Losers
2013-04-17
After probably the longest sports season I’ve ever experienced (compounded by years of bottom feeding), it’s come to this. The supposed fork in the road has finally arrived. For all intents and purposes, the last three years will be decided in the next twelve months. Chris Grant’s talent evaluation abilities, the supposed ceilings of Kyrie, Tristan, Tyler, and Dion, and even Byron’s coaching ability (despite the fact that he may not even be around at that point) will all be judged and weighed against serious expectations.
The last three years haven’t been easy. As a fan, it’s heartbreaking to watch a team you love lose night in and night out, especially, like last night, to an equally bad Bobcats team. As a writer, examining every facet of the team, it’s taxing. If you need proof, see the comments section, where arguments over the big picture become heated and even, at times, cruel. I’ve seen friends and family who formerly watched the Cavs, unwavering in their dedication even in the pre-Lebron years, slowly but surely lose all interest. Not even the emergence of Kyrie could rope them back in. The hope is whatever is coming will.
I’ve made my views on Byron abundantly clear – last night only strengths my beliefs. Even if Byron could’ve been the man for the job, there has to be a signifier – to the fans, to the players, and to the organization, that things are about to change. There are only so many options available – boot Grant, dump one of the young players, or nix the coach. It’s sad that Byron will likely be the one with the onus squarely on his shoulders, but that comes with the territory of agreeing to coach a rebuild. (Don’t feel too bad – the man made one million dollars for every 4.7 wins) Going forward, the players have to realize it’s win or get off the pot.
I’m not going to speculate on the moves that Grant will make this off season, largely because we’ve all done enough of that as the season has progressed. There has to be something. Drafting Noel will not be enough, nor will adding a rookie small forward. The team’s personality, which has been entirely absent these three years, must take shape. That starts from the top down. Likewise, role players have to be signed and secured as part of the future. I don’t advocate blowing too much cap room, but stalling another year would be a massive mistake.
We’re all tired – three years and 166 losses will do that to a person. Three years ago, after the day that shall live in infamy, this moment seemed beyond comprehension. But sure enough, it has arrived. The Cavaliers have youth and talent, but something is missing. I hope, as I’m sure you all do, that whatever is lost will soon be found. I don’t know the answer to the question of what the next few years hold. All I know is that we’re finally at the fork – lord help us all. We are – for hopefully the last off season – dreaming of what will be instead of what is. The future has arrived, and boy is it scary.
Byron is “very replaceable” in that I would probably rather have 25 other coaches in the NBA than him, even if thats only because of his current baggage. The guy never blew anyone away with what he did, One year he took a well talented team to get beat in the finals, he didn’t mess up the development of Chris Paul, and he more or less did what you would expect a coach to do, outside of his 3 tank strong seasons in Cleveland where he was god awful, intentionally or not, and having multiple teams obviously quit on him.… Read more »
Vesus – then we need to seriously temper our optimism on the talent of the roster. And there are plenty of realistic replacement. The last thing we need is another name. We need a young, hungry, defensive-minded assistant coach who can grow and learn with our young players.
KyrieSwirving… how is Byron “very replaceable?” Who else do the Cavs have a shot at landing with the track record of Scott?
Vesus, I hear your excuses, but they simply aren’t applicable to the last 3 games of the season. The reason we lost two too absolutely terrible teams was that the players quit on the coach. He lost them. And if thats the case, now is the perfect time to get a new coach who will get their attention. You can’t waste a single offseason or even a few meaningless end of season games. The young guys need to be working as hard as they can now to get better, while they are still young and the practice pays off more.… Read more »
@ Steve
No, as currently constructed they weren’t a playoff team. Needed another solid offseason of Chris Grant magic. Instead we start off by firing Byron when there don’t appear to be any realistic replacements on the horizon.
aka Bill, you are clearly more browns fan than basketball fan. The NBA doesn’t have long term installments of systems. Its about the players playing hard for the coach. If you’re not Dantoni then players more or less fit into any system and all that really matters is that they play together and play hard. Its not the NFL where they have to learn entirely new hundred page playbooks and it takes years to master the nuances and responsibilities of any given play. There is some adjustment period, sure, but such a cost is a fraction of the NFL equivalent,… Read more »
Bill – we knew from the get go that we were going to rely almost solely on the young talent, and we still had predictions of contending for the playoffs. And if we weren’t accounting for injuries to Irving and Varejao, then it was us being completely naive. If we’re talking about contending in the near future, we have to plan for injuries to those two. Any plan where those two have to get 75 games each for us to be competitive sounds like one that is sure to backfire.
Vesus, then the team wasn’t anywhere near as talented as we expected, and we need to adjust our expectations going forward. And for the OKC and San Antonio games, you can find countless examples where they looked like D-leaguers. All a couple good games tell you is that in the NBA, sometimes even bad teams can be competitive every once in a while.
Steve- it’s because the talent was young and they were given a chance to develop rather than playing mediocre veterans. We had injuries all season. By the time our starting lineup was back (minus Andy), the playoffs were already out of the picture and the best thing was to lose.
Vesus- I agree but who else out there is better? Phil Jackson and maybe S Van Gundy… but they aren’t coming here.
Honestly, the best scenario I see is getting Mike Brown… again… and that’s really disappointing
@ Steve The team looked like crap because they had probably the worst bench in the league until the Memphis trade and the addition of Livingston. When they had those guys and relative health, they played .500 ball and looked like the sort of team that could play with anyone. Am I the only one who remembers them beating OKC and almost beating San Antonio? I think Scott emphasized player development over wins, with the implicit approval of Chris Grant. Now he’s the fall guy because Gilbert was impatient…let’s be honest, Byron Scott has been to two Finals..he KNOWS you… Read more »
Man, Gilbert better damn well have a good candidate ready to sign. I don’t know if Byron was the guy to lead this team long term, but firing him now makes no sense unless they have a replacement picked out.
Bill, if we actually have good young talent, a smart GM, and an owner willing to spend, why did the team look like utter crap for most of this season and not much better than previous seasons? Nobody before the season said that if we have a lower win pct than last year and get another high pick, we’re on the right track. People were convinced we would be contending for a playoff spot! There’s is some significant flaw that caused us to so completely miss our projection. Either we should have realized the (healthy) talent wasn’t there, or that… Read more »
True Dave. Too bad it seems the Cavs will be following the Browns’ protocol. This blows.
$, Browns…Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Year 1 of the rebuild… here we come again
Wow… that sucks…
so now who do we get? Mike Brown? ugh…
That first sentence was horribly written. I meant:
The loss to the Bobcats gives us the outright 3rd worst record, rather than being tied with Phoenix.
By the way Mallory, the lost to the Bobcats gives us the outright 3 worst record instead of losing to Phoenix. I’ll take the ping pong balls over a meaningless win over the Bobcats. The Bobcats can’t even lose right… they go on a 3 game win streak just to give Orlando more ping pong balls. I like Cleveland’s approach much better than Charlotte’s
Link is here, forgot to include.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/9186129/byron-scott-fired-coach-cleveland-cavaliers-source
Sources saying Scott is gone.
Firing Byron indicates we’ve been on the wrong track and we’re starting over again. I hope that’s not the case. I hope we’re not going to experience year 1 again of the rebuild with a new system and new people. We’ve been patient for the first part of the rebuild. Byron should have enough of the pieces he needs next year to contend. I hope we don’t give up and start over again like the Browns do every 2 years with a new coach and new system… look where that’s gotten them. I’ll be really upset if Byron gets fired.… Read more »
Gordon, who are your four all stars? We barely have one right now. They need a shaman to keep Irving and Varejao healthy, and to absolutely nail this pick to have a core that will get you into the playoffs. If they can ever get Irving to play defense and lead everyone else to do the same, then maybe we can start talking about developing toward a championship.
Can we quite counting the season LeBron left as the first season of the rebuild? The rebuilding started with the drafting of Irving and continued this year.
Eh, what’s the rush? Gilbert already lost his “win a championship before LeBron” gambit. Seriously though, there’s little doubt this team (barring more bad luck on the injury front) will be better next year. At worst, it seems like they’ll have Porter and another rookie big with promise to augment the core. TT seems driven to keep improving his game. AV will be back and will either be a defensive spark or a good mid-season trade chip (or both). Grant will probably make a shrewd vet signing or two that don’t tie up the cap. And they should be competitive… Read more »
Mallory It’s probably not as bad as it seems. The way the season ended is not indicative of the teams current state. Injuries aside, the motivation was missing for these guys to play with much effort or urgency. There are still reasons to be optimistic. Some (not all) of the pieces are in place. Unfortunately, there’s no glue holding them together. Whether that glue comes from the coach or a player emerging as a leader is TBD. I think the Cavs plan was to not spend with their cap space this off-season, but next. They probably were expecting some improvement… Read more »
Also – I do not believe we need Porter/Noel to be a star player. If we grab Porter, he does not need to be a 20/7/5 guy for us to win a championship in a few years. That would help a lot, obviously, but with Irving and Waiters, we have the backcourt to score and be the primary ballhandlers and engine of the offense. I highly doubt TT will ever be a 20/10 guy, and I don’t think Porter is a 20 PPG scorer in the NBA (although I would love it if he proved me wrong). But, a guy… Read more »
We need to hit on this year’s #1 pick. Plain and simple. That will ensure we are highly competitive/playoff bound for the next number of years, barring injuries. If we miss on our #1 pick, we better hope we can lure a big time FA in 2014. Kyrie-Dion-TT-AV-Porter/Noel-Zeller is as good of a nucleus as there is. Add in a defensive presence with the LAL pick and we’re in business. I don’t care who the coach is – if you have 4 all-star level talents in your starting rotation, you are going to compete for a title year in and… Read more »
“Even if Byron could’ve been the man for the job, there has to be a signifier – to the fans, to the players, and to the organization, that things are about to change. There are only so many options available – boot Grant, dump one of the young players, or nix the coach. ” If the organization thinks like this, we are all in trouble. The organization should not be worried about a “signifier” to anything. Especially the fans. They have a long-run plan. Now is not the time to change it. If they think changing the coach fits into… Read more »
This should be framed as the quintessential CtB post.
Travis, I wouldn’t get down on Irving just yet. It’s been a rough 2 years. Lebron has acted out at times and now he is being declared by the media as an all-timer. I agree this is going to be the year for Grant. He has been a bit of a mad genius but it needs to make sense going forward. No more crazy draft scenarios where he picks guys he never worked out or talked too. It worked last year, it won’t work every year. We’ve yet to see a good FA signing from him. I would hope this… Read more »
There’s no doubt they need to be better next year, but this offseason is not “the fork in the road”. That would be next offseason. If they are horrible again this season and then land Lebron or another of the several major free agents in the offseason, do you think anyone will care that we spent four straight years as a really bad team? 2014 is their make or break offseason, not this one. Having said that, I do hope we go all out to try and land Kevin Love. Outside of that, I just want them to draft well,… Read more »
Just a side note: Gasol’s play and Kobe Bryant’s achilles pretty much blew your Paumnesty plan out of the water this week, Corey.
I have never been more optimistic about the Cavs’ future than I am right now. This year was about two things: 1) The emergence of TT, and 2) Waiters being who we thought he was on the floor but surprising us by not being the headcase we feared he was off of it. This organization now has potential all-stars starting at 3 positions. Each of those players is in his first or second year and we haven’t even attempted to build a bench and start winning yet. I agree that the complete lack of effort on defense is frustrating, albeit… Read more »
Yo – chill man. I don’t know what you expected, but having been through tbis many times as a long-time Cavs fan – this is jyst about what I expected. Next year will definitely be better – should be a good offseason too.
If we fired Scott it would have to be for a hard nosed Defensove coach… Think POp n Tibb(Chi)
I remember not that long ago 60 win seasons were expected, playoff appearances were not only expected but a given, and trips to the finals and gunning for the ever so elusive title for Cleveland was on our finger tips yearly. It wasn’t that long ago that we almost went undefeated at home, and our jersey sold the most! Then the man who grew up going to Cavs games, grew up as our neighbor, played the same courts we played, expected us to cheer him in HS, expected us to love him as our own. The man who knew our… Read more »
Deep breaths. This is a big off season for all …..fans coaches and players.
With the right offseason moves, this team is poised to take a leap and make a playoff push. Firing Byron now makes little sense, unless they have a stellar replacement picked out before they do it.
Yea, I’ve said I didn’t want Byron fired because I don’t think it’s fair, but whatever. I’ve also said this is a 3 year thing and next year is the year. So, I will start to judge the whole organization differently. If we go into next season with 20-30 million in cap space again, we have problems. I will not be down for that. I’m not saying blow it all for the next 5 years, but it’s time to put together a competent bench on the start of this season. Jarret Jack is a free agent. Carl Landry is a… Read more »
I’ve had a fairly optimistic view about the future of the team but next year is definitely the year when we can judge the rebuild. I’m optimistic that the natural growth of the young core, the draft picks and the salary flexibility that Grant has assembled will pay off. Anything could happen. Grant has no clue what he’s going to do yet. I could go either way with Byron. End of season exit interviews are tomorrow. We should know his fait in a few days. I still see the glass of milk as half full, but it’s going to sour… Read more »
Nothing says loser like Jason Biggs.