LeBron James

What LeBron James is doing right now is just straight embarrassing.

You can call Kobe, Iverson or heck, even Westbrook what you want:
Inefficient chuckers, selfish scorers... Go ahead.

But there's one thing you can't deny they have over LeBron (at least over "present" LeBron): They compete every, f*cking single night!

I always thought that when people said LeBron is no leader, just "Robin" next to "Batman" and all this stuff, they were out of their mind and didn't know what they were talking about. I mean, this guy was the best player in the world the past 4 years, got his team to the finals for 4 straight years, won 2 championships...
He can be the one who leads your team.

But his current attitude is just so shitty and counterproductive... I honestly don't know what to think anymore.
Yes, he can still play the game of basketball. But he's not the mentor, the inspiration, the leader he thinks he is.

I am still of the mindset that when the chips are on the table in the playoffs, Lebron will up his game and produce.

That said, if he does indeed want Blatt out, this regular season might be hard to watch. His body language and effort level is hard to defend at the moment.

KI4MVP said:

so you think we were regressing when we beat the Nets, Grizzlies and Timberwolves by an average of 13 points? Before tonight's game we were 4-1 in the 5 games since the hawks game. During those 5 games we've lost two starters, one for a few games, the other for the season.

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Absolutely. The win against the Nets and Wolves (and Magic) were sloppy affairs that were decided far too late in the game. The final scores are meaningless as a gauge as they were playing like shit for three and a half quarters. The Grizz were hobbled and if Zach Randolph had played the Cavs would have lost the game by a good margin. There is a clear trajectory of shit.

Injuries suck but there is more than enough talent on the court to beat the dregs of the league. Except now they are barely doing that anymore.

nikolajz1 said:

I think Lebron actually thinks he's a great leader just because he has rings. Probably hurting this team a ton because of that ego.

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It's not just that. He just talks like he's giving it his all on the court while pretending like his teammates aren't playing hard enough. He likes to play the victim role for far too long. He's always yelling at his teammates to play better on both ends, but he's been in "chill" mode since the season started and no one has the balls to call him out for his lackluster effort on both ends except for Windy of all people.

Gilbert is back to being his lapdog once again, but he knows he has to suck it up and in order to have a successful team, he needs LeBron and his inflated ego. LeBron is running the show just like old times. LeBron is a lot like Dwight Howard. They're both so sensitive when it comes to people not liking them or criticizing them. Part of the reasons why LeBron didn't performed well in 2011 was because he had a mental breakdown due to the fact that he was forced to played a role that he wasn't.

A lot of players would've embraced the "Me vs the world" challenging role, but LeBron is simply not cut out to be that guy. Sometimes the eye-test doesn't lie. Just by looking you can see the players who play like they don't give a fuck about their critics and doubters, and then you can see there are those who have the talent to play at their peak potential, but they worries more about their public image and marketing value than anything else.

Rich said:

I hate passing blame. If a player is being lazy it's on him. Blame LeBron for LeBron's laziness. Don't blame him for other guys (Kevin Love's) laziness. The entire team is made up of veteran players at this point. Irving, Love, Waiters, Miller, Marion...it's no excuse for them to dog it on defense because LeBron is. They are professionals. They get paid millions of dollars to do a job. Start doing it.

Also, what precisely is the IRving and Love "system?" And why would it be more effective than LeBron running it?

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LeBron is the fucking leader of the team. Leaders lead by example and he isn't. If a platoon is performing like shit, and the LT is a dirtbag, you bet your ass the problem starts at the top.

The system is Blatt's system, which is run to some effect when LeBron allows it to. It is what shows up when he isn't on the court and in first quarters. It is the system that usually gets the Cavs a good lead that is later squandered by poor defense and the implementation of LeISO.

It's not the "Irving and love system" it's the Blatt system. Not saying that is or isn't better than Lebron doing whatever the hell he wants, but it's not love and Irving versus lebron doing whatever the hell they want. You know that. You know that's what people are discussing. Lebron will still eat first and have more freedom.

Rich said:

I hate passing blame. If a player is being lazy it's on him. Blame LeBron for LeBron's laziness. Don't blame him for other guys (Kevin Love's) laziness. The entire team is made up of veteran players at this point. Irving, Love, Waiters, Miller, Marion...it's no excuse for them to dog it on defense because LeBron is. They are professionals. They get paid millions of dollars to do a job. Start doing it.

Also, what precisely is the IRving and Love "system?" And why would it be more effective than LeBron running it?

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Mr. Blonde said:

It's not the "Irving and love system" it's the Blatt system. Not saying that is or isn't better than Lebron doing whatever the hell he wants, but it's not love and Irving versus lebron doing whatever the hell they want. You know that. You know that's what people are discussing. Lebron will still eat first and have more freedom.

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I should have rephrased, from Love and Irving to "Everybody but LeBron's system."

Baseline Runner said:

Lebron has one bad game and you guys meltdown (Gordon Hayward, seriously?). The dude is averaging 25/7.5/5 on 50% shooting this season. Since when did those numbers deserve this kind of meltdown? With the way Love has been playing we'd be a sub .500 team without him. Cleveland fans can be the best of fans and the worst of fans at times.

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When those numbers are the worst since his rookie year.

If people want to call him "the best player in the world" and he doesn't perform like it, then he'll get called out.

King Stannis said:

LeBron is the fucking leader of the team. Leaders lead by example and he isn't. If a platoon is performing like shit, and the LT is a dirtbag, you bet your ass the problem starts at the top.

The system is Blatt's system, which is run to some effect when LeBron allows it to. It is what shows up when he isn't on the court and in first quarters. It is the system that usually gets the Cavs a good lead that is later squandered by poor defense and the implementation of LeISO.

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When he went out in the Heat game the comeback was on and they looked like a team again. Shit runs down hill. Everyone knows who is the main focus on this team. Kyrie and Love are in situations where they can't really call him on it and neither can Blatt, they know if they rock the boat they can be gone at anytime. If it comes down to Lebron going up to Gilbert and saying it's either more or fill in the blank, the other guy is on the next plane out of town. The only person that ever really called out Lebron for his bull shit was Riley and Lebron left. I hate going back to these feelings for the guy but it seems that his true colors are coming out. I thought after that letter that the guy had truly figured things out and looked back from the decision on and said to himself well shit I acted like a huge nut less douche who took the easy way out and let down an entire state. I am going to go back there and make things right no matter what. Turns out he just wanted to make some kick ass commercials and have things go his way right off the bat. He talked about the process and things taking time and he knew that. But when things started slow and looked like it might get rough he started acting like a giant douche again. Hopefully I am just reading too much into this and the team will get back to normal when Kyrie gets back and they figure out the big man rotation.

col63onel said:

When those numbers are the worst since his rookie year.

If people want to call him "the best player in the world" and he doesn't perform like it, then he'll get called out.

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Do you know how many players in the league are averaging 25/7.5/5? LeBron is the only one.

Sticker114 said:

The scariest thing about having LeBron now is that we are locked in with him now.

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The horror, having one of the best players in the history of the NBA locked in to our team.

KI4MVP said:

Do you know how many players in the league are averaging 25/7.5/5? LeBron is the only one.

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Not sure how that refutes anything I said?

I really do hate having LBJ on the team. I wish we could watch Kyrie and Dion make another strong run at 35 wins again. That would be more fun!

King Stannis said:

LeBron is the fucking leader of the team. Leaders lead by example and he isn't. If a platoon is performing like shit, and the LT is a dirtbag, you bet your ass the problem starts at the top.

The system is Blatt's system, which is run to some effect when LeBron allows it to. It is what shows up when he isn't on the court and in first quarters. It is the system that usually gets the Cavs a good lead that is later squandered by poor defense and the implementation of LeISO.

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I fully agree about Lebron needing to be a better leader. He hasn't done a good job of it from the beginning honestly.

Now, for the bolded: has it been quantified? How much of those big first quarters is due to us running Blatt's sets exactly as he wants them or running them "better" than in later quarters? Conversely, how many of those big first quarter points are off of transition runs, off of second chance points, off of improvisation (minor changes to the sets or compete changes to the sets), off of resultant FTs off of the aforementioned, off of Love just being hot in the first (other than today) and hitting a few threes rather missing them off of the same exact sets or off of the same exact improvisational, something g he plagued him in Minnu as well (his biggest production quarters were the first quarters more often hen not)? Do we know? I'm sure the staff has charted it. We don't know though.

It could be that our big offensive quarters are due to multiple factors and not just "we run the system" more. Or it could be that we run the system more.
If you look at the offense that's gotten us big leads, it isn't just the system that does it. We run a lot in transition because before the Miami and Orlando games, we were getting a lot of stops in the first allowing us to run. Our transition offense is not about running Blatt's sets. We also get open threes not always by running the particular sets, but by James's and Kyrie's improvisation. This happened today but we missed all of those open threes that would have given us a 15+ lead after a period. Their improvisation has gotten us open threes lots of times and that's not the system.

It was obvious today that our offense did break down today when we melted down at the end of the second and that's on James.

So, to sum up, I'm not sure that we can so simply say that we lose all our leads because Lebron goes ISO (the defense part seems to be true though) even if it seemed as if that was the case today and might seem to be true anecdotally from previous meltdowns. And we can't definite ely say that we're getting leads solely because we run the sets rather than not.

Zach Lowe is probably thinking about breaking this down as we speak so maybe we'll see some data. Then again, that data will depend upon one's definition of whether or not a set was "run" or if it were impossible to run due to particular defense.

KI4MVP said:

Do you know how many players in the league are averaging 25/7.5/5? LeBron is the only one.

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Just....stop.

You can make any argument with numbers.
You can't tell me LeBron James has outplayed Russell Westbrook so far this season.