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Koby Altman nailed, then failed to take breathalyzer…

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Did Koby Altman nail the rebuild?


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One more season of LBJ and Kyrie was not going to make a difference given GSW's acquisition of Durant, and the significant dropoff in defense among the Cavs wings from 2016.
Wait a minute -- the very first season after Lebron left the Warriors lost the title because Durant and Klay Thompson both went down with crippling injuries. So how can you say "one more season of LBJ+Kyrie was not going to make a difference"? THat makes no sense.

What I am saying is that if we had either kept Lebron/Kyrie together for one more year, or replaced Kyrie with players who really worked for us, then we would have gotten the benefit of that instead of the Raptors.

Of course this assumes we could get past the Raptors with Kawhi Leonard, but it's not like we ever had a problem with them before.

I don't think this is an unreasonable argument.
 
What I am saying is that if we had either kept Lebron/Kyrie together for one more year, or replaced Kyrie with players who really worked for us, then we would have gotten the benefit of that instead of the Raptors

Of course this assumes we could get past the Raptors with Kawhi Leonard, but it's not like we ever had a problem with them before.

I don't think this is an unreasonable argument.

There was no scenario where LeBron wasn't playing in Los Angeles for that season. He had already worked it out with Magic before his last season here. So unless you're proposing Altman should have kidnapped LeBron and held him here against his will and then forced him to play basketball here, it is an unreasonable argument.
 
Wait a minute -- the very first season after Lebron left the Warriors lost the title because Durant and Klay Thompson both went down with crippling injuries. So how can you say "one more season of LBJ+Kyrie was not going to make a difference"? THat makes no sense.

What I am saying is that if we had either kept Lebron/Kyrie together for one more year, or replaced Kyrie with players who really worked for us, then we would have gotten the benefit of that instead of the Raptors.

Of course this assumes we could get past the Raptors with Kawhi Leonard, but it's not like we ever had a problem with them before.

I don't think this is an unreasonable argument.
It's reasonable to suggest that if Kyrie stays, then maybe Lebron stays for another year or two to ride out their contending years before going to LA. However, Kyrie being a miserable teammate and demanding out pretty much made that inevitable no matter how much you want to think any GM or coach could've patched that up. Kyrie's behavior since has only reinforced that farther. Plus I think you're ignoring the fact that the Warriors fell apart physically in the 2019 Finals, whereas Kyrie demanded out after the 2017 Finals. The Cavs would've had to have found a way to manage his unhappiness for 2 more years to cash in on the Warriors hitting the wall, not the one more season you mentioned.
 
I don't totally disagree with this. The two easiest parts of a rebuild is gutting payroll and collecting draft picks. The extremely hard part is putting a team together that is willing to set aside ego enough to play to their strengths.

I'm not sure the Cavs have done either of those under Altman.

They certainly haven't gutted payroll. They've reduced it from "whoa, Dan, that's a big fucking luxury tax check you're gonna write!" to just below the luxury tax threshold (they're less than $1 million below it after the big trade this week). But they haven't slashed and burned payroll like many rebuilding teams do.

As for picks -- they have collected some, but they've never had a giant war chest under Altman. There haven't been any deals where they took on mega-salary to get a crack at the lottery, like when the Cavs got the pick that became Kyrie in exchange for taking on Baron Davis's anchor of a contract. Koby did trade for firsts from Houston (which became Windler), Detroit (KPJ), and Milwaukee (the pick that they sent out earlier this week) -- none of those picks will be higher than the late 20s, now that Giannis is returning to the Bucks.

They've also had shit for lottery luck. None of their lotto picks (either their own or the one they got from Boston in the Kyrie deal) moved up in the lottery; it's only been down.

As much as anything, I chafe when fans act as though the good things a GM does are assumed away ("anybody could have done that"), while every bad decision is magnified. Given the available talent, Koby has drafted well. (Compare his record to Chris Grant's. At least when Koby swings for the fences on a SG with attitude problems, he does it with the 30th overall pick, not the 4th.) He's made some positive trades. I'll give you that hiring Beilein was a bad move; but if we're gonna roast him for that, then we have to praise him for getting Bickerstaff here as AHC, and for turning the reins over to him when they parted ways with Beilein just a few months after he was hired.

2.5 years after LeBron left, Koby has assembled a nice core of young talent (Sexton, Garland, Okoro, KPJ, and Allen are all 22 or younger; Drummond, Prince, Nance, Osman, Windler, and Dotson are all in the 24-27 range). They'll likely have another lottery pick this summer. I like where they are headed.
 
Altman has discovered a market inefficiency that has helped him. Nobody gives a damn about centers. Hollinger is saying you shouldn't take a center in the top 10 etc.

However, he turned around, got a devalued center for nothing and improved the defense of the team immediately which was crucial following the drafting of Garland.

Now he has 3 above average to great centers on the roster while

#1 The Lakers routinely use their size against teams

#2 the #1 team in the east is bulldozing teams with Embiid

#3 One of the other East contenders have a huge team in the bucks

Centers aren't the answer to everything, but most good teams have a good one. While there are not as many super teams this year, there are more teams competing than ever. Smaller Centers like PJ Tucker are getting beat all to hell.

This is actually a good move by Koby. He is acquiring de-valued assets for very little and expecting as injuries pile up that they will become more valuable.

At least 3 teams have lost their center already

Charlotte
Portland
Nets

Portland and the Nets are particularly vulnerable defensively because of this and all of them present opportunities for the Cavs to cash their centers in.

Koby hasn't had the kind of crazy assets that NO or OKC have to work with, so what he has been able to do on the margins to improve the team has been pretty impressive, an he is going to keep flipping these assets until they yield a competitive team, which the Cavs are already miles closer to than last year at this time.
 
Wait a minute -- the very first season after Lebron left the Warriors lost the title because Durant and Klay Thompson both went down with crippling injuries. So how can you say "one more season of LBJ+Kyrie was not going to make a difference"? THat makes no sense.

What I am saying is that if we had either kept Lebron/Kyrie together for one more year, or replaced Kyrie with players who really worked for us, then we would have gotten the benefit of that instead of the Raptors.

Of course this assumes we could get past the Raptors with Kawhi Leonard, but it's not like we ever had a problem with them before.

I don't think this is an unreasonable argument.

Yeah you are assuming they get past the Raps, Lebron doesn't have a season ending injury as well, and Kyrie doesn't have a season ending injury either.

Kyrie hasn't helped anyone win anything since he left the the Cavs, and he has played how many fewer games than Collin?

I am not happy that the title run ended so soon after winning, but Kyrie wasn't actually going to help us anymore, and I wouldn't trade Collin straight up for Kyrie right now just because of the availability and Hard work he has shown.
 
Wait a minute -- the very first season after Lebron left the Warriors lost the title because Durant and Klay Thompson both went down with crippling injuries. So how can you say "one more season of LBJ+Kyrie was not going to make a difference"? THat makes no sense.

Because you're talking about two different seasons. Had the Cavs (unwisely) called Kyrie's bluff in the summer of 2017 and kept him for the "one more" LBJ & Kyrie 2017-18 season, we'd have faced a healthy Warriors team in the 2018 Finals. It wasn't until the next year's Finals that they had the injuries, which means you'd have to invent a fantasy world in which LBJ would have changed his mind, and not gone to L.A., even after losing both the 2017 and 2018 Finals to GSW.

Whether what we got in exchange for Kyrie in the 2017 trade was the right stuff has been debated here endlessly, and there's no point in rehashing it. But the idea that we should have kept weirdo Kyrie despite his openly expressed dissatisfaction with staying, demand to be traded, and threat to get surgery and sit out the season, is something recent events are confirming would have been a poor decision. Presumably, the Cavs were aware of the same basic stuff about him and his weirdness that the Celtics and now the Nets are seeing, and figured that trading him when he had two full years under contract and had max value was better than keeping a malcontent Kyrie on the roster and hoping he didn't have that surgery.
 
I'm not sure the Cavs have done either of those under Altman.

They certainly haven't gutted payroll. They've reduced it from "whoa, Dan, that's a big fucking luxury tax check you're gonna write!" to just below the luxury tax threshold (they're less than $1 million below it after the big trade this week). But they haven't slashed and burned payroll like many rebuilding teams do.

As for picks -- they have collected some, but they've never had a giant war chest under Altman. There haven't been any deals where they took on mega-salary to get a crack at the lottery, like when the Cavs got the pick that became Kyrie in exchange for taking on Baron Davis's anchor of a contract. Koby did trade for firsts from Houston (which became Windler), Detroit (KPJ), and Milwaukee (the pick that they sent out earlier this week) -- none of those picks will be higher than the late 20s, now that Giannis is returning to the Bucks.

They've also had shit for lottery luck. None of their lotto picks (either their own or the one they got from Boston in the Kyrie deal) moved up in the lottery; it's only been down.

As much as anything, I chafe when fans act as though the good things a GM does are assumed away ("anybody could have done that"), while every bad decision is magnified. Given the available talent, Koby has drafted well. (Compare his record to Chris Grant's. At least when Koby swings for the fences on a SG with attitude problems, he does it with the 30th overall pick, not the 4th.) He's made some positive trades. I'll give you that hiring Beilein was a bad move; but if we're gonna roast him for that, then we have to praise him for getting Bickerstaff here as AHC, and for turning the reins over to him when they parted ways with Beilein just a few months after he was hired.

2.5 years after LeBron left, Koby has assembled a nice core of young talent (Sexton, Garland, Okoro, KPJ, and Allen are all 22 or younger; Drummond, Prince, Nance, Osman, Windler, and Dotson are all in the 24-27 range). They'll likely have another lottery pick this summer. I like where they are headed.
You are right, Koby has has not gotten out of all the contracts, but instead went below the tax threshold, as contracts have proven to be better assets by and large for smaller markets than cap space.

I don't think I'm in the "let's roast Altman camp" at all. I mentioned that the harder part of his job was assembling players who want to play hard, and that seems to have been accomplished. I think we agree it's heading in the right direction. The culture seems as good as its ever been, and that is a huge plus for Altman and JB, especially compared to the post James Irving timeline, where the culture was rotten.

I just think it's hyperbolic to say he nailed the rebuild. He's got the hammer though.
 
Time will tell if the “nailed rebuild” holds up.

KPJ is gone.
Windler can’t stay on the court.
Okoro is averaging 9-2-2 despite playing 36+ MPG. Obviously very early, but early returns suggest a long term project on offense. And a 2, not a 3.
Drummond, McGee, and Allen = pending FA

Sexton and Garland have to be great.
 
Time will tell if the “nailed rebuild” holds up.

KPJ is gone.
Windler can’t stay on the court.
Okoro is averaging 9-2-2 despite playing 36+ MPG. Obviously very early, but early returns suggest a long term project on offense. And a 2, not a 3.
Drummond, McGee, and Allen = pending FA

Sexton and Garland have to be great.
I was hoping to avoid tanking this year and see if good mix of young talent and vets could get us into playoffs but now I feel we’re off to another tank. Let’s just hope the league gives us a top 3 pick and doesn’t let contending teams leap frog to drop us to 5 again
 
Time will tell if the “nailed rebuild” holds up.

KPJ is gone.
Windler can’t stay on the court.
Okoro is averaging 9-2-2 despite playing 36+ MPG. Obviously very early, but early returns suggest a long term project on offense. And a 2, not a 3.
Drummond, McGee, and Allen = pending FA

Sexton and Garland have to be great.
It's a bummer. I was 100x more psyched watching KPJ and Sexton on the sidelines.
 

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