John Lucas Says Cavs Tanked To Get LeBron

2010-01-13 Off By John Krolik

Chris Thomasson on Fanhouse with the story. It’s long enough ago so that this shouldn’t become a huge deal, and it was never a state secret that the Cavs wanted to be at the bottom of the league going into LeLottery. For me, the interesting question here is what constitutes shady tanking and what constitutes “aggressive rebuilding.”

Trading mid-level vets for unproven young guys, like the Miller trade? Really just cutting losses and managing with an eye on the future.

Benching vets for younger players? Debatable, especially on a younger team, and one of the young guys Lucas was told to play more like Carlos Boozer.

For me, shady tanking is something like the Madsen three-point barrage game, and it may worth a look into the end of the Cavs’ 02-03 season to see if anything like that was going on. I have class in 10 minutes, so this is just discussion-starting more than anything; please chime in with thoughts.

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