DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Cavs Offseason Continued Continued

We were pretty lax in twitter reports and masked profanity, but let's stop that now.

Continue the discussion here.

If I can beg your indulgence for one more .......

If not, then please delete ......


Just because it isn't really sports related and it's kinda funny .......... and it's not an "actual sports report" .......

Windhorst today reported: "I can't stop laughing because now the world knows about Dan Gilbert's love of caps lock and quotation marks in emails."


Gilbert and I must be related somehow. lol


Anyhow ..... Mo Williams reacts:

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2010/07/mo_williams_reacts_on_twitter.html

Mo Williams reacts on Twitter, says LeBron should've spared Cleveland
Published: Friday, July 09, 2010, 6:16 AM Updated: Friday, July 09, 2010, 6:22 AM

While LeBron James left fans in Cleveland bitter and disgusted, no doubt his teammates are experiencing mixed his emotions as well. James, after all, hosted several of them during his basketball camp earlier this week while keeping them in the dark of his decision.
Cavaliers guard Mo Williams, who hasn't been shy about his love for Cleveland, seemingly went through the five stages of grief on his Twitter account early this morning, as he processed life without LeBron James.

1. Denial


I can't believe this is really real. This is surreal. So many emotions on one man decision. I wonder what is our next move. 1:38 a.m.

2. Anger


The only thing, and I mean the only thing I disagree with is.... If he knew somewhere else was the destination. He should have spared cle 1:43 a.m.

3. Bargaining


Love u bron and always will. I knowu made your decision for the rt reason but we could have got it done here and u would have enjoyed it in cle a whole lot more. But I have no idea what went on behind closed doors but I can sit here today and say that I am truly blessed 1:46 a.m.

4. Depression


The person that I feel most sorry for is mike brown. He is a really good coach. 2:28 a.m.

5. Acceptance


Well, after I wake up in the morning its a new day and I can embark on the new journey in my life. Love all my fans. But we will make it thru. *Expletive* 2:25 a.m.

http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2010/07/dan_gilbert_says_lebron_james.html

Dan Gilbert says LeBron James 'quit' during the playoffs
Published: Friday, July 09, 2010, 6:18 AM Updated: Friday, July 09, 2010, 6:20 AM

CLEVELAND - Angered and betrayed by LeBron James' decision to leave for Miami, Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert accused the NBA's MVP of quitting during the playoffs.

Gilbert, who posted a letter to Cavs fans on the team's website shortly after James announced his plans to sign with the Heat, told The Associated Press late Thursday night that it's "accountability time" for James.

"He has gotten a free pass," Gilbert said in a phone interview with The AP. "People have covered up for (James) for way too long. Tonight we saw who he really is."

Gilbert feels James quit on the Cavs during their second-round series against the Boston Celtics, who rallied from a 2-1 deficit to eliminate Cleveland.

"He quit," Gilbert said. "Not just in Game 5, but in Games 2, 4 and 6. Watch the tape. The Boston series was unlike anything in the history of sports for a superstar."

The Cavaliers were beaten by 32 points in Game 5. During the game, James appeared distracted and uninterested, often glaring at Cleveland's coaches as the Cavs tried to foul to get back into the game in the second half. James also made some puzzling postgame comments, saying he had "spoiled" people with his play over seven seasons.

Gilbert also said he believes James quit on the Cavs in Game 6 of their series in 2009 against Orlando.

"Go back and look at the tape," he said. "How many shots did he take?"

Gilbert, who has owned the Cavs for five years, said he was most disappointed by James' behavior in the months leading up to the superstar's announcement that he is going to Miami to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Gilbert said James never returned a single phone message or text since the end of the season and that the Cavs were not informed of James' decision until he went on the air.

Gilbert said Rich Paul, one of James' business partners, called the Cavs moments before the announcement.

"LeBron James needs to go to another team with two superstars already so he can win a championship," Gilbert said. "We will win a championship before (the Heat) do."

Gilbert said he now wishes he had done some things differently with James, who spent seven seasons with the Cavs.

"It's not about him leaving," Gilbert said. "It's the disrespect. It's time for people to hold these athletes accountable for their actions. Is this the way you raise your children? I've been holding this all in for a long time."

In Miami, Wade said he was stunned by Gilbert's comments.

"I think I'm happy that I have the owner that I have here in Miami," Wade told The Associated Press late Thursday night. "I'm happy Micky Arison is my owner. I couldn't believe it. I'm speechless. It's very unfortunate and I think it makes LeBron that much better about his decision.

"We knew 'Bron would take some backlash," Wade added in his interview with AP. "I told him he's a strong man for it."

http://www.cantonrep.com/newsnow/x909200431/LeBron-is-now-the-king-of-what-exactly

"Lebron is now the King of what, exactly?"

By Jim Litke
The Associated Press
Posted Jul 09, 2010 @ 12:57 AM
Last update Jul 09, 2010 @ 01:31 AM
CLEVELAND — The King?

Of what, exactly?

Hype? Wasting time? Stacking the deck?

Check, check and double-check.

So LeBron James is going to Miami. Man, did he ever pick the right place to win. Just don’t forget why people say to be careful what you wish for.

Because when James finally does win it all, chances are good he will be as much a follower as a leader, a bigger, better, badder version of Scottie Pippen, another prince who collected a fistful of rings yet was never really cut out to be king.

He could do worse, of course. The shame is James could have done better.

A real king would have dug in his heels in Cleveland and redoubled his effort to patch the cracks in the foundation of a franchise that’s already spent more than seven seasons and hundreds of millions trying to build him a throne. That’s what Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant did. Maybe even give the Cavs a hometown discount, taking less money than he was worth to free up cap space down the road, the way Tim Duncan did.

Not LeBron.

He’s lighting out for South Beach to hang with superfriends Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, while the rest of us recover from an hour-long infomercial that was conceived and choreographed by his advisers, then aided and abetted by ESPN. The announcement was expected to draw in audiences rivaling Tiger Woods’ apology and the O.J. verdict — the two biggest non-sports sports stories ever. And just like those two, James is probably the only guy coming out of it who actually believed what he was saying.

Even the kids from the local Boys & Girls Club stuck in the background as props — who would have guessed that wealthy Greenwich, Conn., even had a chapter? — knew that just because James has a tattoo that says “Loyalty” doesn’t make it so.

The most telling moment came when he was asked whether it would have been “sweeter” winning a championship in Cleveland, just down the interstate from Akron, the town James grew up in.

“I think championships are championships, and you can’t look at it as saying, ’Well, if I would have did it somewhere else, it would have been sweeter,”’ he replied. “Because, I mean, it’s a championship. A lot of people don’t get there.

“When you get to that point and you win a championship, you can’t say, ’Wow, I wish I would have did it somewhere else.’ That makes no sense to me, because you put a lot of hard work into it to get to that point and I have not got there yet.

“But I’m going to do everything in my power,” he added, “to lead that Miami franchise to a second one.”

If nothing about the announcement surprised Wade, that last part should qualify as news. He’d never admit viewing Bosh and even James as sidekicks — officially they’re equals, for the moment anyway — but it’s telling that they wound up coming to him. Plus, Wade was the man in Miami when the Heat won their first title, although he had plenty of help from Shaquille O’Neal.

Yet that arrangement worked precisely because Shaq had already won three championships in Los Angeles. Deferring to Wade at crunch time was not only smart — the kid was just hitting his stride — it made Shaq look like an even bigger man. Contrast that with James, who brings the same outsized ego but zero championships to the table. There will never be enough credit to go around.

Russian billionaire and new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov may not be an NBA insider yet, but he already knows how the game is played off the court. Getting in what is among the first of a thousand expected digs at the move, he predicted even before the announcement that joining the bona fide All-Stars awaiting James in Miami would “diminish his brand.”

Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy was even more pointed.

“Come on, an hour long? OK, it takes 15 seconds to say, ’I’ve decided to stay in Cleveland.’ But we’ve got another 59 minutes and 45 seconds to, what, promote LeBron James? As if,” Van Gundy told the local newspaper, “we don’t do that enough”

Frankly, that’s about all anybody remotely connected to the NBA did for the last two years. Attention hound that he’s become, James milked every last drop. He wore a New York Yankees hat to a playoff game against the Indians in Cleveland and a Dallas Cowboys cap to a Browns’ season opener.

James said that he’ll always consider Akron home, which is convenient, since he also has it’s area code, 330, tattooed on another part of his hide. But outside his house, he’s likely to be viewed with the same kind of disdain that northeast Ohioans reserved for Art Modell, the NFL owner who ripped the Browns franchise out of Cleveland and ran all the way to Baltimore with it.

“You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal,” Cavs owner Dan Gilbert said in an open letter to fans on the team’s website. He went on to guarantee the Cavaliers would win a championship before James did: “You can take it to the bank.”

Maybe it hurts more because James is one of their own, maybe the best athlete most of them will ever see, and now even he doesn’t want to be there.

Some king he turned out to be.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/13618...t_photo_content

LeBron comes out looking like coward, not king
July 8, 2010
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist


What a fraud. What a scared little kid. Greatest player of all time? This guy? Nope. Not now. Not ever. Not even if LeBron James wins five rings in the next five years -- which he should.


He'll win those rings, but it'll be beneath him. It'll be beneath a player of his talent to win a title with -- and only with -- fellow free-agent mercenaries Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. When LeBron James wins the 2011 NBA title with the Miami Heat, it'll be like a breast augmentation for Jessica Biel. Sure, she'd be even sexier with bigger boobs. I guess. But it wouldn't be sincere. She'd no longer be real.

Same with LeBron and the rings he's about to start collecting. They'll be flashy. Stupid people will be fooled. But not me. Hopefully not you. Because those rings he's about to win, they won't be real. They'll be trinkets. Worthless. When he's not wearing them, he can store them in a box of Cracker Jack.

Miami Heat fans, you're forgiven for not liking my opinion. Seriously, I get it. You just landed the biggest free-agent combo in the history of sports. Your team won 47 games last season ... and just added Chris Bosh and LeBron James. If everyone stays healthy, your team could win 77 games next season. So you're excited. I get it. Be happy. You've done nothing wrong. This isn't about you.

This is about him.

I can barely write his name, I'm so disappointed in him. James just gave up his claim to all-time greatness. He obviously doesn't know it, but that's what he did. He just put an asterisk by the titles he'll win in Miami, because when he wins those five titles in the next five years, we'll know he couldn’t do it like Michael Jordan did it. He couldn't do it like Tim Duncan did it. He couldn't do it like Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson or Hakeem Olajuwon did it. Hell, he couldn't even do it like Kobe Bryant did it.

Those guys played the hand they were dealt, and they made it work. Some of those guys were dealt better hands than others, but they weren't all playing royal flushes. Some of them were holding a bunch of 3's and 4's until their team found Scottie Pippen or Joe Dumars hiding in the deck. LeBron couldn't do it that way. He couldn't attract anyone to Cleveland. You saw what happened this offseason: Bosh chose Miami. Carlos Boozer chose Chicago. Joe Johnson stayed in Atlanta. There are rules as far as the salary cap goes, but there are sign-and-trade possibilities to get around those rules, and anyway, things can get done if the players want it done. But nobody wanted to join LeBron in Cleveland, so he sold out and hopped on Pat Riley's bandwagon in Miami.

Now, winning a title isn't simply a possibility for James. It's a mandate. This is the Biggest Three, the likes of which we haven't seen in the NBA since the Lakers of the 1980s had Magic, Kareem and Worthy. Don't tell me about the Celtics' Big Three, because that's a joke compared to this one. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett are all future Hall of Famers, and they won their title, but only Pierce was in his prime when that trio came together in 2007. This trio now? Bosh and Wade and James? Average age: 26. They're future Hall of Famers, and they're in their prime.

Los Angeles had a better supporting cast than whatever pieces Miami will be able to put around its trio, but as far as star power goes, Miami is like the Lakers of the 1980s. The Lakers traded for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975. They drafted Magic Johnson in 1979. They drafted James Worthy in 1982. That took some work, some patience and, sure, some luck. But that's how it happened in Los Angeles.

How did it happen for Miami? They pulled out their checkbook and convinced Wade to stay. They grabbed their platinum MasterCard and charged Chris Bosh. And then they hocked their grandmother's engagement ring to buy LeBron James. That's great for the Heat, really. This is not me ripping the Miami Heat, because they played by the rules and put together the NBA's best trio in a quarter-century.

This is me ripping James, because -- stupid me -- I thought he had the guts to pursue an NBA championship without taking such a blatant shortcut. But in the end, James is no different from baseball's Alex Rodriguez, whose megalomania is such that he has been photographed kissing his image in the mirror. James' megalomania is such that he became the first athlete to require an hour of prime-time television to announce his next career move.

Both were too scared to win a title the right way. After failing admirably in Seattle and then failing dishonorably in Texas, A-Rod freaked out and hooked up with the best team money could buy, the Yankees, and finally got himself that championship ring.

James failed in Cleveland. He failed admirably at first, dragging his modest little team into the 2007 NBA Finals, and then he failed dishonorably, pouting his way off the court after the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals and then disappearing in the 2010 Eastern semis. Both years the Cavaliers had the best regular-season record in the league. Neither year did they reach the NBA Finals.

James bailed. Followed the stars to South Beach. And he'll win his ring in Miami -- lots of them. Anything less than a ring-a-year for James, and this will have been a disaster. That's how high the bar should be set for the Heat while James, Wade and Bosh are in their primes. How many years do they have at that level, five? Then the Heat should win five rings.

I hope they win none.

Nothing against the Heat. Nothing against Wade or Bosh.

But LeBron James is a coward, not a king. And I can't root for a coward.

Thanks to Mike Freeman of CBS Sports for the new name for the bums in South Beach ......

"The Three Me Egos".

I think it fits.

Does Akron have those signs like so many other cities do, touting their famous sons?

Something like "Welcome to Akron, Home of Lebron James"?

If so, I hope they have televised coverage of road crews taking them down. He may still have family and a house here ...... but he can't call the area "home" anymore. He hasn't the right.

They should have a huge televised event so that LeBum can see how his "home" feels about being treated like this.

Of course, he probably doesn't care.

The bottom line is though, that he just wasn't good enough to get it done as the leader of a team, so now he has to ride coat tails to try and get it done elsewhere. All of his words and actions say the same thinng ...... "I'm just not good enough, nor capable enough, to get it done unless I am surrounded by superior talent on all sides."

It's been said before ..... but could you ever, in your wildest dreams .... EVER imagine Michael Jordan making such an admission? Could you ever imagine Michael Jordan talking about how there is no pressure on him now?

What we say in unscripted moment reveals our character .... and, in this case, the scripted one might just do an even better job.

LEbron James is on Rovers Morning Glory on wmms right now 100.7


KING

I thought it wasn't too bright of Gilbert to make such a statement. I hope it comes true, but it wasn't a very good idea. Unless he thinks it will take the Heat a couple of seasons to gear up and he wins next season (with what ?), I don't see it.

I won't be seeing it anyway. Sadly, this event has even reduced my normal enthusiasm for COLLEGE basketball too.

Anybody know who the worst team in hockey was last year, other than the Jackets ?

Did Michael Jordan leave Chicago?

Did Koby Bryant leave L.A.?

nuff said..

On this 1 thing, we agree.

Michael Jordan didn't chase the best players, he wanted to BEAT the best players.

Ouch.

Nice, well done WMMS

I loved Windy's tweet about how this was probably PR's compromise draft too

I have heard that Gilbert is not above using a "colorful metaphor" in order to get his point across.

The first draft probably used the famous "7 words you can't say on TV" more than a few times.

I read this week that the Cavs team value would tank 250 MILLION if Wade-follower left. I'd be mad too.

Caught up in al this frustration is this issue...is Dan the only one who feels Wade-follower was disconnected or actually quit in the playoffs?

This isn't the first time he's quit on us.

We are all Witness to his majesty the Quitness.

I'm not a big basketball fan, I'll watch a game here and there of the Cavs, and I'll watch some of the playoffs and Finals with them in it. So to me, it doesn't affect much other than LeBron was fun to watch. Funny, I'll probably see him even more now in Miami.

But the way he did this is just wrong. If you think you can do better elsewhere, by all means, do what you need to to. But don't make a media circus out of it, and play it up to advertise your own name. The media would make a big deal about him moving anyway, no need for a "special" and all the extra hype. That's just a classless way of taking care of business.

Karma is a *****, and it always comes back to haunt you.

the other thing is.

i was never a big person on the lbj=mj discussions. i knew they were there, but i was always the guy that said he might be able to get to that status one day, but for now, he doesn't even play the same position.

well, bailing on your team to go play with 2 all stars is something michael jordan would have never done. he built 6 championships (6 straight in the years he played) he didn't go in front of the entire country to announce he wasn't man enough to do his own. michael jordan was an all time jerk, a bad teammate at times, but he never bailed on chicago when they couldn't get past the celtics or past the pistons. that's why he has a "brand"

the "brand" comes after the sucess.

Screw political correctness and public relations propriety.... I absolutely LOVED what Gilbert wrote and I don't question the wisdom of a single word of it.
They were the right words at the right time... Dead On.

I seriously doubt that Gilberts primary concern is the $250 million value of the franchise.. his primary concern is that he is a business man who probably does business with other respectable people... and now this 25 year old punk, that Gilbert bent over backwards to take care of, who has never won anything in his life, with the complicit support of ESPN, dragged him, his franchise, and his adopted city over the coals for TWO YEARS before going on national teleivision and humiliating them.

Had LeBron left like a man, had he shown Gilbert the respect he deserves, had he walked in and told him face to face, "I enjoyed it here but I'm going to Miami and here's why" then I doubt Gilbert fires off that letter. I'm sure he'd be disappointed but it wouldn't have garnered anywhere near this reaction.

I'd be pretty ticked if a kid I protected, paid, opened doors for, was supportive of, offered the most I could offer just up and walked out sticking a knife in my back on a nationally televised program and causing my net worth to take a $250 million dollar hit...

i couldn't agree more.

and you know this wasn't a decision he made yesterday, last weekend, last week or last month. this was a long time in the making. and he strung us all along. he strung other teams along.

and now it does kinda make sense although i still have a hard time believing it, but yeah, if he wins a title in cleveland, he couldn't possibly leave, right?

i just can't believe a player would tank on purpose like that. we'll never know for sure, but maybe that's for the better.

Very true, can't leave if we are coming off a title run.

it's funny we were banging on chris bosh a few days ago for snubbing cleveland, when in reality, at least he let toronto know immediately.

What's our current cap situation post Lebron?