None of the other greats Lebron is compared to had the 2003-2010 Cavs. He was bound to move. Going back was a different thing entirely as well
I don't think that's entirely fair. There was solid talent on a few of those Cavs team, especially the 2009 and 2010 teams. It's not like he was leaving a perpetual 6th/7th/8th seed. Management did make mistakes (they should've fired Mike Brown well before they did, and maybe they should've pulled the trigger on the Hickson/Amar'e trade - even though concerns about Stat's knees compared to his cost were eventually proven true).
With that said, I'm curious to see what Cleveland is like now. Do they let Lebron and his buddies have the keys to the franchise again or will there be more authority and accountability throughout? Even though he's preaching patience now, he will be 30 in December. How long before he gets impatient again?
Come on, those 09 and 10 teams were not very good. They probably aren't a playoff team without Lebron, who single handidly added probably 30 wins to those teams (which is why they were fighting for the top seed instead of a playoff birth).
The starting 5 in the playoffs for the 08/09 team was James, Mo Williams, Delonte West, Anderson Varejao, and 33 year old Zydrunas Ilgauskas. The rotation was 33 year old Joe Smith, 31 year old and last legs Wally Szczerbiak, 34 year old Ben Wallace, and Daniel Gibson. Take James off that 66 win team and they are lucky to win 36 games.
The next year the team was slightly better with the playoff starting 5 of James, Williams, 33 year old Antawn Jamison, 34 year old Anthony Parker, and 37 year old Shaquille O'Neal. The rotation was West, Varejao, Jamario Moon, and JJ Hickson (Big Z played in just over half of their playoff games). But just as with 08/09, you take James off the team and they are lucky to make the playoffs and probably pretty solidly in the lottery.
James' teams in Cleveland were awful (20-30 win awful). Mo Williams one season and Ilgauskas one season (James' second year) are the only two all star seasons that James played with his entire stint in Cleveland. No teammate of James made an All NBA team or All NBA defensive team, while playing with him in Cleveland. It really is indefensible how poorly managed Cleveland was during his time there. It started with the Boozer fiasco after his first year and continued pretty much his entire tenure. They were just awful. This current group has already shown to be better by locking up Irving before he was a free agent, making the correct selection in Wiggins, trading the pieces with no salary back to sign James, holding off signing Wiggins to maximize cap space to sign veterans (like Miller), bringing in Marion, and capping it off by trading for Love. That 2 month period is already better than the entire 7 years James was in Cleveland the first time.
Topic: Is LeBron's merry-go-round unique? (Read 4691 times)