#CavsRank Villains: 15-13

Sometimes villains are easily personified as thugs, bullies, trash talkers and irritants. They’re annoying and brash, and are usually the component that makes losing that much harder to swallow. But other times, it’s not that simple. Sometimes, players’ bodies betray them or cruel twists of fate intervene to derail even the most promising playoff run. As we’ve witnessed all too often, bones can break just as easily as hearts in The ‘Land.

So, buckle up and take your Dramamine as you journey through the hazards of our next three #CavsRank Villains on the countdown…

AP Photo/Ben Margot

15. Draymond Green

(David Wood) LeBron James and Draymond Green started off on the wrong foot. As a rookie, Green claimed that LeBron, then in Miami, had called him “little,” which prompted him to spit some trashy words back at the King. However, LeBron claims that is simply not the case. He says Green started the trash talk.

However, that isn’t why Green ended up on this list. Draymond cemented himself on this list with his play during the Finals. During the first three games of the series, Draymond was lost and couldn’t capitalize on all the attention Stepehen Curry demanded. Green cowered like a little puppy who was seeing LeBron run a vacuum in front of his favorite bone. He averaged 9.7 points on 26.7% shooting to go with 7.7 boards and 2.7 assists. He had an average plus-minus of -5. Each time Curry found Green after being trapped above the 3-point line, Green failed to make a layup, open shot, or the right pass.

The next three games Green capitalized on all the attention paid to Curry. He averaged 16.3 points on 48.5% shooting. And, he sucked up nine boards and dished out 7.3 assists a game. He had an average plus-minus of +16.7.

But those numbers are just a part of why he became so disliked by Clevelanders. People really hate on him because he played like he knew he wasn’t better than whoever he was matched up with the whole series. Every time he was tasked with keeping Tristan Thompson off the boards, he gripped TT’s jersey as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling into the Grand Canyon. It was such an issue that on one of the podcasts I did during the Finals the CTB team decided Thompson needed to wear a jersey two sizes too small.

Green also set picks like he was a starting NFL fullback in the late 90s. He set picks that Kevin Garnett thought were dirty. Remember when this happened?

It wasn’t called, and neither were three fourths of Draymond’s holding fouls on the boards. Finally, Draymond, forever a poet, said this during the Warrior’s victory parade:

Klay Thompson…Yup!

Splash Brothers…Yup!

Cavaliers…Nope!

We won….Yup!

They suck…Yup!

We here…Yup!

They not….Nope!

Draymond is hated…Yup!

14. Rasheed Wallace

(EvilGenius) “Do you feel the need? The need for… Sheed?” If you were anywhere outside of Detroit in the mid-2000s (or later Boston or New York) the answer was a resounding “NO!”

But, there was something equally detestable and hilarious about the boorish way Rasheed Wallace chose to conduct himself, both on and off the court. Upon his arrival in the motor city during the 2003-04 season, Sheed fully embraced his role as a bully and a villain, bringing that missing edgy piece the Pistons needed to form their Bad Boys 2 “Deeeeetroooooooooit Baaaaaasketbaaaaaalllll!!!” image. With Sheed manning the middle, the Pistons were able to rip off back-to-back trips to the NBA Finals (2004 and 2005), capturing a championship in 2004.

His first major run-in with the Cavaliers came on February 26, 2006, when Wallace took offense to what seemed like an inadvertent elbow from Zydrunas Ilgauskas as he shot a layup, and decided to retaliate by trying to split the Lithuanian big man’s skull.

https://youtu.be/JIT9WHobGwI

Ilgauskas needed five stitches to close the head wound caused by Sheed’s razor-like elbow, that came a mere 1:47 into the game. Wallace was assessed a flagrant foul for hitting Z, and was later fined $5K. For his part, Ilgauskas toweled off the blood, made his free throws and headed to the locker room to get sewn up. He returned later in the quarter, but seemed fazed by the hard foul and was ineffectual for the rest of the game as the Cavs lost 90-78.

“I think he (Rasheed) was frustrated because I caught him first with an elbow and then he hit me back,” Ilgauskas said. “Mine wasn’t intentional. His, I didn’t see the replay.”

Wallace acknowledged that his elbow was in retaliation.

“I’m not going to start a game by cracking a cat in the skull if I don’t get elbowed first,” Wallace said.

Along with his physical intimidation, Sheed brought a swagger and braggadocio that made him plenty of enemies amongst players and fans alike. He was notorious for his “guaran-sheed” predictions of victory (first against the Pacers in the 2004 ECF, and later against the Lakers in the Finals, and the 2005 ECF against the Heat). He was at it again in the 2006 playoffs against the Cavs, giving his guaran-sheed promise that the Pistons (up 2-1) would beat Cleveland in Game 4, then close out the series in Auburn Hills.

“I know we’re going to win it,” Wallace said, after the Pistons lost, 86-77, to the Cavaliers. “Tomorrow night is the last game here in this building for this year. Y’all can quote me, put it back page, front page, whatever.”

Although his guaran-sheed victory was not to be (the Cavs won 74-72), Sheed seemingly had no regrets about his bold statement…

“They won tonight. You can’t take that away from them. The sun even shines on a dog’s ass,” said Wallace. “I can’t always be right. (But) I’ve got the confidence that we can go out there and whoop up on some people.”

Wallace also got the last laugh that year as the Pistons closed out the series in Game 7, following a heartbreaking Cavs loss in Game 6 (84-82) in which Wallace went off for 24 points, hitting 4-8 from downtown. For the low-scoring series, Sheed averaged 14.9 points and 6.7 boards, shooting 43% from three and generally making life miserable for the young Cavs.

However, along with his bravado came a streak of hot-headedness that also brought him a steady avalanche of technical fouls — which often proved to be his (and his team’s) undoing. One glaring example came against the Cavs in Game 6 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals (otherwise known as the “Boobie Game”). Sheed picked up his sixth foul on a charge, running over Anderson Varejao. He then completely lost his composure with the refs, picked up two technical fouls and was ejected from the game. Though he had technically already fouled out, Sheed’s tirade seemed to sap any remaining fight the Pistons had in them, and the Cavs won to get to their first Finals appearance.

Sheed got so many of these, he could have changed his middle name to “Technical”

But I bet you all forgot that Sheed got the final word in 2010 as a member of the hated Celtics. Yep, there he was again, contributing two huge games off the bench in a series that sent LeBron to Miami. First, Wallace scored 17 in 18 minutes in game two, and then Sheed scored 13 in Boston’s 94-85 game six closeout. Just in case you were wondering, Rasheed Wallace wasn’t any more endearing in green.

Even though he retired in 2012, Wallace is still the NBA’s all-time leader in player technical fouls, with 317, and owns the single-season record for technical fouls. In the 2000–01 season, Wallace received 41 technical fouls over a span of 80 games, about one technical foul for every two games. He also holds the record for most ejections for an NBA player. In keeping with his villain status, Wallace was also suspended by the NBA for seven games in 2003 for threatening then-referee Tim Donaghy on an arena loading dock (the league’s longest suspension for an offense that did not involve violence or substance abuse).

Yet, even though he was often worthy of hate, Sheed still contributed some fun things during his time in the NBA, like changing his number from 30 to 36 in honor of the Wu Tang Clan’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). He also (if not coined, at least) popularized the phrase “Ball don’t lie,” using it throughout his career after an opposing team missed a free throw after Sheed was called for a foul. Here was his inaugural trial run on Kwame Brown.

13. Health

(Nathan Smith) Checking in at unlucky number 13, “health” is a catch-all for villain nominations like “Big Z’s feet bones,” “Jim Chone’s broken toe,” and “Austin Carr’s doctors.” Every one of these stories will make you want to throw up when you think about an alternate timeline where these guys never got hurt. It’s true that the Cavs have had more than their fair share of bad luck when it comes to health, but what makes it all so cosmically unfair (in a “first world problems” sort of way) is that so many of the Cavs’ health crises came at the absolute worst times: just when the Cavs were a few games from the ultimate NBA success. Here’s hoping that the decades of rotten luck will make getting to the mountain top all the more satisfying.

Austin Carr’s Doctors: To realize the tragedy of Austin Carr’s knee, one must realize that Carr was the the Lou Alcindor, the Oscar Robinson, the LeBron James of his day. Cleveland Jackson illustrated this more eloquently than I could, in his profile on Austin Carr for last year’s #CavsRank countdown.

[Carr] carried Notre Dame to a victory over the unbeatable UCLA team.   He set the standard with the highest scoring average in an NCAA tournament (41.3 points per game) and with the highest single scoring game in an NCAA tournament game with 61 points against Ohio University.  Carr owns three of the top five and five of the top 12 scoring games in NCAA tournament history. No player since Carr has averaged over 30 points per game in the tournament…

Carr was explosive.  He was a human powder keg, the sky was limitless and he belonged to a City that, like Notre Dame, was ready to embrace his excellence and his promise.

After a stress fracture to his foot in the 1971 pre-season, Carr recovered enough to play and made the all-rookie team, and had the foot surgically repaired the next summer. (Would anyone do that today?) At his peak, AC was a dynamic shooter with unlimited range and lightning quick feet that got him to the line over four times a game. As a guard, Carr shot 49% from the field  in 1973 and 1974. In the 1974-1975 season, Austin boasted a true-shooting percentage over 50 without a three point line.

Then came the knee injury and surgery. The AP reported the surgery in a two paragraph wire piece (left). I know you’re all incredulous right now, thinking “ONLY TWO MONTHS?! For a ligament removal?” To further complicate matters, Carr injured the knee on the 5th of December and then played three more games before going under the knife. True to their word, Carr returned two months later. It was clear to see how devastating the injury was. Pre-injury that year, Carr averaged 23.5 points per game. After? Carr averaged 6.5.

Carr had surgery again after the season to “remove cartilage,” according to an AP report. Knee surgery was still pretty experimental in the mid seventies, and they were using artificial grafted ligaments at that time. Perhaps the doctors just removed the ligament to ensure a quicker recovery time. I don’t have enough information to definitively say what happened with Austin’s knees, but reading between the lines, and just judging from comments during his broadcasts, the team and their doctors handled the injury poorly. Austin came back too soon and made the mistake of playing on it before he was fully healed.

The way Austin’s doctors and the Cavs handled his injuries belies everything we know about knee injuries today, but Carr has – as far as I know – never thrown any doctors or trainers under the bus. It was the 70s. People smoked everywhere, didn’t wear seat belts, and had lots of random unprotected sex. No one even thought about ACLs, but, as Carr himself was quoted in his Cavsrank profile, he was never the same.

Mentally, it was devastating. I lost a whole step. And to lose a step in this game, you lose a lot. I was able to recover and play another five years on a leg and a half.

Austin Carr was the Brandon Roy of the 70s. But AC was so good, he still came back on a “leg and a half” to become the leader of the bench on the Miracle of Richfield team. This isn’t a Maurice Stokes tragedy; AC is still Mr. Cavalier, and will be forever linked with the franchise. He has always maintained a positivity that is infectious. AC doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time regretting what might have been, but like Roy, Penny, Sampson, and Yao, we’ll always wonder.

(EvilGenius) Jim Chones’ Broken Toe: Before the injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving did major damage to the Cavaliers’ title hopes this past season, perhaps the most catastrophic injury in Cavaliers history was the broken pinkie toe Jim Chones suffered just before the 1976 second-round playoff series against the Celtics that effectively ended the “Miracle of Richfield” season. Chones, who joined the Cavs from the L.A. Lakers in 1974, was the Cavs’ leading scorer and second-leading rebounder in the 1975-76 regular season. In the amazing seven-game series against Washington in the first round, he averaged 15 points, seven rebounds and one block per game.

But he came down awkwardly on a teammate’s foot in the final practice before the Eastern Conference Finals, breaking the same toe that he had broken the year before, and was lost for the rest of the playoffs. The Cavs valiantly took the Celtics to six games before losing to a heavily favored Boston team (sound like a familiar scenario?). Chones (like Kyrie decades later), said he was more confident that the Cavs could beat Boston than he was that they could defeat Washington, and would have done so if he’d been healthy.

(EvilGenius) The 1993-94 Season: The rash of injuries both minor and major spelled the end of the second “golden age” of the Cavaliers. After the multitude of maladies this season produced, the careers of Brad Daugherty (back) and Larry Nance (knee) were effectively ended, and those of several other Cavs would never truly be the same.

1993 was the last All-Star game that featured these three Cavs…

Former Cavs Coach, Mike Fratello recapped it best in this quote from an interview he did with The Plain Dealer back in 2012…

“When I came to Cleveland, the statement was made by Wayne Embry and Gordon Gund: ‘We think we can win the championship,’ ” Fratello said. “I came there understanding why I was coming there. In training camp, the first day, Terrell Brandon has mononucleosis. He misses, like, months. Ten days into training camp, Larry Nance has his first knee surgery. We don’t get him back until sometime during the season. Fifty games into the season, Brad blows both disks out of his back and he’s done for his career. As we prepare for the playoffs, Nance had come back, but they operate again and that’s the end of his career. [John] ‘Hot Rod’ Williams breaks his thumb on the first day of practice going into the playoffs, and we sign Tim Kempton, who came back from Europe. Then, to finish it off, the following year in training camp, during the exhibition season, Gerald Wilkins tears his Achilles tendon and Mark Price breaks his wrist. That’s the end of the five of them. Every one of them — bye. That was the end of it.”

(Robert Attenweiler) Big Z’s Feet: After seeing the bitter cocktail of age, injuries and Michael Jordan put an end to what, to that point, had been the high water mark of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the franchise entered a dormant, somewhat snakebitten period, one in which no flash of promise would go unpunished. The brightest flash came in the 1997-98 season when then head coach Mike Fratello guided a team that gave big minutes to four rookies, starting three of them — Brevin Knight, Cedric Henderson and a 7-3 Lithuanian center named Zydrunas Ilgauskas — alongside a pre-Stay Puft Shawn Kemp and Wesley Person to the playoffs. Of the Cavs four rookies that year, Ilgauskas was far and away the most exciting, averaging 14 points and nearly 9 boards a game. The fact that he played all 82 games in 97-98 seemed to alleviate concern about the broken bone in his right foot that had already cost him the entire 1996-97 season. Prior to the strike shortened 1998-99 season, the Cavs locked up their future star, signing Ilgauskas to a six-year $70.9 million contract extension. Ilgauskas would only play five games over the first two years of that contract, eventually opting for surgery, this time on his left foot.

It would take four seasons for Ilgauskas to regain his starting spot, but that year also saw Big Z make his first of two All Star Game appearances. Ilgauskas went on to become the club’s all time leader in games played, developed a strong friendship with LeBron James and, for all the adversity he faced both personally and professionally, became a fan favorite.

It’s difficult to say exactly how much better the Cavs would have been from 1999-2003 had Ilgauskas stayed healthy. A healthy Z, likely, would have done very little to temper Kemp’s ever-expanding waistline and no one from the group of Knight, Henderson and Derek Anderson ever took that next step after their rookie year. Still, it’s highlights like the very first in the video below — of Ilgauskas leading a fast break, before taking the ball behind his back as he goes up for the slam — that suggest that the world never got to see the best basketball Ilgauskas was capable of playing.

How much did the fate of Z’s feet weigh on the mind of Cavs fans back in the early-2000s? In the summer of 2000, I spent the month of June visiting my friend Scott in Seattle. On draft day, I made my way to a great local bar called the Green Lantern (which has since burned down). During that summer, Seattle was all in on a Mariners team that would end up winning 91 games that year —something a historically awful NBA Draft couldn’t hope to compete with. So, I sat at the bar and followed the draft on the ticker at the bottom of the screen. With the eighth overall pick, the Cleveland Cavaliers selected Jamal Crawford from the University of Michigan. I was ecstatic, not because I thought Crawford would be a star (or that he’d still be playing 15 years later) but that in passing over Texas center Chris Mihm and taking Crawford, it showed that the team was secure that Ilgauskas’s feet were, at last, going to be fine.

When, just minutes later, the Cavs swapped Crawford to the Bulls for Mihm, whom they had selected, I was devastated. Luckily, I was right where I needed to be to begin dealing with my devastation.

[Raises hand.]

“Excuse me, bartender.”

(Nathan Smith) LeBron James’ “Elbow”: This mysterious ailment hampered the King during the 2010 playoffs, so much so that he shot a free throw left handed at the end of the Chicago series. His elbow would mysteriously “go numb” at times. LeBron told SLAM’s Lang Whitaker how bad it was.

It was something we couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. There was times where I couldn’t fully extend my elbow, and that’s my shooting arm. And I do a lot with my right hand [laughs] … Close to the last week of the season it started hurting a little bit, and then it just got worse throughout the playoffs.”

LeBron received a ton of criticism for his play in the Boston series, especially from Dan Gilbert. People went so far as to accuse James of “throwing” the last two games. Yahoo’s Kelly Dwyer described it best.

It was pretty bad. LeBron was far from the efficient model we’d seen several hundred times over as the Celtics moved along. And as you’ll recall, just about every time Boston did something splashy or James did something un-James-like, he made a point to show everyone watching … “look, my elbow!”

We’ll never know what happened in that series, and we’ve all moved on. I don’t know about his elbow (we all cringed at LeBron’s jumpers as this summer’s playoffs advanced), but I do know that LeBron’s “heart” is healthier than it was in 2010. It might even be healthier than it was at the beginning of last season.

(David Wood) Anderson Varejao has been perpetually injured as a Cavalier. Over the course of his career he has played an average of 50 games per season. The past four seasons he has averaged just 35 games a year. Andy is known as the Wild Thing on the basketball court, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cavalier doctors called him the Wild Thing in their offices too. Andy has never had reoccurring injuries.

Andy has yet to injure himself with a rake. There’s always next year though.

Here are some of the injuries that have sidelined him throughout his time in the league:

Rookie Season, 2004-2005:  left knee patella tendinitis (six games), and left high ankle sprain (11 games)

2005-2006: dislocated right shoulder (32 games)

2010-2011: torn tendon in right ankle (51 games)

2011-2012: broken right wrist (57 games)

2012-2013: blood clots in lungs (52 games)

2013-2014: back soreness (17 games)

2014-2015: torn Achilles (56 games and the playoffs)

It’s hard to really say how much Andy’s injuries have actually hampered the Cavaliers. When the Cavs went to the 2007 Finals, Andy played 20 games averaging six points and boards a game. He was a solid backup that year leading the league in fouls drawn. Surprisingly, Varejao has played in every Cavs playoff game up until this year.

This season, with Kevin Love going down, Andy might have made a huge difference in the playoffs. It’s definitely debatable, but the Wild Thing might have provided just enough of a boost to push the Cavs over the Warriors. He could have subbed in for exhausted bigs a few minutes a night to keep them effective at the end of games and could have run the second team offense with his passing.

As far as the playoff free years go, Andy seemed to miss time when the team needed him most. In 2013, Andy was leading the league in rebounding with 14.4 per game when he went down after 25 games. He was fourth in assists among centers with 3.4 per game. His mid-ranger became a security blanked for Irving, and Andy’s passing generated offense for the Cavaliers when Kyrie Irving sat that year.

In the 2014 season, the Cavs went 17-13 during the final 30 games. They just missed the playoffs. Andy was out for about a month before the team really started to play slightly above average. If he hadn’t missed that month, the Cavs might have started their little run of acceptable play a bit sooner.

According to Rotoworld reports, Andy will be ready to participate in training camp.

(David Wood) Kevin Love spent his first season on the Cavs dealing tiny nagging back injuries. Yet, he still played 75 games during the regular season. His back didn’t really seem to be a major issue to casual viewers, but among many bloggers and fans, there were thoughts that it was making him passive. He just didn’t seem like he wanted anyone hitting him. The fact that he hung out around the 3-line for many possessions instead of posting up or cutting supported that idea.

An artist’s interpretation of what happened to Kevin Love at the hands of Kelly Olynyk.

In the playoffs, Kevin Love was leveled by Kelly Olynyk in the first round. By now any self-respecting Cavs fan reading this has seen the play at least twenty six times (here’s a link of it with the most basic commentary for the still uninformed). Still, I’ll recap it. While fighting for a rebound, Olynyk channeled his inner Ronda Rousey and ripped Kevin’s arm from its socket. Something messed up in Kelly’s head, and he saw a fight timer in the corner of his eye with just ten seconds left on it. That’s when he luckily felt Love’s arm come across his chest and ended the match. Love had a successful surgery and is now rehabbing his shoulder. He should be ready for the regular season.

Love’s shoulder injury is one of the worst injuries in Cavalier history. In the Finals, the Cavs needed any type of offense that wasn’t coming from LeBron. The team couldn’t hit 3-pointers, and no one knew how to get their own points. Love would have been a savior. He could have canned a couple of the open shots or simply opened up the paint, so LeBron could at least beast mode with a second defender a little bit further away.

(By Nate Smith) Kyrie Irving has a voodoo doll somewhere. I’m convinced. In my nightmares, I envision a witch doctor pin pricking various body parts. It has to be the only explanation. Kyrie’s college career was cut short by a foot injury, limiting him to 18 games, and leaving everyone to wonder if those ridiculous 11 games were a fluke. They weren’t. Irving proved quickly that he was everything we saw at Duke and more, but he also proved that his voodoo doll has a magnet in it.

The above graphic illustrates the injuries, but the ultimate insult came in June, ater a season in which he played a career high 75 games. In Game 1 of the Finals, Irving seemed recovered from the tendinitis that had plagued him throughout the 2015 playoffs. K.I. played brilliantly, scoring 22 points and adding seven boards and six dimes. Even better, Kyrie played the best defense of his career snagging four steals and adding two brilliant blocks on Steph Curry. One of those blocks in the late fourth quarter was crucial in getting the Cavs to overtime. But when Kyrie crumpled at the 2:02 mark of overtime, I screamed at David Blatt for playing him 41 minutes. I was livid for 24 hours.

Then I watched the replay and realized the 41 minutes had nothing to do with it. Klay Thompson just kneed Kyrie in the side of Irving’s left knee, breaking his kneecap and putting Uncle Drew on course for a three to five month recovery. It was another complete fluke, though I am still pissed there was no foul called on Klay. (See the #CavsRank villains, dishonorable mentions for my screed against the 2015 Playoff officials).

So here we are again cursing fate. We all know the Finals would have been completely different with a healthy Kyrie Irving. We all know the fracture could have been prevented if the Cavs had drawn up a better play than a LeChuck at the end of regulation in Game 1. And we all know that the Warriors had the luckiest playoff run since the ’99 Spurs – playing opponents with injured starting point guards in every single round of the playoffs. (Cavs fans seem to be the only ones willing to acknowledge this). BUT I’M NOT BITTER! ARGH. I’m tempted to go get a Draymond voodoo doll, but do you tempt fate with guys from Saginaw? …Nope!