Article:Cavalier Management finally throw LeBron a life ring....

Let me just say that it’s not often that a sports fan such as myself get to see one of your crackpot theories about how to run a basketball team actually unfold before your eyes.

My buddy Kenny and I always talk sports and by talk sports I mean really talk sports. We know sports, we were both great athletes and we understand sports from a perspective that a most sports fans can’t grasp. We don’t jut look at stats and highlights, we understand role players, chemistry, what “athletic” really means about a player, the flow of the game and things like the mythical “intangibles.” We’ve both played high level sports both with and against guys who have gone on to become successful college players, NBA All-Stars and even a host MLB players. You could safely say that we are not your run of the mill fans.

We recognize that Vince Young has something you can’t teach and we both nearly cried when Vick went to jail in the prime of his career because another Mike Vick won‘t be coming around again…ever. We knew teams would kick themselves for letting Adrian Peterson slip to 7th. I said Chris Paul would completely turn the Hornets around and he said that Rex Grossman would win the Super Bowl….OK we aren’t right ALL the time, but we are pretty basketball savvy.

We grew up in Winston Salem, smack in the middle of North Carolina’s famed “Tobacco Road” and have watched (in person) everyone from Grant Hill, Rasheed Wallace, Antawn Jameson, Tim Duncan, Vince Carter, Chris Paul, Josh Howard, Stephon Marbury, Elton Brand and even new Cavalier Joe Smith when he won the Naismith Award (I was a lone Maryland fan living in the midst of Tarheels.) We know basketball because where we come from there are two things that you could smell in the air, tobacco fields and basketball season.

My point I guess being that except for Kenny and I going head to head in Madden (where I won 13 of 30 Superbowls) or my insignificant string of 12 straight championships in NBA Live 06’, our expert analysis has never actually been field tested because, well, we can’t quite afford a professional sports franchise and oddly enough no matter how many championships you win in a row on Madden, NFL owners don’t seem to categorize that as “relevant management experience.” We can only theoretically pose answers to franchise questions such as “Do you take Durrant or Oden,” “Is Dice-K worth the money,” and “Do the Bengals do the majority of their scouting at correctional facilities?”

So it’s not often that a trade comes along that mirrors one of our theories actually comes to fruition. Actually, it's never happened until yesterday.I told Kenny not to long ago that I thought the Cavs should “bring in Ben Wallace and a shooter and get rid of Larry Hughes and his albatross contract” and oddly enough, as if the sports Gods were questioning my somewhat arrogant sports IQ, it finally happened. Like, exactly dead on happened. I’m psyched to say that my very own, I guess you would call it “sports talk radio fantasy” (pertaining to a guy calling in to tell the hosts of a radio show exactly how to they would turn a team around if they ran things) has finally happened with my favorite NBA team LeBro…the Cleveland Cavaliers.

First of all, you gotta look at super phenom All-Star mega talent LeBron James. What’s unique about Lebron’s game is that when he goes to the lane the other team will completely collapse around him to try and stop him which makes James the equivalent of a basketball vortex. He’s impossible to contain, just ask the Pistons after he dismantled them in the play-offs. However, a defense collapsing like this forces Bron to take some poor shots sometimes and while I’d rather have 5 bad LeBron shots than 10 good Anderson Varejao shots, it’s become increasingly clear that Lebron can’t do it all by himself. But he’s so good himself, that it doesn’t look like he needs another superstar, he just needs a few clear cut role players to shoulder some of the load. That’s what the Cavaliers finally got him when they pulled the trigger on a massive team overhaul today. Cleveland NEEDED this trade and will be much better after this trade and here is why….

Ben Wallace brings them a defensive force in the lane that Cleland has lacked since LeBron got there. Zydrunus Ilgauskus is for decorative purposes only when it comes to the defensive end of the floor. At 7’3’ it is hard to imagine how you wouldn’t be good at defense because all you would have to do it stick up your damn hands to become a defensive force, but Big Z is only on the floor to score 15 and grab 8 rebounds, no more, no less. Afterwards he puts on a rain poncho, drives to the marina and boards his boat The Cleveland Steamer and goes out to sea in order to catch cod that will go into Zydrunas Ilgauskas fish sticks. Ok that last part is made up, but does this guy not look like he could be a fisherman. Couldn’t you see him in his yellow poncho on the front of a box of fish sticks? He looks like a longshoreman. from some small Norwegian town rather than a guy who hangs out with the likes of Drew Gooden and Damon Jones. Am I the only one who sees this? I digress…

Wallace brings the defense and physical presence that the Cavs have severely lacked in recent years and it was most apparent during in last years Finals. A few years ago the difference between a good Eastern Conference team and a bad Eastern Conference team was the man in the middle or lack thereof. Nowadays it seems that to be a serious contender you need to have somebody that’s a competent scorer or a strong defender at the Center or Power Forward position. Shaq went to Phoenix for that reason, the Lakers got Gasol and refused to give up Bynum this summer for that reason and Orlando is now reaping the rewards of drafting the next uber Forward in Dwight Howard.

While the Cavs didn’t get a superstar, they got a defender who will contest shots in the paint, bang around and be physical with big men such as Tim Duncan and will do what he does best by boxing out and crashing the boards. Cleveland doesn’t need offense in the middle, they need guys to play tough D and grab rebounds on the off chance that LeBron misses a shot. As long as Wallace doesn’t ever have to shoot free throws and is always allowed to wear his trademark headband, the Cavs got a perfect piece for their quest for a title. Big, physical and tough will hopefully rub off on Big Z, but don’t count on it.

Then there is Wally Szczerbiak. Look if it were up to me I would have gotten rid of Larry Hughes and a 1st round draft pick last year and brought in Ray Allen so that LeBron would have had a superb outside shooter to kick to every time he drove to the lane and the defense collapsed around him. Now Wally isn’t exactly the type of threat that Ray Allen was (even after the day after double knee surgeries Allen was probably faster) and poses as a defensive liability (that’s what Wallace is for) everyone who watched Wally in his Timberwolve days knows that Wally can shoot the lights out, but only when he is open. Wally’s biggest problem is he can’t create his own space to separate and get an open look. No longer a problem. LeBron will penetrate, drag the defense in and kick it out to a wide open Szczerbiak who shoots at about a 50% mark over his career and can stroke the three with the best of them when he’s feeling it.

If you remember, the Cavs drafted Jason Kapono the same year the drafted James for the same reasons they now have Wally, but got rid of him when it turned out he could only makes 3’s during meaningless shooting contests and not in actual game situations.

It’s just that simple when you think about it. It’s a perfect fit. You have you shooter in the corner, your two big men ready to rebound in the middle and you add in Delonte West who is a fairly good shooter himself, but more importantly can penetrate and give LeBron more space to operate, one can see that somebody in the Cleveland system finally looked around and figured out how to finally use LeBron to his maximum potential.

This trade also gives the Cavs more depth when Gibson, Varejao and Pavlovic come back. Some fans have complained that letting scorers like Hughes and Gooden go is going to make LeBron shoulder more of the load, but with a healthy Pavlovic, a getting better everyday Gibson, a hard nosed guard in West and a scorer in Szerbiak, it looks like Cleveland will be able to give LeBron a lot more time to rest on the bench as the 2nd team should have no problems supporting more of the team’s offensive load now. That mean fresher legs for their superstar down the stretch and it makes a serious injury that much more less likely for James. Hell, he may even be able to take a game off to rest now and then, a luxury that Hughes and Gooden never really provided the Cavs.

Hopefully, the team can mesh together and find it’s chemistry quick enough to make an NBA Finals run, but I’m doubting that we won’t fully feel the effects of this trade until late this season or possibly not until early next season bearing that everyone stays put and the team can get healthy.

And what did they give away really? Personally, I think Larry Hughes is garbage. He always has been, even when he was dropping 20 a night in Washington, Larry Hughes has been severely overrated. He never shot for a high percentage and he is supposedly known for being a great shooter/scorer. This baffles me. The guy scored 20 a game as a Wizard, big friggin deal. Look at that team, I mean anyone can score 20 a night as a Wizard. All the do is shoot. Shooting in Washington is like the rain in London, in the winter it just never stops. Even as a decent defender such as Hughes was being way way over paid to sit and watch LeBron carry him on his back night in and night out. Hughes has shot less than 40% over the past three seasons with Cleveland and has not shall we say been the picture of health. He needed to go and no one is more excited that he left than I am.

And Drew Gooden is a decent basketball player in that he is athletic and can run the floor, but honestly the guy is a dime a dozen forward. Almost any player in his situation could match his stats, so the Cavs didn’t give up to much by parting ways with their PF.

Donnie Marshall, hasn’t been good in a few years and I couldn’t pick the other two guys out of a line-up.

Now I’m not saying that this trade is going to go down in history as the trade that won a championship and finally gave the sorts fans in Cleveland something to cheer about, but it’s going to make them better if the want to head to Boston in the playoffs or even make their way out to Phoenix for the Finals. They needed a big guy that could match up defensively with the likes of Timmy D and Beastly McBeasterson AKA Dwight Howard in crunch time and they got him with Wallace.

They got one of the NBA’s better perimeter shooters in Wally Szczerbiak and to boot they got Delonte West, a hard noses shooting/point guard who also posses a pretty decent perimeter game while also possessing a penchant for taking it hard to the rim, which is something that the Cavs B-squad has been severely lacking since Sasha Pavlovich went down with a foot injury. And they get the fledgling Chicago 2nd round pick in 2009 which could end up being a bargaining chip for deals at a later date.

Plus with PG Gibson going down for at least a month, Cleveland had to make a move to keep LeBron from having a Kobe type meltdown and I believe that this will keep Bron Bron happy until his contract expires and according to Kenny he will become the savior of the New York Knicks.

I dunno, but if this all works out the way I think it will, I’ll be available for all your sports management needs, from t-ball to the majors if it does. Who knows, maybe I’ll be the one to sign LeBron in New York. I can’t be worse than Isiah….

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