The Paul George Safari: LeBron Strikes Back!

ZissisKilla said:

I'm satisfied with the title and if LeBron leaves, LeBron leaves. But there better not be much said disparagingly about the organization because it's his fault as much as anyone else's that it's been left in such a position.

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I dunno... it's been a hectic day.. we'll see what happens and what comes out..

RuanuLaw said:

Why is he there? WTF?

This seems like a bad joke. lol

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Is DG having a mental breakdown or something?

This feels like his Britney-abruptly-shaves-head moment...

What's fucked is if we didn't have this owner, we might have had more titles earlier and LeBron would have been a life long Cav. It just seems like DG has his hands way too deep in the way the franchise is run. I appreciate the amount of money he's put into it but damn... Dude has been making a ton of horrible moves. Well, we have one championship so I guess I'm okay... But I don't want to go back to mediocrity and worrying about the draft (also something we've done a bad job at outside of half of out #1 draft picks in the last 14 years).

Here is what we need:

(1) CP3 going to Rockets apparently increases the odds of Blake signing there (CP3 hated Doc for his nepotism, didn't get along with either Griffin or Jordan).

(2) Assuming the Nuggets don't sign Millsap, this increases the odds of Nuggets throwing more assets in for Love so they care pair him with Jokic.

(3) Pacers finally accept the trade, PG gets assurance from LeBron, they both sign long-term next season.

(4) Melo getting a buy out was something Phil and Melo finally agreed on. Then Phil got fired. Who knows what will happen.

(5) If new GM wants a trade only then TT for Melo (TT just knocked up Khloe, so he will be more distracted than ever), Nuggets want to unload Faried so we can trade them Shump, assuming he isn't already coming in the PG trade.

(6) ESPN draft day "expert" had Bulls buying out Rondo (10m) and Wade(20m) lol what an idiot. Bulls are cheap. Maybe deadline.

Wishful thinking I know:

Kyrie
JR/ Wade
PG/ Melo
Bron/DWill
Faried/Tavares

ZissisKilla said:

Yea. And I'm not mad about it, per se. We got a title. We have a very good team. But it just sucks that this league is trending toward strip mining organizations for superstar's short term gain, then moving on to the next willing party.

I'm satisfied with the title and if LeBron leaves, LeBron leaves. But there better not be much said disparagingly about the organization because it's his fault as much as anyone else's that it's been left in such a position.

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It is his fault, but at the same time no one is talking about the real reason.

Its not Tristan's contract. Tristan turned out to be a solid move. However, the addition of Durant limits his impact.
It's not JR's contract. There are still ways around that and honestly we need him vs. the Warriors.

LeBron forced the Kevin Love trade. Bringing in Love day one forced us into championship mode day one instead of letting it grow. Thats fine. I'm good with cause we got a championship, but we could have got a better deal. We got the best player, but we didn't get the most value. We didn't get Dieng, or Lavine, we gave up the Miami draft pick. Love could started the season in Minnesota playing like crap and we might have gotten him for a deal that season.



Also bad development (not LeBron's fault). Waiters simply didn't progress and forced us to have to deal for Shump and we lucked out with them throwing in JR.

So yes we got a title. However, don't get mad at LeBron for TT and JR's contract. Be mad he didn't let us handle the Kevin Love trade better. Because either we could have found a way to keep Wiggins (Wolves get desperate) or we get a better deal.

kookoo said:

What's fucked is if we didn't have this owner, we might have had more titles earlier and LeBron would have been a life long Cav. It just seems like DG has his hands way too deep in the way the franchise is run. I appreciate the amount of money he's put into it but damn... Dude has been making a ton of horrible moves. Well, we have one championship so I guess I'm okay... But I don't want to go back to mediocrity and worrying about the draft (also something we've done a bad job at outside of half of out #1 draft picks in the last 14 years).

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It's not DG's fault that he left before. A history of awful contracts significantly hampered the franchinse and what happened with Bron leaving and us getting Kyrie, landing other high picks, then Bron returning was probably our best shot at winning a title anyway.

It's hard to blame DG for anything other than the letter. It's not DG's fault Bron basically strongarmed the team into giving impossible to unload contracts to JR and Tristan.

If it wasn't for DG's willingness to open the checkbook for these dumb deals, Bron probably would have left again already.

ZissisKilla said:

If Jaylen Brown continues to improve, Tatum shows promise and Hayward joins Boston, we'd be lucky to be able to lose 4-1 again.

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If the Celtics got Hayward, they'd need to tear apart their team and Jaylen Brown would likely be one of the players traded for him. Maybe Tatum too. And even if they got him, the Cavs would still beat them. There is no chance the Cavs lose to the Celtics.

ZissisKilla said:

It's hard to blame DG for anything other than the letter. It's not DG's fault Bron basically strongarmed the team into giving impossible to unload contracts to JR and Tristan.

If it wasn't for DG's willingness to open the checkbook for these dumb deals, Bron probably would have left again already.

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You can blame DG for what's been going on for the past year in the front-office, meddling, etc. You can blame DG for Anthony Bennett. And you can blame DG for making an ass out of himself today...

You can blame DG for a lot of things.

LeeBuckeye said:

Here is what we need:

(1) CP3 going to Rockets apparently increases the odds of Blake signing there (CP3 hated Doc for his nepotism, didn't get along with either Griffin or Jordan).

(2) Assuming the Nuggets don't sign Millsap, this increases the odds of Nuggets throwing more assets in for Love so they care pair him with Jokic.

(3) Pacers finally accept the trade, PG gets assurance from LeBron, they both sign long-term next season.

(4) Melo getting a buy out was something Phil and Melo finally agreed on. Then Phil got fired. Who knows what will happen.

(5) If new GM wants a trade only then TT for Melo (TT just knocked up Khloe, so he will be more distracted than ever), Nuggets want to unload Faried so we can trade them Shump, assuming he isn't already coming in the PG trade.

(6) ESPN draft day "expert" had Bulls buying out Rondo (10m) and Wade(20m) lol what an idiot. Bulls are cheap. Maybe deadline.

Wishful thinking I know:

Kyrie
JR/ Wade
PG/ Melo
Bron/DWill
Faried/Tavares

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Melo will never be a bench player ... The rest will be hard to do as well

So we are not gonna blame the TT contract, I know he is great at what he does and in today's NBA it's not terrible, but he was non existent for most of the finals.

The Love trade you make 11 times out of 10, with or without Wiggins. Waiting it out wouldn't have worked imo.

I don't want to blame LeBron because he has done a lot for the Cavs, but he bears some of the responsibility of where the Cavs are roster wise, especially with some of the contracts involved with Rich Paul. Even before LeBron came back, we had to move assets(to Boston lol), so we could offer him the max. Imagine if he took a small paycut like he did for Miami in year 1, Cavs could have been better off for it asset wise long term.

gourimoko said:

You can blame DG for what's been going on for the past year in the front-office, meddling, etc. You can blame DG for Anthony Bennett. And you can blame DG for making an ass out of himself today...

You can blame DG for a lot of things.

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How people act like he's a saint is beyond me. He's fucking Jimmy Haslam without LeBron James.

We've seen Dan's great plan without LB. We fucking sucked. And the players we got, was pure luck, nothing else.

Jscc said:

Is DG having a mental breakdown or something?

This feels like his Britney-abruptly-shaves-head moment...

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He's gotta hear Joe Lacob's sh*t talk all year. So I give DG a pass if he is mentally stressed.

LennoxLewis said:

So we are not gonna blame the TT contract, I know he is great at what he does and in today's NBA it's not terrible, but he was non existent for most of the finals.

The Love trade you make 11 times out of 10, with or without Wiggins. Waiting it out wouldn't have worked imo.

I don't want to blame LeBron because he has done a lot for the Cavs, but he bears some of the responsibility of where the Cavs are roster wise, especially with some of the contracts involved with Rich Paul. Even before LeBron came back, we had to move assets(to Boston lol), so we could offer him the max. Imagine if he took a small paycut like he did for Miami in year 1, Cavs could have been better off for it asset wise long term.

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I still think Thompson is worth his contract in an NBA where guys like Noah and Mozgov are a making nearly as much money. Thompson is durable and young. Yes he was bad in this year's finals, but he was fantastic in the playoffs for three years straight, including twice in the finals against the Warriors. He was without question the Cavs third best player in the 2016 Finals that ended the Cleveland curse and won the Cavs its first and only championship. Sports is the ultimate "what have you done for me lately" profession, but let's not forget how big of a piece he's been for the Cavaliers during this three year run.

godfather said:

How people act like he's a saint is beyond me. He's fucking Jimmy Haslam without LeBron James.

We've seen Dan's great plan without LB. We fucking sucked. And the players we got, was pure luck, nothing else.

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I'm not a huge Dan fan, but lets not go that far..

LennoxLewis said:

The Love trade you make 11 times out of 10, with or without Wiggins. Waiting it out wouldn't have worked imo.

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I agree with you, and I was on the fence about the Love trade...

With that said, in hindsight (which.. isn't how you evaluate a trade), Love was totally unnecessary in our winning the 1 championship we have over the past 3 years. One might argue we win in 2014-15 with Wiggins rather than Kevin Love (who did not play).

So, to be fair... the Love trade didn't result in the Cavs winning the championship.. LeBron and Kyrie were the biggest components to that title run.

And if we had Wiggins now, we could've flipped him for Jimmy Butler, making the Cavs overall a better team.

In hindsight, the "win now / mortgage your future" approach did not work. And while Love getting injured, etc, shouldn't be weighed in hindsight against such a trade -- the overall outcome does speak to the idea that we should always be "All In" with LeBron.

If were the GM and I could go back in time and inform myself of the future, I wouldn't make the Kevin Love / Andrew Wiggins trade. It made sense at the time, with the information we had, surely; but again, it didn't work out as planned.