2nd Round Pick in 2013 - for Telfair.

It’s hard to argue with that trade, even if it may not change life in Cleveland dramatically. 

So far Chris Grant and Dan Gilbert have to be applauded for not irrationally trying to jump start the post-LeBron era for the sake of making a splash, to the long term detriment of the organization. We’ll see what happens next.

1:00am  |   URL: http://www.josemesaisdead.com/post/865167875/sessions-hollins-delonte-telfair
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FILED UNDER: Cavaliers Timberwolves David Kahn Chris Grant Trades trades