Are 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers massively underrated?

[Drygon]

Whenever people talks about 2007 Cavs, it's painted as LeBron with a trash supporting cast.

Something that I personally never understood.

Yes, LeBron is unquestionably a fantastic player but I feel like his supporting cast gets way too much disrespect.

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1) The 2007 Cavs were ranked #4 in defensive rating and ranked #18 in offensive rating.

- The Cavs were first and foremost a defensive minded team led by a defensive minded coach in Mike Brown to the 2nd seed in the Eastern Conference with 50 wins.

2) The 2007 Cavs were ranked #1 in offensive rebounding, #6 in defensive rebounding and #2 in total rebounds.

This was due to a 3 headed rotation of Drew Gooden, Anderson Varejao and Zydrunas "Big Z" Ilgauskus. None of those guys amassed enough minutes to put up gaudy stats but their per 36 minute stats are:

- Drew Gooden: 14 points & 11 rebounds
- Anderson Varejao: 10 points & 10 rebounds
- Big Z: 16 points & 10 rebounds

3) The 2007 Cavs had depth.

-They had 10 guys playing at least 15 minutes per game during the regular season.

-They had 7 guys playing at least 20 minutes per game against Detroit Pistons in the playoffs.

-Already discussed DG/BZ/AV.

- Larry Hughes had the best year of his career just two years prior and averaged 22/6/5, and led the league in steals with 2.9 per game while making All-NBA defensive 1st team. He got traded to the Cavs where his role was diminished and his stat totals decreased.

- Daniel Gibson was an elite 3 point shooter (42%), and dropped 31 points while coming off the bench to beat Detroit Pistons in game 6 of ECF. For comparison, LeBron had 20 points on 3/11 shooting in that game.

- Donyell Marshall was a floor spacing big, who at one point held the NBA record for 3PM in a single game (before Kobe RIP)

4) The 2007 Cavs were the 2nd seed in the East by record but if you placed the Cavs into the Western Conference, they would play the Spurs in the 1st round (yes the same Spurs that swept the Cavs in 4 games). The teams the Cavs beat to get to the finals were:

- First round: 41-41 Wizards were ranked #28 in DRtg, also missing Gilbert Arenas & Caron Butler.

- Second round: 41-41 Nets were ranked #15 in DRtg, also missing starting center Nenad Kristic who averaged 16 ppg. As a result, the nets had to start Mikki Moore and Jason Collins (think poor man's Kendrick Perkins). The Nets got killed on the boards all series.

- ECF: 53-27 Pistons were ranked #7 in DRtg, also missing Ben Wallace (who won DPOY the year prior for the 4th time) and head coach Larry Brown. The Pistons were actually a solid team but past their prime, missing their identity with the loss of Big Ben & Larry Brown.

- NBA Finals: 58-24 Spurs ranked #2 in DRtg.

5) Not really related to the 2007 Cavs, but a single superstar like LeBron leading his team to NBA Finals in the East was done in the years prior to and after 2007 by others on elite defensive teams:

- Dwyane Wade in 2006. The Heat won 52 games that year (two more than the 2007 Cavs) and beat the Pistons (who won 62 games and still had Ben Wallace & head coach Larry Brown) on the way to upsetting the Mavs in the NBA finals (who won 60 games). In the finals, D Wade averaged 35/8/4/3/1. Shaq averaged 14 ppg & 10 rpg.

- Dwight Howard in 2009. Orlando Magic won 59 games and made it to the NBA finals where they lost to Kobe & Pau Gasol. They lost Jameer Nelson halfway through the regular season, but still had Hedo & Rashard Lewis.

- Jason Kidd in 2002 & 2003 led the Nets to back to back NBA finals.

- Allen Iverson in 2001 led the 76ers to the finals.


TLDR: 2007 Cavs were a great team lead by a transcended superstar.

[loserX]

They may have been in the grand scheme of things, but no way would they have reached the finals without LeBron. There weren't many players in the league at that time good enough to get that kind of result with those guys.

And many of your arguments are not very compelling. The fact that minutes were distributed fairly evenly does not mean their depth was *good*, picking one game of Boobie Gibson's doesn't mean he was anything more than an old-school Troy Daniels, and citing Larry Hughes as apparently valuable because he was good before he got there and not after is pretty absurd.

[dhsilv2]

They were by nba finals teams, pretty terrible. Where they a bad nba team completely? Well, no they were a good defensive team for sure.

[Homer38]

Very good defense,but awful offense....When LBJ was on the court,the offense had a offensive rating of over 107(It would been top 10 in the NBA)but with him off the court,it was at 99.9...The worst team offense in 2007 was the pacers at 102.9..His stats are per sports-reference

Between 2006 to 2010,the 2007 Cavs were maybe their worst team it was not the best year for LBJ even if he was still great.

[nikster]

So in the past 2 decades you can point to only 4 other Finals teams whos might have had weaker supporting cast (I still think CLEs is weaker), and on none of those teams did the Star do as much heavy lifting on both ends of the floor as Lebron.

[Capn'O]

They put a decent compatible team around LeBron but really didn't have that second round of firepower you need to be a champion. I wish they'd been able to pull off the JJ Hickson for Stoudemire trade a few years later. That tandem would have been fire to watch.

[TheDiesel36]

No, they absolutely sucked. I could never wrap around my head about the fact, that they were that good defensively with Ilgauskas and Gooden (absolute sieve) up front.

[bondom34]

They had 3 players with a positive BPM.

[Egg Nog]

The 2007 Cavaliers wouldn't have made the playoffs without LeBron.

[Imenutz]

This is way too much analysis over what you can already see on paper.
This team was garbage, trash and if they weren't already in the trash east, not even having LeBron would have taken them to the finals.
Not kidding, this is surefire lottery team without LeBron.

[Ron Swanson]

Nah, they were certainly one of the weakest Finals teams of the last two decades and only made it there because of Lebron. I'd argue that the 2009-2010 Cavs were the team that is underrated. It's just that LeBron , for whatever reason, absolutely folded in the last 3 games of that Boston series. That was the year they had both the defense (not as great as '09 but still really good) and the offensive firepower to beat the Magic and Lakers. It should have been the Kobe/Lebron Finals that we all deserved.

[KMartsCrew]

I've said this before, but, as a New Jersey fan, the key moments that stuck in my mind & that haunt me from that 2007 conference semifinals series against the Cavs were these:

- Late in game 1, Sasha Pavlovic tracks down & blocks Jason Kidd, who had what looked like an easy layup on the open floor (Hughes would make a huge shot after that inside the final minute, too):

Watch on YouTube

- Final possession of game 4 in Jersey, with Cleveland leading the series 2-1 & the game by 2, the Nets have the final possession to either tie or win the game. Eric Snow, with help from Larry Hughes, plays great defense on Vince Carter & forces him to turn the ball over.

- Game 6 at the Meadowlands, with Cleveland up 3-2 in the series. Donyell Marshall goes bananas from 3, 1st helping them blow the game wide open, & then, after the Nets made their run, helping the Cavs seal the deal in the 4th:

Watch on YouTube

Say what you will about that cast, but without those contributions, Cleveland would absolutely not have made it past the 2nd round against a .500 NJ team that was also decimated, missing their 2nd leading scorer (Nenad Krstic), & still gave them a run for their money, beating them handily a couple times & being in it in the 4th in every loss.

[PistolPeteJR]

They were trash.

/thread

[BigDocta898]

They were absolutely terrible all those teams you listed had better #2s than that Cavs team had.

Did you forget ABOUT SHAQ, Kmart, RJ, Mutombo

[bon]

It was a similar team to the 2001 Sixers

[Optms]

The only thing "Great" about the 2007 Cavaliers was Lebron. Everything else was trash.

[Bergmaniac]

OP's neverending quest of finding ways to discredit LeBron is quite hilarious.

In the minutes Lebron was on the bench in the playoffs, this "deep" team had a -19.3 Net rating.

[OriginalRed]

That team had no talent outside Lebron whatsover. It was just filled with hustle and grit guys that played hard on defense, which is why they were always ranked high defensively since defense is all about effort. The only reason why they won so many games in the regular season was because of how bad the Eastern Conference was from top to bottom and how they went all out in the regular season.

Lebron should be given credit for taking that team as far as he did but at the same time, you have to also accept they faced subar competition on the way.

[SK21209]

Some of the responses in this thread are so dumb. "They had nothing around LeBron;" well, yeah, they only had decent/mediocre roleplayers around LeBron but LeBron was on the team so you evaluate their team with LeBron on it

They were not a "trash" team; they were a very good defensive team with one of the three best players in the league. That alone makes you a good team.

[Dupp]

Top tier Defense and rebounding. Awful offence. Lebron wasn’t even that good then either.
Take away Lebron from both teams though and it’s a better cast than 18.