Why Can’t LeBron Get Any Love?

8 thoughts on “Why Can’t LeBron Get Any Love?”

1. 

   Thomas Lehner

   July 27, 2010 at 11:42 pm

   Personal disclosure: having been born and raised in Ohio to be a Cleveland sports fan (in every sport), I must take issue with your article.
   First, and possibly most importantly, most CLE fans care more HOW he left rather than that he DID leave. It’s rather disgraceful to keep secret from a city, granted a collective of people, who have given, voluntarily, more than enough emotionally to LBJ sports-wise, that it would take a public one hour, staged interview to “decide” things directly before them instead of informing them ahead of time. I can’t force him to do anything, but c’mon, there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing business, and LBJ clearly chose the wrong way.
   Secondly, regarding the CLE HOF’s, LBJ’s indecision to commit forced the team to build year-to-year without being able to commit to a viable long-term strategy. Hence, the constant signing of players to just get them over the hump, aka Shaq. Also, I believe your argument of players being HOF’s rests on shaky ground. Sure those were great teams, but, in the modern era, who beyond a Kobe or Kevin Garnett that is a HOF-quality player has helped their team win a trophy? I would argue Robert Parish and Scottie Pippen are not HOF’s without their counterparts, as opposed to the way you treat them.
   Finally,Coach Mike Brown lacked the ability to make in-game adjustments but that beside the point of the argument.
   1. 

      Wilt Alston

      July 28, 2010 at 9:51 am

      I hear you, and I really appreciate your sentiment as a Cleveland die-hard fan. First, the easy stuff. I didn’t say that LeBron did it “the right way” at any point. This is because that part of the debate is irrelevant the points I make. Hell, I said he probably embarrassed himself. Secondly, it is entirely possible that internal team dynamics led to the lack of quality talent around him. Again, that’s just a “why” that relates to them losing, and, in fact, supports my contentions.

      Next, we can argue about the supposed HoF-ness of past players, but that’s a waste of time. Why? They’re already in the Hall! That you (or I) think [put player here] should or should not be in the hall is irrelevant, since that decision is made. I admitted that Parker and Ginoboli might be great debates, but who cares? They were (and are) better than anyone on the Cavs roster at the time, both from objective data (stats) and subjective impression. (I don’t think you’re saying that the Cavs roster was better than the Spurs, are you?)

      Finally, as I said to another respondent, it is, almost without exception, true that the NBA Playoffs are won by the team with superior talent. (Let’s put the debacle with the Kings aside for now!) Boston put together a team with superior talent, and they did it in the salary-cap-bad-GM era that both you and the other respondent mention. Again, let’s not argue if KG or Ray Allen or Paul Pierce are headed for the Hall. Clearly, they provided superior talent for Boston. And just as clearly they played at that high level during Boston’s run. It’s about firepower. Always was. Always will be. That Cleveland did not have superior talent is, I think, unarguable. You may believe that there are valid reasons for this. Maybe so.

      One last point, that I didn’t include in the piece that plays, I think, to the contention that past players just “took it and played hard.” The data just doesn’t support that contention. Even in the 80’s players moved around and became key cogs in title runs. Dennis Johnson to the Celtics comes to mind. (Tiny Archibald, anyone?) In this regard, what LeBron has done, with D-Wade and Bosh, is absolutely typical of the NBA specifically, and professional athletics generally. I take strong exception to the suggestion that he’s somehow more shallow or more willing to put winning above other things that is true of anyone who competes at that high level. Now, it might be that athletes are a-holes generally, or that he is actually more shallow, but this episode doesn’t prove it. He’s just not unique, judged by almost any rubric, and the formation of his “big three” in Miami ain’t even news, really.
2. 

   David J. Heinrich

   July 27, 2010 at 11:59 pm

   A conversation between myself and a friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) on this article:

   #
   My Friend:
   This isn’t very good in terms of understanding why teams were constructed the way they were. He clearly just looked at rosters and statistics and matched up HoF guys, without looking as to why teams could be built like that in the mid-80s, …and not like that today.

   In the mid 80s, there were 23 teams in the league. Thats 9 less than today, or 108 less players in the league. Therefore, the talent pool wasn’t as diluted as it is now. It was plausible every team had at least 1 HoF player or near HoF player, and contenders were able to field more than one. Understand that this was the most competitive era in the league, with somewhere around 20-25 of the top 50 players of all time playing during this era, and 6 of the top 12 (Jordan, Bird, Magic, Hakeem, Kareem, Moses).

   There was also no salary cap, and GMs weren’t that. Combine these two elements, and its completely possible to build super teams like the ’86 Celtics, who had 5 HoFers on their team (Bird, Walton, McHale, DJ, Parish). There’s no way you could build a team like that today. At best you could get Bird, and maybe one of those other guys, and you’d have to surround them with role players. Also, Magic made everyone on his team at least 10% better than what they actually were. If you put James Worthy, Cooper, AC Green, and Byron Scott on another team, I doubt they’re even in discussions in the Hall.

   So how were the Bulls able to pull it off with Scottie Pippen for so long? Its easy…Scottie was one of the worst paid players in the league during the length of his entire contract. He was a HoF player paid like the 7th or 8th guy on the team. He was also a draft pick who just happened to turn into a Hall of Famer, not a free agent who they signed.

   It would take me too long to get into the Jordan discussion, but Jordan never wanted to play with Bird and Magic. Jordan was a competitive psychopath who went out of his way to eviscerate other alpha dogs on other teams on the grandest stage possible. Here’s the list: Clyde Drexler, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley. He also wanted to go through the Pistons, not join up with them. It was true that Bird, Magic, and Jordan all wanted to beat each other, not play with each other. Bird and Magic hated each other for the longest time. This can be confirmed in any book in which all 3 talk about each other.

   A couple notes on the Cavs: they made the finals in a year they weren’t supposed to, and wouldn’t have had Dwayne Wade stayed healthy. Their team sucked because they were still rebuilding. The last 2 years they were legitimately upset in the playoffs, and it was mostly due to their coach absolutely sucking.

   #
   My Friend: Edits: GMs weren’t that savy, and I was trying to make the point of just how deep the talent pool was in the 80s, so that you could have multiple HoF guys on a team.

   #
   My Friend: and Ginobli and Parker are in no way HoF players. If they get into the Hall, the hall should be knocked down.

   #
   David Heinrich Yea, but the the teams he cites in the 80s were competitively put together vs. other championship-winning teams. The Cavs clearly aren’t. You just mentioned their coach absolutely sucking — well that’s a very important part of the team. Jordan and Pippen didn’t win without Phil Jackson, and Magic had Pat Riley. These are great coaches. So the Cavs didn’t build a great organization around LeBron. He is probably looking at this and thinking he is going to be the next

   #
   My Friend:
   The Cavs were competitively put together, or as competitive as you could be in this day and age. That was a great team the last 2 years. They had the best record in the Eastern Conference 2 years in a row, and were a sick defensive team. Th…ey made the conference finals 3 out of 4 years. This offseason, they went out and added Byron Scott as their head coach. They could have made it this year, but LeBron James stopped trying after game 3 of the Celtics series (vs a very, very hot Celtics team). I watched those games. He gave up.

   Winning a championship is just tough to do. The Celtics didn’t decide “Ok, today we’re going to be competitive” and go out and sign Parish, Bird, and McHale. It just sort of happened. None of that comes together if Bird doesn’t take a year off college to be a garbageman. If it were that easy, every team would be competitive. Its like capturing lightning in a bottle. You can try to build great teams all you want, but something usually happens that puts them over the hump that is completely out of their control. Its a lot of luck. Ask me about any team from the last 20 years, and I’ll point out the lucky break that happened to clear the way for them to get where they were. The Cavs never had that break.

   Also, as far as coaches, they don’t matter in pro basketball as much as you would think. There have been maybe 6 coaches in the history of the game who matter, and those coaches were lucky enough to coach (and be made by) Hall of Fame players. Remember, the Bulls and Lakers didn’t know that Pat Riley and Phil Jackson were going to be Hall of Fame coaches when first hired (and would they be if they didn’t coach Jordan, Magic, Shaq, Kobe, Pippen, and Wade?).

   People are being critical of him now because, for the first time in his life, he faced some adversity, and he handled it all very poorly, but understandably so. He essentially gave up basketball immortality and took the path of least resistance. We’re all disappointed, but at the end of the day he’s just a 25 year old kid who was ill advised and made some terrible decisions, all done with some sort of super spotlight on him that I can’t imagine.

   Karl Malone didn’t miss out on winning a title because he played on crap teams (0/3 in the NBA Finals). Karl Malone didn’t win a title because he got a deer in headlights look in any type of pressure situation. And he played against Jordan. He had his chances, and we all found out he was the least clutch superstar of all time.

   My point being was that because of the talent pool of the 80s, a lot of inept GMs, and fewer competitors, and no salary cap, championship teams look absolutely loaded compared to our teams today. It was a completely different era. Its a bad comparison.
   1. 

      Wilt Alston

      July 28, 2010 at 9:38 am

      David, your friend raises some good points! I’ll have to get back to this debate when I’ve more time to read and digest his whole post. One quick comment: Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, two guys who lost to Jordan teams, are GREAT examples. I considering looking at that too, but hey, it’s a blog post, not a book. In BOTH Malone and Barkley’s case, they were on teams with equal or less quality talent–using any rubric, including HoF–than the Bulls. Additionally, their (Barkley and Malone) stats went DOWN in the playoffs. Jordan and Pippen? Their stats went up. Again, it’s a case of firepower. HoF (or at least superior) talent to your opponent, playing like it when the lights are high. A team *must* have this to win in the NBA tourney. This year, and in the 80’s. No difference. The salary cap, GM ineptitude, etc. are just reasons why a team might lack this. But, and I state again, because this seems lost, the NBA playoffs are ultimately decided by talent, as is the almost inevitable result of a series set-up.
   2. 

      Wilt Alston

      July 28, 2010 at 10:58 am

      Ah hell, this is gonna nag me all day, so I might as well read it all now and respond…

      (By the way, I can’t help but think your friend works in sports. Something about the tone that reminds me of friends of mine who work in sports. Whatever.) Again, the points he makes are largely valid, but often tangential to what I’m trying to say. For that reason, I’m kinda stuck with one response: So?

      As I’ve said in 2 other (now 3) posts, the NBA Playoffs are won, it seems pretty obvious, by teams with superior firepower. That is the result, I’d argue inevitably, of a series format. The regular season, for reasons having largely to do with length, is simply not a good rubric. For one thing, role players generally play better at home. For another, the pressure of the playoffs manifest on players in ways that tend to either immortalize them or expose them. (The comments about Malone being “least clutch superstar of all time” are very well taken in this regard.)

      Dilution of the talent pool doesn’t change that series-format-arithmetic, it just give teams with *not* superior talent (Cavs?) a chance to compete, if they have one transcendent player. That is, unless they come upon teams with more than one transcendent player. (By the way, as I actually said in the piece, who gives a large rat turd if Parker and Manu aren’t headed for the Hall? They were and are demonstrably better than the Cavs players against whom they competed.) GM ineptitude doesn’t modify the arithmetic either. GMs don’t play, they build. The ones who get a lot of credit somehow assemble talent despite dilution, salary caps, etc.

      Finally (really this time, we all hope) I am not defending LBJ from attacks about his handling of the situation. What I am saying is this. It makes absolute sense for him to seek a team with (what he hopes will be) superior talent. This path has always made sense, and any suggestion that past players wouldn’t have done it–aside from specific cases like Pippen in Chicago or Jordan’s personal approach–is ludicrous and goes against every praxeological principle we know. (Yes, I managed to get praxelogy into a sports debate!) It even goes against empirical data, as players moved around even in the 80s. It is further undercut when one examines, as I did, the evidence. The teams that win have superior talent. By the way, one could certainly argue that such talent seems superior because the teams won, sort of a chicken-and-egg thing, and that’s fair too. It just seemed pretty cut-and-dried to me, looking back. Hey, that’s sports debates!
3. 

   Wilt Alston

   July 28, 2010 at 1:09 pm

   Something just dawned on me, and I’m kicking myself for not including it in the original essay. (It is possible that this was scratching at my psyche and I didn’t even know it.) This LeBron situation, and much, if not all, of the negative response to it seems really out-of-place, not only looking back at 80s dynasties, as I did, but also when looking at recent data.

   The Boston Celtics did what LeBron, D-Wade, and Bosh are trying to do, only a few years back! Boston, apparently under the care and handling of Danny Ainge, acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. Now, let’s not worry about their HoF credentials. Instead, let’s look at the facts. They–Boston–won a championship with those players. And those players played like HoF players. Now LBJ (and Wade and Bosh) are attempting to do what could very easily be described as exactly the same thing in Miami and it’s like LeBron has become the epitome of what’s bad in sports.

   Hogwash.

   You know what I think? I think part of the backlash occurring now, ironically even from other players, is fueled by a feeling that these current players–James, Wade, and Bosh–have had the temerity to take aggressive, directed steps toward what GMs have done in the past. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s almost like people are mad that some of the slaves have decided to organize versus letting the slave-masters determine who works where.

   (I know. Again, that’s unfair.)
4. 

   Wilt Alston

   July 28, 2010 at 11:43 pm

   I should have checked Mises before I shot off my mouth. Here’s a piece that covers much of the same ground, but likely better than I did! Skip Oliva, posting on the Mises Economic Blog: LeBron and the Collectivist Mentality
5. 

   Geoffrey Allan Plauché

   July 29, 2010 at 1:11 am

   Whenever I see “LBJ” I don’t think LeBron James, I think Lyndon Baines Johnson — and that’s not fair to LeBron! Maybe just call him LJ? 😀

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