Introducing #CavsRank… Villains!

The Joker, Hans Gruber, the Wicked Witch of the West, Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine, Ivan Drago, Hal 9000, Michael Corleone, Shredder, Iago, Cruella de Vil… Often, we remember a great villain more than we remember a great hero. For every Indiana Jones, there’s a Mola Ram. We Cavs fans have our own villains that have ripped our beating CavsHearts from our chests.  To discover them, we polled our crack staff to discover who and what we all still have nightmares about, and in the course of the next week or so, we’ll be counting down the biggest villains in Cavs history. (Big props to the commentariat’s TV63 who suggested the idea).

First up? Our (dis)honorable mentions, many of whom are just as memorable as the guys at the top. “Kali Ma!” indeed.

Charles Barkley

(By Nate Smith)  Sir Charles was a protagonist on a rough-and-tumble 76ers team that bounced the Cavs from the playoffs in 1990. Not only did the round mound level Craig Ehlo with a vicious foul in that series, but the Chuckster also averaged 25.6 points and 14 boards.

Further cementing his villain legacy, in 1996, Barkley and Reggie Miller had dinner at The Basement, a Cleveland club, with everyone’s favorite Indian, Albert Belle. After dinner, Barkley got into a brawl with New York native, Jeb Tyler. Barkley was arrested for disorderly conduct, but not charged. Tyler later sued Barkley for $550,000 (and lost). Barkley would be higher on this list, but he’s mellowed with age, and gotten friendlier towards Cleveland as time has passed. Charles advocated that LeBron James should, “go back to Cleveland” (before James did), picked Cleveland to win it all in last year’s playoffs (thanks for the curse, Chuck), and even endorsed Ohio governor, John Kasich, for POTUS, yesterday.

Elvin Hayes

(By Nate Smith) Elvin Hayes killed the Cavs throughout his career (as he did most teams). The Bullets Hall-of-Famer played 66 regular season games against the Cavs and averaged 21.3 points and 12 rebounds. In 10 career playoff games, he posted 20.5 points, 13.6 boards, and 3.6 blocks per night. Hayes was the best Bullets player on the squad that lost to the ’76 “Miracle of Richfield” team, but missed crucial free-throws in game six that would have tied it. Nevertheless, Hayes got redemption the next year when the Bullets dropped the Cavs in the opening round of the playoffs.

George McCloud

(By EvilGenius) In my opinion, George McCloud should have made the top 25, mainly because he threw the craziest sucker-punch since Kermit Washington broke Rudy Tomjanovich’s jaw on the court. His victim was an unsuspecting John Battle, who McCloud decked on the way to the locker room on January 22, 1992, following the Cavs’ 119-115 overtime victory over the Pacers. Battle then reportedly went into a nearby storage room and grabbed a 2×4 to retaliate before Craig Ehlo and some security guards stopped him.

“What happens on the floor, stays on the floor,” said Battle. “But when it comes off the floor, then it becomes citizen versus citizen. My first reaction was to pick up the nearest thing. I don’t know what it was. But Craig held me back. Craig said there’s a better way of handling it.”

Amazingly, McCloud was only hit with a $10,000 fine and suspended for a game. But it wouldn’t be the last time he punched someone…

In '00,Nugs George McCloud socked Magic's Ron Mercer by team bus after a game.Punch knocked RM's head into steel beam.Doc was Orl coach then

— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpears) January 8, 2013

The incident also spilled over to the head coaches when Bob Hill reportedly got into a shoving match with Lenny Wilkens during the dust up. Keep it classy, Indy…

Apparently, Cowens was also able to levitate…

Dave Cowens

(By Nate Smith) Boston’s Dave Cowens formed a one-two punch with guard Jo-Jo White, that would eventually end the ’76 Cavs’ “Miracle” run. Cowens averaged 18, 15.2 rebounds, and 4.8 assists that series, en route to an NBA championship. Cowens remained a thorn in Cleveland’s side for the rest of his career, often due to the perception that refs loved him.

Stan Van Gundy

(By EvilGenius) Former Magic (and current Pistons) head coach Stan Van Gundy, makes the list primarily for his often candid and provocative post-game comments during the infamous ECF series between the Cavs and Orlando in 2008-09. Once dubbed the “Master of Panic” by Shaquille O’Neal for accusing the big man of flopping, SVG decided to troll the Cavaliers, specifically Ben Wallace and Mo Williams, following Game 3. He said the pair “fell down more than a baby learning to walk.”

Here was Big Ben’s response…

Still, despite his extremely annoying sideline antics and snarky comments during media sessions, his villainy with regard to the Cavaliers only really lasted for one season when he was the architect of the Orlando yolo three-point offensive attack that denied the 66-win, heavily favored Cavs from a Finals collision course with Kobe and the Lakers. Plus, how upset can you really get with a guy who so closely resembles a certain “hedgehog”?

2015 Playoff Officials

(Nate Smith) 2015 Playoff Officials. The refs in the 2015 playoffs were bad. In the first round, they let the Celtics play thug ball on the Cavs in game three in Boston. This set the tone for the Kelly Olynyk arm bar in the first quarter of game four, we all know how that turned out. The men in gray continued to let things escalate in that game. Perkins leveled Crowder on a pick, and probably should have been ejected. J.R. Smith was ejected (and rightfully so) for backhanding Crowder and knocking him the **** out later in the game. The officiating reached comic levels when at 99-91, Isaiah Thomas grabbed LeBron on an inbounds while standing out of bounds, directly in front of Tony Brothers, who saw nothing. Thankfully it didn’t matter and the Cavs prevailed. Brothers is rumored to be auditioning for the role of Sergeant Schultz in the coming Hogan’s Heroes reboot.

The Bulls/Cavs series, while testy, was mostly under control, though Delly, sensing official incompetence, baited Taj Gibson and got him ejected from a game. In the ECF, the whistles were responsible for the worst block/foul call you’ll ever see in your life, when TT obliterated a Kent Bazemore dunk attempt and got called for a foul. Oh, and Delly got Al Horford ejected in that series. No one works the refs like Matty-D.

The NBA saved the best worst officiating for last. In the Finals, the Warriors’ plan was to keep Tristan Thompson, Timofey Mozgov, and LeBron James off the boards was basically to hold every single play and dare the refs to call it. Whether it was an arm, a shoulder, or (usually) a jersey, the refs swallowed their whistles most of the series. The Dubs perfected the art of grabbing the jersey on the small of the back where the refs couldn’t see, and basically doing it till they got caught. They became masters of off-ball fouls. Offensively, the Dubs would hold or run fullback lead plays on the majority of their screens, allowing Draymond Green (more on him later this series) to knock over defenders like a dozer plows trees.

But these sins weren’t the worst. The refs just consistently blew calls for the entire finals. Don’t forget Steph Curry’s two pump-fake-and-flail bailouts in the overtime of game one that led to four points. Or the worst of all of it, the play that ended Kyrie Irving’s season, that wasn’t even called a foul on Klay Thompson (though it’s clearly a blocking foul). The Warriors gambled that if they made LeBron run a gauntlet on every drive, the officials wouldn’t be able to or wouldn’t be willing to call everything. By the end of the series, it was too much for the Cavs to beat the Warriors and the officials.

Danny Ferry

(By David Wood) (Dis)honorable mention, Danny Ferry, brought us what I like to call the Instahelp All-Stars. The start of the era doesn’t have an exact date. Maybe it started with Larry Hughes. Although I usually think of it as when team traded for an older Ben Wallace in 2008 to stop Dwight Howard if needed During the 2009 playoffs, Wallace didn’t stop Dwight, however, he didn’t get too much of a chance to. The team was reluctant to leave him out too long because he couldn’t shoot free-throws. Big Ben played just 12 minutes a game.

The 2009-2010 season ushered in the ultimate washed-up star era. The team acquired Shaq before the season, and then grabbed Antawn Jamison mid-season, via a trade that devastated Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Shaq and ‘Tawn played well in the regular season, but it was no secret that Jamison could no longer average 32 points and 10 rebounds for a series like he did against Cleveland in the 2007 playoffs as a Wizard. And, Shaq wasn’t the one man wrecking crew the world was used to seeing. There was always this sense that the team should have gotten younger or flipped pieces for a disgruntled star instead of over thirty former-stars. The 2010 season ended before Shaq could even shut down Dwight.

Rajon Rondo

(By David Wood) Fellow (Dis)honorable Mention, Rajon Rondo, made sure of that with a triple double to end the Cavalier playoff run and LeBron’s Ohio residency. Maybe the Cavs could have grabbed Jason Kidd instead of Antawn that season, and my Instahelp memories would be much fonder.

Steph Curry

(By Nate Smith) Steph Curry… *sigh* too soon?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFrSbTz19T8

Doc Rivers

(By Cory Hughey)  A story isn’t dictated by the baby face, but by the heel. Luke Skywalker didn’t make Star Wars great, Darth Vader did. As we go down through this compilation of Cavs villains, a theme will emerge that many are interrelated to one another, and they tell much of the Cleveland Cavaliers story. Doc Rivers and his Celtics squads from 2007-2010 are a plot fulcrum as the Cavs couldn’t get past them in the playoffs, and they laid the blue print to LeBron of how to build a title contender in the modern NBA, and gave him the inspiration to build his own three headed monster in Miami.

https://youtu.be/sOKFMT_nEzY?t=4m30s

In sports, a reputation can change in an instant, in either direction. Rivers compiled a paltry 273-312 record during his first eight seasons as a head coach. In 2006, Bill Simmons openly called for Rivers to be fired, and at the time, he was on point. Then the planets aligned and the the Celtics’ years of futility parlayed into a championship summer of transactions and later googling of Ubuntu. The Celtics morphed into an Eastern Conference immovable object that stopped Lebron’s unstoppable force and caused the James to move (south).

Kobe Fans

(By Tom Pestak) Yesterday was the 89th anniversary of Rudolph Valentino’s sudden death.  When Valentino died unexpectedly in 1926, mass hysteria gripped New York City.  Droves of despondent women apparently committed suicide.  Over 100,000 people lined the streets during his funeral.  If you’re not familiar with the “Latin Lover” he was a silent film actor and America’s foremost heartthrob during the roaring twenties.

Valentino was an overrated actor that became a sensation (sounds familiar).

When he wasn’t dancing or dueling, he acted by posing in elaborate costumes and popping open his eyes to show emotion. Love, hate, surprise, any emotion at all. Even considering that exaggerated gestures were standard in silent films, Valentino lacked subtlety.

But his image — exotic, artificial, with a splash of machismo and a whiff of androgyny — spoke to the forbidden desires of the era. His short career lasted from 1921 until his death at the age of 31 in 1926. It was a hedonistic time in Hollywood, but the actors’ and film makers’ licentiousness arrived on screen cloaked in conventional morality, bringing what seemed like daring sexual fantasies to Middle America. [NYT]

Kobe Bryant was the Rudolph Valentino of the 2000s, minus the whole untimely death thing.  Overrated, controversial, criticized.  He could never be called ‘subtle’.  He posted middling True Shooting percentages year after year as he took more and more shots.  He certainly wasn’t the best basketball player of his era (Tim Duncan) and you’d be hard pressed to find a single season where he was the best player in the NBA.  But his image — fearless, clutch, with a torrent of machismo, and a whiff of Michael Jordan’s mid-range jumper — spoke to the forbidden desires of the era.  And his fans adored him.  Kobe is the only player in the history of the NBA that could get loud “MVP” chants in the 1st quarter of a pre-season game.  His fans lived to defend his honor.  They wrote epic poems for each of his handful of game-winners and they’d celebrate his egregious misses almost as passionately, because, you know, it showed us how courageous of a ball-hog he was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpGVNB6RJwE

Pretty much every argument with a Kobe fan went like this:  Non-Kobe Fan: “You know Kobe’s not really very good in [choose any of a multitude of advanced stats]” Kobe Fan: You can bluck my blick 81 times!!!11.  Non-Kobe Fan: “You know that was against a historically bad defensive team, right?” Kobe Fans: Count da RINGZZZ!  Basically, stats, evidence, large aggregates of data, head-to-head matchups….throw it out the window.  KOBE!!!11 was more myth than man by the late 2000s.  Even his most epic failures were swept under the rug with a speed that should make us blush in the Twitter era.  After losing by not 10, not 20, not 30, but THIRTY NINE points in closeout game of the NBA finals, Kobe Bryant whisked his seven-for-22,-one-measly-assist,-and-negative-35-plus/minus-butt off the court in Boston and prepared for the Beijing Olympics.

If you happened to tune into any of those games at 4 am, you might remember the commentators gushing (at least 5 times per segment) that Kobe Bryant was the “best player on the planet”.  Nary a mention of the beatdown he just received in the Finals, nor the 45% shooting and turnover-prone hero-ball that repeatedly sabotaged Team USA’s well-oiled offensive machine.  His defense was even worse.  Watch this shameless effort followed by a death stare to his teammates, who let him down.

Kobe fans defended a myth they helped create.  Ask a Kobe fan today, and he’ll say that without Kobe, team USA doesn’t win gold.  Kobe did hit a few timely shots at the end of the gold medal game.  That’s more than enough to sustain the myth.  Ignore the body of work, ignore the blemishes, focus on the the hero ball and the few times it works out – that’s the Kobe Fan’s modus operandi.  As someone on the front lines of the LeBron v Kobe crusades, I know well enough to both laugh at Kobe fans and fear them.  They are ridiculous, illogical, rabid, and uncompromising.  They will stop at nothing to spread their gospel.

Also Receiving Votes: Ricky Davis, Larry Hughes, DeJuan Wagner, Tony Parker, Bruce Bowen, Rafer Alston, Phil Jackson, Al Horford, Dennis Rodman, “The Media”, Allen Iverson, Randy Wittman, Jae Crowder, Jiri Welsch, the crushing weight of decades of regional sports failure, and Cavs ads making light of domestic abuse. If you didn’t see the subjects of your nightmares here, they’re probably in the top 25. Stay tuned.