The Point Four-ward: Elder Statesmen?

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) Assuming the Cavs eventually re-sign LeBron James and J.R. Smith, Cavs GM David Griffin has done a pretty nice job strengthening the roster for next season. With no draft picks, his team already heavily into the luxury tax, and with a championship quieting any calls for a trade involving one of the Cavs’ bigger stars, Griffin watched, waited (in fact, he’s still waiting), and turned zero cap space and no picks into an intriguing rookie point guard in Kay Felder and two playable veterans, Mike Dunleavy Jr. (who should actually be more than just playable) and Chris “Birdman” Anderson.

In this off-season, Cavs got better… but they also got older and Father Time, LeBron James will be the first to remind everyone, remains the only unbeaten in pro sports.

So, how old is too old for a team to contend for a championship?

When looking at a team’s age, it’s important to not just average out the ages of all the players on the roster because not every player is equally critical to his team’s success. Some young players play fewer minutes than vets and, conversely, there are older guys who hardly even get off the pine. I came upon a stat called weighted age (WAGE) that tries to account for this. WAGE, as its name suggests, gives greater weight in calculating a team’s overall age to a player who plays more minutes.

Based on this statistic, the oldest team to ever win an NBA championship were the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls with a WAGE of 32.096. The 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs were the 10th oldest trophy winners with a WAGE of 29.617. By comparison, the 1976-77 Portland Trailblazers (they of Jack Ramsay and Bill Walton) had a WAGE of 24.199, while the 2014-15 Golden State Warriors were the eighth youngest winners at 26.393.

2.) The average WAGE for a championship winner is 28.234. Last season, the Cavs, for all the talk about James getting up there, were actually below that average at 28.08. This season, though, they’ll be using two 36-year old backup forwards in Jefferson and Dunleavy Jr., and 33-year old Mo Williams seems the most likely to take over the bulk of the minutes at backup point guard from the departed (and younger) Matthew Dellavedova.

Outside of an infusion of youth in Felder and his Summer League co-star Jordan McRae, both of whose playing time is anything but given at this point, the Cavs will tip off next season with last year’s roster mainly intact. Everyone will be another year older and wiser, but the bench options are all older as well.

Still, it’s probably not time to panic yet.

The top players in total minutes for the 1997-98 Bulls were a 34-year old Michael Jordan, followed by Dennis Rodman (36) and Ron Harper (34). The Cavs will rely on James (31), Kyrie Irving (24), Kevin Love (28 in September) and Tristan Thompson (25). So, while the Cavs are veteran-laden to be sure, they still have enough youth on the roster to balance that out.

At some point in the future, though, the team will need an infusion of quality youth. Maybe that’s Cedi Osman. Maybe that’s just Griffin’s next big challenge.

3.) With the explosion of sports coverage that began, in part, with the rise of ESPN in the 1980s and then accelerated exponentially in the decades that followed, sports fans are often presented with what amounts to an illusion of access. Because we, as readers, have access to so much more content, the reasoning goes, then we must know more about the athletes we follow than ever before.

Now, that’s partially true. Modern sports fans get to dip their ladles into a far deeper cauldron of minutiae than did fans in any previous era. But does having more information always relate to knowing something or someone any better? Plenty of old-school journalists have argued that prior to the 1980s, beat writers and the athletes they covered were more like equals. They traveled together on the same commercial flights, and it was possible for writers and the players they covered to have real relationships. This allowed the journalists to write about the players with a greater level of insight and sympathy, creating a depth of coverage — even if, compared to today, there was a relative dearth of content — over which many still mourn.

As the media’s coverage of professional sports grew, athletes no longer just saw the beat reporters they knew and had relationships with. They began to see a sea of people who, in their eyes, were mainly interested in tabloid style, build-them-up-to-knock-them-down coverage. The media members, meanwhile, began seeing players acting on the advice of their agents — thinking more and more about their personal brands and business interests. Players now traveled on private jets and no longer had the one-0n-one down time — let alone the inclination to let their guards down — around the people who were covering them.

We all know what this led to: a litany of canned responses given by athletes and reported by media members that make professional athletes seem essentially unknowable to fans.

4.) That’s what makes essays like Channing Frye‘s recent contribution to The Player’s Tribune so refreshing. Not only is “Let’s Enjoy This Wonderful French Toast” probably my favorite title of any piece of writing ever, getting to read Frye’s honest account of what winning a championship meant to him is a longer peek behind the curtain then we normally get.

When the final buzzer put an end to Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, there was probably not a single fan who was thinking “Who the hell would’ve thought Channing Frye would be an NBA champion?” The only person thinking that specifically about how an NBA championship impacted Channing Frye was Channing Frye… and that’s part of the point. Despite all of the content we have about the sports and athletes we follow, thinking about what winning the championship meant for Frye — what it meant for, say, assistant coach Phil Handy or one-and-done Cav Sasha Kaun — is rarely our first instinct. We focus, as most do, on the stars. We focus on legacy. We focus on curses.

Frye’s story reminds us that every one has one… and his message — to be sure an appreciate the little moments that make one’s life special — is a great reminder to us all. Even if we don’t all get to enjoy the same free burritos that the Cavs provide for their players.