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Historic Cavs Teams Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

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What is the Biggest Mistake the Cavs Have Made?

  • Not Ousting Stepien Sooner

    Votes: 2 4.0%
  • Trading Ron Harper for Danny Ferry

    Votes: 16 32.0%
  • Not Blowing Up the Team in 1994

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • Various Awful Draft Picks in the Late 90s

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Trusting Carlos Boozer

    Votes: 10 20.0%
  • Hiring Paxson as GM

    Votes: 7 14.0%
  • Trading Lotto Picks for Jiri Welsch and other Garbage

    Votes: 8 16.0%
  • Signing Larry Hughes

    Votes: 4 8.0%
  • Drafting Anthony Bennett

    Votes: 8 16.0%
  • Trading Kyrie Irving to Boston

    Votes: 11 22.0%

  • Total voters
    50
Being fair, RBB never played a game for the Cavs, was just throw in of the Jeff McGinnis/Darius Miles trade. Think he was more or less for salary purposes.

Boumtje-Boumtje rode the end of the bench for the Cavs for some of the remainder of the season but never played. He was really included in the trade because he was a gentle giant from a foreign land who Rasheed Wallace turned the whole Jail Blazers team against. They would chuck basketballs at the back of his head all the time. People forget what an asshole Wallace was for most of his career.
 
Boumtje-Boumtje rode the end of the bench for the Cavs for some of the remainder of the season but never played. He was really included in the trade because he was a gentle giant from a foreign land who Rasheed Wallace turned the whole Jail Blazers team against. They would chuck basketballs at the back of his head all the time. People forget what an asshole Wallace was for most of his career.

I thought they had waived him a couple days after the trade, but I was clearly wrong.
 
What if the Cavs had pulled the trigger on the alleged offer of Curry and Thompson for Irving after Kyrie's rookie year?

Legitimately curious on that one. Where do they end up in the following lottery? Does Drummond fall to the Cavs instead of the Pistons? And the following year, are the Cavs then good enough for someone like Giannis, CJ McCollum, or Steven Adams to be the pick?

Does LeBron rejoin the Cavs boasting a core of Curry, Thompson, Drummond, and a pick that probably isn't Wiggins?

Is the #2-#4 pick enough to get Kevin Love? If it's one of the guys above in addition to pick 2-4, I'd say it is, so there's a very long shot we see a team of :

Curry
Thompson
LeBron
Love
Drummond.

Now, I have 0 personal faith that the Cavs' dumpster fire of an organization, especially Mike Brown get anywhere near the development out of the splash brothers that Golden State did, but it's a fun rabbit hole to go down.
 
What if the Cavs had pulled the trigger on the alleged offer of Curry and Thompson for Irving after Kyrie's rookie year?

Legitimately curious on that one. Where do they end up in the following lottery? Does Drummond fall to the Cavs instead of the Pistons? And the following year, are the Cavs then good enough for someone like Giannis, CJ McCollum, or Steven Adams to be the pick?

Does LeBron rejoin the Cavs boasting a core of Curry, Thompson, Drummond, and a pick that probably isn't Wiggins?

Is the #2-#4 pick enough to get Kevin Love? If it's one of the guys above in addition to pick 2-4, I'd say it is, so there's a very long shot we see a team of :

Curry
Thompson
LeBron
Love
Drummond.

Now, I have 0 personal faith that the Cavs' dumpster fire of an organization, especially Mike Brown get anywhere near the development out of the splash brothers that Golden State did, but it's a fun rabbit hole to go down.

To answer the part about Love for a #2-#4 pick, the answer is yes.

The Wolves did not receive other offers near as good as that as any trade for Love was predicated on his re-signing the following year and Love had the power to more or less scare away good offers from teams he did not want to join. So, ultimately, the Cavs were the only real game in town due to Love's preferences.

The Wolves had other offers, but nothing as good, and nothing better was going to come along.
 
What if the Cavs had pulled the trigger on the alleged offer of Curry and Thompson for Irving after Kyrie's rookie year?

Legitimately curious on that one. Where do they end up in the following lottery? Does Drummond fall to the Cavs instead of the Pistons? And the following year, are the Cavs then good enough for someone like Giannis, CJ McCollum, or Steven Adams to be the pick?

Does LeBron rejoin the Cavs boasting a core of Curry, Thompson, Drummond, and a pick that probably isn't Wiggins?

Don't remember rumors about the bolded. seems very implausible even considering Curry was a shell of what he is now.

I do joke that we should've not released Del Curry to the expansion waivers, because if we kept him, Steph grows up wanting to play with LeBron.

Good job recognizing the butterfly effect in the following drafts, when most fans, Cavs or not, say "hurr hurr Bennett instead of Giannis hurr durr" without noting we likely don't get the #1 pick or any lotto pick at all, and hence likely no LeBron, with a better player.
 
Don't remember rumors about the bolded. seems very implausible even considering Curry was a shell of what he is now.

I do joke that we should've not released Del Curry to the expansion waivers, because if we kept him, Steph grows up wanting to play with LeBron.

Good job recognizing the butterfly effect in the following drafts, when most fans, Cavs or not, say "hurr hurr Bennett instead of Giannis hurr durr" without noting we likely don't get the #1 pick or any lotto pick at all, and hence likely no LeBron, with a better player.

The rumors were real, staff at RCF knew about it in real time. But I finally closed that loop when I listened to a local Bay Area interview with the G.S. Warriors GM, Larry Riley, from that era this summer.

They knew Monta Ellis and Steph didn't jive as a back court. They put out a lot of feelers out for Steph and Klay as a package deal for a young star, in the case of the Cavaliers it was for Kyrie. They actually had no intention to trade Steph, it was all a ruse after he had two years of on again, off again rehab on the ankle. Every time, they would use the ankle as a reason to push Monta into the trade instead.

So the Cavs wisely didn't bite when they pulled the bait and switch, but Milwaukee were so frustrated with Bogut's injuries they played ball with the Warriors, who obviously didn't include either one of Steph or Klay but achieved their goal of moving Monta.

The more you know *shooting star*
 
Lebrons first season back and then both Love then Irving go down: we would have won that title for sure if we were healthy,

Lebron's first stints don't really count: we put a worse collection of talent around a GOAT level player as you probably could have come up with. End of the day Lebron decision still clouds that Loozer fucked us over good and that cost us not only a more realistic chance at a title but likely setup Lebron leaving in the first place.

I loved Ron Harper but even if they don't make that trade and that Cavs team was going to be really fucking good I just don't see them beating a prime MJ (that pre-retirement Jordan was the best player I've ever seen)
 
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One of my two votes went towards hiring Paxson for GM and I'll go further into detail. It should be a top two choice on here.

Jim Paxson was a solid shooting guard for the Blazers for about a decade, went to two AS games. He and his more decorated brother grew up in Ohio and started at U of Dayton. Sounds like a feel good story, until it wasn't.

Named GM in 1999 after an internship of a year under Embry, he did a little good and a lot of bad. Mind you that Embry left him some quality young players like DA, Sura, Wes Person, Brevin Knight, Big Z... many would go on to very successful careers elsewhere after Paxson traded them away. An argument could easily be made that hiring a cadaver propped up in a chair would have fielded a better team by doing nothing.

Year one: Trading Potapenko for DeClerq and a first rounder that became Miller worked out because the Celtics didn't know The Ukraine Train was battling a drinking problem. That same year, he drafted Trajon Langdon in the lottery and let local kid and fan favorite Earl Boykins walk after a surprising rookie year. Langdon became a Euroleague star and Boykins would go on to score almost 5,800 points with over 2,000 assists coming off NBA benches as instant offense. The next year he shipped out Bob Sura (5,000+ points 2,000+ rebounds, 2,000+ assists career) and Derek Anderson (almost 7,000+ points, 2,000 rebounds, 2,000+ assists career) for Tractor Traylor and Lamond Murray, followed by drafting and trading 19,000+ point career scorer Jamal Crawford for Chris Mihm. The second rounder sucked. Lots of fail.

So again, to his credit in 2000 he traded DeClerq for Matt Harpring, which was a solid move. He did get out from under the Shawn Kemp contract for expiring deals, leading to a crazy season full of mercenaries who had no plan on sticking with the franchise. Now the negatives: traded away Brevin Knight and his career 4,400+ assists and 1,200+ steals for the ghost of Jim Jackson, drafted Saggy Diop, and traded Brendan Haywood's draft rights for Micheal Doleac. Haywood had over 1,100 career blocks and nearly 4,900 career rebounds playing for contenders year after year. As per usual, the second rounder sucked. Locked down Bimbo Cole's to play point guard rather than those quality guards I mentioned he moved the past two years.

We now see lots of talented young players traded for aging vets and chances taken on bad young players heading into 2002. He doubles down by trading solid young forward Harpring for aging Tyrone Hill and stretch four Jumaine Jones. He also manages to lock down Ricky Davis in a trade for one of those aging veterans who doesn't like to play for the franchise, Chris Gatling. This is important because it's one of the few good trades in his tenure. In the draft he takes Dajuan Wagner in the lottery to prove yet again he can't find any guard who could have a better career than undrafted local kid Earl Boykins no matter how many assets he blows through. But finally, a second rounder doesn't suck: Future All Star Carlos Boozer. Maybe he is learning. He isn't. He trades Wes Person (career 8,100+ points, 2,400+ rebounds, 1,200+ assists) for the ghost of Nick Anderson who retires and Matt Barnes, who also never plays a minute for the Cavs. He spends the next season dumping good players left and right, including his only good 1st round draft pick in Andre Miller, for what amounts to Darius Miles and a series of failed experiments like Smush Parker. He moves the frustrated Lamond Murray for Micheal "Yogi" Stewart and the first rounder who would become Jared Dudley... but that pick will be wasted soon. At this point the face of the franchise is still Big Z on one bad foot carrying all these scrubs.

After lucking into LeBron James in the most important lottery in draft history, they select Jason Kapono ahead of players like Kyle Korver and Luke Walton. The mistakes of the 2003-2006 Cavs until Paxson is finally fired are well-documented: Kevin Ollie, Ira Newble, JR Bremer, Kedrick Brown, Eric Williams, Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, Jeff McInnis, Eric Snow, Sasha Pavlovic, Luke Jackson, Drew Gooden, Steven Hunter, Jiri Welsch... all these scrubs cost actual assets or valuable cap space. Few had a better career than the 5'5 local kid he didn't bother to resign in his first year running the team. Sure we occasionally grabbed Varejao or Tony Battie to cloud the situation, but it was a whole truckload of fail that led to LeBron eventually leaving in disgust.

Jim Paxson, destroyer of a fairly talented young core Embry set up for him and poisoner of everything Danny Ferry tried to fix. One of the main causes of me writing about the Cavs and why they frustrate me daily, which carries through every fiber of my being today. As dark a stain as any on the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Oh God, yes.
HE is the reason I believe the Cavs blew LeBron 1.0. And somehow Dan Gilbert gets the blame, since he was basically cleaning up Paxson's mess.
 
Anthony Bennett and us not trading JJ Hickson for Amare S are my 2. Bennett especially because it was CLEAR at least to me that he was around 6 foot 6 and would not be able to play the 3 or the 4. I have no idea why we drafted him.
 
I wanted to say Bennett over Giannis... but i voted for trading Kyrie. Because everything listed prior to that eventually led to 2016.
 
Jim Paxson, destroyer of a fairly talented young core Embry set up for him and poisoner of everything Danny Ferry tried to fix. One of the main causes of me writing about the Cavs and why they frustrate me daily, which carries through every fiber of my being today. As dark a stain as any on the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
I never felt Ferry’s feet were held to the fire nearly as much as they should’ve been. Paxton was a bad GM. But, he left Ferry a ton of cap space that was brutally squandered in the summer of 2005 on Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, and Damon Jones. That summer hamstrung the Cavs for a long time.
 
So that was one the intents of my post.

Looking back, it was indeed awful that Paxson traded the pick that would become Rudy Fernandez for Jiri Welsch. Fernandez had some success in the NBA but mostly in the Spanish League. Paxson also traded the pick that became Jared Dudley for Sasha Pavlovic. Dudley is still playing, but in his career he scored over 6,600 points with over 2,800+ rebounds and 1,300+ assists.

However, in the grand scheme of things, those were just two bad moves out of about twenty during Paxson's run. DA, Sura, and Ferry all helped other franchises win championships. Plenty of solid role players were liquidated for nothing. Others like Harpring, Haywood, and Crawford helped other franchises make long playoff runs year after year.

It's is this vast body of sucky work that should easily slide into second place in this poll.

Didn't really matter who was drafted with those draft picks TBH. Going piecemeal by bleeding one draft pick and then another was just brutal. instead if you had those picks and grouped them together maybe you could have actually pulled a sign and trade for a proven player not some trash like Welsh and Pav's.
 
I never felt Ferry’s feet were held to the fire nearly as much as they should’ve been. Paxton was a bad GM. But, he left Ferry a ton of cap space that was brutally squandered in the summer of 2005 on Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, and Damon Jones. That summer hamstrung the Cavs for a long time.
Still bitter about never finding a way to pair LeBron with OSU alum Redd. LeBron still has never played with a dead eye shooter/scorer like Redd in his prime (Ray Allen was nothing like his young self by the time of the Beatles). I guess Kyrie could count but he was never great off the ball
 
Still bitter about never finding a way to pair LeBron with OSU alum Redd. LeBron still has never played with a dead eye shooter/scorer like Redd in his prime (Ray Allen was nothing like his young self by the time of the Beatles). I guess Kyrie could count but he was never great off the ball

I loved the way he cleaned up that mess with the Ben Wallace mega deal. I argue that stable Delonte West was the ideal PG to pair with LBJ, the mistake was bringing in Mo afterwards instead of a true SG at the time.
 
Biggest fuck up, aside from the Boozer fiasco, was not pulling the trigger on Joe Johnson. Hawks traded Diaw and two 1sts for Johnson and if I remember correctly the sticking point for us was the picks (which we did nothing with). That was 2005. Putting a 24-year-old Johnson with LeBron at that stage in his career would have been a nightmare. Cavs could've started JJ, LeBron, AV, Z, and basically whoever at PG.

After that first year in ATL, JJ went on to make 6 straight All-Star appearances. He would've been only 28 in 2010 when LeBron's contract was up, too. We potentially could've positioned ourselves to sign/acquire Bosh or another player at that stage with JJ already on the roster, or maybe we find ourselves in the mix for KG a year or two earlier.

It's just crazy to see how many chances the Cavs had to put something around LeBron in his 1st stint and basically failed at every point. Damn near any good move they made was scrambling to cover for something they completely botched that would've been way better in the first place.
 

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