The Lebron Safari 2014

[Chris]

"Dan would take him back," Carroll says. "Dan is not going to go out of his way to recruit him. Who knows? Dan likes cool stories and happy endings. It could be a good thing for both of them, bring some closure. I think it would be great. Wouldn't that be pretty cool?"

I think closure is another argument for why this would be good for Cleveland. I can't think of a better way to help people get over The Decision, a better way to close the book for good, than for the whole thing to just fucking come full circle and James fulfill his original promise to Cleveland.

[Nw220]

I dont see it i think Gilbert hurt Lebron's Huge Ego when he called him out after the whole Decision and Lebron will never forget...I could be wrong though,anyways id rather win it without him if we could...

[Mdog1]

I dont see it i think Gilbert hurt Lebron's Huge Ego when he called him out after the whole Decision and Lebron will never forget...I could be wrong though,anyways id rather win it without him if we could...

Well yeah sure it'd be nice to be in a position to win it without him, but he certainly improves the chances if he's on the team, even if we have a chance to win it without him. As for his ego it definately took a hit, but it wasn't just from Gilbert, it was from the whole world for his 2011 season. It seems like he's matured a lot since he left, of course that could be a marketing ploy. Never know really.

[STAT]

LeBron hasn't been called for a foul in 2 weeks in which he's played 5 games and more than 186 minutes. Strange and impressive, but mostly it looks like insane star-treatment.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ba...0036--nba.html

[Chris]

If LBJ was still on the Cavs people would be defending him saying he's just that good.

[jay_em]

LeBron hasn't been called for a foul in 2 weeks in which he's played 5 games and more than 186 minutes. Strange and impressive, but mostly it looks like insane star-treatment.http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ba...0036--nba.html

Hard to really make an accurate call without watching those 186 minutes. The Heat haven't been playing any of the power houses over that span. So it may be a legit "streak", plus what incentive would the refs have not to call any fouls on James? I can see not fouling out or getting in foul trouble but no logical excuse for deliberately not caling any on him.

so i guess to sum it up he is that good

[JawJuttinAsasin]

He has always had a historically low foul rate. Which is why I would get greatly angered at Mike Brown when he would get yanked with 2 or 3 fouls.

[Sawduzt]

Simple, he's not contesting shots just playing straight up d. Should try harder

[Jake]

It's getting to the point where I don't really care about Cleveland's pride anymore.. I just want us to win one. If LeBron comes back, I won't root for him.. But i'll be happy that we finally won a Championship with him.

[Frank Reynolds]

Ideally, I would like to win one without him first, but that is definitely going to be a challenge. I'm not saying it's impossible at all, it's just going to be rather difficult. OKC has more talent that we can even dream of and they still haven't won shit. They have two of the most unique basketball players of the last 10 years in Westbrook and Durant.

Westbrook and Durant are two huge mismatch players, they are a BITCH to guard if you are the opposition.

Kevin Durant last year, was on par with the LeBron James we had in Cleveland, in terms of supreme talent. Then they have a mega star point guard that can score, finish, defend, rebound.....Russ can do whatever he wants, he's still maturing as a player. I'm not even going to touch on their other players..... They're pretty damn good too.

You guys are just not acknowledging that in the future, you are gonna have to beat OKC.... When Duncan, Kobe, Dirk..... all retire in a year or two, the West will be owned by OKC for years.

You would need approximately the same amount of talent as OKC to win, and any other margin would have to be closed by having fantastic execution..... The Cavaliers and executing.....hmmm yeah not really seeing it. Granted, we're still young, but we only have one mismatch player: Kyrie.

Kyrie is far from perfect, he has a ton of learning to do still before he's considered the top PG in the NBA. Again, attainable but it's going to take Kyrie breaking some really shitty habits, particularly on the defensive end.


I'm just looking down the line at these next years drafts, and nobody is really jumping out at me as a can't miss player. The only few that would give me hope are Wiggins, Parker, Randle, and Mohammad.

Even if we get Wiggins, (which we won't because our record will be too good) we'd be looking at another 3+ years before we are LEGITIMATE contenders like OKC is now.


We have Tristan Thompson rather than Serge Ibaka (who happens to be hitting over 55% on his midrange jumpshots)

They had James Harden, we have Dion Chucking Waiters.


Idk guys... I guess I could forgive the guy..... You guys seem like you can't..... It's perfectly cool that you want to win without him, I hope it happens like that too.......

I'm just not sold on Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters or Chris Grant. Chris Grant will pass up Shabazz Mohammad because we already have Dion Waiters, and in my opinion that's ignorant.

I hope we can win one without him, but realistically you're going to need to stop Durantula and Westbrook for the next 7-10 years. I think in time, Kyrie could get the best of Russell Westbrook, but we still have no answer for Durant......

LeBron is really the only player that can get the best of KD.

If LeBron wanted to come home and make things right, you'd be an ignorant Clevelander to not at least consider it.

As Kurt Cobain said, "I'd rather go out in flames than to fade away"


I'm still just curious how Kyrie would react if LBJ coming back became a possibility. If he wants James in Cleveland, he might alienate a lot of fans. I just can't help but feel Irving would love to have LBJ here, Kyrie could care less, he's not from Cleveland. The funny thing is, LeBron is......

no wait he's from Akron, no come on mother fuckers, he's from northeastern Ohio! that's the only thing that makes this a legit situation in the future.

[Triumph36]

Simple, he's not contesting shots just playing straight up d. Should try harder

or he's just playing much smarter defense.

[Frank Reynolds]

Here's another one for the doubters, took this from the Sports Illustrated piece about Gilbert. Didn't want to cloud up that thread with LBJ talk, but here you go.


"Dan didn't like the fact that LeBron was taking the easy route in a fancy, warm-weather city with more superficial people who are less grounded than the people in Cleveland," says Quicken Loans vice president David Carroll, who has known Gilbert since they were both four"

"Look, there was no friction between he and I," Gilbert says. "We always got along. There were never words. There was nothing bad, there really wasn't. Even he said in his comments it's not personal. I always sort of liked him. Is it personal or not? Only because I feel personally connected to Cleveland and Detroit. I know it wasn't personal. His decision wasn't about a personal feeling about Dan Gilbert. But it just became so personal because there are those of us who believe in Cleveland and Detroit. That's where it was personal."

James is validated. He finally has the championship long expected of him. He was magnificent in the playoffs, putting up numbers few had ever compiled, becoming a finisher instead of bejeweled assistant. He got what he wanted most in Miami, with Akron's 303 area code tattooed on his right forearm. Has he really left northeast Ohio for good? Deep down, does home mean the same to him as Gilbert? James recently told Oprah Winfrey that Gilbert's letter was "hurtful," but he hinted during the season about someday returning to play for the Cavaliers again. Would the man who runs open companies be open to the idea?

"Dan would take him back," Carroll says. "Dan is not going to go out of his way to recruit him. Who knows? Dan likes cool stories and happy endings. It could be a good thing for both of them, bring some closure. I think it would be great. Wouldn't that be pretty cool?"

Gilbert is coy on the topic, saying "nothing surprises me about the NBA."


So there you go. Now we have an idea of where Gilbert would stand on this topic, it's just going to be a matter of if the Cavaliers have a good enough roster in place.

Really I believe the key player in all of this is Richard Paul. Paul still lives in Cleveland, and he has went on record saying that a return to Cleveland is definitely a possibility, and that we should be open to the idea of it in the future.

I think a lot of you just think I am a big LeBron fan boy, and that is not true at all. Yes, LeBron left us in the most despicable of fashion, but I just think that was the apex of his arrogance. He hadn't won the title yet, he was always expected to win the title and he still hadn't won yet. Combine that with growing into the body of the best athlete on Earth since Jordan, with no father present and of course you have a prime recipe for a hot-head.

Cleveland didn't exactly make matters better. We hung this Zeus sized mural of the guy outside of our Arena as if he had already delivered us the championship. What did we expect to happen? The guy grew into even more of a monster and was even more bitter when Dirk stuck the dagger in him the next year.

There is no doubt that James did some classless shit when he was here, but we made mistakes too. I think everyone takes this a little bit too personally. The guy wanted to maximize his shot at winning his first championship.

Cleveland fucked itself by never making a good enough trade to bring in a bonafide' second option. Mo Williams was a very good player, but ideally your 3rd or 4th option on a championship team. We stole Mo for pennies on the dollar, we also stole Antawn Jamison and somehow parlayed our leftover parts from Joe Smith > Kyrie Irving 5 years later.

We made some really shitty moves on the free agent market and pigeon holed ourselves into an over bloated situation with no real flexibility to do anything. Cleveland's problem was we never wanted to give up value and expected all stars in return. We probably could have gotten Andre Igoudala, Gerald Wallace, Jason Kidd, Amare or someone else, but we were never willing to give value up to get something good back in return. It was always some bullshit scenario involving Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract + Boobie + a couple Sugardale hot dogs for an all star in return. If the other party wanted JJ Hickson, or Delonte West, forget about it, Danny Ferry wasn't having any of that, he'd hang up the phone. He became so accustomed to raping the other party in a trade that he didn't want any of that.


Then you go back to the Paxon era and our pissing away of precious draft picks. Luke Jackson and Jiri Welsch were basically the mortgaging of our future. Add in our shitty free agent splurge with Damon Jones, Larry Hughes, and Donyell Marshall and you have one shitty situation with a very murky future.


I think we all took LeBron leaving way too personally. I don't think it had anything to do with the fans, the owner, hell even the city of Cleveland itself. LeBron simply had seen too much error on our part and needed to go somewhere else so he didn't piss away the prime of his athletic career. Yes, I'm salty he took the easy way out, and his particular decision to go to Miami, but he wanted to maximize his odds of getting the championship.


His "decision" definitely gave off the impression that he wanted to shit on us on the way out, but I don't think that's what he really intended at all. He was high off his emotions, he was stoked that he was going to be joining his two all star friends and living on the beach. Nothing more, nothing less.


If Cleveland has the roster assembled by the time James is leaving Miami, he'll consider us as an option. It would do wonders for his legacy if he returned home and finally knew exactly what it takes to win a championship.


Rich Paul knows this, and he's the most important man in all of this.


So you have LeBron himself, LeBron's lifelong friend and agent Rich Paul, who lives in Cleveland...... and now Dan Gilbert's friend that he's known since he was 4 saying that Dan would take him back, and that Dan likes cool stories like that.


There is no feelings at all, it's strictly business. Dan is in the business of getting Cleveland our championship. LeBron is in the business of trying to win chips.

This time around, we didn't piss away our assets, we have flexibility, we have young promising players. We definitely already have a superstar in Irving.....

If LeBron could be the last piece in our championship puzzle, you best believe he's going to consider it long and hard. He'd cement his legacy as a legend, and he would be showered with praise for being so mature and being the crucial cog in Cleveland's long awaited championship.

A lot of people in Cleveland couldn't handle that, but a lot of people in Cleveland also took this way too personally. You were pissed that our anointed "chosen one" ditched us because you bought into all the bullshit, you bought into what the media was selling us. I did too, but now I have cooled off and am trying to look at everything more objectively.

A lot of people in Cleveland couldn't handle it if he returned. If the best player on Earth wanted to put all the bullshit aside and re-join your team to deliver a championship, yet you turned him down, well, you must not want a championship in our lives bad enough.

I want to be at that party. I want to see the mob-scene that would be a championship Cleveland. I want to see the life time Clevelanders of young and old open their checkbooks and buy the bar. I want to see just how long it's been since we have known such pure, insane elation.

[Triumph36]

if anyone doubts that gilbert would take him back, they are very naive. that isn't the issue - it's making the team appealing enough for lebron to return.

[I-77 NORTH]

Everyone is saying "hey yeah, he might just come back"...

..but to what extent? Is he going to sign a 2-year deal? Would it be the full max of 5? or maybe just 4?

To me, it'll probably be a 2-year deal - seeing that Kyrie's contract will be up in 2015 - and he'd like to not be left in uncertainty.

[SRStark20]

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm thinking LeBron is not going to re-up with Miami.

I'm not saying he'll come to Cleveland, but looking at Miami's current roster, and then looking two more years down the road... it wouldn't be that good.

Wade would be pushing 33 years old, and he is already looking like he is starting to decline a bit.
Bosh would be around 31 years old, although I feel that he'll age a bit better and be effective until his late-30s.
Allen and Mike Miller will both likely be out of the league.
Battier will be almost 37 years old. Udonis Haslem would be 34.

Chalmbers and Norris Cole are their only "younger" guys that would project to be effective. Of course, they could always sign players in free agency, but, I don't see Miami being the best destination for LeBron in a few more years.