2020-2021 Cavs Season General Discussion

["MVP"]

Winning cultures are overrated. They matter in the context of a stable organization and great coaching that can squeeze blood from stones. That is a very long-term endeavor. The Cavs have not demonstrated that it can foster that environment.

Ultimately the best thing OKC can do for SGA is give him an all-star running mate to win with for the next decade. Whether they won few extra games is not going to change his or the franchises trajectory for the good.

Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love did not need winning cultures to succeed. They need a talented roster.

Are they?

Teams that have prioritized winning cultures:
- Brooklyn: Got KD & Kyrie to go there over the Knicks.
- Miami: Quickly rebuilt themselves after losing LeBron & Wade. Got Butler to join them. Overachieved.
- Indiana: Ravaged with injuries this year, but have overachieved since the Paul George trade.
- Toronto: Put themselves in a great position to trade for Kawhi then win a championship. Have overachieved every year until the wheels fell off this year. Seem to consistently find guys off the scrapheap that come in and overachieve.
- Utah: Have become the hallmark of stability in an ever-changing league and will likely finish with the best record in the league despite not drafting in the top 10 in the last ten years.
- Denver: A legit title contender with an awesome young core with no top-5 picks and only Murray as a top-10 pick.
- Portland: Probably will never win a championship due to lack of decent wings around Dame & CJ, but I think most franchises would trade accolades over the last decade with them.
- San Antonio: The hallmark of winning. Now without Kawhi, Duncan, etc. and still showing that they have a bright future with a number of No. 29 picks leading their youth movement.

The Suns have been a loser franchise for a decade plus and finally got out of it by trading for one of the top few winning culture shifters in the league.

The Knicks are finally trying to shift their culture after a decade of embarrassment.

The only team in playoff contention that yearly tanking has paid off for is the Sixers.

Then you have a lot of the same loser franchises consistently praying for ping pong balls.

If your argument is that there are two ways to win in the NBA––drafting no-brainer superstars at the top of the draft and building around them or having a savvy management––and the Cavs have no chance at the latter, we're kind of screwed from the jump. But personally, I'd rather root for the Cavs to become a stable, savvy franchise rather than pray. And to me, that starts now.

No point in purposely tanking. Hope we get a top-4 pick whether we have the 5th best odds or 8th best odds, but I want to see continuous progress from our young core and savviness from our FO.

 

[ansatsusha80]

I don't know what people are complaining about. Altman has done nothing to fast track the rebuild. They're playing Dean Wade and Lamar Stevens significant minutes. If the Cavs win too many games down the stretch, it's because the young players they already have are better than people think. Which was the point of the rebuild to begin with.

And while this draft has some nice prospects, we wouldn't be missing out on a LeBron James at the top. So if the players they have are too good for a top 5 pick, you try to find a George or Leonard or Giannis or Jokic or Mitchell wherever they end up picking.

At some point, this organization needs to start winning games. You can't lose all the time and expect Sexton, Garland and Okoro to be happy with it.

People want the team to tank but get upset that the team loses every night. I don't understand that logic at all...Then,want to shit on Koby for drafting those three players.

Tanking is for organizations that's too lazy to do their homework and put a team together. I rather the team win games and help young guys unlock their potential.

 

[OptimusPrime]

You need talent to win in the NBA. Some of that is smart scouting, but on average a higher pick will be better than a lower one. If you need more talent, you need to draft high and win as much as you can on the margins.

We have been doing the latter. We still need to do the former.

Anyone saying tanking doesn't need to work needs to look at statistics again. Your recency bias says we got jumped two years in a row, so clearly having a bottom 5 record isn't key to good lottery luck. But each draw is independent, they are not pseudorandom. We need to be going for the position that maximizes our chance at a superstar.

I am really not sure why there's a debate here. The best decision is to tank and try to get out hands on a blue chip talent.

So bench Sexton and Garland. And replace the coach that wants no part of it, replace the half the roster that mutinies, and pay the fine from the league. All to pick from a group of guys that most of whom won't be better than several of the guys drafted after them. It's the way to make sure they get a top pick in 2022, which is apparently the goal of the sport. Let's do it.

 

[Pioneer10]

I am not going to necessarily disagree, but this argument makes it sound like we're at the beginning of the season and that Sexton and Garland haven't played.

They played all year. The Cavs didn't tank this season they had a run and then reality and injuries caught up with them. Their development won't be stunted for years if they aren't playing winning ball for the last six weeks of season. They aren't mysteries, and they aren't First Teamers on the verge either.

People act like the Cavs have been rebuilding forever. They have been in the Lottery of their own accord for only two years. Particularly when the cupboard was as bare as it was when LeBron left. The Cavs were in the worst possible position.

Those other teams are not informative examples. Portland drafted a core of good players from the Lotto, they weren't reaches. They were fortunate. Lillard was a star player from the get go. And they were coming off a very mixed ten year run. They have not been to the Finals with Lillard and are actually trapped in the moderate success treadmill. Indiana had bad years preceding Paul George and two after they traded him, but had their rebuild jumpstarted by the fruits of the PG13 trade.

And yeah, there are no guarantees in the Draft but that isn't a justification either. As low as the odds are of wining the top pick, or finding a franchise player after five, or whatever, the odds of the Cavs getting a franchise player outside the Draft are much, much lower. As in non-existent.

I think I have more of a problem with how people's arguments are couched in why the team is better off without a high Lotto pick, than the actual reasons. A lot of it is very wishful thinking. Not you though.

Moderate playoff success treadmill is perfectly fine for a small market team. It does give you a shot for the title if the right move comes along and you have built the assets to make it happen. You have teams like Detroit and Toronto being clear examples of pretty good teams with good but not superstar talent able to pull the trigger on a deal that puts them over the top. In Detroit's case it was Rasheed and then Toronto with Leonard.

Nothing is guaranteed to work - Indiana has done an excellent job drafting/trades and they got hit with bad injury luck. Portland has been unlucky to be in the West but I'd rather be rooting for a team that is consistently good then one who just hoping to be in the right spot in the lottery.

 

[Sebastian]

So bench Sexton and Garland. And replace the coach that wants no part of it, replace the half the roster that mutinies, and pay the fine from the league. All to pick from a group of guys that most of whom won't be better than several of the guys drafted after them. It's the way to make sure they get a top pick in 2022, which is apparently the goal of the sport. Let's do it.

You don't have to use a reductive argument to make your point.

No one suggests that, no one wants that at present.

 

[AllforOne]

You need talent to win in the NBA. Some of that is smart scouting, but on average a higher pick will be better than a lower one. If you need more talent, you need to draft high and win as much as you can on the margins.

We have been doing the latter. We still need to do the former.

Anyone saying tanking doesn't need to work needs to look at statistics again. Your recency bias says we got jumped two years in a row, so clearly having a bottom 5 record isn't key to good lottery luck. But each draw is independent, they are not pseudorandom. We need to be going for the position that maximizes our chance at a superstar.

I am really not sure why there's a debate here. The best decision is to tank and try to get out hands on a blue chip talent.

Sure it is, if you look at it from a narrow and overly simplistic point of view. It’s a point of view that makes a lot of specious assumptions, including:

- Stars can only be found at the top of a draft;
- Player development is completely irrelevant - i.e., young players can lose and lose and lose, then when that mythical tipping point of talent is reached, they can suddenly turn into winners;
- Losing has no corrosive effect on those players, coaches, or owners;
- It also will have no effect on the organization’s desirability to prospective free agents, or to the team’s own young players when those rookie contracts expire.

In other words, all you have to do is go against every competitive instinct for several years, still get the ping-pong balls to fall the right way, and then maybe you’ll have a sufficiently good team. Maybe. Never mind that the next team to follow this path to a championship will be the first.

 

[2 For The Brew]

I am really not sure why there's a debate here. The best decision is to tank and try to get out hands on a blue chip talent.

“To tank” is not a decision.

What, precisely, do you want the management of the team to do? Try to lose instead of win? How is that done? Bench better players? Put poor rotations on the floor? Instruct players to not try and win games?

Or we could just trade away good players for draft picks. Then when we eventually draft a superstar we’ll have a crap team around him.

There‘s a debate because not everyone drinks the Sam Hinkie koolaid. Sacrificing everything for more ping pong balls makes no sense to me.

 

[Sebastian]

At some point, this organization needs to start winning games. You can't lose all the time and expect Sexton, Garland and Okoro to be happy with it.

People want the team to tank but get upset that the team loses every night. I don't understand that logic at all...Then,want to shit on Koby for drafting those three players.

Tanking is for organizations that's too lazy to do their homework and put a team together. I rather the team win games and help young guys unlock their potential.

No one goes into a Draft saying "Oh, I want to fuck up."

And tanking has only been a marginal tool for the past few years.

Hinkie gets a lot shit, but had things gone slightly different he'd still have a job there because ultimately he had his shot to get the players he needed and whiffed on them. He failed in the second part of the equation.

 

[Sebastian]

“To tank” is not a decision.

What, precisely, do you want the management of the team to do? Try to lose instead of win? How is that done? Bench better players? Put poor rotations on the floor? Instruct players to not try and win games?

Or we could just trade away good players for draft picks. Then when we eventually draft a superstar we’ll have a crap team around him.

There‘s a debate because not everyone drinks the Sam Hinkie koolaid. Sacrificing everything for more ping pong balls makes no sense to me.

Low-key tanking, which is what the Cavs have been doing is made so much more difficult by the teams doing exactly what you are suggesting.

All things being equal, if the NBA came down on teams sitting starters for no reason, this discussion would be moot.

 

[Sebastian]

Are they?

Teams that have prioritized winning cultures:
- Brooklyn: Got KD & Kyrie to go there over the Knicks.
- Miami: Quickly rebuilt themselves after losing LeBron & Wade. Got Butler to join them. Overachieved.
- Indiana: Ravaged with injuries this year, but have overachieved since the Paul George trade.
- Toronto: Put themselves in a great position to trade for Kawhi then win a championship. Have overachieved every year until the wheels fell off this year. Seem to consistently find guys off the scrapheap that come in and overachieve.
- Utah: Have become the hallmark of stability in an ever-changing league and will likely finish with the best record in the league despite not drafting in the top 10 in the last ten years.
- Denver: A legit title contender with an awesome young core with no top-5 picks and only Murray as a top-10 pick.
- Portland: Probably will never win a championship due to lack of decent wings around Dame & CJ, but I think most franchises would trade accolades over the last decade with them.
- San Antonio: The hallmark of winning. Now without Kawhi, Duncan, etc. and still showing that they have a bright future with a number of No. 29 picks leading their youth movement.

The Suns have been a loser franchise for a decade plus and finally got out of it by trading for one of the top few winning culture shifters in the league.

The Knicks are finally trying to shift their culture after a decade of embarrassment.

The only team in playoff contention that yearly tanking has paid off for is the Sixers.

Then you have a lot of the same loser franchises consistently praying for ping pong balls.

If your argument is that there are two ways to win in the NBA––drafting no-brainer superstars at the top of the draft and building around them or having a savvy management––and the Cavs have no chance at the latter, we're kind of screwed from the jump. But personally, I'd rather root for the Cavs to become a stable, savvy franchise rather than pray. And to me, that starts now.

No point in purposely tanking. Hope we get a top-4 pick whether we have the 5th best odds or 8th best odds, but I want to see continuous progress from our young core and savviness from our FO.

Correlation and Causation.

Teams win because of they have good players, or do they have good players because they win?

Brooklyn is not the best example. They brought in All-NBA players.

Indiana is perhaps the best example in the East, along with Boston before the Kyrie trade, before Brown and Tatum, who were winning playoff series thanks to Brad Stevens and system fostered by an organization with a unity of command.

Maybe it is both. Is the real trick knowing when to stop losing? When the tipping point of talent is?

If your argument is that there are two ways to win in the NBA––drafting no-brainer superstars at the top of the draft and building around them or having a savvy management––and the Cavs have no chance at the latter, we're kind of screwed from the jump. But personally, I'd rather root for the Cavs to become a stable, savvy franchise rather than pray. And to me, that starts now.

That is the thing to admit, sometimes they don't have a chance. And who wouldn't want the Cavs to become a stable savvy franchise? They have not yet shown that they are, but things can turn on a dime sometimes. The Browns are an example, but then again, they needed a top pick to get that missing piece.

 

[Sebastian]

Sure it is, if you look at it from a narrow and overly simplistic point of view. It’s a point of view that makes a lot of specious assumptions, including:

- Stars can only be found at the top of a draft;
- Player development is completely irrelevant - i.e., young players can lose and lose and lose, then when that mythical tipping point of talent is reached, they can suddenly turn into winners;
- Losing has no corrosive effect on those players, coaches, or owners;
- It also will have no effect on the organization’s desirability to prospective free agents, or to the team’s own young players when those rookie contracts expire.

In other words, all you have to do is go against every competitive instinct for several years, still get the ping-pong balls to fall the right way, and then maybe you’ll have a sufficiently good team. Maybe. Never mind that the next team to follow this path to a championship will be the first.

But specious examples go both ways:

-Stars can routinely be found at the bottom of the Draft. It happens with a frequency to justify not drafting in the Top 5 (or 10, or 6 whatever),
-Player development is everything and they can will themselves to winning despite their lack of talent,
-Players that have done nothing but lose can't learn to win,
-Winning will attract Free Agents to Cleveland

The Cavs tanked on several occasions and did win the title because of it. So it has been done.

People on both sides of the debate can make reductive arguments. The past decade seems to suggest that a team needs to both get lucky in the Lotto, or at least very good at drafting players, and also develop a winning culture. The good teams seem to know when to stop losing and start winning at just the right time.

The revision of the Lottery rules should have been a signal to teams to beef up their scouting departments. Because it is true that there is not a whole luck involved for teams that consistently find talent late in the draft. It was not luck that the Warriors got their Big 3 outside the deep Lotto. It was seeing something the others didn't.

 

[Dr No]

Of the 24 all stars this year, half were taken with he 9th pick or lower. Clearly your chances off getting an all star go up with higher draft picks, but most top 10 picks end up not being world beaters. Your odds of getting an all star after the top 10 aren’t good, but they are out there. All in all, if I’m looking for a franchise changing talent, I’d rather have 1 top 5 than 3 top 10 or worse.
The other piece of this is team makeup. There are numerous talented players whose teams stay mediocre to bad because the team is poorly put together. Once you find that franchise talent, you have to construct a team around them that can win.

 

["MVP"]

Correlation and Causation.

Teams win because of they have good players, or do they have good players because they win?

Brooklyn is not the best example. They brought in All-NBA players.

Indiana is perhaps the best example in the East, along with Boston before the Kyrie trade, before Brown and Tatum, who were winning playoff series thanks to Brad Stevens and system fostered by an organization with a unity of command.

Maybe it is both. Is the real trick knowing when to stop losing? When the tipping point of talent is?



That is the thing to admit, sometimes they don't have a chance. And who wouldn't want the Cavs to become a stable savvy franchise? They have not yet shown that they are, but things can turn on a dime sometimes. The Browns are an example, but then again, they needed a top pick to get that missing piece.

Meh. Of the top ten seeds in each conference, the only ones that purposefully tanked for multiple seasons were the Sixers, Hawks, Knicks, Bulls, Suns, and arguably the Lakers (though I think they were more incompetence than intention pre-LeBron).

The Sixers pulled off an absurd and miserable process that still required great luck that Embiid broke his leg and fell to them at 3. If their rebuild instead starred Wiggins/Parker with Simmons.... Well, they're probably still tanking. Plus, with the evened out lottery odds, Philly's tank could have had them looking at picks 5, 3, 5, and 3 instead of 3, 3, 1, and 3.

The Suns had to bring in one of the five best culture setters in the league in CP3 to get them out of their losing ways, in addition to finally having some coaching / management competency between James Jones and Monty Williams (though passing on Haliburton stings).

The Lakers get to be the exception to every rule on how to run a franchise because of their history and location. If LeBron doesn't want to live in LA, they're still in purgatory.

The Knicks have been a laughing stock for 10+ years and have only started to shift their culture. We'll see where it goes. Tanking got them nowhere.

The Bulls tank led to them getting Markkanen, Coby White, Wendell Carter, and Patrick Williams... Three guys they basically gave up on and finally a guy that looks like he has real upside. They then made a short-sighted trade for a 30-year-old center in attempt to win immediately that cost them their future assets. (To me, there's a big difference between playing to win vs. jeopardizing your future assets to moderately improve a mediocre team.)

The Hawks tank netted them Trae Young, Cam Reddish, Deandre Hunter, and Okongwu. That's a pretty meh core. I realize that part of it is bad management to trade Luka for Trae & the pick that became Cam, but regardless, add them to the list of tanking fails.

Tanking is a difficult game to play and comes with zero promises. I'm not advocating the Cavs go all out, and force Kevin Love to play 37 mpg on a bum hamstring or rush Nance back from his illness, etc. But at some point, we need to see progress with our young guys (which we have), and openly resting our core to slightly improve our odds at a top-4 pick is a losing philosophy that I cannot get behind.

 

[foucault87]

Just because there are stars that people have found outside the top of the draft does not mean it happens often. For every Jokic and Butler, there are 10 guys who didn't make it to their second contract. On the flip side, there are way more top draft picks that look like trash to start and then figure stuff out because they have the talent. Randle is a great example of that (even though I think he is one of the worst allstars in the league right now). And as it is, just getting a star isn't enough. You need a superstar if you want to contend. There are probably less than 10 guys in the league right now that qualify. Only the two I mentioned plus Steph and Dame were not taken in the top 5. It is simply true that you are more likely to find a superstar at the top.

Smart drafting and savvy management absolutely matters more than anything else, I will not contest that. Development and finding good players outside the lottery is how the team we all admire (Utah, Denver, Portland, SAS) have earned their positions. And historically, those teams have tanked in smart ways. Utah for Mitchell, Denver for Murray, Portland for Dame, and while not recent SAS once threw away a season to get one Tim Duncan.

Tanking is a totally valid strategy but you still need to not be an idiot. Otherwise you take Nik Stauskas in the lottery or do whatever the heck Phx was doing before getting CP3. Sometimes, you can still be an idiot and get the call right. Otherwise the Paxson wouldn't have taken LeBron.

Why do I think tanking is the right move for the Cavs? Look at our young talent. I love our core group of guys (SexLand, Okoro, LNJ, Allen), but none of them project to be more than a 2a or 2b guy on a contender. We still need our franchise player. This draft looks like it will have 4+ of them, compared to the 1-2 in the average draft. We don't even need to tank THAT hard. You could argue that we could trade for one or find them in free agency. But we haven't got a big budget FA since Larry Hughes (Lowry and Hayward QOs not withstanding). Trading for a blue chipper that is young happens once a decade at best (Harden being the most notable recent one). So the draft is our best chance. I would rather bet on the probability of more ping pong balls than a miracle jump from 8 to 2.

Now, you could argue that aggressive tanking builds a losing culture. I agree and I think it is fairly obvious if you look around the league. Teams like Sacramento have been trash for years and they even had a top 10 guy in Boogie for a few years. But if you take a look at the current team we have, I don't think that will happen. Players like Sexton and Okoro have the right attitude that you want to build your culture around. With them leading the way, I am confident we will be able to build the kind of hard working culture that teams like Miami have built. And beyond that, I am not advocating for a multi-year crazy tank where we bench all our young guys. I just want us to tank for the rest of this season to get good odds.

The last argument I have seen is that the team is more fun to watch when they win. I think that's a fair argument, but frankly if I am a basketball decision maker and my goal is to win a championship, how pretty the product is should not matter. I should make the decisions that maximize my ability to win.

 

[AllforOne]

At some point, this organization needs to start winning games. You can't lose all the time and expect Sexton, Garland and Okoro to be happy with it.

People want the team to tank but get upset that the team loses every night. I don't understand that logic at all...Then,want to shit on Koby for drafting those three players.

Tanking is for organizations that's too lazy to do their homework and put a team together. I rather the team win games and help young guys unlock their potential.

Exactly. The fans who advocate for tanking live in a world where the only acceptable outcome for each game is for all the young stars to put up big numbers, yet still lose closely ... and then many of them bitch about how the rebuild is going nowhere because none of the young players are winning any games.