Just got a kick out of Van Gundy's analysis of Rondo's play. He said nice use of the "European step thru". I dvr'd the 2 plays he showed and I thought yeah I've seen that play in the US before it 's called "Le travel". I hate when star players are allowed different rules in the NBA...ssoooo frustrating.
is it wrong?
NO
I was born and raised in Ohio, lived in Cleveland for 13 years and I'm right there with ya
Lebron needs to get out of
Lebron needs to get out of that crap state they call ohio. GO CELTS! GO Tics? what do I call them?
I am absolutely cheering for
I am absolutely cheering for the Cavs to lose. Always.
And what's with Sheed? That guy loves to foul lately, huh?
Go Celtics
Screw Lebron, I can't root for anyone who says this: “I put a lot of pressure on myself to go out and be great and the best player on the court. When I don’t, I feel bad for myself.”....... “I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have three bad games in seven years, it’s easy to point them out.”
Plus Lebron supports Ohio
Plus Lebron supports Ohio St. F- that.
My church is in Mauldin, SC.
My church is in Mauldin, SC. I'm rooting for KG. That, and Doc Rivers is a cool dude. Go Celtics.
Lebron
9 TO's
Cavs are done
Hey atleast he learned to shake hands
Couldn't wait to get that jersey off
LOL
wow they just completely gave up at the end.
if i were a cleveland fan, id be disgusted.
This is home...
Ditto
With :47 left and a 7 or 9 pt lead (?) Boston gets the tip back out and Cleveland players just sit in the lane and gave it up. That was unbelievable. I know I get hacked when teams foul when they are out of it, but I don't get that.
Cleveland's FO
has nobody to blame but themselves when James leaves. He's been there for seven years and they continue to surround him with a bunch of bums who continually come up short. Even Jordan needed a Pippen.
I disagree.
The Cavs had enough surrounding talent this year. The really great players put their teams on their backs. Lebron hardly did that this evening. Williams stepped up in the first half. Lebron couldn't do the same in the second when they needed him.
He did have
30 pts 20 rebounds and 10 assists. Not sure what you were looking for, maybe 63 pts or something like that, but a triple double is not "hardly doing anything".
He scored a lot of points...
he also missed a lot of shots and turned the ball over 9 times. I didn't say he 'hardly did anything' -he didn't carry that team down the stretch when the Celtics started to pull away. Let's look at the evidence:
http://espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=300513002&period=4
Under 10 to play. To this point the Cavs have been on an 8-0 run in the 4th quarter; LeBron has just hit two big 3-pointers to draw the Cavs within 4, 74-78. Celtics call timeout.
Then what happens? Four minutes go by with no Cavaliers score. The Celtics push the lead out to 88-74. LeBron has 2 rebounds, a turnover, and a missed shot during that span. Jamison finally hits a shot to break the drought.
From the 5:35 mark to the 1:36 mark, Boston's lead gradually gets cut in half - at that point it's 92-85. The Cavs scored 11 points in those 4 minutes. LeBron has 4 of them - a posterizing dunk and free throws. Parker has 3. Jamison has the 2 mentioned already. Varejao has 2 on free throws.
In the final 90 seconds James took no shots and threw the ball away.
So, from the 9:33 mark (at the Celtics TO) of the 4th quarter, with the series on the line, Lebron went 1-3 from the field and had 4 points. That's not putting the team on your back. Michael Jordan would have demanded the ball. Kobe Bryant would have demanded the ball. Perhaps the injury is a lot worse than he's been letting on, but that was the quietest triple-dub the millenium's greatest player will ever have.
Front office mess
Who's the second best Cav? If you were selecting a team, how many Celtics would you pick before you selected your first Cav after Lebron? It's at least the big 3 plus rondo, arguably you'd take Perkins . It's even more extreme for Orlando, where I'd take Howard, Nelson, Carter, Lewis, Pietrus, and Barnes before taking Shaq, Varejo or whichever of the interchangeable guards you want on the Cavs. Hell, I'd go 5 deep on the Hawks with Smith, Williams, Horford, Crawford, and Johnson.
Ever since the Cavs lost Boozer they've been a front office mess that hasn't had a longterm vision of the team.
I'll grant you at least part of that argument
Still, the Cavs won 61 games, most in the East. They certainly couldn't have done that without James, but the other guys must have had something to do with it. Mostly I think those other guys played good defense. That doesn't come out in the individual stats or the ESPN highlights of course.
Other good playoff teams had at least two big scorers. Boston has their big 3 (all 17-18 ppg). Orlando has 4 in the 15-20 ppg range, The Lakers have Bryant and Gasol both over 20ppg, and the Suns have Richardson and Stoudamire over 20 as well. The only other guy on ESPN's front page for the Cavs was Jamison, at 15 ppg.
Overall the Cavs were very high in offensive efficiency (4th in the league), but they channeled so many of those points through LeBron. Perhaps this made them vulnerable to a really good defensive team in playoffs mode, like Boston, or to LeBron's increasing number of off nights.
If I were a Cavs fan, I'm sure I'd be pissed at management right now. Jamison is currently the second scorer (and rebounder, I think) - he's maybe more what you'd want for your third guy. You'd want somebody else who can reliably step up for 17 a night. Maybe the Cavs couldn't do that with the salary situation, or maybe it's bad decisions, as you suggest. Certainly the franchise can't be mentioned in the same breath as the Celtics or Lakers, or even the Pistons or Suns. It does look like the LeBron years will have been squandered, from a title perspective, for Cleveland fans.
I
I don't care if you like him, or Cleveland, or not.....you don't win in the NBA without a good supporting cast, and Cleveland has never provided one for him. He's gotta be gone now.
I don't know if you want to
I don't know if you want to make the case he can't take over a game. I still have nightmares about a certain Cavs-Pistons playoff game. Look at Cleveland's roster. It's really pretty bad. If he leaves, they'll probably win fewer than 20 games.
Two things
(1) Supporting Cast. He didn't have one. Antawn, Varejao, West, the Williams', Powe...Zydrunas? No true Play-Offs side-kick among them, and the ones that COULD help take over a game had a skill-set too similar to LeBron's. LeBron needed a respectable shooting guard; what he got was a shit-ton of role-playing forwards.
(2) Play-Off decisiveness. No doubt the kid deserved regular season MVP honors. Borderline averaging a triple-double shows an ability to carry your team. But come playoffs, the dynamic shifts dramatically how a star-player can carry the load.
If you're LeBron in the playoffs, you have to know what you're going to do before the ball touches your hands. You cannot dribble around and expect a play to develop the same you would in the regular season. You're going to be pressured much faster; your teammates are going to be neutralized, and you'll have to make snap, correct, decisions. LeBron showed an immense lack of playoff maturity.
You look at Kobe, Jordan, Bird, Magic...those guys knew exactly what they were going to do with the ball in the playoffs. There was no hesitation in their game. Hesitation leads to turnovers; 9 to be exact.
Is lack of playoff maturity going to be LeBron's albatross throughout his entire career? Doubtful. The guy is going to be a champion very soon, it only matters where. Give him an offseason to work on pressure decision making. Relieve him the burden of having to grab so many rebounds, or throw so many assists. He's going to make either Chicago, New York or Miami fans very happy next year.
E to the S Go Blue, Class of '04
Well, he doesn't really have
Well, he doesn't really have a bunch of nobodies. Mo Williams has had a number of good games, Shaq is older now but still a good big man, Antwan Jamison too.
You don't win as many regular season games as they did without a good supporting cast. Lebron just doesn't play in the playoffs like MJ or Kobe. Lebron had a good game tonight (even though he shot the ball a million times and turned the ball over a lot) but he had a few games this series where he was outshined by a few people. That didn't happen to Jordan and Kobe, not very often at least.
Lebron still has a lot of career left. I just hope he never wins.
That's the thing
Jordan had Pippen. Kobe had Shaq in his prime. LeBron has nobody that is even in the same vicinity as those two players. How much can you really expect from one guy? Geez.
lol
OK, well when you're practically quadruple covered because your "great supporting cast" can't hit the broad side of a barn, it's easy to see why he'll turn the ball over more frequently.
I'm not even a big LeBron guy at all, it's just amazing how much flack he's personally catching for this series loss. Basketball is a team game, one guy cannot win or lose a series.
Let's not compare the Cavs to
Let's not compare the Cavs to the Bulls of the early to mid 90's or the Lakers of the early 2000's. Those teams were dynasties, each winning 3 Championships in a row (twice for the bulls). If your argument is "LeBron doesn't have enough of a supporting cast to build a dynasty and win 3 titles in a row" I would agree with you. But that's not the argument. You are saying he doesn't have enough supporting cast to win one championship by citing 2 of the best teams in the last 30 years.
The Cavs had enough of a "team" to win 61 regular season games this season, more than any other team. If LeBron is such a star, he should be able to take that team to at least the Eastern Conference Finals. It just seems that whenever LeBron wins a game for the Cavs, he's "perhaps the greatest to ever play the game" but when he chokes, all the LeBron supporters jump right to everyone else on the team. It's one or the other.
Oh ok
Well, sorry I forgot to mention the Celtic teams of the 70s and 80s, or Showtime, or the Bad Boys, or Duncan and Robinson, or Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili or Olajuwon and Drexler, or Shaq and Wade, or Garnett, Allen and Pierce or Kobe and Gasol (yes Gasol a far superior player to anyone on CLE). Detroit in 2004 might be the only champion of the last 20+ years who didn't have one alpha dog and at least one top-10 caliber player on their roster and even they had the four starting all-stars.
For the last time, I'm not even a LeBron fan, but it's a team game. He can't do it by himself which was exactly what he was forced to do in the second half yesterday because nobody else on the team decided to come out of the locker room to play. Jamison was invisible, Blo Williams played well in the first half, which is why Cleveland was right in the game and then poof he was gone. Hickson and Varejao didn't play enough.
Triangle Offense
If you're running the triangle, you can pretty much expect one guy to win you championships. I think if Phil Jackson coached the Cavs, they absolutely beat Boston. The triangle would give LeBron that much more decisiveness on each possession. No hesitation. That's the playoff recipe for success when you have a player of LeBron's talent.
Also, what the hell was with playing Shaq for so many minutes? Didn't Cleveland win 3 out of 4 or whatever against Boston with a small line-up during the regular season? Was there any doubt that the way to beat an aging Boston team is with an up-tempo, small, young starting 5?
I think a ton of this loss came down to coaching. Mike Brown has no idea how to coach a team to the Finals. And he articulates a little bit like Bubba Gump. Am I the only one who notices this?
E to the S Go Blue, Class of '04
I agree. No inside scoring,
I agree. No inside scoring, no pure shooter on the perimeter,no strong defense or rebounding, it's no wonder he's thinking about leaving. The brass has done absolutely nothing to make the Cavs a serious contender.
"It's the only place to get the inside story on Wolverine football, so blee bluhh tahh!" - Bo
Really
glad I'm not from Cleveland.
Oh, did the Cavs play tonight?
Been a good couple days
Pitt yesterday
Cleveland today
atleast I can watch the rest of the playoffs in peace
Agreed
With no chance of a Detroit/Michigan title this season I can't think of anything better than watching our rival cities fail as well. First the Cindy dynasty goes down to the 8th seed Habs lol. And now Lebron goes down and breaks all those poor Cleveland buckeye fan hearts in the process. I love it! Can we get a little Blackhawk fail just to put the cherry on top?
“That is a total f***ing lie. It is bullsh*t and it is horse sh*t, and people need to be held accountable" -Jim Leyland
End of an Era in Cleveland?
Stay Tuned....
A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something. - Plato
The next era begins in the
The next era begins in the Chi, Lebron and Derrick Rose will dominate for a long time IMO.
Everyone saying Lebron can't
Everyone saying Lebron can't win has to be serious and fair. Washed up Shaq, and Mo Williams does not equal Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. Lebron needs a good playoff supporting cast, Chicago here we go.
Pretty rattled none the less, Raptors fan, but a Lebron fan also all those wasted dollars on a guy who can't win a championship in the city I have his jerseys. (At least I have his high school he won a state champ).
You like Ohio too much.
You like Ohio too much.
You
You are really overrating the rest of Cleveland's team.
That was awesome to watch.
That was awesome to watch. Goodbye LeBron, please stay out of the Central division. Say no to Chicago, yes to the Clippers!
Where should he go?
New Jersey, Clips or Bulls? I honestly think putting him in LA with the Clips roster would make them automatically a team to beat. NJ would have to sign two max FAs, then with the likelihood of getting John Wall combined with Brook Lopez and Devin Harris and they would be pretty freaking good too. Bulls have Rose and Noah.
Chicago and LA if he wants to win championships
LA would have B-diddy, Gordon (sick shooter), LBJ, Griffin, and Kaman with a couple decent bench guys. Chicago would have have to play either Lebron or Deng at the 2 or 4 but would be pretty nasty either way. Maybe they would trade Deng for someone like hamilton to have a true SG, who knows. Ben Gordon needs to be starting if they are going to pay him 11 million a year for the next 4 years.
It will be real interesting to see what happens.
T
You
You don't think New Jersey is potentially the best destination provided they win the lottery and get Wall? I think it's kind of odd that they were so shitty this year because they seem to have a lot of talent, plus he'd finally have a legit big man to play with.
Edit: Nevermind, I saw you were up on NJ's contract info....if that's the case he's better off in LA or Chicago for sure.
Man, if LeBron goes to the
Man, if LeBron goes to the Bulls, all the joy of seeing Ohio basting in misery would dissolve in an instant. As a Pistons fan, there is nothing worse than a non-trainwreck Bulls team and their front-running fans. Chicago fans deserve nothing but pain and disaster.
It's even more offensive when you consider that Reinsdorf and Paxson have done nothing right this year (letting Gordon walk, trading Salmons, the whole Del Negro fiasco, etc.)- jesus, even getting Derrick Rose was blind luck. Now, a chance to build a legit contender falls into their lap. With Calipari coaching. Gross.
And if this ends up happening, then the Bulls can clear capspace to sign Bosh as well. Disgusting. At least I have another season of Charlie Villanueva to look foward to!
*Edited to fix link
Ummm...
What did the bulls do wrong? I'm sorry, but being in the BEST position of any team to offer a free agent is wrong... how?
You're really gonna criticize the bulls front office who: Didn't overpay for Gordon to come off the bench (you won't win a championship with Ben Gordon at the 2, the Bulls know this, they let him go) who traded Salmons so they CAN offer a max free agent this year.
They gave del negro his first chance at coaching, and he did pretty well, not great. As we saw with Mike Brown, a coach can't win you a championship, but he can lose it. They're not going the next step with Vinny either, so they fired him.
Yes the lottery to get DRose was lucky, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
All i know is the Bulls front office have done SO much more to help their team than the Pistons front office... just look at the two finishes this year, and we'll see where the offseason takes both teams. I know I'd rather have Rose/Noah/Deng with Wade/James/Bosch/Amare than 5 shooting guards, 2 150lb guys, and Charlie V holding down the post with an undersized maxiell.
"Over? Did you say, over? Nothing is over until we decide it is!"
I have to respond to your
I have to respond to your last sentence first: Were you somehow inferring from the Charlie V. comment that I am happy about the Pistons' late moves? I can assure you that isn't the case. Lots of us Pistons fans are pretty queasy about the recent moves Dumars has made.
As for the rest of the post: Really? Are you really going to tell me that Paxson is a good GM? I forgot to mention this in the last post, but isn't this the same genius who didn't want to give up Luol Deng to get Pau Gasol? That there wasn't major dysfunction in the front office this past year? I mean, I'm not getting this stuff from other Pistons fans- read your own local columnists and blogs. There's lots of other stories like those.
Let's be clear, you guys are in a enviable situation as a franchise- one much better than the Pistons are in right now (or the Knicks for that matter). Please don't act like this was some elaborate chess game by Bulls management. If Mike Brown weren't too dumb to adjust to the fact that KG was raping Antawn Jamison, that his offense runs much better with JJ Hickson on the floor than Shaq, or actually draw up a non-Iso-LeBron play, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Not saying that all the bulls
Not saying that all the bulls moves were good, or that Pax is a great GM, but yeah, I am saying that we're in a damn good situation right now.
I know you're not happy with the pistons - no one is, but for right now things look pretty good for the Bulls, and they don't for the Pistons. And yeah, that's due to the front office making a lot of the moves you discussed in your 1st post. Kobe didnt want them to give up Deng. There was major dysfunction... and yet we're in a great spot.
"Over? Did you say, over? Nothing is over until we decide it is!"
Minor point- I was talking
Minor point- I was talking about the proposed Gasol trade, not Kobe. Ben Gordon- your owner pinned letting him walk on allocating minutes- not clearing capspace. I'll concede trading Salmons as an intentional cap-clearing move, but that's it.
Other than that, I'm not sure we're exactly disagreeing on anything other than semantics. We both agree that whatever did happen, Chicago is in a good situation.
As to these and the other factors that have them in the running for LeBron right now- the Cavs meltdown, having Derrick Rose, a coaching vacancy- all factors which fit nicely with the needs of the LeBron-Worldwide Wes-Calipari nexus- I just don't see some masterplan. Unless Gar Forman, John Paxson, and Jerry Reinsdorf are secret geniuses. Just don't see it. I'm still going with blind luck. So, with that said, agree to disagree?
Done and Done
NBA is pro sport #4 to me anyways, I just root for my home town team, Da Bulls.
And if they're secret geniuses... the world is even more messed up than i thought. Agree to disagree
"Over? Did you say, over? Nothing is over until we decide it is!"
nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah
nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey goodbye cleveland! And good ridance. Hate the Cavs and their bandwagon fans
"Ohio is like a giant turd that Michigan just can't pinch off"
There is no way he goes to
There is no way he goes to Chicago to deal with the other 23s legacy. I personally want to see him go to the Nets and team with Bosh, Wall, and Brook Lopez
" I want to win Big 10 titles. Multiply. Consecutively. I just made that word up (multiply). I'm like that. I'm good at Scrabble."
Not going to happen
Nets only have room under the salary cap for one max player and maybe another 8 million dollar player. Only New York has enough room for 2 max players.
T
The Rockets should have about
The Rockets should have about $22 million with T-Mac coming off the books. LeBron paired with Yao Ming would sell over a Billion Houston Rocket jerseys in China.
“That is a total f***ing lie. It is bullsh*t and it is horse sh*t, and people need to be held accountable" -Jim Leyland
On another note
Did anyone hear the "New York Knicks" chant when LeBron was at the free throw line late in the game? It was totally Bill Simmons idea.....check this out: http://twitter.com/CelticsChants
Also don't count out the
Also don't count out the Clippers.
“That is a total f***ing lie. It is bullsh*t and it is horse sh*t, and people need to be held accountable" -Jim Leyland
.....to hope that the Cavs lose?
That way, Nike's tag will be .....you will be witnesses......to CHOKING!
No radio. Nothing of value.