NBA Free Agency: Cavs Likely to Match Offers to Alonzo Gee
June 21, 2012While We’re Waiting… Cleveland Fans, the Morning After
June 22, 2012One of the hardest lessons I learned from the LeBron James situation in Cleveland is that I can’t let anyone have that kind of control over me ever again. The power that LeBron James had over Cleveland was granted to him by people just like you and me. Sure, it was augmented by Phil Knight and Nike, as well as enablers that worked for both Gordon Gund and Dan Gilbert, but ultimately you can’t be sold anything if you aren’t willing to buy it. When it came to LeBron James, Cleveland bought in hard. In hindsight, too hard.
For all the stupidity that occurred during LeBron’s free agency, it was amplified by the fact that LeBron’s actions forced us to look in the mirror and question ourselves. For a lot of us we didn’t like what we saw. Andy Baskin penned a long piece about how he felt he and the media had failed in a lot of ways in covering James. Even the angriest of fans, including the few that burned their jerseys, were more than likely redirecting a lot of their own self-anger and self-hatred toward LeBron James whether they knew it or not. In hindsight, for me and I think for a lot of other fans out there, it was self-hatred fueling a large amount of the fire. It is important to know that. It doesn’t let James off the hook as catalyst and key figure in the situation, but it is a far more balanced and intellectually honest view and baseline to begin any conversation on the topic.
Behind the scenes yesterday we got into some arguments about the whole NBA situation. The crux of the argument was that among the NBA die-hards at WFNY, this NBA finals has been some of the finest basketball and pageantry the sport has ever seen, regardless of pretense. For the NBA die-hards at WFNY that’s worth a lot. I’ve been watching the Finals too, but it isn’t worth much at all to me.1 For me, it’s really hard to see past the overwhelming pretense that a few of the game’s best players basically rigged the league and that it’s been pretty successful for them.
Some will argue that it hasn’t been easy. The Miami Heat have faced unbelievable pressure from being public enemy number one. Regardless of the fact that they put the target on their own back, it is undeniable that everybody’s been gunning for them. Additionally, they failed to finish off the Dallas Mavericks a year ago. They were being discounted yet again when the Pacers were giving them a run for their money this year. Some will always wonder what would have been if Derek Rose hadn’t torn his ACL or this hadn’t been a shortened season due to labor struggles.2
Regardless, the facts look like this to me. The Heat formed a team with three of the best guys in the NBA, they’ve made it to two consecutive NBA Finals,3 and they’ve probably been favored in nearly every basketball game they’ve showed up to play since they suited up in the same jersey. You can laugh at the brashness of the celebration they had counting up the number of championships they would win,4 but it has only been difficult for the Miami Heat based on those ridiculous standards. The bottom line is that they’ve won basically 70% of their regular season games and made two deep playoff runs in two years.
What does all of this have to do with not letting anyone have that kind of control over me ever again? Doesn’t this mean that LeBron James somehow won? Not to me, because I already own the conclusion.
My conclusion has been and always will be that three superstars in their prime teaming up to form a superteam the way the Heat did is bad for the NBA. To put it at its most basic level, it’s dumb. It doesn’t prove much of anything and it is bad for the league. That’s my conclusion regardless of the outcome of this series against the Thunder. I don’t care how great this series is from a pure basketball standpoint. I am watching it too, so I know technically, it is good basketball. I won’t tell you not to enjoy it, but I will tell you that it seems fraudulent to me and that fraud weighs heavily on top of it all.
To me it feels more like an exhibition. It isn’t ice skating in the Olympics where amateurs are actually competing. It’s more like the Ice Capades. It isn’t Andre Aggassi and Pete Sampras facing off in a major tourney. It’s their tour of exhibition matches against each other after they were retired. Why? Because to me the outcome of this NBA Finals doesn’t matter much more than when those two tennis titans set up nets on the floor of Gund Arena. By the time the Sampras vs. Aggassi tour was happening, the real storyline had already been written. For me, the LeBron James / NBA storyline here has already been written too.
If LeBron James and the Miami Heat win, then it just proves you can fix the outcomes of the NBA when you have guys team up outside of the normal system for team building. “You mean you can stack teams with more talent and have them be successful? Duh.” If they lose, then it serves them right for trying to fix the thing. Still, the appearance in two straight NBA finals proves the point of how dumb it truly is. They don’t have to successfully win it all for my conclusion to be intact. “Hey look how badly we can screw with the competitive landscape of an entire sport! Wheeee!”
I don’t blame NBA die-hards for hating my line of thinking. They’re on Twitter talking it up, looking for superlatives and highlights for the mental montages of all-time NBA moments. In a way I’m trying to write off the very thing that they love so much. I don’t want to take anything away from anyone else, but I also can’t just look at it that way anymore. It’s my defense mechanism and I’m entitled to it. It could be worse though, right? I’m dispatching those defense mechanisms in order to try and enable myself to actually keep watching the NBA at all. It would be much worse if I decided to give up on the whole thing and quit even watching the Cavaliers.
So, we’ll see what happens tonight. The outcome doesn’t matter much to me.5 The story has already been written enough that I have my conclusion. Will I ever buy into the NBA again after such a poor experience the last time? Sure. I never sold out of the Cavs themselves anyway, but I guarantee it will be a much more modest purchase with tempered expectations no matter how big the sales pitch might be.
Has it always been this complicated to be a sports fan?
(Picture: Finals logo from NBA.com)
- With an “argument” or “debate” like this there is really no winning or losing. There can be mutual understanding, but nobody is ever going to admit they’re wrong in a battle of preferences. Still, understanding amongst fans with a common favorite team seems like a worthwhile venture no matter how messy it might get. [↩]
- I think the compressed season made the Heat and other league elite shine brighter, by the way. The teams most affected negatively by fewer days off would have been the lesser talented teams. Think of it this way. Who is going to have bigger issues with consistency and quality of play when tired? Would it be LeBron James or Alonzo Gee? [↩]
- and look to be about to win the whole thing unless the Thunder can do the largely improbable. [↩]
- I’d laugh, but I didn’t really find it funny as much as I found it to be sad and another knife in my back, personally. Again about letting someone have that kind of power over you. [↩]
- It certainly mattered more to me last year, and I didn’t even watch the deciding game, instead choosing to watch David Bazan rock out a club in Akron. [↩]
72 Comments
I’m just glad the Heat didn’t win it last year. All I really want to know is if Bron is going to hold a parade in Akron and how people from his hometown are going to respond. Will they find pride that he’s a hometown world champion or feel betrayed that he left his home state. .
You are exactly right. It’s not individual self loathing but more of a communal, “why us?”
Cleveland tanked like hell to get LeBron and couldn’t do nothing with him.
Pretty obvious that he could only achieve the greatness he was meant for by ditching the anchor known as Cleveland Sports.
Calling a high school kid “the Savior” was absurd back then
He’s been getting told how great he is since Jr. High. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we ever expected him to not be a narcissist.
You can blame the Celtics fro starting this trend when they brought Ray Allen and Garnett in to get Pierce a ring. Now all the superstars want to play together so they can win a title. The landscape of the NBA has changed, and if you don’t have a “Big 3” then have fun at the bottom of the league until you do.
Do you work for ESPN? You’re like one of their analysts, just with far worse grammar.
I guess beside the fact that Grant was the GM beginning in the 2010 offseason, but here goes:
2005 – No picks
2006 – Pick 25 – Shannon Brown; Pick 42 – Daniel Gibson Pick 55 – Ejike Ugboaja
2007 – No picks
2008 – Pick 19 – JJ Hickson
2009 – Pick 30 – Christian Eyenga; Pick 46 – Danny Green
Grant becomes GM here:
2010 – No picks
2011 – Pick 1 – Kyrie Irving; Pick 4 – Tristan Thompson; Pick 32 – Justin Harper; Pick 54 – Milan Macvan
So, taking into account your argument about the draft picks of our GMs (I’ll take them collectively) being horrible, when not trading picks to try and build a team around LeBron, the earliest pick the Cavs had prior to the 2011 draft was 19 – hardly a spot to pick a super-duperstar.
I would argue that they didn’t “miss” on Gibson or Hickson (Hickson fell off the rails after Cleveland, and Gibson, when healthy, has been great for a 2nd rounder), or even Shannon Brown (even though he played better for other teams). But really, given the draft position, I’m not sure what rabbits you expected them to pull from hats on this?
In your example, N’Sync and Britney Spears’ record sales figures would have represented the quality and health of the record industry in the late 90s, not the quality and health of pop music or whether or not they are worthy of recognition in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Easier? Sure. Easy? No.
Craig, you may want to get your money back from whatever therapist told you that you have ownership or closure on this issue.
Your argument that if the Heat win then its “rigged” and if they lose “they get what they deserve” is the worst sort of insulated argument that allows you to be right no matter what, without acknowledging that these are mutually exclusive ideas.
I’m not going to be too hard on you because I remember you writing a similar piece around Super Bowl time, when you pointed out that the title would be tainted since Eli “rigged” his destination in the same way LBJ and Bosh did, and how you regularly rail against baseball agents “rigging” the system by determing their players will go to major markets years before their free agency.
Wait you didn’t write those things, well thats absurd, if you weren’t consistent in calling out white people in other sports for doing the exact same thing people may draw some unfortunate conclusions about the motives behind your hatred how NBA players act.
Ludicrous. You took me out of context. The back-to-back appearances in the NBA finals is good enough for me to conclude that this is bad for the NBA.
“If they lose, then it serves them right for trying to fix the thing. Still, the appearance in two straight NBA finals proves the point of how dumb it truly is. They don’t have to successfully win it all for my conclusion to be intact. ”
I also criticized the hell out of Jeff Moorad over the years for the way he handled the Manny Ramirez free agency on TV. But Manny Ramirez isn’t white, so I guess I’m still a racist? Tell me again how this works?
I have no idea what you’re trying to say. So you think TV ratings equals success for sports fans? Good stuff.
Racist was a very poor choice of a word, and I apologize. I do however feel that your attack on the NBA while not holding the other two sports to the same “I can’t even watch without feeling its tainted” standard, falls in line with the white peoples perception that the NBA is a “black” sport, and I don’t believe you view Eli Manning or John Elway determining where they will play, in the same way you view LBJ, Bosh and Wade doing the same. You certainly don’t blame the entire NFL for being “rigged” because a player forced his way onto a team and has since won 2 titles.
Again and you can ignore this all you want but your central premise is flawed. You claim to be “over” the Lebron thing, however your key rationale that the system is either rigged, or the Heat get “what they deserve” is not an intellectual response it is purely emotional. The Heat trailed in 3 playoff series this year. Indiana couldn’t figure out how to exploit their stregnth in the post. They had no idea how to run low screens to open up space for West/HIbbert, instead they just lobbed the ball over the fronting defender and hoped for the best. The Celtics despite also being a “super team” and with all their savy and playoff smarts, couldn’t win 1 of 2 to close out the series. OKC had a trio of their own and Homecourt advantage. These teams all had a fair shot at winning and couldn’t and mostly because Lebron did what we had all prayed here he would. Had he not become what he became, they wouldn’t have won regardless of their “big 3”.
The point is you are being utterly hypocritical to claim that alll of basketball is rigged and tainted ONLY when the Heat win, and then crow about them losing and getting what they deserve when they lose. If the system is rigged wouldn’t it have to be “rigged” all the time. Just a very poorly made argument. Its emotional and I get that but you tried to come from an intellectual place and failed.
Please read my post again, Craig. I don’t care to argue with you if you are going to take me out of context.
Quite frankly any Cleveland fan who watched that series needed the heat to win. Rooting for Oklahoma City to win the finals is like rooting for Art Modell to win the superbowl.
Did LeBron leave break the cities spirit? Yeah, it did a little. Did he maybe follow some bad advice and leave poorly? Yes. The fact is that guy gave Cleveland a relevancy that we hadnt experienced in quite some time and definately played his heart out.
People are going to want to say he didnt play ‘his best’ but especially in that last series against Boston, the Cavs were coached out of the playoffs by bad decision making. LeBrons talent, like almost always, kept the Cavaliers close, but he wasnt enough.
This Heat team is talented, but LeBrons’ had some talented (enough) teams behind him, things were different this time around and honestly its a good thing to see this guy get the ring.
You are projecting an awful lot on me here and you’re wrong to do so. I never supported Eli Manning doing what he did either. Stick to the topic at hand which is the NBA.
My disgust with MLB is pretty well documented and has nothing to do with the NBA. They have their own problems in MLB.
First, long time reader, first time commenter; excellent article; second, LeBron is now villian#1 in the NBA, is a title worth it? he thinks so; and third, assembling this level of talent is analogous to the Yankees, and you know how I feel about them. Hey Stern, give Gilbert a chance to spend his money. Abolish the cap! Parity = socialism, Your friend, Burton.
To my knowledge you never wrote a piece proclaiming that the entire NFL was rigged because of what Elit did.
I would like to “stick to the topic at hand” and I would like to stop “taking you out of context”. Unfortunately you have at least 2 and I would say 3-4 different major ideas going at once here, all of which conflict in some way with each other. So while I would like to slam dunk point out to you why every thing you have written here is hypocritical, and nonsesical you won’t allow it. To me a good summary of this piece is that you FEEL that the ENTIRE NBA is forever tainted by the Heat making 2 consecutive finals due to their free agency moves and noone can talk you out of it.
So why don’t you some up your feelings in a clear concise manner. If this were just a “I’m venting because I’m mad” piece I’d be okay, but you seem to be insisting that there is some intellectual reasoning behind your disgust and I just can’t stand having someone who is so utterly neutered when it comes to all things NFL especially the Browns, become so hardline when it comes to the NBA.
Make a clear 2 line summary, or shut up, but don’t tell me I’m projecting or not sticking to the topic when you won’t present a clear topic to stick to.
I wrote an entire article talking about the NBA being rigged. That’s the summary. You are projecting because I don’t have to have an opinion on each individual sport or risk being a hypocrite because I have one on the NBA. You don’t make the rules. You certainly shouldn’t tell me to shut up either.
The NFL is by far the best system in terms of parity and competition. Eli Manning choosing where to go as a rookie is not comparable to the Miami Heat. It’s more like what Steve Francis did when he said he wouldn’t go to Vancouver. So no. I don’t think one rookie on a huge roster of football players is the same as three guys teaming up on a basketball-sized roster nearly all in their primes. I can’t believe for a second that you do either.
If you have such a strong opinion about “rigging” based on such a small sample in the NBA, and zero opinion about “rigging” based on a similar sample in the NFL and MLB then I am not “projecting”. You have no idea what you are talking about, my entire premise was that your LACK of an opinion about similar situations in other sports was the evidence that you are holding the NBA to a different standard than other sports. You are right I “don’t make the rules” the rules make themselves. You are being either willfully or blissfully ignorant that to have such a strong opinion on one topic while not having an opinion on a similar cirucmstance in a field you comment on makes you a hypocrite. You are Mike Dukakis when it comes to the NFL and the Browns in particular (when was the last time you leveled such hardline criticism against the Browns) but when it comes to the NFL you are Rush Limbaugh. Again it all comes back to the white man’s perception that black people shouldn’t get to exert the power that Wade LBJ and Bosh did, but it is okay for white people to do so. You can juke and jive and keep redirecting this at me but at the end of the day you have a hard on for trashing the NBA and are willing to accept anything that happens in the NFL as acceptable (or at least without claiming that the WHOLE league is rigged).
But you are right the NFL is the best system for parity. In the last 10 years 6 NBA teams have won a title while 7 NFL teams have. I mean in that stupid rigged/fixed NBA, only 6 teams won titles this decade whereas in the utopian NFL 7 teams did..
“I can’t believe for a second that you do either”
That my friend is the definition of projecting. What I did was use your complete Silence on the issue of MLB/NFL rigging to call you out on your hammering the NFL. What you did was use your own opinion that Steve Franchise/Eli are the same thing and then claim that I believe the same. If you are going to accuse me of something for the love of god at least learn what the word means.
I do look forward to your next milquetoast piece telling us how another 4-12 Browns season is okay and not “bad” for the NFL while 3 players choosing to exercise their RIGHTS to play togther proves that the ENTIRE NBA is rigged.
Twice used NFL in place of NBA, didn’t want my typos to confuse your already addled mind further
If you did delete what posted good for you, if not sorry for the assumption. As far as projecting, I couldn’t help but notice you instantly pointed out that black Steve Francis said he wouldn’t go to Vancouver to exonerate white Eli Manning for his breaking the rules of the system to go to a team he wanted to.