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The summer of 2005 was painful. That summer the Cavs were looking for LeBron's side kick. They had a lot of money to use and needed to pull someone in. The number one target was Ray Allen. Allen chose to reup with Seattle instead of come to Cleveland. #2 on the list was Michael Redd. He should have come to Cleveland but he opted to take big money with Milwaukee. The 3rd guy on the list was the hardest to obtain, Joe Johnson. Johnson was a restricted free agent so any offer could and likely would be matched by Phoenix. I believe Phoenix would have 7 days to match it which would have tied up the Cavs cap funds for a week causing them to lose out on all other free agents if PHX did indeed match. We moved on to Larry Hughes as the next target. About 2 weeks after we signed Hughes, Phoenix made the Joe Johnson trade with Atlanta. After Hughes the next guy was Bobby Simmons so the drop off was pretty severe.
That summer we spent our cap money on resigning Z and getting Lebron a 2nd star. We got our 4th choice then added Donyell Marshall who was a solid pick up at the time and Damon Jones who was a scrap heap signing to finish the off season. LeBron and prime Allen or prime Redd would have been fantastic. Johnson was always a stretch but man I would have loved to see him in a Cavs uni back then too. Hughes, well we all know how that turned out.
That summer we spent our cap money on resigning Z and getting Lebron a 2nd star. We got our 4th choice then added Donyell Marshall who was a solid pick up at the time and Damon Jones who was a scrap heap signing to finish the off season. LeBron and prime Allen or prime Redd would have been fantastic. Johnson was always a stretch but man I would have loved to see him in a Cavs uni back then too. Hughes, well we all know how that turned out.