IG2 wrote:lessthanjake wrote:
They also had a better 3rd guy.
Jeff Malone averaged 19 ppg on 55% TS from from 91-94 to Hornacek's 15 ppg on 60% TS from 94-98. Obviously, Hornacek's 3pt shooting made him the more effective offensive player, but I don't know how significant that difference is. The same applies to the rest of the roster too. Look at the names! Literally nobody stands out on the 86-93 Jazz (besides Eaton) or the 94-98 Jazz. They were all bit time players never heard from again. Hardly the kind of guys who'd explain why Utah went from a 50-55 win team with peak Malone/Stockton to a 60-64 win team with mid-30's Malone/Stockton/Hornacek. This is clearly a case of the league weakening from mid-90's onward and why I'm often wondering why Utah's in the Finals watching them in '97 and '98.
As someone else has already told you, Hornacek was absolutely better than Jeff Malone. There was a huge gap in defensive quality between them and Hornacek’s superior shooting was a significant difference. Hornacek was also a far superior playmaker. He was just a much better player.
As for the rest of the roster, saying “look at the names” and then saying no one stands out is just a really silly thing to do regarding NBA role players from multiple decades ago. You’re almost certainly not actually drawing on significant specific knowledge about these players. It’s basically just you looking to see if anyone was an all-star-level guy and saying otherwise they must all be the same. It also completely ignores that probably the biggest thing with role players is just how well they fit with the team, with the star players, and with the coach’s system. This matters a lot (and I already gave an example here where I think it was very important—with Eaton’s atrocious offensive capabilities being a real problem), and you just want to handwave all of it and say the only explanation for the Jazz doing better is the league getting way worse. No. The Jazz became a meaningfully better team. And honestly, that was clear for all to see at the time.
Mike Brown was an incredible defensive coach in that era
Funny how you couldn't bring yourself to say this even once when obsessing over 2007 Cleveland's defensive success
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What in the world are you talking about? I brought up Mike Brown being a great defensive coach over and over again in the discussion I had about the 2007 Cavs defense. A few examples (among many) of me talking about Mike Brown in that discussion:
- “It was also with a completely different coach—not Mike Brown, who was an incredible defensive coach and was a huge reason for the team’s defensive greatness.”
- “Maybe you think that Mike Brown carried the team with his defensive coaching, I don’t know. That’d be a legitimate position to take.”
- “There’s really a much better argument that Mike Brown carried that team, with his coaching on the defensive side of the ball.”
So yeah, this is just a completely bizarre thing for you to say. In the discussion you’re referring to, I kept saying over and over again that Mike Brown was an incredible defensive coach in that era. Why would you go out of your way to say something about me that is this brazenly untrue?
For the record, I do agree Mike Brown certainly proved his defensive chops as a Cavalier, but the guy was no miracle worker. His teams post-LeBron have ranked 13th, 19th, 25th and 14th defensively. And every single one of those teams had better defensive personnel than the 2011 Cavaliers. Even if Cleveland hadn't replaced him with an equivalent coach in Byron Scott, they still didn't have a prayer of winning more than 25 games. Mike Brown's absence was always irrelevant to why 2011 Cavaliers were a disaster.
We don’t know how well the 2011 Cavs would’ve done with Mike Brown. What we do know is that Mike Brown’s defensive coaching was a huge part of the puzzle that made those first-stint Cavs teams so good. Without Mike Brown, that piece of the puzzle was gone. It’s a big deal. He was really ahead of the curve at the time defensively, and losing him was very important. Downplaying that to prop up LeBron is silly.
Umm, I think we’d be hard-pressed to find a team that lost a major superstar
There's no shortage of great teams who lost their superstar, didn't replace him with anything notable and still managed to be respectable teams the following season. '89 Celtics lost Bird after 6 games, had a different coach from the prior season and still made the playoffs. '92 Lakers without Magic made the playoffs. '94 Bulls were a championship contender without MJ. '97 Magic made the playoffs without Shaq. 2017 Thunder made the playoffs without KD. 2018 Spurs made the playoffs without Kawhi.
The example of the Lakers, Celtics, Bulls, and Spurs are a few of the absolute greatest dynasties in history. No one is saying the Cavs supporting cast was as good (or as talented) as those teams’. And it obviously doesn’t have to be as good as those to be a good supporting cast that fit really well with LeBron and was capable of winning a title. Nor do those teams really fit the fact pattern here anyways: For instance, the 1992 Lakers didn’t fire their coach, the 1994 Bulls absolutely retooled and materially improved the roster rather than just shedding salary, etc.
The 2017 Thunder wasn’t a dynasty but also doesn’t fit the fact pattern at all. Obviously they didn’t replace Durant with a player as good as Durant (that was not an option), but they went out and got Oladipo—who would be all-NBA the next year. They drafted Domantas Sabonis that year, which was obviously a great pick up. Not to mention getting other solid players. The 2017 Thunder did not shed like 35% of their salary like the 2011 Cavs did, and they added quality players. They also kept the same coach as before. Just a much better situation. And that’s not even mentioning that the team had been built as much around Russ as around Durant, so it wasn’t the case that the remaining players on the team were a crew that was specifically built around the guy who had left.
There's literally zero precedent in NBA history of a contender losing 1 big name and becoming dog **** the following season. Zero. And there's a simple reason why. Teams as unremarkable in talent as those '09 and '10 Cavalier teams never achieve contender status to begin with. Their top ceiling is generally high 40's to low 50-ish wins and a quick playoff exit. But peak LeBron was a such an incredible floor raiser, comfortably the GOAT in that category, that he had those teams overachieving out of their ass. This is why 2009 and 2010 are seen as a great boon to his legacy as opposed to a failure simply because he didn't win it all with 'Mo Williams as his 2nd banana.
There’s “literally zero precedent in NBA history” for that? Really? David Robinson went out for a season and the Spurs went from contender to getting the #1 pick in the draft and being just as bad as the 2011 Cavs. Beyond that, the Rockets went from a decent contender with Harden to being absolutely awful when he left. Moses Malone’s Rockets went from being a Finalist in 1981 (albeit a bit of a surprise, but they had the 6th best pre-playoff odds in 1982 too) to being far worse than the 2011 Cavs in 1983 when Moses was gone. Those Rockets teams weren’t really as big of contenders as the Cavs IMO, but Harden and Moses Malone also just weren’t as good as LeBron—the situations are still analogous, and the Spurs one definitely is. You are completely wrong. And that’s not even mentioning examples where you’d probably say more than 1 big name left (including the 1999 Bulls). For instance, the 2020 Warriors were awful—and while they lost Steph, Durant, and Klay, they’d been title-winners without Durant, and Klay is really just a role player IMO (who, quite notably for these purposes, they were ultimately clearly a contender without in 2022, before he came back). And these are just examples off the top of my head. Of course, there’s not infinite examples, because this scenario requires a very specific thing to happen in the first place that isn’t all that common (i.e. a major superstar leaving his team while in his prime). But this sort of stuff happens, and it’ll likely become even more common now than it was in decades past, now that tanking is more of an accepted thing.
And again, Cleveland never entered 2011 with the intention to tank. Dan Gilbert would've loved nothing more than proving LeBron wrong. Nor would he have hired a name-coach in Byron Scott. Most importantly, what 60+ win team tanks after only losing 1 player of significance? Go look at the boxscores of their games the first few months. Right from get-go they were playing their returning core high mins and barely playing their young guys. But from late November itself they started a 1-37 stretch while fully healthy, so their ineptitude was apparent very early on. Whether they eventually began tanking is irrelevant. They always sucked.
I don’t know why you keep mentioning Byron Scott, as if bringing in Scott suggests the team must not have been tanking. It wasn’t even the first time Scott was brought in as a tank commander, nor would it be the last.
As for your question, I’ve answered that. A 60+ win team certainly will probably tank when they lose their superstar who the pieces were heavily built around offensively (moreso than with most superstars in history, because of LeBron’s heliocentrism), the coach who was the architect of their great defense is fired, the team loses multiple other significant rotation pieces, and the team decides to just shed salary. It especially does that in an era where tanking for draft picks is an accepted strategy (since it is now understood that the worst place to be in the NBA is being an average team). It also especially does that when two of the actual remaining guys who were in the previous year’s playoff rotation are in their mid-30s (and, by the way, the fact that a lot of the main guys on the 2010 Cavs were old and likely to decline or retire is surely a significant reason why LeBron decided to leave in the first place—he knew that the team having opted for veteran guys meant that it would naturally decline moving forward, even if he stayed).
You’re just wrong. I’m not sure if you just were too young to remember the criticism at the time or just lived in a bit of a bubble regarding this
Since I haven't missed a LeBron game since 2007 and
THE reason why (along with a poster named SSB) the LeBron thread on the PC board came into existence in 2011, I think it's safe to say I'm fairly well versed in his career and the narratives that have followed him. And I know for damn sure one narrative that has never existed is him supposedly leaving a great situation in Cleveland (2011 sure proved that huh
). You keep harping on this because it's very important for you to brand 2009 and 2010 as a failure. Yeah, nice try.
Sorry, but you’re just wrong if you think people didn’t think the situation in which LeBron was on the pre-playoff title favorite two straight years was an objectively good situation. Of course, everyone recognized that the Miami situation he left to go to was even better, but I am just objectively right that he had been on the pre-playoff title favorite two straight years. It’s not debatable. And that is definitionally a good situation, and is not one that happens without a good supporting cast. People recognized that at the time. And whether you were in a LeBron-fan bubble at the time (certainly I’d say that creating “the LeBron thread on the PC board” doesn’t exactly suggest you weren’t in such a bubble) and simply didn’t see people talking about it in that way is basically irrelevant. I am telling you that this is how tons of people I talked to at the time spoke about it. You have zero basis whatsoever to tell me that I am wrong about that.
I don’t appreciate the sarcasm and personal attacks (“just another MJ creep”) here. It’s rude and also completely misplaced.
You can't be in literally every LeBron thread writing novels against him with mostly bad-faith arguments and outright BS and then pretend to be his supporter. Not buying it. I'm a Chicagoan and I know how important it is for the MJ cult to protect his legacy at all cost. This is why I love the fact that I live in the absolute peace of genuinely being a massive fan of both guys. I have 0 insecurity, thus no need to make **** up. I get to enjoy them simply for who they were.
Nothing I’ve ever said on these forums is “bad faith arguments and outright BS.” That’s just nonsense. And, with you making argument after argument plainly aimed towards downplaying Jordan as compared to LeBron and railing against “Jordan creeps” and “the MJ cult,” while simultaneously saying you are “a massive fan of both guys,” I would think you of all people would be able to comprehend the possibility of being a fan of someone while also arguing on the internet against positive narratives about the person that you disagree with.
