This is why the Cavaliers are terrible
2011-01-27I semi-accidentally triggered a “why are the Cavaliers THIS BAD?” discussion with my last post. In the comments, there was a lot of talk about how the Cavs’ epic futility has occurred because they built their team around LeBron, and the team is now hopelessly rudderless without him.
There is a grain of truth in that. The Cavaliers arranged their talent around LeBron, because that was the best/only option really available to them. However, that glosses over the fact that LeBron prevented the Cavaliers from accumulating talent. He did not do this by being evil or failing to commit long-term to Cleveland in order to convince Trevor Ariza to join the team. He did this by making the Cavaliers significantly better very fast, and very good for a number of years. This gave the Cavs fewer chances to add real talent through the draft, and the Cavaliers blew the chances they did have.
Think of team-building as a very basic mathematical concept. Trades are made when each team is getting something of theoretically equal value — therefore, a trade can only rearrange the overall talent level of a team to best suit its goals. Free-agency is nice, but big free-agency opportunities are few and far between — remember that Shaq is the only max free-agent signing to have won a championship with the team that signed him. (To date, that is. Yes, the Heat have a chance of joining the Lakers as the only team to craft a dynasty through free agency. And remember that they got Caron and Odom in the Shaq trade, traded Caron for Kwame, and flipped Kwame’s contract for Gasol — the initial capital all came from that Shaq coup.)
And as I’ve said before on this blog, teams that spend money in free agency are the ones that already have solid talent “cores” — teams are not good because they spend money. Teams spend money because they are good. The Cavs’ big post-LeBron acquisitions were Mo Williams, Shaq, and Antawn Jamison. They got those players for almost nothing, because the teams those three players played for did not feel they were worth paying the remaining value of their contracts. There are reasons for that.
On a fundamental level, the only real way to really and truly add talent is through the draft. This is a fairly basic concept. If you do not have good players or prospects, other teams will not trade you good players or prospects. If you do not have good players or prospects, it makes little sense to spend money on free agents. The only reliable way to acquire good players or prospects is through the draft.
Even a team like the Celtics, which was seemingly built on trades, relied on the draft. They drafted Paul Pierce, bought the draft rights to Rondo, traded a top-5 pick for Ray Allen, and traded Al Jefferson (considered an all-time steal at #14) for KG. With very, very, few exceptions, team-building always comes back to the draft. With that in mind, let’s take a look at who the Cavaliers have used their post-LeBron draft picks to acquire:
2003: Jason Kapono, pick #32 overall. Lost to Charlotte in the expansion draft.
2004: Luke Jackson, pick #10 overall. For more on that, read my full writeup.
2005: No picks. (Effectively) traded their 1st-round pick for Jiri Welsch (click here for more) and their 2nd-round pick for Anderson Varejao.
2006: Shannon Brown, pick #25 overall. Eventually traded away as a throw-in to the Ben Wallace trade. Daniel Gibson, pick #42 overall. With Andy out for the year, Boobie is the best player on the team. This was a great pick.
2007: THIS FIRST-ROUND PICK WAS ALSO TRADED FOR JIRI WELSCH.
2008: J.J. Hickson, #19 overall pick. That’s been a roller-coaster ride.
2009: Christian Eyenga, #30 overall pick. Starting to look like a rotation player, maybe. Team also got Danny Green, who they later cut.
2010: Pick traded for Antawn Jamison.
Note: if anyone has an easy way to keep track of where all the Cavs’ 2nd-round pick went, I’d appreciate it, because it’s hard to keep tabs on exactly what the Cavs spend their 2nd-rounders on. Also, I am aware that the Cavs still have the rights to Sasha Kaun.
I mean, yikes. Eyenga, Gibson, and Hickson are the only rotation players the Cavs have managed to draft post-LeBron, and Jamison is the only rotation player, current or former, that the Cavs managed to get for a traded pick. That’s a miserable showing for six years of drafting. Oh, and the Cavs took their big free-agency shot at Larry Hughes.
Again, part of this is because LeBron made the team too good to fast. The Thunder got to rebuild with four top-five picks in three years, starting with the Durant draft in 2007. If the Cavs had the #3 pick in 2005, they would’ve gotten Chris Paul or Deron Williams. In fact, lets’ do this exactly (no CP3 over Deron): The Thunder drafted Jeff Green #5 in 2007: if the Cavs had the #5 pick in the 2003 draft, LeBron and Wade would’ve been Cavaliers from day one. And Deron Williams would have joined them when they drafted him 3rd overall in 2005. (Shaun Livingston in 2004 would have been a tough break, but no cheating.) Think about that for a while. By not carrying his team to a respectable record for the first two years of his career, Durant prevented himself from having to make an uncomfortable exodus to greener pastures later on. He really has done everything right, hasn’t he?
If they’d sucked in 2004, they might have actually snagged Dwight Howard. Now that’s the kind of young core that would have kept LeBron here forever. Instead, their success forced them to have to look for a Kobe-like minor miracle in the late lottery or full-blown Ginobili miracle in the later picks, and those aren’t easy to come by.
Why do the Cavaliers suck? It’s not because they built around LeBron. It’s not because they didn’t build around LeBron. The Cavs acquired an asset who wouldn’t have fit around LeBron without having to give up significant talent this off-season. His name is Ramon Sessions. You have been basking in his glory. The Cavaliers suck because the draft is the best way to acquire significant assets, the Cavaliers acquired one significant asset through the draft in the last seven years (Boobie is maybe .5 of a significant asset — what teams would give up a #1 pick for him? Consider that the #15 draft pick is an average 1st-round pick), and that significant asset left last summer. That’s why this team is historically terrible. That’s the story here, folks. Nothing less, nothing more. Until next time.
Good to see you’re making lemonade out of lemons. I have been on basketball hiatus since the first loss to the heat. There’s been a marked difference in the team prior to and after that game. You could write about 15 psychology dissertations on the dynamics there.
The talent on our team is: Boobie, AV, Mo, and Jamison. Boobie-Good rotation player who can play at either one or two, but should not be a starter since his best game is just the spot up 3. AV-An energy guy who gets rebounds, is a great defender, and energizes a team. Worth a mid-late first probably. Mo-Quite a good offensive pg, especially when he is not in leading role (though this year we have seen that he can get high assist numbers as well) but has terrible defense. Basically an above average starting point guard. Jamison-Former very good player… Read more »
Krolik’s got talent x
What Aaron said.
@Dan – It doesn’t explain all the horrific losses that occurred with Mo and Andy still playing. It’s not like injuries decimated the team and cause them to suck. Yes, injuries decimated the team, but they were already sucking. What’s the reason?
(do you honestly think if shaq and Z had stayed on this year it would be any different?)
You can’t hit homeruns with late picks without the luck of the Spurs, but good teams in the league have to not strike out. A good team can prolong their run at the top by drafting solidly for many years consecutively giving them a cheap and effective depth of talent behind the big money stars. The Lakers did it right. The core of their bench from the championship and Finals exit years were mostly home grown from bad picks. Ronny Turiaf: 2nd round pick (37th overall) Sasha Vujacic: Late 1st (27th overall) Jordan Farmar: Late 1st (26th overall) Luke Walton:… Read more »
Summarized:
A) Danny Ferry was a terrible talent evaluator.
B) No one wants to live in Cleveland.
great post. you left out one thing, though. the cavs trading our secret weapon, donyell.
The Cavs are this bad because they don’t have Ilgauskus, Varejao, Mo Williams, or Shaq. This is who the team had become last year. These were the core players. None of the above are currently playing… and yes, I realize that Shaq and Ilgauskus are in the twilight of their careers. The people who are playing now are a bunch of rookies.
This question reminds me of the 08/09 season when people were discussing all star selections. Remember when it was hard to believe Lebron was the only all star on a team that was basically losing to no one?
Maybe he just is responsible for that many wins.
Because, per this post, the cavs drafted no good talent in 8 years and roughly rearranged their talen through trades. FA signings did not pan out, therefore a lottery team + Lebron = contending team – Lebron. I guess it makes sense.
They got more than 1 asset in seven years of drafting, which you mention above: Anderson Varejao. They may not have drafted him, but the did trade a 2nd rounder for him. Of course, 2.5 assets in 7 years is still terrible.
@Than – that sort of exercise is even more depressing. The short story is all GMs make mistakes, especially in the draft (the 2000 and 2001 drafts are an amazing collection of WTF? lottery picks in retrospect). @ozward – the in depth analysis you’re looking comes down to a simple answer. You can submit yourself to the torture of watching games on tape multiple times, analyzing sets, taking notes and coming up with the conclusion: They’re just not very good. There is no way to arrange the puzzle and make them good. It kills me to say it, I want… Read more »
It would be a more interesting analysis (hind-sight being 20/20) to talk about not who they drafted that turned out to be terrible, but who they could have drafted and become good. Did we miss out on a lot of Tony Parkers? I recall we certainly missed out on Dajuan Blair for Eyenga.
It’s not because they built around LeBron. It’s not because they didn’t build around LeBron. – wouldn’t it be reasonable to say the Cavs did not, but were also not able, to build around Lebron because they were too good too fast? If their W-L record prevented them from ‘building around’ anyone, then it was a futile enterprise from the 03 season on, no? – I still feel like this does not address the historical nature of these Cavs. Plenty of teams draft poorly over many years, and are consistently bad, but how are this season’s Cavs this bad? –… Read more »
man what jim paxson did as GM was brutal…that jiri welsh thing is so brutally bad i cant think of any GM that would ever do that except maybe David kahn or Chris Wallace who are considered the worst GMs in the league. I also think my whole point ive been saying on here a lot is how Lebron being such a great superstar why he couldnt convince great role players or other star players to come to Cleveland and win ONE title. You win just one title in Cleveland you are legends for the rest of your life. I… Read more »
Damn Krolik, we all just got eviscerated by a college student. Well done, once again!
What should have been the core around LeBron James were the drafts of 2001, 2002 and 2004. Jim Paxson walked away with DeSagana Diop, Dajuan Wagner and Luke Jackson. You add in the Boozer debacle, the shortsighted trades of Ricky Davis and Darius Miles for middling veterans like Tony Battie, Eric Williams and Jeff McInnis along with trading first round picks for Michael Doleac and Jiri Welsch the cupboard was bare when Danny Ferry was hired except for that cap room, Z, Gooden and Varejao
I completely agree with you on the importance of the draft as well as your analysis on what trades really are. That being said, I think that we all have to remember that trades are made to find players that are better fits, if not necessarily more talented players. The worst part about the Larry Hughes signing was that he was a terrible fit next to Lebron. In theory, before all the injuries happened, if the Cavs has traded Mo Williams for a shooting guard or small forward of equal talent earlier in this season, they would still probably be… Read more »