#CavsRank Villains: 5-4, The Lie and The Truth

The old adage, “hurt me with the truth, but don’t comfort me with a lie” rings particularly accurate with our next two #CavsRank Villains. Coming in at numbers five and four respectively are two perpetrators that we love to hate for being on the opposite sides of the trust scale. The first was once loved as a feel-good underdog story, who seemed like a key component among the King’s men before he infamously deceived a blind man. The second was a self-proclaimed Truth that had enough support to become a reality simply too hard for the Cavs to handle.

Believe it or not… here are today’s #CavsRank Villains…

5. Carlos Boozer

The man who’s name karmically rhymes with “loser,” was considered by many to be the biggest turncoat in Cleveland sports since Art Modell fled to Baltimore in the middle of the night in the fall of 1995. And while the “cash-poor” Modell’s betrayal came because he was blinded by his own greed, Boozer’s own greedy betrayal took advantage of an actual blind man.

Boozer didn’t start out as a villain though. In fact, he was initially a tremendous “beat the odds” success story for the new millennium Cavaliers. Boozer, who had been a star at Duke under Coach K and helped lead the Blue Devils to the 2001 NCAA Championship, thought he’d be a first-round pick in the 2002 NBA draft. Most drafts experts agreed, predicting the 6’8 junior would go between 15th and 25th overall. But he was mainly overlooked in the 2002 draft, falling all the way to the second round. The Cavs selected him with the 35th overall pick taking a flier on the undersized big man.

“That night left a huge chip on my shoulder with a lot to prove,” Boozer said of the draft. “It’s like anybody in America going for a job interview and getting turned down, except when you’re an athlete and you’re trying to go to the professional level, you get turned down on national television over and over and over again.”

Boozer also claimed he was making a list of the teams he couldn’t wait to play. He cataloged which teams passed on him once, which passed on him twice. This semi-vindictive streak was probably an early warning sign about Boozer that GM Jim Paxson and the Cavs should have heeded, but chose to ignore. And who could blame them, especially after Boozer averaged 10.0 points and 7.5 rebounds per game in his rookie campaign, and followed it up with a breakout season of 15.5 points and 11.4 rebounds per game in his second year, becoming a terrific complement to their new rookie standout, LeBron James. But the good times were about to come to an abrupt end.

The headline says it all…

After the 2003–04 NBA season, the Cavs had the option of allowing Boozer to become a restricted free agent, or keeping him under contract for one more year at a $695,000 salary. Acknowledging (foolishly in hindsight) Boozer was worth way more than that (and reportedly at the urging of Boozer’s then agent Rob Pelinka), Paxson supposedly shook hands with Boozer on a deal in which the team would forgo the option and let Boozer become a restricted free agent. In exchange, Boozer would agree to sign with Cleveland for roughly $41 million over six years.

The Cavs then proceeded to release him from his contract, but during the interim free agency signing period, the Utah Jazz offered Boozer a six-year, $68 million contract ($27 million more than the Cavs could offer) that Cleveland could not to match due to salary cap considerations. Boozer accepted that deal and the debate over whether or not Paxson get “Bamboozered” started raging. Was he at fault for taking the Boozer’s word? Did Carlos act with malicious deception by breaking his promise? And was there a promise even made to begin with?

“There was no commitment, no handshake,” Boozer insisted, stating correctly that it would have been illegal under the collective bargaining agreement. “I’m a man of my word, and the only commitment I gave was to Utah, and I kept that commitment.”

Brian Windhorst (who was still a beat writer for the Akron Beacon Journal back in those days), did some excellent reporting on the details of what exactly what went down between June 30 and July 8, 2004, including the infamous meeting between Boozer, his wife at the time CeCe, Pelinka, Paxson and Gordon Gund that changed the fate of the young Cavs and probably began the derailing of the team’s chances of putting a strong supporting cast around LeBron.

“It’s a hell of a blow,” James said of Boozer’s move to Utah. “Anybody knows that. My feeling was that Booze was going to be around. But when he called me, I told him he’s got to do what’s best for his family.”

Boozer also took offense at being labeled a liar for his decision to bolt…

“It disappoints me the way some people have reacted to the situation, because I pride myself on my integrity and my honor,” Boozer said. “I want people to perceive me as a man of my word and a man of great integrity.”

It was hard for Cleveland fans to view this assertion as anything but a blatant lie, by yet another Benedict Arnold on the heels of Modell’s treachery. I, for one, couldn’t wait for a chance to change my “booooooze” chant to boos, and planned to fly back to Cleveland to catch the “Loozer’s” first game back at the Gund. Unfortunately, like so many other Cavs fans, I had to wait almost three years for Boozer to actually be healthy enough to make the trip to Cleveland to receive his chorus of boos. It did finally happen in March of 2007, as LeBron nearly went for a triple-double to propel the Cavs to their eighth straight win, as they shut down Boozer and his Jazz 82-73, and gave Carlos his expected reception.

But still, even the loudest and most cathartic booing can’t assuage the pain of what might have been if this once promising double-double machine would have made a different decision. Who can say how quickly the Cavs could have risen to championship contender with Boozer and LeBron. Perhaps they’d even already have a ring or two. It’s something we’ll never know.

But, what we do know is that the fallout wasn’t limited to the Cavs alone. Even though Boozer went on to be a two-time All-Star and help turn the Jazz (and later the Bulls) into a perennial playoff contender, he never reached the NBA promised land, after being hampered by a variety of injuries, getting criticized by the Jazz owner for not trying, hated by fans, Shaqtin’ a fool and punching refs in the jewels, being amnestied by the Bulls and finally winding up getting benched last year on a lackluster Lakers team and released. His former agent, Pelinka, was forced to resign from his company SFX, when they disassociated themselves from Boozer. Boozer and his wife/business manager CeCe divorced in 2009 amid reports of infidelity. Jim Paxson was fired in 2005 after Gordon Gund sold the team to Dan Gilbert. Paxson never really recovered from the Boozer fiasco, making a litany of poor personnel decisions for the team.

Boozer proved to be an expert at Blind Man’s Bluff…

Gund himself felt completely betrayed by Boozer, feelings he expressed to Cavs fans in a letter (which was not written in Comic Sans).

“I believed in Carlos,” Gund said. “In the final analysis, I decided to trust Carlos and show him the respect he asked for. He did not show that trust and respect in return.”

But just to underscore for Cavs fans that karma really does exist, here’s an excerpt from a terrific article on the “Not So Magical Career of Carlos Boozer” from FanSided last year…

Somewhere along the way someone told a Carlos Boozer lie when they said he was a player who could lead a team somewhere. His career is evidence that is not true. What Carlos Boozer can do is give a team valuable minutes. He can score mid range buckets and he can get rebounds. He has never been what people wanted him to be and he can never rise to the capacity of someone else’s dreams. All he can do is what he has already done.

And even then there is nothing Carlos Boozer can do to stop the hate that comes his way. It is his particular burden. It started in Cleveland when he took the money and refused to look back. It followed him to Utah and to Chicago. It’s a part of his Los Angeles story, despite the way he ended up here.

If anything is true it is this Carlos Boozer lesson: you can’t outrun your past even when you are desperate to change your future.

And of course, there was this awesome moment last season with Iman Shumpert victimizing a hapless and pathetic Lakers era Booze…

4. Paul Pierce

“The Truth” as Pierce is referred to in NBA circles, or at least since a postgame interview with Shaq in 2001 when he coined the nickname, was a scourge on the court for the Cavs during LeBron’s first tour with the wine and gold. It’s no lie that Pierce was not only one of the major stumbling blocks for LBJ and the Cavs (especially once he got some help from Ray Ray and KG), but his triumvirate in green was also a major factor in helping usher Cleveland out of the playoffs in 2010, setting the stage for LeBron’s eventual departure to construct a “super team” of his own design.

Like any classic rivalry, there are variations on the origin story. According to some accounts, there was already some ill-will brewing between The Truth and The King during LeBron’s rookie season in Cleveland in 2003. Pierce reportedly got into an in-game trash talking war with Otis Carter, the father of LBJ’s close friend and fellow horseman Maverick Carter. It set the stage for the first great battle between the two forwards. James had 37 points that night, but Pierce ended up scoring 41 to beat the Cavs, staring down Carter after each basket in the second half. The legend goes that Pierce told James late in the game he needed to tell Carter to pipe down or he’d go for 50.

Others say the real bad blood started in 2004, when Pierce almost goaded LeBron into the the closest thing James has ever had to a fight in his NBA career — and it happened in the preseason! Things got a little heated during a Cavs and Celtics matchup in Connecticut, and it boiled over when they played again the next night in Columbus. After taking turns showing each other up on the court, Pierce and James got into each other’s faces and were hit with technical fouls. Then Pierce, refusing to keep it classy, spit toward the Cavs’ bench, for which he was later fined $15K. But the actual fight almost happened on the way to the dressing room area after the game. Tempers flared and Pierce’s teammates had to literally carry him away to prevent an altercation.

For Pierce though, it seems his disdain for LeBron and other players of his generation goes beyond these petty clashes to a larger issue…

“This is a different era,” Pierce said. “Guys are playing a lot more together in the summer. You see more friendships in the league. It’s not like in the 80s when you had enemies, or you couldn’t stand this guy, and there were fights all the time. These guys, they all get along. It’s a new generation. They all want to play with each other, they all want to win. I still can’t stand none of these guys. I want to beat all of them.”

No video clip better illustrates Pierce’s old school nature towards LeBron than this stone cold move. At the end of a regular season victory over LeBron and the Cavs in 2009, Celtics fans were giving the The Truth a standing ovation. Pierce responded with high fives for those sitting at court side… except for one kid.

https://youtu.be/7OLy3dNl2QA

Other than the near pre-season fight though, the conflicts have mainly been centered on the floor. The rivalry, however, only got stronger once the Cavs and Celtics started facing off in the post-season.

In the 2008 playoffs, Pierce and James staged several classic battles. In a pivotal Game 5, James’ 35 points weren’t enough as Pierce scored 29 points and Boston took a 3-2 series lead. After James forced a final game with an unbelievable performance in Game 6 with 32 points and 12 rebounds, Pierce carried the Celtics to a Game 7 victory. He scored 41 points (including a shaky free throw for number 40 that bounced seemingly 10 feet above the rim before somehow dropping in), and the Celtics outlasted James’ 45-point effort at TD Garden, in maybe the best head-to-head playoff battle of LBJ’s career.

That series would also feature Pierce getting into it with another James family member. During Game 4, Pierce wrapped up James on a drive to the basket. The two spilled into the stands, where Gloria James got up from her seat and began yelling at Pierce. James famously yelled to his mom to “sit your [blank] down.”

Two years later, in the gut-wrenching 2010 playoffs, Doc Rivers’ game plan was to have Pierce concentrate on defending LBJ and not worry about his own offense. It was part of an overall strategy to be physical with LeBron and keep him away from the basket. Over the last three games of the series, which the Celtics won in agonizing fashion (including a thoroughly demoralizing 120-88 beatdown — the worst home playoff loss in Cavs history), the Cavs were shut down, allowing Boston to pull the upset. Pierce averaged just 14.3 points, but his defense (along with LBJ’s mysterious elbow issues) helped the Celtics hold LeBron to averages of just 21.3 points and 34 percent shooting. His 15 point, 3-14 showing in the horrific Game 5 loss lead to Dan Gilbert to question The King’s effort and heart. But The Truth that LeBron apparently learned coming out of yet another disappointing season’s end, was that he needed a lot more help. He needed his own triumvirate to win a title. The Truth hurt…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDH5XrmtcPQ

LeBron finally got his victory over Pierce and the Celtics in 2011, but only after becoming a Cavs villain himself by joining the hated Heat. When he and the Heat closed the series out, LBJ fell to his knee in appreciation of the accomplishment of beating his rival.

“We understand how competitive each other are,” James said. “It’s always fun to go up against the best, and he’s one of them.”

LeBron also reflected this season on what his rivalry with Pierce has done for him, and how The Truth has set him free…

“Obviously he gets a Cliff note or a couple notes in my book as far as guys that helped me get over the hump or kept me where I was at the time,” James recognizes. “I knew I had to become much better individually. He’s one of those guys.”

LeBron and the Cavs narrowly missed another playoff encounter with Pierce in 2015. After he dropped some truth on the Raptors in round one, he pulled some magic out of his hat with a last second bank shot to win Game 3 against the Atlanta Hawks (The Truth doesn’t call “bank,” he calls “game!”). A second buzzer beater later in the series was disallowed (Pierce was ruled to have stepped out of bounds), sparing LeBron and the Cavs from experiencing any “inconvenient truth” in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Personally, as much as I’ve loved to hate The Truth over the years for the playoff exits and emotional scars, I really would have enjoyed seeing him go at it with LeBron one last time. Maybe that will still come to pass with a Cavs/Clips Finals in 2016. Come to think of it, beating The Truth and Doc might be just as satisfying as getting revenge on the Warriors…

Until that happens… just remember…

Stay tuned next week for the top three #CavsRank Villains!