This might well be the end, and it truly would suck. But, it was all worth it!

[jvpertz]

If the Cavs didn't bomb on their drafts so bad, the Warriors super team next exists.

Durant probably never even goes there.

We're looking an entire domino effect. If just drafted Leonard or Klay, and still did everything else bad. We'd be in an entirely different situation right now.

Bombing on draft day over and over, when you have high picks, comes back to haunt you.

Like I said, we only have ourselves to blame for this. Say what you want about the Warriors, and I hate them. But they show you what position you can be in if you do shit right via draft.

We did shit so bad, and it cost us. Everything. LeBron, multiple titles, a dynasty, everything.

Monday morning quarterbacking.

Nobody thought Klay Thompson or Draymond Green or Kawai Leonard or Giannis would be future superstars.

Nobody thought victor oladipo would be a future star. Not even the magic who had him for three years...

But all of those guys were in drafts where the Cavs drafted players over them. A lot of other teams wasted picks drafting guys instead of those guys...

That’s the nba draft. Occasionally there are no brainer superstars like KD or Lebron or kyrie.

And sometimes teams do a great job scouting like the warriors and Celtics with the curry and Tatum picks respectively.

But Monday morning quarterbacking the nba draft is a fools errand.

 

[Randolphkeys]

Articles that devalue making it to the NBA Finals hold no value to me. Cavs should have had 2015 but injuries killed them. Didn't really have the horses in 2017, then Kyrie decided that self promotion and a TERRIBLE summer movie were more important than contending in 2018. No idea what the future holds, but Top Gun was a lie: Second place trophy is nothing to hang in the ladies room. Sexist bastards... That movie was based on gay porn, BTW. So are you going to let gay porn which for some odd reason also contains Meg Ryan and Kelly McGillis tell you there's no value in second place? I thought not.

 

[buzzdog]

It’s a shame the demise of the team was completely avoidable if the idiot owner would have stopped meddling with the front office and just retained griffin. Who was the only person who could reach kyrie. He wouldn’t have done that stupid Boston deal either.

Complete revisionist history.

 

[stowfan]

Complete revisionist history.

I like Lebron a lot, I will be happy with what ever he decides to do. The one championship was well worth it. Basketball is the hardest sport to win a championship, you only need to find three of four good players. Bottom line, it's been great while it lasted.

 

[tonyn]

One championship, tons of confreconf championships, lots of division titles, not to shabby.

Plus I like to think that making it to the finals and getting the chance to soak in that experience from the deep playoff push will make our young guys hungrier and drive them to evolve thier game.
Hopefully LEBRON stays and we have a chance to have a full training camp and actually practice next year

 

[cavsfever]

Monday morning quarterbacking.

Nobody thought Klay Thompson or Draymond Green or Kawai Leonard or Giannis would be future superstars.

Nobody thought victor oladipo would be a future star. Not even the magic who had him for three years...

But all of those guys were in drafts where the Cavs drafted players over them. A lot of other teams wasted picks drafting guys instead of those guys...

That’s the nba draft. Occasionally there are no brainer superstars like KD or Lebron or kyrie.

And sometimes teams do a great job scouting like the warriors and Celtics with the curry and Tatum picks respectively.

But Monday morning quarterbacking the nba draft is a fools errand.

Well, you could say Monday morning quarterbacking anything is a fools errand since the game is already over. And certainly there is nothing to be done about our past draft picks now.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to want your team to actually be good at spotting talent and scouting. We ask the players to be good at what they are paid millions do on the court and we get on them when they aren't. Why can't we ask the organization and front office to be good at what they are paid millions to do? Even when the right answer is not obvious. I mean, presumably the reason you pay general managers millions is precisely for the decisions that are NOT "no brainers". That's when you need a professional.

And as for "no one thought Victor Oladipo would be a future star" -- dude was picked at #2 in the 2013 draft! So somebody thought he would be a future star. Nobody gets picked #2 in the NBA draft unless someone thinks they could be a star.

In fact, both of the players picked immediately after our disastrous Anthony Bennett pick in 2013, Victor Oladipo at #2 and Otto Porter at #3, have turned out to be very good players who would have made a huge difference to have on our team right now. So what that tells me is that the consensus picks the Cavs ignored in 2013 to pick the worst #1 pick of all time were actually pretty solid picks.

 

[CavsFanJapan]

One championship, tons of confreconf championships, lots of division titles, not to shabby.

Plus I like to think that making it to the finals and getting the chance to soak in that experience from the deep playoff push will make our young guys hungrier and drive them to evolve thier game.
Hopefully LEBRON stays and we have a chance to have a full training camp and actually practice next year

It is funny how we look at "failure" due to championships but no one in the East could stop us even in a bad year (this year) and one of the three all-stars out in another (2015). However, GSW barely got past the choke artists Thunder (down 3-1) and if Houston doesn't have an injury to Paul and miss 27 straight 3's (not like it was GSW defense) there is a totally different story.

I can rest with one ship in eleven years with LBJ because there was always a challenge in those early years such as Detroit, then Boston, the Spurs, and now GSW. I would normally end this with "It was good" but he ain't leaving so I'll say "Waiting for next year!"

 

[jvpertz]

Well, you could say Monday morning quarterbacking anything is a fools errand since the game is already over. And certainly there is nothing to be done about our past draft picks now.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to want your team to actually be good at spotting talent and scouting. We ask the players to be good at what they are paid millions do on the court and we get on them when they aren't. Why can't we ask the organization and front office to be good at what they are paid millions to do? Even when the right answer is not obvious. I mean, presumably the reason you pay general managers millions is precisely for the decisions that are NOT "no brainers". That's when you need a professional.

And as for "no one thought Victor Oladipo would be a future star" -- dude was picked at #2 in the 2013 draft! So somebody thought he would be a future star. Nobody gets picked #2 in the NBA draft unless someone thinks they could be a star.

In fact, both of the players picked immediately after our disastrous Anthony Bennett pick in 2013, Victor Oladipo at #2 and Otto Porter at #3, have turned out to be very good players who would have made a huge difference to have on our team right now. So what that tells me is that the consensus picks the Cavs ignored in 2013 to pick the worst #1 pick of all time were actually pretty solid picks.

Anthony Bennett pick was terrible. Chris grant wasn’t a great gym.

But that’s life. And at least Chris grant got the single most important draft question correct-kyrie Irving or derick Williams. Thank god

 

[mhi]

The past few years Vegas had the Cavs as always the clear favorite as to where Lebron would resign each year. Now today Vegas has the Lakers and 76ers the favorites as to where Lebron will sign. Cleveland is the 7th team at +7000. So that means if you were to wager or bet $100 that Lebron would resign with Cleveland and he did, you would win $7,000 on a $100.00. Somebody knows something, and it certainly doesn't look good at all for the Cavs. Sorry to say

Interesting. Care to share whose taking those bets?

 

[PIP]

I think if we had the 2018 version of LeBron in the 2015 NBA finals — they probably would have won it without Kyrie and Kevin..

For as much as it sucks to get 1– it has to be tougher for LBJ to realize outside of Magic Johnson, he’s gotten there substantially more times than MJ, Larry, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq and he’s only got the 3.

Think of the 3 he’s won as well.

The title vs the Thunder was against a team full of MVP’s before they were MVP’s...

The title vs the Spurs needed the Leonard missed FT, Bosh rebound and ultimately the Ray Allen 3

The title vs the Warriors had the Draymond drama...

The man could literally be sitting there today (as great as he is) with 1 title out of 9 tries. He’s fortunate to have the 3 as is..

Ultimately tho the only one you can really look sideways at is the 2011 finals against Dallas. There’s simply no way they should have lost that. Then again that was a LeBron who was much different than today’s version and we base a lot of his whole career by what we see of him today and not the inferior versions (especially in contrast to his BBallIQ now)

 

[Dr. Claw]

Monday morning quarterbacking.

Nobody thought Klay Thompson or Draymond Green or Kawai Leonard or Giannis would be future superstars.

Nobody thought victor oladipo would be a future star. Not even the magic who had him for three years...

But all of those guys were in drafts where the Cavs drafted players over them. A lot of other teams wasted picks drafting guys instead of those guys...

That’s the nba draft. Occasionally there are no brainer superstars like KD or Lebron or kyrie.

And sometimes teams do a great job scouting like the warriors and Celtics with the curry and Tatum picks respectively.

But Monday morning quarterbacking the nba draft is a fools errand.

I definitely thought Klay was a better gamble than TT, we just needed to trade down. But if not, just reach.

Next year they make the ultimate reach at #4. Giannis was certainly a better bet on paper than Anthony Bennett.

 

[cavsfever]

I think if we had the 2018 version of LeBron in the 2015 NBA finals — they probably would have won it without Kyrie and Kevin..

For as much as it sucks to get 1– it has to be tougher for LBJ to realize outside of Magic Johnson, he’s gotten there substantially more times than MJ, Larry, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq and he’s only got the 3.

Think of the 3 he’s won as well.

The title vs the Thunder was against a team full of MVP’s before they were MVP’s...

The title vs the Spurs needed the Leonard missed FT, Bosh rebound and ultimately the Ray Allen 3

The title vs the Warriors had the Draymond drama...

The man could literally be sitting there today (as great as he is) with 1 title out of 9 tries. He’s fortunate to have the 3 as is..

Ultimately tho the only one you can really look sideways at is the 2011 finals against Dallas. There’s simply no way they should have lost that. Then again that was a LeBron who was much different than today’s version and we base a lot of his whole career by what we see of him today and not the inferior versions (especially in contrast to his BBallIQ now)

Good summary. Lebron has had worse luck in terms of teams than almost any other top historic great. Even in Miami, Wade's health started to drop off significantly soon after Lebron got there, and the rest of that team was always very thin after the Big Three. They always had tough battles against the likes of Indiana in the East and then faced an absolutely all-time team in the Duncan - Parker - Ginobli - early Leonard Spurs. Lebron remains the only superstar to defeat Duncan in a Finals.

Then we were robbed of at least one and probably two more titles by the combination of the 2015 injuries and the cowardice of Kevin Durant.

It would such a farce if Durant collects more titles than Lebron and he has to deal with the argument that Durant is better for that reason. I want Lebron to stay, but I also want him to get the team he deserves and end all arguments.