DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Cavs vs. Celtics Playoffs Thread (Part 2)

Quote:

---

sure lebron has mad bball skills, but the killer instinct, the perseverance and instestinal fortitude like jordan had, lebron don't have it. Not sure its something you can learn..

---

Can't be taught, can't be learned. You either have it or you don't.
I see Steve Nash is home and cooled in the western final. Now, he is a guy with heart.
The series isn't over, though... a lot of posters think it is, but it isn't.

I won't say that it's definitively over... but with how they've played over the last two games, even if you were to ask a Magic 8-Ball, it'd say "All signs point to Yes".

Here's what I think:

*Followers follow the leaders lead. If a leader is tough and hard nosed, never say die, the followers adopt that mentality. If a leader is passive, the followers become passive. It can be said about a team or a company or whatever ... the followers always take on the personality of the leader. Jordan won with guys like Longley, Pennington, Kerr, Brown, Buechler, Paxson, Wennington, etc. Read that list over again if you'd like. But Jordan had a killer instinct and refused to lose. Those guys played their butts off because of that.

LeBron just doesn't have a killer instinct. He caves under the pressure, and the team follows.

If he's healthy enough to shoot a jumper, he's healthy enough to get the job done. I don't want to hear anything about injuries.

The Cavs do not have the best team. They have the best regular season team, but that means nothing now. However, LeBron is good enough to still get it done. Unfortunately, he can't handle the pressure. I feel very badly for the city of Cleveland.

And LeBron's exit pretty much guarantees a Kobe championship which makes me sick to my stomach.

I was behind the Cavs all season, even when they came out and looked bad. After last night though I can say one thing for certain, if these guys come out again and give another pathetic effort in any game for the rest of the playoffs, their vacations are starting early.

A part of me really wishes that guy like LeBron would just say "I'm going to sign with Cleveland for a minimal amount, because I am going to make millions upon millions in my other enterprises ..... and I really want to add another exceptional player and bring multiple championships to Cleveland."

Of course, then I wake up and realize that almost never happens in professional sports ........

Its hard to leave that much money on the table. Max contracts in the NBA are $20 million+ and there are very, very few of us who would give up that kind of money to take the next step in our careers. I don't think I could do it. Guess it depends just how much money I already had.

Guy like LeBron has big time aspirations for his life after basketball. Say, for example, he wants to own his own team. I don't know that he does but its a goal that requires a lot of money to achieve. Professional athletes make a lot of money but they don't make that kind of money. He will never get to that point giving away $20 million every year.

j/k


We are Witness......To the end of Cavalier Basketball....

Sorry but they brought it upon themselves, 1/2 the team stood around watching n waiting for Labron to do it all himself.....To me Mike Brown got out coached big time last night,

Quote:

---

I did read that list over and I noticed you left out guys like Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Ron Harper. The bolded one being a top 50 player of all time in his prime during the Jordan era.

---

He got his first three without Rodman and Harper.

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2010/05/cleveland_cavaliers_poor_effor.html

Stunned Cleveland Cavaliers owner Daniel Gilbert wonders about team's effort
By Brian Windhorst, The Plain Dealer
May 12, 2010, 2:29AM

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In the shell-shocked silence at The Q Tuesday night, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert sat stoically in his baseline courtside seat less than 10 feet from LeBron James, who passed the time of the neverending final minutes on the last seat of the bench.

The scene on the floor and the silence in the emptying building wasn't what either of them had planned for this "all in" season, which is now down to Thursday's Game 6 after the Cavs lost, 120-88, to the Celtics.

After the game, in an exclusive interview with The Plain Dealer, Gilbert expressed some frustration at the effort level of his team that he's spending more than $100 million in payroll this season; a team he put together by sparing no expense in an attempt to win the title this season.

"Our entire franchise has done everything in its power to put all of our players and its coaching staff in the best possible position to execute when it counts," Gilbert said. "And to deliver to the highly supportive fans of Cleveland a proud, intense, impassioned all-out drive to achieve a championship."

"The last two home playoff losses and the manner in which we lost these games does not come close to being anywhere near the high expectations all of us have of our organization. Our fans and supporters deserve more."

Like many fans must have been feeling after the 32-point loss, the worst home playoff loss in team history, Gilbert seemed to be taken aback by his team's effort in both the Game 4 and Game 5 losses, in which the Cavs were outhustled by the Celtics.

"Above all, the fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as the entire franchise, deserve and need our players and coaches to dig deep within themselves," Gilbert said.

Despite his disappointment in the losses, Gilbert, who is known for his optimism, said he's confident his team will be able to rebound in Game 6.

"We have to ask ourselves two questions," he said. "Will we remember who we are and choose to impose our will on our opponent for the remainder of this series and beyond? And how much do we want it? I believe in our players, our coaching staff and our entire franchise. This series is not over."

J/C

LeBron looked like an employee who has already given his 2-week notice.

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2010/05/cleveland_cavaliers_vs_boston_4.html

By Brian Windhorst Cavs Beat reporter:

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Thoughts following the Cavs 120-88 loss to the Boston Celtics:

* There is no one reason the Cavs are in a 3-2 hole to the Celtics after what probably was the worst performance -- considering the stakes -- in the 40-year history of the franchise.

But there are signs that some of the culprits are deeper and that they are decaying the team that won 61 games and assembled a rock-solid postseason resume after an impressive six-month season.

Let's start with coach Mike Brown, since that is where many of the fans have started. There are several players who are upset with him and how he's handled his rotations during the playoffs, sticking guys in and yanking them out of the lineups.

This came to a bit of a head after Game 4 in Boston, where Shaquille O'Neal was upset that he didn't come back into the game after leaving early in the fourth quarter.

He's also been moving around playing time for Zydrunas Ilgauskas and changing roles of bench players and even starters. During the playoffs, Anthony Parker has played as little as 19 minutes and as many as 42. O'Neal as few as 15 and as many as 28. The players haven't been fully comfortable with those role adjustments,

Ultimately it goes back to the fact that the Cavs didn't have a complete team until the first game of the playoffs. The return of O'Neal forced one odd man out and it destabilized the rotation. The pressure of the playoffs already causes enough back-and-forth and adjustments, but coming into the playoffs blind has taken Brown out of a comfort level and it has carried over to the players.

After nearly a month of it, tempers have flared. There were a number of angry players Sunday in Boston. They were displacing their frustration over the loss on the coach and not on the lacking effort they clearly put forth.

Also, Brown seems to be searching during games without any real plan of what to do. The players can sense this and it undermines him to a certain degree. Very rarely during the playoffs have the Cavs made in-game adjustments that have provided fruit. In between games with practices and film sessions, yes. But not within the game. When the Cavs look like they are going to lose in the first quarter, usually they have lost.

This is either because Brown isn't making proper adjustments or that the team is not executing those commands. Either way, it is a sign of trouble.

Beyond Brown, however, there are other responsibilities. It lies with the captains and that means LeBron James. While he will be the first to tell you that he's a leader and you can see that his teammates are fully invested in that situation, he has not seemed to act like one during much during this series.

First off, he's undermined his coach by acting lax after losses when Brown has been sounding alarm bells. It is James' personality not to be too worried about anything and it was not expected that he'd be throwing people into lockers and such. But his "we'll get 'em next game" philosophy has clearly backfired. With the exception of Game 3, despite all the handshakes and nonsense, the Cavs have been knocked on their heels in every game.

It has further become problematic that James has been disengaged during the games. Not only has he fallen into the trap of "letting the game come to him," but he's been increasingly distant. In huddles he's looking at the ceiling or into the distance. It is not the James anyone on the team knows and his teammates and coaches have seen it. More problematic, they can't explain it and that is making the entire locker room uneasy.

On Tuesday it was Zydrunas Ilgauskas and O'Neal that actually were more proactive. They were showing more leadership than James both on the floor and off the floor.

There were two skirmishes on the court. One was with Kendrick Perkins and O'Neal and the other was with Mo Williams and Rajon Rondo. James showed no such fire and then didn't get get involved in the exchanges, staying off to the side.

Whatever James says in the locker room behind the scenes stays there. In the past, it has been quite obvious that James has a huge role in everything that happens. Perhaps that is still the case. But the way his teammates are playing they have either tuned him out or he's not showing the same fire as he regularly did during the season,

All of this is magnified because right now the Celtics have excellent chemisty. They are playing like the team that is tighter and has more confidence and more stars. That is only making the issues more glaring.

And there's very little time to figure this all out.

J/C

I don't get it. It doesn't add up.


- The Elbow hurts and supposedly affects his performance in games 1 and 2.

- His elbow feels fine as he explodes in game 3 and we hand them their worst loss in playoff history.

- After several questionable calls in the 2nd half of game 4, we get kinda blown out. People start to wonder about his elbow again.

- He doesn't score a field goal until 6 minutes left in the 3rd quarter of game 5. Announcers and analysts begin discussing his elbow again. Here, less than a week after handing them their worst playoff loss in franchise history, they hand us ours.

- ESPN continues to discuss his elbow and excitedly brings up Paul Pierce's quote after last nights game "You can stop one of us and somebody else will step up, with Cleveland, all you have to do is stop Lebron." ESPN agrees with Peirce's sentiment, and doesn't tie in Lebron's elbow and his poor performance to the Cavs struggles. - He sucked as bad as everybody else last night, but ESPN doesn't mention that.


- You don't get the best record in basketball two straight years without having a good supporting cast.

- Mike Brown doesn't suck as bad as everybody says.- Again, you don't get the best record for two straight years with a bad coach.


I'd love to say that we have sucked this series because of Lebron's elbow, but again, I think about his game 3 performance and can't figure it out.


Can anybody explain what the heck is going on?

The NBA MVP is leaving his legacy - and its looking like a bad one.

I hope and pray Shaq goes to LeBron and Mike Brown, grabs them by their throats and tells them he didn't come to Cleveland, Ohio to shovel snow. I want him to look LBJ right in the eye and tell him Kobe would never quit on his team.

Unless the devil, David Stern, "talks to the refs" for game 6, LBJ might have just played his last game at the Q in the wine and gold.

Quote:

---

Can anybody explain what the heck is going on?

---

I can only explain what I see. At times (sometimes for LONG stretches of time) the team looks totally apathetic and confused. They look like they don't get it (whether its the rotations or the gameplan or whatever) and whats worse, they look like they don't care that they don't get it.

I don't think Cavs will move if lebron leaves, first there is the 30 year lease on the Q, with huge penalties, I don't think NBA would approve any such move. The biggest thing is yeah maybe we take a step back, but we have a great owner and a decent GM, we will be competitive. There have been some great players coming out of college. Look at Durant, i think in a few years durant will be better than lebron, Lebron is the end all. I mean its not as if we've won a ring yet with him. Great player yes, bigger than the team, no.

Quote:

---

Find the team with a good young center and a good young point guard and that is where you will find James. I don't care if they are a middle of the road team...he takes them to the top in a hurry.

---

That would be Chicago.. if you consider those things along with considering they have to able to afford James.. Rose and Noah are the best young PG/C combo on a team that can still afford James that I can think of.. unless Bosh and James decide to go somewhere together, then that opens up other options..

Interesting thought....and Chicago seems like it would be his kind of town.

Bad thing would be, he'd be living under a long shadow at the United Center.

I hope the rest of the team realizes that LeBron is their 'Jobu'...they gave him rum, they defended him, heck, they sacrificed a KFC bucket of chicken.

but, when it comes down to it, Jobu isn't going to hit the curveball for them. so, if Jobu won't show up, they need to tell him, Screw-U Jobu, I do it myself. and smack the crud out of the ball.

i don't think we can win 2 games against Boston that way, but if everyone else shows up, I think we can steal one (because it's not like they'd be expecting it)

i still feel if both these teams show up and play their best game, the cavs win, but who the hell knows if that cavs team will ever show up.

something's wrong with lebron, i refuse to believe that guy just had a bad game, i think we've all seen enough of him to know.

i think it's more than the elbow, i think something else is wrong.

Doesn't NJ have 2 more years in a crappy building in Newark before they move to Brooklyn? I doubt LBJ wants to spend the next two years going through that.

i think someone needs to tell Lebron he hasn't won anything yet, i think his head is getting a little too big. He undermines Brown alot, which i can understand, after that many years with the same bs, i'd get tired of it too, but in his post game he actually said "i spoil alot of people with my play, so when you have 3 bad games in 7 years they stand out"....whaa? seriously, sometimes i really wonder if he thinks before talking. If there was 1 person in the world i'd want to be right now.......lebron's bookie

absolutely.

and we're all hearing about the infighting with the coach/players. it's officially rock bottom with this team and this season.

they need to hug it out, and prepare for game 6. and if i were mike brown, i make wholesale changes in the way i rotate my guys, cause it ain't workin.

i understand bringing in z, he gave you a spark last night, but some of the other choices were baffling. it was like he threw that game away when they got behind by 20 with 7 or 8 minutes left in the third. the game is far from over at that point. he treated that game like it was in the middle of january.

This guy is spot on...


CLEVELAND – This isn’t important enough to LeBron James(notes). That’s the uncompromising, unconquerable truth. Everything has come too easy to him, and he still doesn’t believe that winning championships takes a consuming, obsessive desire that borders on the maniacal. He is chasing high school and college kids on recruiting trips for his fledgling marketing company, medicating his insecurities with unending and unfolding free-agent dramas.

James is chasing Warren Buffett and Jay-Z the way he should be chasing Russell and Jordan and Bryant. He wants CEOs to bow before him, engage him as though he is a contemporary on the frontlines of industry. Only, the truth of the matter is, he’s a singular talent who’s going to watch his playoff failures start to chip away at the thing that seems to matter most to him: his marketability and magnetism.
Most of all, James is forever selling something of himself – an ideal, an image, a possibility. Something nebulous, something promised. He’s chasing a global platform, the bright, blinking billion-dollar fortune, and he’s largely gotten the natural order of things backward.

Stop strutting, stop preening, stop stomping away as an ungracious winner, a sore loser, and win something, LeBron.

Win something now.

No more excuses. Not now, not after this biblical bottoming out that pushes the Cleveland Cavaliers to the brink of an unthinkable collapse. And yet, after Tuesday’s ferocious failure of his professional career, the encompassing embarrassment of a 120-88 Game 5 loss to the Boston Celtics, James dismissed his unthinkably poor performance with this colossal cop-out: “I spoil a lot of people with my play. When you have three bad games in seven years, it’s easy to point them out.”

Who is he to be indignant after he gave a playoff game away? What’s he ever won to be so smug to the masses? That’s what drives the Celtics crazy about James. Eventually, he will understand his greatness isn’t measured on the hit-and-runs through NBA cities across a long season. It’s measured now, in the teeth of the battle, when a tiny guard, Rajon Rondo(notes), has stolen his stage and nearly a series.

Somewhere, the whispers of the game’s greatest talents became a murmur louder and louder: James still doesn’t understand part of the price of greatness is inviting the burden on yourself and sparing those around you. He missed 11 of 14 shots. James didn’t score a basket until the third quarter. He was terrible, just terrible, and yet James couldn’t bring himself to say the worst home playoff loss in franchise history began and ended with him.

For all of James’ unselfishness on the floor, he can still be so selfish off it. They could’ve lined up the greatest players in the game’s history Tuesday night in the primes of their championship lives, and there isn’t one of them who would’ve deflected and deferred like the self-proclaimed King James. They would’ve been livid and they would’ve put it on themselves. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant(notes). Tim Duncan(notes) and, yes, Shaquille O’Neal(notes).

They had titles, and they would’ve mutilated themselves for public consumption. James is too cool, too stubborn and maybe too self-unaware. This is on me, they would’ve told you, and, I’ll get us out of this. They would’ve made sure teammates and opponents, fans and enemies understood. They would’ve made sure the whole world understood: This isn’t how an MVP plays in the playoffs. This isn’t how he lets a legacy linger in limbo. What you heard out of James was self-righteous: “I put a lot of pressure on myself to go out and be great and the best player on the court. When I don’t, I feel bad for myself.”

This wasn’t the night to feel bad for himself. There’s been enough pity for him in this series. As much as anything these past two years, the Cavaliers have taken on James’ persona: Entitled, arrogant and expectant that the sheer divine right of his greatness will win them a ring. Only, the Celtics are proud, old champions arisen out of the rubble and on the brink of closing out the Cavaliers on Thursday night at the Boston Garden. No one saw this coming on Tuesday night, the surgical removal of the Cavaliers’ hearts surrounded with a stunned silence that devolved into the debris of boos.

James lorded over one of the most agonizing, humiliating losses a championship contender ever endured. So much comes with this collapse, bookended with decades of a city’s championship sports futility set against the free agency for the son it spawned in neighboring Akron.

This collapse will cost people jobs. This will change the course of the franchise. Where’s James going? And as job security goes, the CEO of British Petroleum has more going for him than Mike Brown right now. Forty feet away Tuesday night, Kentucky’s John Calipari was sitting under the basket with Leon Rose, the agent Cal shares with his buddy, LeBron.

James invites these storylines into the gymnasium, this drama, and leaves everyone else to live with the consequences. Owner Dan Gilbert has fostered a culture of permissiveness with James that hasn’t served him or the franchise.

The Cavs live in fear of him, his moods, his whims, and it’s the reason no one ever tells him the truth: Hey ’Bron, you looked childish for refusing to shake the Orlando Magic’s hands last season. You sounded small grumbling about criticism for your wildly up-and-down play in this series. James walked out of the Q on Tuesday night and there’s no guarantee he’ll ever return as a Cavalier here.
The Cavs need consecutive wins over the Celtics to keep alive Shaquille O’Neal’s goal to “win a ring for the King.”
(NBAE/ Getty Images)

Yet make no mistake: James has enough around him. This team isn’t perfect, isn’t assured of beating the Los Angeles Lakers, but it has no business losing in the conference semifinals – never mind failing to even compete. And, yes, as much as ever, this is on James.

He invited all this drama about walking out on his hometown team this summer, and now free agency hung over the Q like an anvil. Here’s a city that’s waited 46 years for a championship, a town that reacts viciously to the sheer suggestion that James could leave for New York this summer. These fans have been much better to James than he’s been to them. It hasn’t been the media that’s built his role in the summer of 2010 to a crescendo, but James himself. He constantly manipulated it with suggestions and hints and wink-winks to New York.

James proclaimed July 1, 2010, as the biggest day in the history of basketball, ramping up suspense of his ultimate decision: Do I stay or do I go? What it has done is throw more palpable pressure in the air, more desperation, and it’s come back to haunt him now.

James says the Cavaliers know all about what it takes, but he knows about winning in the regular season. This is a different time, a different game. Three bad games in seven years? He’s kidding himself. Now, he has a championship cast around him. Now, he’ll be judged. No one gives a damn what he did in the regular season.

Perhaps sooner than later, he’s going to get his coach fired for losing this series. Or the next to Orlando. He’s mocked Brown for acting too angry with the Game 2 thrashing, but the coach understood what James refused to acknowledge until Tuesday night: The Cavs have been wildly inconsistent in these playoffs and they’re nowhere near playing championship ball.

Across the regular season, James can play hard, let his talent take over and embark on all the side gigs that gobble his time.

This isn’t a part-time thing. Winning everything takes a single-minded, obsessive devotion. Michael Jordan had it. Kobe Bryant does, too. They didn’t want to win championships, they had to win them. They needed them for validation and identity and, later, they became moguls. LeBron James is running around recruiting college kids to his marketing company. He picks up the phone, tells them, “This is the King,” and makes his pitch to be represented in his stable. Think Kobe would ever bother with this? Or Michael? Not a chance when they were on the climb, not when they still had a fist free of rings.

LeBron James is on the clock now, and Game 6 in Boston could be for his legacy in Cleveland. He has been prancing around the edges for too long now, angling for a transcendent existence he believed his brand could bring him. Only, it’s all a mirage. It’s all vapor until he does the heavy lifting that comes now, that comes in the shadows of Magic and Larry, Michael and Kobe. This isn’t about selling an image to Madison Avenue, about pushing product through all those dazzling plays across the winter months. This is an MVP’s time, his calling, and there was LeBron James standing in the middle of the Cavaliers’ locker room at 11:25 p.m., staring in a long mirror, fixing his shirt before the long walk down the corridor to the interview room.

James stood there for five seconds and 10 and maybe now 20, just staring into the mirror, just taking a long, long look at himself. For the first time in his career, the first time when it’s all truly on him, maybe the sport stood and stared with him. All hell breaking loose, all on the line now. Forget everything in his life, all the make-believe nonsense, Game 6 and maybe Game 7 will promise to serve as the most honest hours of his basketball

Link