Tag: jerry west

Maybe Cavs Need Fit More Than Talent.

By the end of this month, it is very likely the roster of the Cleveland Cavaliers will look quite different. The Cavs have the third pick in the draft, and rumors persist of a trade coming involving leading scorer Collin Sexton.

While it may be absurd to many people for a team with one of the worst records in the league over the last three years to move their best player, you have to remember that basketball is not a sport where the best talent wins all the time, there has to be a good fit.

You can’t take players’ statistics and add them together when talking about possibilities. For example, a team made up of Stephen Curry, Bradley Beal, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Jayson Tatum, the leading scorers at their respective positions, would not average 146 points per game, which is the accumulation of their scoring averages in 2020-21.

To go really old school, the 1967-68 Los Angeles Lakers won 52 games and went to the NBA Finals behind two of the great players of the era, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. They also had Archie Clark, who averaged 19.9 points that year. Clark was a prolific scorer, with a career scoring mark of 16 points per contest, with a high season of 25 PPG.

That off-season, the Lakers, feeling they needed something to push them over the top, combat Boston and Bill Russell, and win their first title in LA, traded Clark, center Darrell Imhoff and Jerry Chambers to Philadelphia for Wilt Chamberlain, who we still believe is the greatest center in NBA history.

Surely, the combination of three all time greats would lead to a championship.

The addition of Wilt the Stilt got the Lakers back to The Finals, where they again lost to Boston in 1968-69. Chamberlain missed all but 12 regular seasons the following season, but was back for the playoffs, where again LA lost in seven games to the New York Knicks.

After a loss in the conference finals to Milwaukee in ’70-’71 (Baylor was injured and retired early the following season), the Lakers inserted Jim McMillan in the starting lineup for Baylor and the team became unbeatable, going on a 33 games winning streak (still the all-time record), and won a then league record 69 games and won the title.

McMillan was a good player, not a great one (18.8 points, 6.5 rebounds in the championship season), but was a perfect fit for that team.

The Cavaliers are a losing team, winning 19, 19, and 22 games the last three seasons, and although Sexton was the leading scorer the past two years, he wasn’t the Cavs’ leader in win shares in any of the years he has been on the team. The first two years it was Larry Nance, and last season it was Jarrett Allen.

Based on this, we can see why the Cleveland front office is hesitant to give Sexton a contract extension, and may feel moving him now to bring in some pieces who might fit better with guys like Darius Garland, Allen, and whoever the wine and gold take with the third overall pick.

Although it is difficult to believe, it isn’t always about the talent in basketball, it’s about how that talent fits and the combination of players can play off of each other.

Look at the transformation Chris Paul made with Phoenix. His presence changed the dynamic of the roster.

That happens a lot in the NBA, and could be the answer in Cleveland. We understand that thinking.

Will James Ever Satisfy His Critics?

The Cleveland Cavaliers are going back to the NBA Finals for the fourth straight season.

Allow that to sink in for a moment.  Four straight chances to play for the NBA title.

And to think LeBron James is responsible for making this happen.  In fact, this is the fifth Finals appearance for the franchise, all with James as the centerpiece, the leader, and the best player on the roster.

James is making his ninth appearance in championship round, and the only players in history to have made more are Bill Russell, Sam Jones, and Kareen Abdul-Jabbar.  That’s it.

By contrast, Michael Jordan went to only six Finals.  Jerry West?  Nine times, same as James.  Magic Johnson?  Only nine times.

Eight of those appearance by James have come in the last eight seasons, four with the Miami Heat, and of course, the last four with the wine and gold.

When Jordan was getting to the Finals on a yearly basis, outside of the two years he left the sport to play baseball, we recall the media adoring His Airness, appreciating what he was accomplishing.

It seems James gets nothing but criticism about his feat.  Yesterday, we read how this season, the Cavaliers avoided the four next best players in the Eastern Conference:  Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Kyrie Irving, in order to win the conference title.

We also read about the terrible teams James defeated to advance to the title round.

James doesn’t have any control over either of these things.  Both the Bucks and Sixers lost to the Celtics in the playoffs, the same Celtics that pushed the Cavs to seven games in the conference finals.

His team got a chance to play Boston, and they won.  Would it be better for his legacy to lose this season or any of the other seven seasons?  If he did, then the media critics would pound him for that.

Last season, Cleveland defeated the top seeded Celtics to get to the Finals.  The year before, the Cavaliers were the top seed, and defeated the second seeded Raptors in six games.

In James’ first return year with the Cavs, the swept the first seed Atlanta Hawks.

And this year, Cleveland knocked off not only the top seeded Raptors, but also the second seeded Celtics.

In LeBron’s four years in Miami, his team was the top seed once, and beat the top seed twice to reach the NBA Championship round.

It is true that James’ record in the Finals is 3-5, but the only time you could claim his team was upset in the Finals was the loss to Dallas in the 2010-11 season.  The other four losses came to the sports’ most consistently excellent franchise of the last 25 years, the San Antonio Spurs, and to Golden State.

The criticism gets really insane when the first loss to the Warriors, in which Cleveland was missing all-stars Kyrie Irving (injured in Game 1) and Kevin Love (missed the entire series), and yet the series still went six games.

And after the Cavs’ triumph in 2016, the Warriors fortified their roster by signing the league’s second best player in Kevin Durant.

When Jordan played, his teams were the equivalent to the Warriors, the team regarded as the league’s best.  Meanwhile, in the last three seasons, the Cavaliers were considered the underdogs going into The Finals.

Perhaps James will be appreciated more when he retires from the sport, at least nationally.  Maybe at that point, when he could be the sport’s all time leading scorer, and rank in the top five in assists, and the top 40 rebounders, we will realize his greatness as a player.

He’s not just a numbers compiler either.  His nine conference titles should be proof of that.

JK