NBA fans

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

btw I don't see how you can see the boys and girls club thing as anything more than a PR move...

[Dunwho]

Let him do what he wants.... i think there will be too many egos at the Heat now that he is there... may not work.. though that is a long shot.

As far as the Cleaveland coach is concerned, shame on him for reacting like that - he is the worst loser I have ever seen and no better than the fans who need to get on with it and stop relying on one player to be successful - shit happens

[BrotherLovesDub]

Bill Simmons had a great article on this yesterday. Please refer to that.

PR move or not, he donated the money to a good spot.

[cured]

Originally Posted by Eikman

i don't get it. is this an American thing? sports stars change teams. for whatever reasons. so what.

You're right; sports stars do change teams. But basketball is a different animal than football. Basketball teams invest highly in their star player by building teams around them. Teams have to be careful and tend to stay away from ego-driven sidekicks because it can cause a lot of tension in the greedy me-first world of NBA basketball. Having two of the top 5 players choose to sign with the same team at the same time is unheard of in the NBA, even worse adding in another quality player who was also a free agent. Many view this as selling out. I kind of like the fact there will be a real "villain" team in the NBA to take some of the thunder away from the Los Angeles Lakers.

Cleveland was a sports wasteland, a city used to losing. Lebron is a hometown kid who brought a ton of promise to the team and the city. They won a lot of games in the regular season, sold out their arena every night, and James often talked about how loyal he is as a person.

Here's where it gets tricky, though. For all the moves Cleveland made trying to get players to compete for the title, none of them ever panned out. They all wilted under the pressure of the playoff spotlight. Lebron was sick of watching superior teams squeeze the life out of his Cavs and move on to titles. He was sick of watching Kobe Bryant hoist trophies while he ran a one-man show in Cleveland. The Cavaliers have $49M in salaries tied up this year, not counting Lebron and Shaquille O'Neal (whom Lebron did not like much, anyway). If Lebron stayed, they would have been the same team that would have been run out in the playoffs by Boston or Orlando the next year, and the year after, etc.

Another wrinkle is the fact Lebron, Bosh, and Wade played for team USA starting back in 2006. With the Americans starting to lose tournaments in global competitions, Team USA realized they had to really recruit the best of the best to take back the crown. That led to recruiting younger players entering their prime, who then (wouldn't you know) got really close as friends after spending entire summers together. The wheels for this move were set in motion several years ago.

Lebron, though, has shown he is a pretty big wet-flapping douchebag by having this 1 hour show dedicated to his worship. He never did get to have the recruiting experience in high school because everyone knew he was just going to end up with whatever team won the NBA lottery after his senior year. I don't know if it was him or if this was more his management team but drawing this whole process out on television instead of behind the scenes only served to twist the knife into whatever teams he spurned.

The Knicks spent two years dumping players to try and get him. Chicago has been dumping salary (along with a couple of good players). New Jersey jettisoned players who were making money and endured a 12 win season for a shot at Lebron. What makes this worse is that this really seems pre-meditated from several years back. Dan Gilbert, Cleveland's owner, never had a shot.

So now Lebron is in Miami, a team with exactly 4 players on the roster. 3 of them are going to make about $20M per year, the 4th guy is going to make $900,000. Beyond that, they are essentially going to have to pay every other player they sign to minimum contracts.

It's going to be a very strange year in the NBA. It's great for Miami and those nights around the league when Miami is the visiting team but parity in the league was just shown the door. It's not a whole lot of fun when there are only 5 or 6 teams who are going to be any good.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Originally Posted by Dunwho

Let him do what he wants.... i think there will be too many egos at the Heat now that he is there... may not work.. though that is a long shot.

As far as the Cleaveland coach is concerned, shame on him for reacting like that - he is the worst loser I have ever seen and no better than the fans who need to get on with it and stop relying on one player to be successful - shit happens

I assume you're talking about the owner...yeah the way he reacted is classless, but let me just say that Gilbert did pretty much everything he could to help out Lebron and literally saw his franchise value drop hundreds of millions overnight. You'd be upset too. "Stop relying on one player to be successful"...welcome to the NBA. That is how it works.

[cured]

One last thing: if that bit between Delonte West and Gloria James (Lebron's mom) is, in fact, true...I wouldn't blame Lebron one bit for leaving

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

Wouldn't be so quick though cured; I can't think of a single championship team that was built this way. I wouldn't concede them the title over the Lakers just yet. The truth is that Wade cannot fulfill his full potential when he has to share balls with Lebron and vice versa. I still wonder what kind of center they are going to pick up. Obviously everyone's going to want to play there but if you can only offer a minimum contract you're not exactly going to get Shaquille O'Neal.

BLD - I thought the Simmons article was really good too. I pretty much agree with him on everything.

[cured]

I'm not conceding the title to the Lakers. It could be Boston, Orlando, Chicago. It's just LA is the current champion and they are bringing just about everyone back.

Guys I would not be surprised to see in a Miami uniform this year: Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady. All of them are desperate for a ring, on the far back end of their careers, and want to win. It would be absolutely toxic to have all of them on the same team but there will be guys out there who sign at the minimum for one year and hope Miami extends them (since they can go over the cap on with their own players).

Lebron talked yesterday about not having to play as many minutes with so much talent around but he's in for a rude awakening. They aren't going to go out and annihilate teams with a roster of also-rans. They are going to be logging a lot of 4th quarter minutes.

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=6859

Basketball reference seems to think these three alone should be able to win a ridiculous amount of games even if their supporting cast sucks; I don't know if the stats they pulled for these three guys are really accurate since they were all accrued as the alpha guys on their respective teams, but the math currently does predict them as breaking the Bulls '96 record...

I guess for Lebron's sake this better be true - his public image is at an all-time low now, but regardless of what he pulls winning titles speaks above everything else.

[cured]

The 1996 record will not be broken by Miami, write that in stone.

they did pick up Mike Miller for 5 years/$30M so someone must have taken a pay cut for this to work.

Bill Simmons has the fallout here:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...simmons/100709