I don’t know if you have Insider, but Hollinger had a great article up a while back about the team that they’d have with those three and the rest of the roster filled out with minimum salary guys. Basically they’d be one of the top teams in the East in year one if everyone stays healthy, .500 if one of them misses a significant amount of time due to injury, and well under that if anything worse happens.
The real improvement comes in the later years, though - even though they’re capped out, they can still add quality players through draft picks, the mid level exception, and the biannual exception. In year one it’s those three and a bunch of replacements, but two years down the road you have two young draft picks and three veteran role players around them, and as long as you don’t completely blow those decisions, it’s a pretty scary team.
The Heat would have a starting five of James-Wade-Bosh-Chalmers-I Don’t Know [SI mentioned Brendan Haywood as a possible center] and we have no idea who on the bench, since all they have is the rights to Butler, Varnado, and Pittman. Cleveland would still have a starting five of James, Mo Williams, Jamison, Parker, and Ilgauskas assuming they resign him, with Varejao et al off the bench. Which is better? Despite the question marks I think Miami looks pretty good there. Cleveland’s offseason to this point has consisted of changing the coach and GM and letting Shaq go. All of those are good moves but it doesn’t look like much with all the big names flying around.
http://www.freep.com/article/20100708/COL01/7080416/1319/Bring-curtain-down-on-LeBron-Show--please
I think Mitch Albom nailed it today. A guy who calls himself ,King, and summons the owners in to his lair to offer deals to is obscenely arrogant. I have been turned off by his arrogance for a long time, but this prime time 1 hour show, disgusts me. Fuck Lebron. I wouldn’t watch his press conference if it was held in my back yard.
The other thing to consider about the Heat is that they’ll be able to add valuable veterans for nothing just because those guys want to catch on and win championships. You can add an incredibly useful player just for a year or two when the market’s right, because a guy whose career is fading or who has had a down year isn’t going to worry about the extra year or the extra three million he could get from a lottery team compared to running with those guys. Even if all you can offer is a minimum salary or a one year exception, you can get a James Posey or old Gary Payton and really have it pay off. Karl Malone didn’t really work out that well, but he signed with the Lakers for a million and a half his final year.
And not for nothing, but I am absolutely comfortable writing off completely the opinions of a guy who says Lebron’s not a good enough passer to be a primary ballhandler.
Cleveland built a team around Lebron. You can be sure he had great input in who the team signed. Yet they did not go very far in the playoffs.
Wade, Lebron and Bosch on the same team? They will need 2 basketballs in play all the time.
This is why i think he will stay in Cleveland. Going to Wades team to be handed a decade worth of championships is basically admitting “I’m not good enough to win a title”. Winning with Wade and Bosh would never be seen as HIS accomplishment like winning in Cleveland would.
I am not a big NBA guy, but I don’t begrudge James for all the hype and the special tonight. I think if anyone should be run over the colas it is ESPN, but even then it just highlights the strange nexus between sports and news that has always existed.
I really think LeBron is staying in Cleveland, but I am not going to make any bets on it. MY main reason for thinking that is I just don’t see LBJ as havinga an hour-long FU to his hometown. I think he wants to create his own legacy, not share it with D Wade and lets not forget that Cleveland did have the best regular season record, so it isn’t like they are chumps. They could do some things to get him more help, too. Oh yah, and $30 million more that he could get at Cleveland doesn’t hurt either.
Of course he wil end up somewhere and given that there is more than a couple of columnists out there for each city he supposedly going to claiming they have inside sources, someone will get to say “I WAS RIGHT” when he or she was probably just guessing like the rest of us.
Not that I am much of a James fan, but I heard that ESPN came to him with the idea for the show, and he turned them down.
ESPN being… well, ESPN then convinced him to do the show by offering the profits of the show to his favorite charity which is the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (a legit charity, BTW).
So, it wasn’t James’ idea in the first place and the profits go to a worthy charity.
If you don’t want to watch, then don’t watch.
My bet is that James goes to the Heat, but my team (the Hawks) will fare poorly no matter where he goes and with a new coach probably won’t even make the playoffs this next season.
Well, there don’t have to be a lot, just a couple. You don’t need 8 championship caliber role players. And I was talking about the next few years as well. They won’t have to pay the minimum forever. Look at the Celtics in recent years. Marbury, Eddie House and PJ Brown all took the minimum, Rasheed signed for the exception, Marquis Daniels played for under $2 million in a sign-and-trade instead of them using an exception, and Posey opted out of a $6 million deal and then played for $3 million (even though I think they had cap room at that point, he still played for an amount below the exception level). All useful guys who could have gotten more elsewhere, except probably Marbury, but even he could have played a bunch of other places and chose Boston.
All I’m saying is that the cap isn’t as much of an obstacle when a team can sell veterans on potential rings.
They could get some players that way, mostly older guys who’ll accept a lesser role for a chance to win a ring. It’ll be tough to convince younger players to take a much smaller deal because they’ll want to make hay while the sun shines, and yes, there’s the matter of the potential lockout. Someone on SI or ESPN made these points this morning, but I forget who it was.
Haywood is staying in Dallas to take a six-year, $55 million deal, so he’s off the table as Miami’s center. Dallas is trying to trade Erick Dampier but he’s making $13 million this year so there’s no way I can think of that Miami could swing it. Even if they don’t get LeBron that deal would give them some problems. Meanwhile Jermaine O’Neal is apparently going to sign with Boston. I guess he’ll be the replacement for Rasheed Wallace. And assuming the Knicks can’t pull off a miracle tonight, there is word they are going to sign David Lee and trade him to Golden State for Anthony Randolph, Ronny Turiaf, and Kelenna Azubuike. Toronto made an offer to Linas Kleiza, who played in Greece last year. Denver has his rights but I’m guessing they’ll let him go.
I’d love to know what that blender in your brain looks like that takes in one statement, chews it up, and regurgitates something completely different.
I said LeBron doesn’t have the point-guard chops to play point-forward. I said he’s a good passer, but not great. Watch the Cleveland offense, it’s stagnant and virtually useless in crunch time. LeBron can’t create for anyone but himself, and with his issues shooting from the outside that makes him defensible and that was exposed in the playoffs.
LBJ is absolutely a great passer; I’ll agree to disagree with you on that point, tho. I contend that his elbow was in much worse shape than the Cavs may have said 2 months ago. It’s not by accident that Cleveland had the most wins in the league - take LeBron off of that team and they’d struggle to win 30 games.
It wasn’t just the last 2 months where he’s had issues and where the Cavs offense bogged down. The elbow may have been a contributing factor but prior to that you’d often see LeBron to into isolation and dribble to nothing and hoist a crappy shot when there was a set play. He passes well off penetration and can run a break but he doesn’t pass well in the halfcourt offense and he’s not an effective passer against zone defenses. That’s what seperates Steve Nash and Chris Paul and that’s what the point has to do to score in pressure situations. That’s why I says he’s good, not great.
ESPN seems to be getting more confident in their reporting, unless they just want to make it look that way. They’re now saying things like “all indications point to LeBron signing with Heat, sources say.” That bothers me because we don’t have a single hint what the indications are. They’re also relying on anonymous sources, but I expected that much. So this stuff about “indications,” which they have been running with all damn day, is pure rumor and there is no way to assess whether it’s worth paying attention to. Here are some things I think might count as indications:
Pat Riley is traveling with LeBron, and Riley has been overheard saying things like “I really owe Satan big time on this one.”
LeBron has been gabbing all day about how excited he is and someone in his camp thinks he is talking to a guy named “Duane,” but it might’ve been “Wayne” or even “Steve.”
LeBron is checking out real estate in Florida and asking what Tiger Woods is like.
An Ohio Big & Tall store is filling an order for black and red pinstripe suits.
When LeBron got up in the morning, the first thing he said was “how about this heat,” with an emphasis on the last word that seemed meaningful.
So… keep bringing us that vaguely journalism-like-substance, ESPN.
I’m a little surprised the entry isn’t locked.