2009 66 wins Cvaliers with Iguodala replacing LeBron, how many wins do the get?

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

With 19 points a game 5 Assists a game high charachter good leader willing defender 76ers 1st option Iguodala replacing LeBron on the 66 win 2009 Cavaliers how many wins does the 66 wins Cavs team get with 2009 76ers Iguodala replacing LeBron.

Big Z
Ben Wallace
Anderson VeraJao
Joe Smith
Hickson
Wally
Iguodala
Sasha Pav
Delonte West
Daniel Gibson
Mo Williams

Delonte West was playing 40 minutes a game in the playoffs probably because his bacck up Sasha could not defend guards. Delonte West's was in my opinion somewhat based on Delonte out working the opposition which Delonte can't do if he is plaing 40 minutes a game. Iguodala can defend off guards and can give Delonte a rest. LeBron probably could have defended off guards to give Delonte a rest but to conserve LeBron's energy and fouls the team probably chose not to have LeBron defend guys that were faster than him.

Wally and Sasha were hitting 3s at 40 percent probably in part because LeBron waa driving and kicking out to them for open 3s.
Iguodala can also drive and Kick but Iguodala won't be sucking in help defenders like LeBron did. Wally and Saha were not horrible players and could have played more minutes. With Iguodala playing 10 minutes of off guard to give Delonte a rest and with Iguodala playing less minutes than LeBron, Sasha and Wally will get more minutes.

Big Z, Verajao, Past his prime Ben Wallace, past his prime Joe Smith and Hickson were a nice group of bigs. A quick undersized power forward might be too fast for all of them but Hickson and Hickson was just a kid and Hickson never got particularly good. Playing Wally at power forward for improving is an option and gives shooting.

On paper LeBron took almost all the small forward minutes. I don't know that 66 win team well enough to say whether LeBron ever guarded power forwards or off guards. On paper Wally and Sasha were also small forwards and my memory agrees that they were small forwards. I absolutely remember Sasha guarding off guards on other teams. I think I remember Wally playing some power forward. Although Wally and Sasha did not play a lot for the 66 win Cavs, LeBron's and Wally's and Sashas's minutes add up to quite a bit more than 48 minutes per game so some of them were getting minutes at off guard and power forward.

[falcolombardi]

45~ wins

[No-more-rings]

Probably somewhere around 48-50 wins. They had a good collective defense, so they’re probably more or less the same in that regard but obviously they get a lot worse offensively like possibly a bottom 10 offense.

[tone wone]

Low to mid 40s maybe a bit more if they catch a break with health.

Offense would be rough though without anyone to bend defenses. Take away Lebron's rim pressure and how does this team score?

[homecourtloss]

40-45 wins if there’s good health. Big Z., Big Ben, and West missed a total of 60+ games in 2009. The biggest problem would be offensively. 2009-2012 Iggy was a slight negative on offense when looking at impact stats. If he’s the team’s best scorer and best playmaker (the other option at playmaker would be Williams), I foresee a stagnant offense that’s below average. Iggy isn’t going to create rim pressure, and he’s not going to create three-point opportunities for others at the same rate James did. Cavs were 24th in % of shots at the rim; what do you think this number is without James? Cavs were 4th in 3pt attempt rate, though, and shot the 4th highest of their threes as corner threes. Iggy isn’t going to create those corner three opportunities for Mo and Gibson and Wally and Sasha and West.

That stagnant offense is also going to hurt their defense even though Iggy is a great defender because they’re going to be giving up transition opportunities from a likely poor offense.

In the end, your replacing a +8 to +9 player with a +2.5 player at best in a weird, mismatched lineup.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

2009-2012 Iggy was a slight negative on offense when looking at impact stats. If he’s the team’s best scorer and best playmaker (the other option at playmaker would be Williams), I foresee a stagnant offense that’s below average. Iggy isn’t going to create rim pressure,

In the end, your replacing a +8 to +9 player with a +2.5 player at best in a weird, mismatched lineup.

Iguodala has had a long decline but I am talking 2009.
Iguodala was scoring 19 points a game at TS% 56% and was the 76ers 1st option.
I don't see those 76ers as having the taalent to stop defenses from focusing on Iguodala
Leage average was TS% was TS% 54

Now Andre Miller was a very good passer, better than Mo Wiillams so maybe Iguodala's TS% goes down on the Cavaliers.
76ers 2009 Iguodala was pretty accrobatic when attacking the rim with a drive. Not chopped liver. I don't know if his drive and kick that the Cavaliers depended on from LeBron was that good. 5 assists is good for a small forward. I know old Iguodala better than 76ers Iguodala. Old Iguodala gets assists through great court vision and high baskeball IQ not drive and kick.

[homecourtloss]

2009-2012 Iggy was a slight negative on offense when looking at impact stats. If he’s the team’s best scorer and best playmaker (the other option at playmaker would be Williams), I foresee a stagnant offense that’s below average. Iggy isn’t going to create rim pressure,

In the end, your replacing a +8 to +9 player with a +2.5 player at best in a weird, mismatched lineup.

Iguodala has had a long decline but I am talking 2009.
Iguodala was scoring 19 points a game at TS% 56% and was the 76ers 1st option.
I don't see those 76ers as having the taalent to stop defenses from focusing on Iguodala
Leage average was TS% was TS% 54

Now Andre Miller was a very good passer, better than Mo Wiillams so maybe Iguodala's TS% goes down on the Cavaliers.
76ers 2009 was pretty accrobatic when attacking the rim with a drive. Not chopped liver. I don't know if his drive and kick that the Cavaliers depended on from LeBron was that good. 5 assists is good for a small forward. I know old Iguodala better than 76ers Iguodala. Old Iguodala gets assists through great court vision and high baskeball IQ not drive and kick.

The 2009 Cavs were 4th in 3 point attempt rate and had the 4th highest % of their threes as corner threes—if LeBron wasn’t creating them, how were they getting those?

Also, I forgot to mention that the 2009 Cavs were absurdly clutch, one of the greatest clutch teams in the regular season that we have data for. If we go by net ratings, THE greatest clutch team we have data for. That team shouldn’t have gotten to 66 wins and if you play the season over again 10 times, it’s unlikely they win 66 again unless they get absurdly good health.

2009 Cavs’ clutch statistics: https://www.nba.com/stats/team/1610612739/advanced/?Season=2008-09&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&Split=clutch&sort=EFG_PCT&dir=1

Compared to other teams in 2009: https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/clutch-advanced/?sort=NET_RATING&dir=-1&Season=2008-09&SeasonType=Regular%20Season

1997 to 2022 clutch net ratings

1. 2009 Cavs: +34.2 per 100 in the clutch
2. 2016 Warriors: +34.1 per 100
3. 2022 Suns: +33.4
4. 2013 Heat: +28.9

Btw, the Cavs led the league in clutch net ratings in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

James in the clutch in 2009: 40/11/8 per 36 minutes on 64% TS.

[MyUniBroDavis]

My recollection was the 2010 team had about the same win pace with the lebron, and the 2011 team when healthy had a sub 20 win pace before injuries and trades decimated them

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

My recollection was the 2010 team had about the same win pace with the lebron, and the 2011 team when healthy had a sub 20 win pace before injuries and trades decimated them

2011 Cavaliers started out 6 and 7 in games in which Mo Williams played.
Then they too many players.
In that 6 and 7 start Verajao and Antwan Jamison missed games.
Big Z and Ben Wallace were no longer with the team
In the 50 games without Verajao 6' 9" power forward Hickson got most of the center minutes and was backed up by 7 foot useless Ryan Hollins who was only grabbing 5.7 rebounds per 36 minutes and only blocking 1.3 shots 36 minutes. 1.3 blocked is OK but not good but if a 7 footer is not rebounding maybe I will give him a pass if he is focussed on blocking shots instead of rebounding.
Ryan Hollins had a 9 year career as team after team hoped they could get something valuable from him bet he only had 6 rebounds per 36 minutes for his career.

Ramon Sessions was a good aquisition.
If Sessions, Verajao, Jamison and Mo williams all play the 2011 team could beat some bad teams. Mo Williams played 36 games, Verajao 31 games, Jamison 56 games and Sessions 81 games. And Ramon Sessions had better be hot. He had a bad shooting percentage and was cold more than he was hot but ould help a team steal a game from a better team when he was hot. Like when a good champion Lakers team with Pau and Kobe goes to face the 10 and 46 Cavaliers and Sessions drops 32 points and gets help from Jamison and 15 rebounds from Hickson so the bad Cavaliers steal a game from the champion Lakers.

[MyUniBroDavis]

My recollection was the 2010 team had about the same win pace with the lebron, and the 2011 team when healthy had a sub 20 win pace before injuries and trades decimated them

2011 Cavaliers started out 6 and 7 in games in which Mo Williams played.
Then they too many players.
In that 6 and 7 start Verajao and Antwan Jamison missed games.
Big Z and Ben Wallace were no longer with the team
In the 50 games without Verajao 6' 9" power forward Hickson got most of the center minutes and was backed up by 7 foot useless Ryan Hollins who was only grabbing 5.7 rebounds per 36 minutes and only blocking 1.3 shots 36 minutes. 1.3 blocked is OK but not good but if a 7 footer is not rebounding maybe I will give him a pass if he is focussed on blocking shots instead of rebounding.
Ryan Hollins had a 9 year career as team after team hoped they could get something valuable from him bet he only had 6 rebounds per 36 minutes for his career.

Ramon Sessions was a good aquisition.
If Sessions, Verajao, Jamison and Mo williams all play the 2011 team could beat some bad teams. Mo Williams played 36 games, Verajao 31 games, Jamison 56 games and Sessions 81 games. And Ramon Sessions had better be hot. He had a bad shooting percentage and was cold more than he was hot but ould help a team steal a game from a better team when he was hot. Like when a good champion Lakers team with Pau and Kobe goes to face the 10 and 46 Cavaliers and Sessions drops 32 points and gets help from Jamison and 15 rebounds from Hickson so the bad Cavaliers steal a game from the champion Lakers.

They started 5-8, an average margin of victory of -7.5, and only 1 of those wins was against a team above .500 and all were by single digits

More than that, both teams three beat at .500 or above (76ers and the Grizzlies) had a rough start, the 76ers were 1-6 when they played and the Grizzlies were 7-10

The combined record of those teams at the time of playing was 16-33, and they were all close games, 3/5 by less than 5, 2 were single possession wins and the remaining two were by 8 and 7. (and iggy got hurt midway through in the 76ers game I think).


The record with mo williams and Varejao overall was 6-21 together, add in Antawn and it’s 4-20, who only played the season prior anyways, and only 25 games

[giberish]

Iggy wasn't the low-usage role player he was later in his career. He could keep the offense from completely cratering. With elite defense along with solid offense he was more of a +5 type player than a +2.5 to +3 player. Over the season perhaps only 10 wins behind LeBron.

Though the crazy clutch stats of the 2009 Cavs might not hold up. So they may drop by 10 expected wins based on SRS, but drop 15-20 in terms of actual wins.

Anyway, they probably end up around 50(ish) wins, then lose in the 1st round of the playoffs as their offense would be too easy to shut down by a credible playoff defense.

[OhayoKD]

Iggy wasn't the low-usage role player he was later in his career. He could keep the offense from completely cratering. With elite defense along with solid offense he was more of a +5 type player than a +2.5 to +3 player. Over the season perhaps only 10 wins behind LeBron.

Though the crazy clutch stats of the 2009 Cavs might not hold up. So they may drop by 10 expected wins based on SRS, but drop 15-20 in terms of actual wins.

Anyway, they probably end up around 50(ish) wins, then lose in the 1st round of the playoffs as their offense would be too easy to shut down by a credible playoff defense.

2009 cavs regular season srs was like top 20 all time wasn't it?

[ShotCreator]

Iggy wasn't the low-usage role player he was later in his career. He could keep the offense from completely cratering. With elite defense along with solid offense he was more of a +5 type player than a +2.5 to +3 player. Over the season perhaps only 10 wins behind LeBron.

Though the crazy clutch stats of the 2009 Cavs might not hold up. So they may drop by 10 expected wins based on SRS, but drop 15-20 in terms of actual wins.

Anyway, they probably end up around 50(ish) wins, then lose in the 1st round of the playoffs as their offense would be too easy to shut down by a credible playoff defense.

Iguodala was never close to a +5 kind of guy.

He had a less obvious version of Blake Griffin career transition as becoming a “role player”. Blake could always play defense, but he wasn’t specifically a key defender in a playoff series until he got in Brooklyn.

When he was at his offensive best, trying to carry the highest load he could, his defense suffered.

When he shrunk it down is when he really got into some elite defense in Denver and GS.

But the result is the same. 50 wins just seems insane here to me.

LeBron was pulling in Iguodala’s career best defensive work or better and made peak Kobe, Paul, and Wade look pedestrian offensively in this given season, on top of the insanely dominant late game play.

40 or so wins would feel right.

There’s a lot of synergy that Cavs team had centered around LeBron’s unique momentum as a young player from rookie to then built up I think would be missing in a significant way.

Probably one of the truly rare teams I actually believe in the “chemistry” angle in to the highest level.

Cleveland had no energy when LeBron left in 2010. The defense fall off was unbelievable. I believe he literally inspired those guys to naturally play a level of hard that you can’t coach or train.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

My recollection was the 2010 team had about the same win pace with the lebron, and the 2011 team when healthy had a sub 20 win pace before injuries and trades decimated them

2011 Cavaliers started out 6 and 7 in games in which Mo Williams played.
Then they too many players.
In that 6 and 7 start Verajao and Antwan Jamison missed games.
Big Z and Ben Wallace were no longer with the team
In the 50 games without Verajao 6' 9" power forward Hickson got most of the center minutes and was backed up by 7 foot useless Ryan Hollins who was only grabbing 5.7 rebounds per 36 minutes and only blocking 1.3 shots 36 minutes. 1.3 blocked is OK but not good but if a 7 footer is not rebounding maybe I will give him a pass if he is focussed on blocking shots instead of rebounding.
Ryan Hollins had a 9 year career as team after team hoped they could get something valuable from him bet he only had 6 rebounds per 36 minutes for his career.

Ramon Sessions was a good aquisition.
If Sessions, Verajao, Jamison and Mo williams all play the 2011 team could beat some bad teams. Mo Williams played 36 games, Verajao 31 games, Jamison 56 games and Sessions 81 games. And Ramon Sessions had better be hot. He had a bad shooting percentage and was cold more than he was hot but ould help a team steal a game from a better team when he was hot. Like when a good champion Lakers team with Pau and Kobe goes to face the 10 and 46 Cavaliers and Sessions drops 32 points and gets help from Jamison and 15 rebounds from Hickson so the bad Cavaliers steal a game from the champion Lakers.

They started 5-8, an average margin of victory of -7.5, and only 1 of those wins was against a team above .500 and all were by single digits

More than that, both teams three beat at .500 or above (76ers and the Grizzlies) had a rough start, the 76ers were 1-6 when they played and the Grizzlies were 7-10

The combined record of those teams at the time of playing was 16-33, and they were all close games, 3/5 by less than 5, 2 were single possession wins and the remaining two were by 8 and 7. (and iggy got hurt midway through in the 76ers game I think).


The record with mo williams and Varejao overall was 6-21 together, add in Antawn and it’s 4-20, who only played the season prior anyways, and only 25 games

Mo Williams missed a few games early which were I think 3 losses and 1 win.
They went 6 and 7 in the first 13 games Mo Williams played despite one of Verajao or Jamison missing about 5 of thise games. Then everything crashed.

[MyUniBroDavis]

2011 Cavaliers started out 6 and 7 in games in which Mo Williams played.
Then they too many players.
In that 6 and 7 start Verajao and Antwan Jamison missed games.
Big Z and Ben Wallace were no longer with the team
In the 50 games without Verajao 6' 9" power forward Hickson got most of the center minutes and was backed up by 7 foot useless Ryan Hollins who was only grabbing 5.7 rebounds per 36 minutes and only blocking 1.3 shots 36 minutes. 1.3 blocked is OK but not good but if a 7 footer is not rebounding maybe I will give him a pass if he is focussed on blocking shots instead of rebounding.
Ryan Hollins had a 9 year career as team after team hoped they could get something valuable from him bet he only had 6 rebounds per 36 minutes for his career.

Ramon Sessions was a good aquisition.
If Sessions, Verajao, Jamison and Mo williams all play the 2011 team could beat some bad teams. Mo Williams played 36 games, Verajao 31 games, Jamison 56 games and Sessions 81 games. And Ramon Sessions had better be hot. He had a bad shooting percentage and was cold more than he was hot but ould help a team steal a game from a better team when he was hot. Like when a good champion Lakers team with Pau and Kobe goes to face the 10 and 46 Cavaliers and Sessions drops 32 points and gets help from Jamison and 15 rebounds from Hickson so the bad Cavaliers steal a game from the champion Lakers.

They started 5-8, an average margin of victory of -7.5, and only 1 of those wins was against a team above .500 and all were by single digits

More than that, both teams three beat at .500 or above (76ers and the Grizzlies) had a rough start, the 76ers were 1-6 when they played and the Grizzlies were 7-10

The combined record of those teams at the time of playing was 16-33, and they were all close games, 3/5 by less than 5, 2 were single possession wins and the remaining two were by 8 and 7. (and iggy got hurt midway through in the 76ers game I think).


The record with mo williams and Varejao overall was 6-21 together, add in Antawn and it’s 4-20, who only played the season prior anyways, and only 25 games

Mo Williams missed a few games early which were I think 3 losses and 1 win.
They went 6 and 7 in the first 13 games Mo Williams played despite one of Verajao or Jamison missing about 5 of thise games. Then everything crashed.

Yeah, this isn’t true lmao

Varejao didn’t miss any of the first. 13 mo played, Jamison missed 3 games of the first 13 games mo played, where they went 2-1 anyways (a 5 point win vs a 23 win nets team, a 7 point win vs a philly team that were 1-5 and had iggy get hurt mid games)

They went 5-8 for his first 13 games, if you wanna count only the games all three played they went 3-7, with the caveats of who those wins were against of course

I don’t get how you ignored my entire post and resaid Ur point when what you said is just factually not true lol, this ain’t an opinion lol I’m telling you what happened

[Ein Sof]

Probably around 20-21

[70sFan]

I think they'd make the playoffs at over 40 wins, but they wouldn't be anything more than first/second round exit (depending on the matchup). James wasn't surrounded with a lot of talent back then and Iggy (who is an amazing player) wouldn't be able to lift them offensively.

[70sFan]

Probably around 20-21

That's quite a hyperbole.

[Ein Sof]

Probably around 20-21

That's quite a hyperbole.

True. I tried to be a little generous to that cast. The real figure is probably more like 10-15.

[Stan]

Best case scenario, that's a 45 win team and a first round exit.