Welcome to “how it all went wrong,” a breezy romp through the ways the Cavaliers managed not to build a solid “core” around LeBron James during his time in Cleveland. This is an idea I came up with during the free agency process, but never really got around to it. Since I did, LeBron signed with Miami, who built their team this off-season in an audacious, unprecedented, and possibly pre-planned turn of events. Because of that, I realize that some people might say the Cavs’ failure to build a core around LeBron ultimately turned out to be a moot point, but I still think there’s value in taking a look how the Cavs were more or less forced to build with LeBron and duct tape during Cleveland’s competitive years.
One other thing: this is not a “this was all the front office’s fault” thing. Because LeBron made the Cavaliers so good so fast, they only had a few chances to make the move or draft pick that would have given him a true running mate or set of running mates. Due to a series of circumstances both within and beyond management’s control, the moves they made didn’t work out. Without further ado, the tale of Luke Jackson, the Cavs’ only lottery pick in the LeBron era.
The Theory:
Things were looking good for the Cavs after the 03-04 season. LeBron won rookie of the year and was well on his way to becoming a superstar, the Cavs finished the year strong after dropping Ricky Davis and Darius Miles, Carlos Boozer had shown promise as a potential running mate before his contract situation got more and more dire, and basketball was cool in Cleveland. All good things, and the Cavs had their sights set on building on the momentum they’d gained and making a playoff run.
With the #10 overall pick, Luke Jackson was the fairly obvious choice. Thanks to LeBron, high school/young player mania was in full effect, and the draft was full of risky picks: 8 of the first 20 picks were either in high school or too young to have attended a year of American college.
Furthermore, the Cavs knew who their star was, and didn’t see the need to take a risky player: they knew they were going to compete for a playoff spot next season and run the offense through James, so they wanted a player who would be able to contribute right away and would be a good fit next to LeBron. Again, Luke Jackson was the only thing approaching a “safe” pick at the #10 spot. Here were the players taken after Jackson:
#11: Andris Biedrins, a horrifyingly raw center (the Cavs still had Z) who was actually younger than any of the high schoolers in the draft
12: Robert Swift, a high school center and that year’s recipient of the Sonics’ scholarship fund for raw centers who didn’t know how to play basketball
13: Sebastian Telfair, who was considered a huge reach at 13 and most people were sure would be a bust (and who the Cavs would later GIVE AWAY. RIGHT AS THEY WERE BUILDING A RUNNING TEAM. A RUNNING TEAM FOR BASSY. I can’t talk about Bassy without ranting about my love for a short point guard who can’t shoot or finish inside. I apologize.)
14: Kris Humphries, who is Kris Humphries
15: Al Jefferson, high school big man
16: Kirk Snyder, who went to college and is now serving a three-year prison sentence. Currently working with Maurice Clarett on a book about how age limits keep players from making bad life decisions.
17. Josh Smith, high school player then considered a shooting guard, albeit one who couldn’t shoot or dribble with his right hand. Bilas predicted that he would be the bust of the draft.
18. J.R. Smith, high schooler, three-point gunner, neck-tattoo enthusiast
19. Dorell Wright, high-schooler
20. Jameer Nelson. I’m telling you, this was an ass-backwards draft. How ass-backwards?
21. Pavel Podkolzine “Pavel Podkolzine went one pick behind Jameer Nelson” ass-backwards.
Then Russian Teammates Viktor Khryapa and Sergei Monia were taken before Delonte West, Tony Allen, Kevin Martin, Sasha Vujacic, Beno Udrih, David Harrison, and Anderson Varejao were taken with consecutive selections. Making a bad pick in the 2005 draft was like making poor health choices in Mad Men times. I mean, look at the players taken before Jackson:
#1: Dwight Howard: Okay, he would’ve been nice.
#2: Emeka Okafor: I mean, kinda meh. Good player, but not a franchise savior. How much better would he have been at his contract number than Varejao at his, considering Varejao and LeBron’s chemistry?
#3: Ben Gordon: Would’ve been a nice pickup/player. No Scottie Pippen, to say the least.
#4: Shaun Livingston: (Shakes fist at absent God)
#5: Devin Harris: Would’ve been nice, but he was raw and seemed like a reach. Jury’s still out on whether he’s a star — very little talk about the power of a LeBron/Harris pair this summer.
#6: Josh Childress: Played LeBron’s position. Went to Greece.
#7: Luol Deng: Played LeBron’s position. LeBron was unexcited by the possibility of Deng being the fourth-best player on LeBron’s new team.
#8: Rafael Araujo: Probably a very nice man.
#9: Andre Iguodala: More on that later.
Furthermore, Luke Jackson really should have worked on paper. The dude averaged 21.2/7.2/4.5 in his last year at Oregon, on 48.8%/44%/86.2% shooting, had good size for his position, and wasn’t supposed to need athleticism because the Cavs had LeBron to create most of the plays anyways.
My basic “the team really screwed this pick up” rules are as follows: the correct choice has to be within five picks of the team’s actual choice, and not have been considered a huge risk or bad fit at the time — it has to be plausible that the team actually would have made the pick. No “Oh, the Grizzlies and Cavs passed on Amar’e for Drew Gooden and Dajuan Wagner.” Other than Jameer, there’s no player who wasn’t a huge unknown behind the Jackson pick, and Jameer went at 20. Here’s the scary part: if the Cavs had the #9 pick and a choice between a raw-as-hell, similar to LeBron, averaged 13 points in college Andre Iguodala, which player would have seemed like the more logical choice? That one would have looked terrible in hindsight, but even then the Jackson pick would be justifiable.
The Reality:
Unfortunately, Luke Jackson struggled with not being injured and not sucking throughout his NBA career. He played a total of 46 games for Cleveland, never averaging more than 8.9 minutes per game. After Cleveland got rid of him, he bounced from the Clippers to the Raptors to D-League and international ball. I saw him in Summer League this season, and he didn’t look like he belonged there. I don’t know if it was the injuries, but Luke Jackson never resembled an NBA role player.
The Cost:
Thanks to the Jiri Welsch debacle and the Cavs’ subsequent success, Jackson was the Cavs’ only lottery pick. No Durant/Westbrook/Harden for the Cavs, thank you. Just LeBron and Luke Jackson for Cleveland. Good hindsight is always fun, but for to fix this one you might have needed a DeLorian and a case of St. Joe’s DVDs. Sigh. Just because something was nobody’s fault doesn’t make it suck less in the end.
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LeBron already had his running mate–Boozer. The whole thing was a crime: The fact that he left and the way he did it. But I guess it foreshadowed The Decision.
DeLorean is spelled wrong.
It’s not the obvoious moves that make teams great. It’s the ones that seem ridiculous or impossible at the time. Ainge and Kupchak made them, Ferry didn’t.
I feel like I shoul get partial credit for this. I wrote about this fairly in-depth (as as in-depth as you can be ona comments section) months ago.
I am glad it’s up here though so I can easily link it when people want to know why LBJ never had a running mate. We swung and missed on Luke Jackson, plain and simple.
Don’t forget which city drafted both Durant and Westbrook… SEATTLE. Before those players and the entire team were ripped away and relocated to OKC in one of the worst sports scandals of all time. Learn the truth on our website.
We feel you Cleveland. You lost a great player. We lost a great player AND our 41-year franchise.
Jackson was a swing and a miss no doubt. Ferry’s biggest mistake was not doing anything significant with Wally Sczerbiak’s expiring deal. Second to that I would list giving Damon Jones twenty million dollars. Ferry wasn’t a good evaluator of talent. That’s why he is out of a job.
Kevin Martin would have been nice.
the donyell marshall damon jones and larry hughes FA signings are ones that stand out the most to me…especially hughes. I remember being pretty excited about him and thinking with him and Lebron the Cavs would have an awesome backcourt…that really never materialized for the obvious reasons that everyone knows by now. marshall and jones annoyed me mainly because they were veterans who were known to hit 3′s yet barely hit wide open 3′s with set up by lebron…it was annoying as hell to watch.
interesting bit on luke jackson and what we couldve gotten instead. amazing iguadala was there one spot ahead and jameer nelson fell so far down (i think due to his height)…the NBA is so big on raw talent and working with projects that alot of picks go to waste more than any other professional league draft. you just have to wonder about the scouting sometimes…
i still insist that the wally non trade was a non factor in 09…the suns never wanted to get rid of shaq so it wasnt like we didnt try…we still couldve beat the magic and thats a series that even now i still cant get over….im pissed at lebron for wanting to guard rafer alston instead of hedu or rashard lewis…thats what hurt us the most in the series…
i think danny ferry couldve done better, but i doubt lebron did little if any recruiting to get a #2 here in cleveland…if you’re the best player in the league or at least arguably the best player in the league…it shouldnt matter what city you play in…you should be able to recruit some top talent via FA….
@ Sonicsgate…believe me when I say that Cleveland fans also know something about losing a franchise.
Actually, Araujo was a complete a-hole, as anyone who followed the MoWest Conference during his tenure would attest. Dirty player.
This was a great post.
“Kris Humphries, who is Kris Humpries”
fun fact: Luke Jackson played for my bars city league team (PrimeTime Sports Bar, Springfield OR) and is a horrible tipper for a millionaire….still eeking out a living in Italy….still widely hated by bartenderes in this area….and loved by Duck fans. Growing up in Cleveland, they should have figured how soon Lebron would have moved to SF….and if you want to blame any one decision, it was the Laura Hughes signing…how many bad trades did that result in, just to get rid of one player and his enormous contract….?
As an Orlando fan (great post by the way) Im intrigued at the regret shown to missing out on Nelson. I know it came much later but wouldnt Nelson have done pretty much what Mo Williams had done? And you cant even say “yeah, but Orlando wouldnt have had him then” as Nelson didnt even play in the 2009 ECF (the series that looking back was the end of the road for the Cavs in the LeBron era.)
The thing is, Orlando actually bought the 20th spot from Denver in order to draft Nelson. Could a follow up enquiry to this post be “why didnt the Cavs do something similar or wouldnt they have gone for Nelson at all anyway?” Especially as we know Denver were up for selling their pick and many teams in the 18-30 range are rumoured to be willing to sell their pick each draft.
Like the OP and other commenters said, its harsh for anyone to spit fire about the Jackson selection in 2010. A team can only make their best decision based on the info and perception they had at the time. The pick made sense, the pick had a realistic chance of working, it just didnt work out. I noted the Durant/Westbrook/Harden mention. Three top 4 picks in successive years should help any team. A classic case of LeBron simply being TOO good lifting the Cavs out of the lottery too soon. Swings and roundabouts. Orlando missed out on their 3rd “lottery bow” too courtesy of Mr Vasquez (who played well against USA for Spain a few days ago by the way.) Ended up with Dwight and JJ Redick with no “3rd bow.” In a way, Orlando’s front office made a bigger draft mistake in 2005 then the Cavs did in 2004.
Harden shouldn’t even be thrown into that mix though. That guy is going to be a solid BENCH player for quite some time. He didn’t make or break that team. Had they not drafted Harden and instead drafted someone else..they still make the playoffs this year.
LBJ went to the playoffs in his third year. Durant did too. They had the same opportunities to be in the same amount of lotteries after drafting their places, and messed up it completely.
All of it might have been for not though, because I’m not sure MIke Brown could have figured out how to use other talent. Say they draft Josh Smith…that would have ended up just like Larry Hughes did. LBJ dominates the ball to much (mostly because of Mike Brown) and Smith is left standing around the three point line where he shouldn’t be. Slashers need ball movement and body movemy, and as long as MB was coaching, there wasn’t going to be much of either.
this has nothing to do with your posts but just some random lebron thoughts i’d like to share.
i think most people believe that Lebron’s decision was an excellent basketball move (go to a better team with a much higher likelihood of winning) but a poor business move because it minimizes his impact on his own team and hence minimizes his role as THE MAN. also the PR aspects of the way he handled le decision were poor on his image also.
i’d actually like to concede that i think what Lebron did was a wise BUSINESS move, but a dumb basketball move. why? let me explain the business side first. a player’s best bet at maximizing how much money he can make is to maximize his perceived value. how does a player maximize his value? by winning. pure and simple. no matter how many conference championships, mvp’s, etc. lebron has, WINNING will make his business value sky rocket like nothing else (see bryant, kobe. former alleged rapist). the reason everyone can point to shaq’s value is because when he changed teams he brought the championship with him… and so, despite the fact that shaq is no longer a superior NBA player, he will always be perceived as a winner and will get promotions up the wazoo for life.
HOWEVER, the reason i say it’s a bad basketball move, is that basketball is pure. basketball does not have incentive. basketball understands that a college team defeating a high school team is not an equivalent win to a college team defeating a college team. the same parallel can be made for forming a team of super-NBA quality players playing in an NBA league. your win just doesn’t matter as much. so, from the perspective of pure basketball… any wins that they produce will always come with a big BUT… i.e…. ‘The Heat Trio won 5 consecutive championships, BUT they had such an unfair advantage that those championships don’t mean much’….
it’s sort of like how the dream team didn’t give a crap about their gold medals back when we were the only country playing organized basketball, but.. now that the competition is stiffer, the USA team values the wins more.
I would like to point out that I said the cavs had the opportunity to be in the same amount of lotteries as OKC was in…..but they managed to screw that up with Jiri Welsch. So, still a FO blunder.
And there is just no way I can justify now or justify then picking Luke Jackson over Josh or J.R. Smith. Both were highschool phenoms who everyone knew had huge, huge upside. Of course, they could have ended up like Shaun Livingston and it wasn’t like I was pining for them….but they should have been picked higher than Luke Jackson and that is w/o hindsight.
I think it was letting Boozer go that really screwed the Cavs. They let their Pippen walk out the door. Not completely the Cavs fault, but you cant just let a disgruntled player get his way and not get anything in return. I guess even back then Boozer didn’t trust the Cavs’ management.
the boozer situation was different management (not Ferry) and different ownership (Gund). that being said, it was 99% cavs fault. they should have recognized that pro-athletes are almost entirely about getting the most money and getting paid asap, especially a second rounder like Boozer. they should have known that somebody, in this case Utah, would likely figure out how to swoop in and give the guy a deal he couldnt refuse. i really dont think Boozer went into the whole situation thinking he was going to leave the team but once Utah came in how could he turn that down? no way he was going to turn down that kind of money. the bottom line is, Paxson/Gund should have known better than to just let a player they wanted to keep long-term out of his contract for no good reason. Paxson/Gund got what they deserved for being stupid/naive.
Not the Cavs fault? Teams like the Thunder have used every resource to get better. Not just money, but actual talent evaluation and trades. The Cavs were in a terribly short sighted win now mode which left their hands tied for seven years. LeBron tied those hands, sure, but that doesn’t mean that it was some cruel twist of fate that left you without a title.
I beleive the Boozer ‘ordeal’ was the result of Boozer wanting out and the Cavs ‘fell for’ his tactics. There is no way ANY team would have let Boozer out of his deal the way they did and exposed themselves like that – unless of course they felt as though they had an agreement (which I believe they did and Boozer then backed-out). Not saying Gund was smart on how he handled the situation, but it’s not believable to me that he would have let a young and improving double/double machine in Boozer go for nothing.
Many of the other moves the Cavs made, including Larry Hughes & Luke Jackson made since on paper. Just like Jamison’s signing did last year. Sometimes the end result just doesn’t match what the paper says should happen – that’s why you play the game. I actually put the most ‘blame’ for the Cavs falling short the last few years on Mike Brown. He just never seemed to be able to figure out an effective offensive scheme and many of the commentators would talk about not understanding what he was doing with his rotations etc. SVG would often times say “another interesting line-up by Mike Brown” The word ‘interesting’ is commentator speak for ‘what the heck is this guy thinking? Brow never incorporated Jamison in the line up to match his best strengths last year. He for some strange reason decided to limit JJ’s minutes when he had been getting it done all year. He refused to play some of his most effective line-ups and slowed things too much in order to appease Shaq etc.
Not saying the Cavs could not have done better with some of their picks/trades, but I would say at the time in which many of them were done – they actually made since. They obviously didn’t always pan-out very well, but they made since. For a matter of fact, the one move they made that seemed really strange at the time was when they selected Eyenga. I’m not sure who we could have got instead, but I do remember thinking – why/who the heck did we choose this guy. This upcoming season we’ll see if it was the ‘right’/'smart’ pick or not. The other move we made that I scrathed my head over was keeping JJ – which may prove to be a good move, but the jury is still out on that one. Honestly now I’m just trying not to put to much pressure on him to produce. If he is a 15/7 player then I’ll be pleased.
Ramble over… for now.
I mean, it’s not like Jameer was the reigning Naismith POY winner at the time. People really felt that Delonte was only four spots worse than him at the time?
Personally, Paul Silas getting fired is somewhere on my list as well. I think it sent a message of sorts about the type of owner Gilbert would be. But perhaps I’m over-reacting to that event.
re. Boozer – i doubt we will ever know for sure. i doubt Boozer “wanted out” no matter what. why would he not agree to the deal with the cavs if the cavs were willing to bend the rules to get him more money, sooner? once Utah came along, boozer said “see ya” to cleveland. maybe Boozer already knew from the start that Utah would come along? who knows? at the end of the day, no matter what, Cle was 100% stupid to let boozer out of his deal when they had no reason to do so. they had boozer locked in and just screwed it up royally.