Anyway, on the subject of the trade itself: I hate it for Cleveland. It’s a very easy move to sell, since they’re getting far and away the best player in the trade, and since Wiggins could fail to ever be as good, statistically, as Love is right now and still not be a disappointment.
But strategically I just don’t see where the urgency came from. Cleveland gave up enough assets that it seems like they felt they were the ones who had to make the deal happen, and that’s nowhere near true. Love was gone from Minnesota. The Warriors weren’t giving up Thompson. So the opportunity cost of sitting on Wiggins and trying to make a deal without him involved was… what, exactly? Minnesota gives him up for Jimmy Butler, and then he resigns with the Bulls? Wasn’t going to happen. He goes to Boston and resigns there? Why would he do that? I don’t see where the Cavs would be taking an appreciable risk by just not offering Wiggins. If Love becomes a free agent you’ve got the greatest sales pitch in the world… and you’ve still got Wiggins anyway.
That’s the part that I can’t get my head around. It’s true that Love, LeBron and Irving is a bananas offensive arsenal. It’s true that – and this is a fucked up thing to say, but true – by a lot of measures these two might be the two best offensive teammates there have ever been. Getting Kevin Love: good idea. But what is the reason they needed to give up Wiggins to do it? The worst case scenario is you don’t get Love and then you have max money to give to LaMarcus Aldridge or something. To avoid that risk, you throw in the towel on Bennett, give up a first, and cash in the gigantic chip that the basketball gods undeservedly bestowed upon you.
I think there are contract reasons why they need to get him in a trade rather than in free agency, not to mention that free agency is uncertain. Oh, and LeBron is basically the GM now and likely wanted Love on the team NOW, not later. There could be an injury, or the Bulls or Warriors could swoop in. Plus, they’re gonna need some to time to gel as a team, and the Cavs don’t want to waste a single minute of LeBron’s prime, and you never want to take a championship window for granted.
I know you would have preferred that personally. But that’s the problem: the player is expected to be loyal to the team, full stop. The team is expected to be loyal to the player only as long as the player is useful and fits with their plans. Calling this unfair would be a little overdramatic, so let’s say it’s unbalanced. So when you say a player should be loyal, keep in mind that you’re saying he should relinquish control of his short career in pursuit of an ideal his team doesn’t share. And you’re still picking and choosing from LeBron’s history while ignoring some very obvious facts that don’t fit your theory.
Eh. You don’t need LeBron to the GM to make this trade. It’s in the Cavs best interest to win now as well for reasons you and I both went into.
I don’t think there are any contract reasons from their end. From his end, sure. And OK, free agency is uncertain, but Love’s gonna end up being a free agent either way.
If LeBron wanted Love now, not later, well, that’s the decision I’m criticizing. I think if you map out the possibilities over the next eight years trading Wiggins for Love vs. the possibilities if you drew a line in the sand and refused that deal, your championship window is bigger if you keep Wiggins.
According to Adrian Woj in the Yahoo article Marley linked, the Cavs won’t have the cap space to sign him as a free agent. But if they trade for him, they get a bunch of exceptions that they can use to exceed the cap. Supposedly, Love has agreed to opt out of 2015 and sign a new 5 year deal with Cleveland.
I don’t think a deal was happening without Wiggins. Without him, Minny may as well keep Love and take a shot at making the postseason, or deal him at the deadline. Maybe Cleveland could have gotten him at the deadline, but again, there’s uncertainty there.
They have a huge incumbency advantage if he becomes their free agent. There’s a reason most of the best free agents stay where they are. It took a pretty exceptional combination of events for LeBron to leave Miami or Dwight Howard to leave LA. Re-signings like Carmelo in NY and Bosh in Miami are more common.
In the NBA I don’t think you can judge anything eight years out. Eight years from now, LeBron will be close to retirement (he may even be retired), Love will be declining and Wiggins should be at his peak. But what are you getting over the next three or four years, which is about as far as you can project given the lengths of NBA contracts and other vagaries? LeBron will complete his prime but should still be very good. Love will get to his peak. Wiggins should be very good but he won’t be at his peak yet.
I’m not judging eight years out, just trying to judge for more than this one. I’m talking about every year for the rest of LeBron’s career. The incumbency advantage is the same huge incumbency advantage that Minnesota currently has, that Cleveland previously had with Carlos Boozer and LeBron, and that Miami also had with LeBron. Free agency is uncertain, like Moidalize said.
Either way, though, what bothers me is that Wiggins and Love come with very different costs. It’s not Wiggins or Love, which would you rather have. That’s a false dilemma that plays into this sense of urgency that I think was the problem here. You didn’t have to make that choice. It’s Wiggins at 4 years and like $20 million and Bennett at roughly the same, plus whatever else you can do with the rest of the team (including getting Love), or Love at infinity million plus whatever you can do with the rest of the team.
Right. But maybe they could. And maybe the Wolves keep him and he then becomes a free agent. And in either event the Cavs would have ended up with both. And if they roll the dice on those possibilities and totally crap out, they have LeBron, Irving, Wiggins and all the money that Kevin Love was going to get.
Those examples are not totally comparable given the changes in the CBA three years ago. That incumbent advantage has never been bigger, and for that reason Love would be almost a lock to stay in Minnesota if the team hadn’t screwed up with his previous contract. Anyway I think I’m right about the next three or four years, and you can’t realistically look much farther than that. We can expect Wiggins to be very good, but he’s not as close to his peak as Love and LeBron are to theirs. And that’s without getting into their individual skill sets, which you can argue about, too. Love is a top-15 player now. Wiggins might be one years from now, but probably not in three or four years. There are reasons not to try to plan farther ahead.
Unless they were going to trade LeBron or Kyrie Irving, there’s no other realistic package this team would put together that would get them this player. Players of Love’s caliber are very hard to get. Wiggins and Bennett are young and cheap, and most of the Cavs’ other notable players are not young or particularly cheap. So this was the Cavs’ their best opportunity to get him. They could wait a few months or until this offseason, but at that point the playing field could look very different. Golden State could’ve given on on Thompson, which some of their people wanted to do, and other teams would’ve had time to move into position. So yes, waiting was an option. But since it involved some obvious risks, it’s not so hard to see why they didn’t do it.
I do think the Cavs with Wiggins presents interesting possibilities, but I doubt they could have begun to scratch the surface of those possibilities this upcoming season. Kevin Love is a great player now. And I think everyone is overlooking Dion Waiters, who could be a real X-factor.
The Cavs with Love will likely have some real deficiencies defensively. They don’t have a real rim-protecting big, and as of now LeBron is the only real perimeter defender they can rely on. But at this point in his career, and going forward, it’s more important to have guys who can handle the offensive load so that LeBron can reduce his minutes, and this team will be electric on the offensive end.
YOU have a long memory because of your vendetta against Lebron, but the days of hating him for what he did to Cleveland are LONG gone…even before he agreed to come back.
Ok, I’ll explain it this way: LeBron, like everyone with money, doesn’t particularly care what people think of them, as long as the $$ keeps rolling in. And when people catch on, they have the means ton walk away, and tell you to pound sand.
Two years ago they could’ve given him a five-year “designated player” extension, but they didn’t want to - perhaps because they wanted to save it for Ricky Rubio, who was a rookie at the time. So Love signed a four-year deal with an opt-out after the third year, which is where we are now.
For perhaps the third or fourth time, he could’ve taken more money to stay in Miami. Not only that, but a couple of posts ago you said he was DESPERATE for people to like him.
