coldfish wrote:The Cavs figured out that you simply have to surround Lebron with shooters. He hates to run a structured offense and he doesn't do particularly well off ball. It sucks for the Cavs from the standpoint that if you build a team around Lebron and then he leaves, it completely collapses. Regardless, Lebron does one thing (play a 4 spread offense with him as the ball handler) and he does it really well. When you try to get into a motion offense or something, he gets outright insubordinate.
It sucks for the Cavs? He led them to their first championship. Whatever they're dealing with now, that's a payoff you make 100 times out of 100 times. Same thing with Miami. They tripled their championship total and made it to the Finals every season with him. Almost half the NBA has never had that kind of success either team enjoyed with him.
He's got his flaws, especially now that he's past peak. The passive-aggressiveness and pouty behavior gets old fast, especially during games. That's compounded by the fact he's prone to making James Harden-like lapses on defense at this point, down to basic lack of effort, which impacts everybody else's attitude.
We're not even a full season into this, and it's absolutely fair to question whether we've made a big mistake hitching our wagon to a player whose timeline we're not even remotely equipped to capitalize on. (And if we strike out this summer, which I've got a sinking feeling we will, it's probably not even a question anymore.)
But over the course of his entire career, LeBron's positives
grossly outweigh the negatives. Point taken about being in the East. But be that as it may, you do even a half-way decent job building a team around him, and you're pretty much a lock to make the conference finals. You can count the number of players you can say that about on one hand.
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