RealGM

http://basketball.realgm.com/src_wiretap_archives/60028/20090624/ford_cavs_formula_building_around_lebron_was_all_wrong/

First off... I want to say that at first I was going to agree but then I actually thought about it and its easy for people to criticize when things go wrong. They weren't saying all of this when we were winning 60 games. First off Ferry came in LeBron's third season. Paxson pretty much salvaged draft picks at will so it wasn't like he could draft young talent. Ferry tried to make a splash that offseason. It wasn't like Ray Allen, Mike Redd, or Joe Johnson were exactly running down our door for us to sign them. They weren't so we had to make the most of the money and to be honest at the time, they were the right moves. The big mistake he did was signing those FA to horrible contracts. As far as trades were, people wonder why we don't have the sufficient pieces around LeBron. It's not like we had very good trade assets to acquire top name guys and then people expect us to give up everything we own for their players like our players are crud... NEWSFLASH PEOPLE!!! I never knew of a one man team to win 60 games. As far as I'm concerned, Ferry has fared pretty well considering the limited draft picks and limited trade assets he has. I would like to see somebody try to do better cause I doubt they could. What are you guy's thoughts?

This is completely revisionist. People were arguing 5 years ago that the Cavs had to put a good team around LeBron asap. that was done, now they are saying that, oh, it should have been a young team that he could grow with.

Hogwash.

Carlos Boozer. He screwed us in 2 ways....

1. We would of had him if that whole deal didn't go bad and none of this stuff is ever said.

2. He was so good in his 2nd year, that it cost Cleveland a high draft pick. Remember that when Bron came to Cleveland, we sucked....horrible. Arguably the worst team the NBA had seen in a long time. So we should of had a good/high pick the year AFTER LeBron was drafted.....but LeBron and Boozer were so good that we actually made a minor run at the playoffs. Then we got Luke Jackson and the rest was history. Imagine if we had the top pick in that draft, which was Dwight Howard. Or even Emeka Okafur.

Ferry was fine. We had FA money in a weak year and Hughes ended up being a bust. It happens.

Ferry has been a failure. To be fair, he's been making better moves as of late. Delonte and Mo were good acquisitions. But I don't excuse his hesitancy/arrogance to not pull the trigger on Shaq at the deadline. That cost us a trip to the finals. Danny had a 13M expiring contract of a bench player and he didn't do anything...now the writing's on the wall that our big men blow and his idea so far has been going back to Shaq??? Too late Danny!!

It was Paxson and Gund that screwed us w/ Boozer. Pax tried to lowball him into a deal of much lesser value than his market value. Gund signed off on it. What kind of a team offers a guy a deal worth half as much as the market indicated and actually expects to keep him?? That's just ridiculously idiotic on their parts. Afterwards, to save face, they tried to pin it all on Boozer for not being loyal, but it only takes a little bit of common sense to see that they were in the wrong.

That did hurt the Cavs a lot. Having Booze would have been a totally different scenario. But Danny's idea of good people have been: Larry - blows. Donyell - was over the hill. Wesley - why? Damon - ouch. Wallace - ouch. Wally - whaaaaa.

Mike Brown thinks in the same idiotic terms, that's why the above guys kept getting huge minutes at the expense of Shannon Brown, Sasha, Boobie, JJ Hickson, AV...

Neither of these 2 guys are good, both are super conservative/have no clue...

Some additional considerations:

1) LeBron isn't going anywhere in 2010, he has no reason to.
2) LeBron was too good too fast to add lottery picks to the team.
3) We're actually in a very good cap position when he opts for free agency.
4) If we wouldn't have added veterens we risked losing him when he extended the first time.
5) We won 60+.
6) Boozer was added and lost before Ferry arived.
7) Ferry was handed a very bad hand when he arrived, then swung and missed big time on his first chance. That's old news though, recent moves have been pretty good.

All that said, I would like to see our young players given the consistent minutes needed to develop.

Paxson is the one that screwed this franchise over, not Ferry. What Ferry has done with what "assets" he was given is beyond remarkable really.

Presti is able to build around Durant thru the draft since he has had draft picks many of which have been in the lottery.

Most of Ferry's picks to this point were already traded by the previous regime which Ford conveniently forgets. Not to mention the previous regime also lost a young Carlos Boozer for nothing. Now that Ferry has picks they are at the end of the first round. Exactly how many lottery picks have the Cavs had the past few years? None. Kinda makes it difficult to build thru the draft. Ferry has found some second round gems like Gibson/Jackson and made some shrewd trades to add Mo and Delonte despite a total lack of assets to improve the team.

BTW, the Cavs hand was forced during Ferry's first summer and he had to spend FA money to add talent around LeBron since that was the only way to improve the team without draft picks. Otherwise LeBron never would've signed his extension a few years ago.

THIS JUST IN...



Chad Ford hates Cleveland. In all seriousness, had Larry Bruise stayed healthy and put up 20ppg, this article would be a whole different story. So Damon Jones was basically worthless as a Cavalier, but Ferry turned his contract into Mo Williams. I honestly feel as though Cleveland is a season away from being where they want to be. When you have three players (Wallace, Wally, Snow) chewing up $28 million of your salary cap, and you get virtually nothing back from them, what can you really do?

I disagree with Ford, but I took his comment to suggest that Ferry should have added young players, not the veterans that he brought in.

The issue is whether such youth was available. I think not.

oLd sKool

The problem with Ford is that he forgot that Jim Paxson and Gordon Gund screwed the pooch on the franchise. Paxson drafted a bunch of busts(Luke Jackson, Dajuan Wagner, etc), traded away our first round picks for crap(stepien-esque crap)...the pick that eventually got Rudy Fernandez originally belonged to Cleveland....which we traded for Jiri Welsch at the time.

Then, with LeBron's only sidekick, Boozer, Gund (although Paxson was the one voice trying to tell Gund not to trust Boozer) believed Boozer wasn't going to go back on his prmise and screw us, which he did immediately.

We had cap room with Ferry...we signed Z(Eddy Curry, Dan Gadzuric, and Erick Dampier were other options available at the time)...good move. We made plays for Redd(he said no), Joe Johnson(were turned down, because from Atlanta they got two first round picks that we didn't have thanks to Paxson to get him)....he was forced to overpay Larry Hughes(pressure so that LeBron didn't bolt)...but he had really no other choice.

Ford really made himself sound ignorant here.

The pick that ultimately got Rajon Rondo was the Cavs pick. (The regime before Paxson *Embry* actually traded that protected pick years ago). The pick that got Sean May was the Cavs(Charlotte passed on Danny Granger and others when they picked May) a pick that Paxson traded away. Paxson drafted Luke Jackson over the likes of Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, Andris Biedrins, etc. It's sick to look back at all the wasted picks by previous regimes and I'm only talking about post LeBron. I actually give them a pass on busts like Wagner, Langdon and Diop since those horrible picks led indirectly to them getting LeBron.

mg wrote:The pick that ultimately got Rajon Rondo was the Cavs pick. (The regime before Paxson *Embry* actually traded that protected pick years ago). The pick that got Sean May was the Cavs(Charlotte passed on Danny Granger and others when they picked May) a pick that Paxson traded away. Paxson drafted Luke Jackson over the likes of Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, Andris Biedrins, etc. It's sick to look back at all the wasted picks by previous regimes and I'm only talking about post LeBron. I actually give them a pass on busts like Wagner, Langdon and Diop since those horrible picks led indirectly to them getting LeBron.

Actually, it was Rudy Fernandez who the Cavs pick was used on.

Boston traded our pick to Phoenix for Rondo, then Portland bought the pick from Phoenix and took Rudy.

The sad part of all of this is that most people will take what Ford says as the truth. The media these days doesnt report the truth, they just make it sound as if they know what they are talking about while pushing their agenda, truth be damned. Why should sports "journalism" be any different.

http://slam.canoe.ca/StatsBKP/BC-BKP-LG ... ROS-R.html

that was the roster the season before he came. I like what Ferry has done.

His first season he had no young guys except LeBron, Luke Jackson (who paxon drafted and who sucks), Varejoa, and Gooden (who we traded because hes not that good). Not to mention no draft picks because we traded them for Jiri Welsh.

He has gotten us some good young players finally and made us one of the best teams in the league. We dont have the luxury of being one of the worst teams in the league and drafting high every year like OKC.

But lets praise the GM who made a 31 win team even worse.

The real problem, as someone else already mentioned is

1) Boozer situation. Screwed us on many levels. You can't lose a young, talented PF like that for absolutely nothing. Set us back big time, because worst case scenario his trade value was high.

2) Lebron was too good as a rookie - Lebron was dropping 20 a game from the opening tip as a HS rookie which hurt this team long term because we couldn't get any high picks. Compare that to OKC where Durant is good but doesn't have the impact of a Lebron, they can suck and get high draft picks for a couple years to build up their talent base. We got Lebron and that was the immediate end of our lottery picks.

Winners don't make excuses. The Gasol deal to the Lakers didn't happen because Kupchak was satisfied with the roster. I expected Ferry to be better coming from the San Antonio RC Buford lineage. To have the team we have around Lebron is unacceptable. Too many pieces that just don't fit. At the time Cleveland resigned Big Z and signed Hughes it was a bad fit. No one needed hindsight to realize that this supporting cast was not winning an NBA title. The Cavs may have surprised in the regular season, but they fizzled in the play-offs. Next year we are up against a Rockets, Blazers, Nuggets, Laker, Celtics, Spurs, and Magic team that all have a better roster than the Cavs.

As the Cavs GM, Ferry needs to rebuild this team instead of doing patch work. If Lebron leaves then he leaves, but the worst thing you could do is fill the team with overrated pieces that don't fit. This is not a team that is one player away.

Oh please, we won 66 games and played a series in which 5 out of the 6 games we're very close games throughout. If Rashard Lewis doesn't go clutch-master clutch on us, we win that series despite being at a serious disadvantage. We obviously need to improve, but we are the DEFINITION of a team that is one player away.

InBoobieWeTrust wrote:Oh please, we won 66 games and played a series in which 5 out of the 6 games we're very close games throughout. If Rashard Lewis doesn't go clutch-master clutch on us, we win that series despite being at a serious disadvantage. We obviously need to improve, but we are the DEFINITION of a team that is one player away.

If we had a good GM we would have won 75+ games EASILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yea, wouldn't that have been nice?

Pula_86 wrote:Winners don't make excuses. The Gasol deal to the Lakers didn't happen because Kupchak was satisfied with the roster. I expected Ferry to be better coming from the San Antonio RC Buford lineage. To have the team we have around Lebron is unacceptable. Too many pieces that just don't fit. At the time Cleveland resigned Big Z and signed Hughes it was a bad fit. No one needed hindsight to realize that this supporting cast was not winning an NBA title. The Cavs may have surprised in the regular season, but they fizzled in the play-offs. Next year we are up against a Rockets, Blazers, Nuggets, Laker, Celtics, Spurs, and Magic team that all have a better roster than the Cavs.

As the Cavs GM, Ferry needs to rebuild this team instead of doing patch work. If Lebron leaves then he leaves, but the worst thing you could do is fill the team with overrated pieces that don't fit. This is not a team that is one player away.

Sorry we dont have spys in our organization employed by other franchises. If you dont think jerry west had anything to do with gasol going to the lakers, you my friend are a fool.