Why the Cavs are where they are?

[kovanovich]

I posted this over in the 2010-11 roster thread, but it's extremely relevant to this discussion.

For those out there that want to blame Ferry, do yourself a favor and look at the roster in 2005 when he took over as GM:

Jeff McInnis, Dajuan Wagner, Pavs, Z, Lucious Harris, Ira Newble, AV, Eric Snow, Lebron James, Robert Traylor, Luke Jackson, Jiri Welsch, Scott Williams, Desagana Diop, and Drew Gooden.

How that team won 42 games is beyond belief. Much of what we're facing now is a result of a hole that we were put in by Paxson. He did about 3 good things during his time as Cavs GM, draft LBJ (which was a no brainer), draft Boozer, and trade for AV. Of course the AV trade only occurred because Paxson was an idiot and let Boozer out of his contract early. I guess you could add making every bad move possible to make sure we were the worst team in the league and in position to draft LBJ.

I know hindsight is 20/20, but the two drafts following LBJ's rookie year were an absolute disaster and gave us no young players to build around him. In the '04 Draft we took Luke Jackson (Al Jefferson went 5 picks later, Nelson 10), in '05 we had no first round pick because of some 3 way trade we made in 1997 , and in '07 we had no first round pick because of the Jiri Welsch trade (brilliant). That means in '05 we missed the chance to pick a guy like Danny Granger, and in '07 we missed a chance to pick some guys like Rudy Fernandez, Aaron Brooks, Arron Afflalo, Carl Landry, Glen Davis, and Marc Gasol. The only two players that we've drafted since LeBron has been in the league that are still on the team are Daniel Gibson and J.J. Hickson.

It's kind of weird, but we actually suffered a bit in the draft not only from poor management early on, but because of the fact that LeBron developed so quickly at a young age and improved the team around him so much, we didn't get the younger players around him soon enough to set-up the potential for long term success. Look at how Portland, OKC, and Orlando have been built. All teams with young cores, and all teams built with good drafting.

Portland got Aldridge and Roy in '06, Oden (has been injured but could still work out for them) and Rudy Fernandez in '07, and Jerryd Bayless and Nicolas Batum in '08.

OKC got Durant and Jeff Green in '07, Westbrook and Serge Ibaka in '08, and Harden in '09.

Orlando got Howard and Nelson in '04, Gortat in '05, Reddick in '06, and C Lee '08(traded for Carter but played well in rookie year).

Though they might not all be studs, these guys are at least important role players. The point is these teams added young pieces to their stars early on through the draft, something which we were never able to do, and it put us in a bad spot having to trade for older players past their prime. It's not easy to attract another big star to Cleveland through free agency even though we do have LeBron, because most of those players want to be the "man" and it would never happen in Cleveland with LeBron there (see Ray Allen and Michael Redd in '06).

Also, can we please stop with the Amare trade? People act like the offer was sitting on Ferry's desk waiting for him to accept. Ferry made the Suns an offer that he was comfortable with. The Suns decided they didn't want to trade Amare or made a counter offer that Ferry didn't like, and Ferry pulled the trigger on a back-up deal that he liked and allowed him to get a player that fit our system for essentially nothing, while holding onto one of the few good young players on the team. End of story. If the Amare deal was ever a realistic possibility, I have no doubt that Ferry would have made it happen.

I've already posted a partial summary of Ferry's body of work in this thread...In retrospect, it's hard to find too much to fault. Many of his moves didn't exactly work out as planned (Shaq most obviously), but they didn't give up much of anything in most cases.

Still, in the season's post mortem, Bill Simmons and others continue to blame Cavs' management. Maybe despite not having any assets of value and no pick higher than #19, in 5 years Ferry needed, somehow, to delivery that second young star to pair with a once in a lifetime player like LeBron, but I still don't see how this could have happened. Maybe buying a second rounder in 2007 and drafting Marc Gasol, then trade him for Pau Gasol. That's something that conceivably could have happened. But it's hardly reasonable to expect Ferry to have foreseen how that scenario would play out.

On Eyenga, the Cavs drafted him because of his potential, and because they knew Toronto liked him, but also because the Cavs hoped to build some assets for a possible Bosh trade.

Ferry tried to buy Denver's 2009 second round pick (at #34), which he would have used to draft Blair, but Houston stepped in and snatched the pick. Blair wasn't exactly what the Cavs need, but it would have been nice having another young big. Maybe Ferry could have made the Amare trade work if he had had Blair.