Like a lot of other Cleveland sports junkies, I grow a little more frustrated every day by the Cavs. However, I’m no longer talking about the record or the lack of defense. I’m not talking about the players. I’m not even talking about the infallible Byron Scott (for once).
I’m talking about the front office.
Clearly, the team isn’t going to turn things around. At this point they’ll be lucky to avoid the worst record in modern NBA history. But I worry, because I have seen nothing in weeks that indicates the front office has accepted this unavoidable reality.
Mike and I have already argued on this blog for months that the best possible move is for the Cavs to declare the present a total loss and do anything they can to prepare for the future. By now, we’re certainly not alone, and it’s no longer a revolutionary opinion (if it ever was).
Yet every day I check for Cavs’ trade rumors, and every day I come up empty.
So for all the talk about the need to collect assets and build through the draft, I have no real evidence that the front office is making overtures to try to do that. And if they’re not, I cannot for the life of me imagine why. Because at this point, that’s their only function besides scouting the NCAA and Euroleagues—making this team worse now (and better later) by pawning off any semi-valuable players to contenders at the highest possible price.
Other people have written about how Dan Gilbert’s near-psychotic need to win faster than LeBron has already hindered the rebuilding process. The argument is that after being humiliated by James, Gilbert convinced himself that the Cavs should try to compete for the playoffs this year as a way of saving face.
Of course, I don’t have behind-the-scenes knowledge of what’s going on in the owner’s box, but I suspect that there’s a good deal of truth to this theory. All you have to do is realize that whatever the Cavs could’ve gotten for Andy over the summer would’ve been better than what they can get for him for the rest of this season, which is basically nothing.
The real problem is that I now fear that Gilbert will try to save face by holding onto would-be “stars” like Jamison and Mo in hopes of avoiding the worst record ever—without realizing that those big(ger) names are directly contributing to the reasons the team is losing as much as it is. (To prove Byron Scott is either a hypocrite, out of options, or out of touch, consider that Jamison is averaging 31.3mpg this season despite Scott’s insistence that only players who will lock down on defense will see playing time. Watching Jamison try to D up reminds me of that moment in every ghost movie where someone or something passes directly through the body of a specter and leaves all witnesses amazed and terrified.)
I admit that just because I’m not seeing rumors on the web doesn’t mean that talks aren’t happening behind closed doors. The Cavs’ case is also hurt by injuries to some of their more tradeable assets: Andy out for the season, Mo having only appeared in 34 games because of nagging ailments.
But between now and the trading deadline (which is only a month away), I sincerely hope to see strong evidence that Chris Grant and company are working the phones like mad to try to get what they can for what they have. If they’re not—or if Gilbert’s ego is holding them back in any way—this rebuilding process is going to be as delayed and bumpy as major real-world construction projects so often are. Having been up close and personal with one of those for a number of years, I hope for the city’s and the fan base’s sake that none of us have to suffer through that.
Yesterday, Mike made an excellent point about what dark clouds the new NBA free agent circus may hold for small-to-mid-market franchises. His conclusion syncs up nicely with something I’ve been thinking about since the end of the Browns season.
The question is this: Is it possible that in a few years, the NFL will be the only sustainable pro sport in non-major markets, i.e. the only one where cities like Cleveland can legitimately hope to compete for a title?
Based on the available evidence, I believe the answer may be ‘yes.’
I’ve considered a few crucial differences between the NBA and NFL in this regard. I’ve ignored Major League Baseball because their system is currently so far out of wack—see: the complete lack of a salary cap—that it hardly seems worth addressing. (Let alone that MLB’s largest problem is that almost no one in contemporary American life wants to watch 162 regular season games that last 3.5+ hours each.)
Unless the parameters change in the new CBA, rookie contracts will be one major determinant of the answer. The current rules dictate that a player drafted in the first half of the first round can be signed to a 6-year contract; players in the second half of the first round to a 5-year contract; and players after the first round to a 4-year contract. (Thanks to Ask the Commish for the details.)
The contrast with the NBA is evident immediately. For first-round picks, the longest contract a team can extend is 4 years, with the latter 2 years both existing as team options. If a contract extension isn’t worked out by the end of the 4th year, the team can put forth a qualifying offer for a 5th year—but that only makes the player a restricted free agent. Further, if the player decides to play out the 5th year, he obtains veto power over any trades, then becomes an unrestricted free agent the following summer. (Thanks to Hoopsworld for the low-down.)
Perhaps counter-intuitively, NBA second round picks gain leverage even faster than their first-round cohorts. The longest contract an NBA team will normally negotiate here is 2-years of nonguaranteed money. However, if a second round pick pans out in a major way, he’s free to test the market as quickly as his sophomore, or at worst, junior season in the league.
The end result of this comparison? Current NFL rules protect their franchises by providing longer guarantees for potential star players than their NBA counterparts.
Consider the following: In 2010, the St. Louis Rams signed Sam Bradford to a 6-year contract. Meanwhile, LeBron was a Cav for only 7 total seasons: 4 on his rookie contract, another 3 thanks to an extension.
This example is one where simple subtraction simply doesn’t tell the story. Yes, we’re only talking about a net 1 year difference between the Rams’ agreement with Bradford and the Cavs’ two agreements with LeBron. But the difference is continuity. After going 7-9 and barely missing the playoffs in his rookie season, the Rams’ front office knows that Bradford is a franchise player that they have for the next 5 seasons, guaranteed. As we all know too well, the Cavs didn’t have such a long-term safety net. Instead, they allowed themselves to be forced into a series of panic upgrades that were never conducive to a strong, long-term foundation.
The reason was obvious: LeBron’s free agency was always pending, so they had to prove they could win now in order to keep him around. The Rams, meanwhile, have half a decade to build around Bradford.
The contrast carries through the lower branches of each sport’s draft: by the time a second round NFL pick can become a free agent, a second round NBA pick will have had the free agency option two or even three years earlier.
All of this plays into the viability of pro football versus pro basketball in cities like Cleveland. As proven by LeBron and Chris Bosh, young NBA stars are no longer prone to take slightly more money to stay with the franchise that drafted them. Their desire to build “super teams” is hardly surprising, given the (Mesa favorite) fact that only 8 different NBA franchises have won the title in the past 30 years.
But young NFL stars are basically locked into their first franchise for a substantial time period from the starting gun. With a skillful personnel department, NFL teams have the time they need to convince budding stars to stick around via complementary moves. Given the numbers, those players also have less incentive to migrate to specific alternatives than their NBA counterparts anyway; in the same 30 year period, 14 different NFL teams have won the Super Bowl.
These rookie contract considerations aren’t the only elements that empower small-to-mid-market NFL teams. Their ability to “franchise” a player otherwise ready to hit the open market is another powerful tool in the quest for competitive balance.
For the uninitiated, the franchise tag essentially blocks a player at the end of his contract from entering free agency. If he’s hit with an exclusive franchise tag, the player cannot negotiate with other teams, but is compensated by receiving one year’s salary equal to either the average of the top 5 salaries at his position in the current NFL season, or 120% of his previous contract year, whichever is greater. If he’s hit with a non-exclusive franchise tag, the player is compensated by receiving either the average of the top 5 salaries at his position in the previous NFL season, or 120% of his previous contract year, whichever is greater.
However, non-exclusive franchise players also maintain the right to negotiate with other teams. If they sign an offer sheet elsewhere, the original franchise has the right to match the offer, or else refuse it and receive two first-round draft picks from the franchise player’s chosen destination. In comparison to the NBA equivalent, this system is vastly preferable to any franchise unable to maintain a star player. Two first rounders in the NFL draft is a HUGE bounty. By contrast, the best an NBA team can do when a star chooses to go elsewhere is normally a few infinitely less valuable future draft picks and a trade exception. (We can all see how much that trade exception has helped the Cavs this season.)
If all of the above weren’t enough, also consider the prevalence of undrafted NFL free agents or late round picks not only making an NFL roster, but becoming impact players. (Peter King examines this phenomenon briefly in his most recent Monday Morning Quarterback - just scroll down to “The [Super Bowl] match-up is a reward to two organizations that built teams.”) The probability of a second round pick or undrafted NBA free agent having the same kind of effect on a team’s fortune seems to be much rarer—and again, even when it does happen, the team that took a chance on the player in question almost immediately has to work to try to retain his services.
Admittedly, I have no idea what the new NBA and NFL collective bargaining agreements will look like. However, if current rules and current trends largely remain, then I sincerely believe that we are rapidly approaching a time when the NFL is the only legitimate game in town for cities like Cleveland. Here’s hoping I’m dead wrong.
In a tweet last week, LeCharles Bentley suggested that there were parallels between Mike Holmgren’s decision to hire Pat Shurmur as head coach of the Cleveland Browns and LeBron James’s decision to leave the Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.
The implication here, of course, is that Holmgren decided a long time ago that Eric Mangini would be fired and that Shurmur would replace him - just like LeBron almost certainly knew he would leave Cleveland for Miami far before July 1st, 2010.
Bentley’s argument then, if I’m interpreting the tweet correctly, is that if people are going to be angry about LeBron’s course of action, they should be equally angry with the path that Holmgren took.
I respect Bentley’s opinion more than any other talking head or radio personality in Cleveland. He offers specific insight about football that only an ex-player can give (as opposed to the gross, watered down generalizations a lot of former jocks toss out). He also has a true point of view. Almost nobody has that. I will choose to distill Bentley’s defining P.O.V. as pro-player / anti-ownership … or pro-worker / anti-management if you prefer to look at it as such.
It follows then that the overarching point Bentley is trying to make is fairly obvious: fans treat players one way and treat management another. When players exercise power they are derided for not being loyal. When ownership exercises power it is applauded for being firm. Fans want disciplinarians as coaches - but would never want their boss to be a disciplinarian.
Overall, I largely agree.
However, with all of that in mind, LeCharles is grabbing at straws by comparing Holmgren with James.
In the case of LeBron, fans of the Cavaliers were going to hate that he left no matter where he went or how he decided to do it. Watching the Cavs play this year, it’s easy to see why. By leaving Cleveland, LeBron very literally removed the joy that once came from watching the Cavaliers. Largely because of LeBron, one rather pleasurable extracurricular activity for Clevelanders … poof. Gone.
Not much fun.
But what angered people even more was their belief that LeBron let his decision to leave Cleveland show up in his performance on the court (read: the Eastern Conference Semifinals). The matter of LeBron having decided years ago that he, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh would team up in Miami was inconsequential - until it had an effect on how he conducted the one aspect of his business that could not be hidden from the fan base.
Anyone who has ever coasted during the last week of elementary school really shouldn’t complain about LeBron’s behavior. The same goes for anyone who didn’t try so hard in Algebra once they were admitted to college, or took the easy way out on difficult tasks during the last two weeks at a job. The only difference between you and LeBron is that millions of people care about his work. Maybe ten or fifteen people at most care about yours.
We could debate whether LeBron has a higher level of responsibility than me or you for a long ass period of time.
We won’t do that now.
Let’s look at Holmgren instead.
It’s hard to see the precise parallels between his situation and LeBron’s, even if we are to assume that Bentley is right and Holmgren decided … before the start of this season? … that Shurmur would be his head coach in 2011.
What impact did that decision have on the product the Browns put on the field in 2010?
Would the team really have won significantly more games with Shurmur than they did with Mangini?
Should fans be insulted that Holmgren “lied” to them, saying he wanted to give Mangini the best shot he could to make things work if he really did not?
If you’re truthfully surprised or actually upset that a pro sports executive, professional athlete, or hell, any person in the public eye lied to you at a press conference or in an interview, then you haven’t been paying attention for much of your adult life.
Ultimately, the notion that both Holmgren and LeBron “played us” may be true - but as far as Holmgren goes, we have to ask, “To what effect?” LeBron’s back room dealings impacted the playoffs and a real chance at a championship. What impact did Holmgren’s scheming have? Is the charge that he wasted this season by keeping Mangini around? Maybe … I’m just not sure the season would have been “found” if Shurmur or anyone else had been the coach instead of Mangini.
