Is it possible...

[Rat_Tail]

To get rid of these Ronald McDonald uniforms after only one season?

The all whites aren't bad but the all wine looks silly.

Anyways, Cavs keeping it within 11 right now.

[Rat_Tail]

...and Andrei Kirilenko gets my vote for ugliest person in the NBA.

[GodHatesClevelandSport]

... for the Cavs to win another game this season?

No.

[rebelwithoutaclue]

...and Andrei Kirilenko gets my vote for ugliest person in the NBA.

It's Chris Kaman and it isn't even close.

[Rat_Tail]

Cavs have allowed 100+ points 28 games so far this season.

About to be 29. Nuggets have 79 right now and it's only the end of the 1st half.

I wonder if this is why we've lost so many games this year.

[ArtGold]

Rebuilding is a bit tough on the fan base, but with a decent plan the Cavs can be a competitive club within a few seasons. Meanwhile, it is important to get the building blocks in place and for the front office to have honest communication with the fans.

Unlike baseball, a few players can make a significant difference in a very short time.

[Spin]

I've lived through the expansion era, the Stepien era, and the post-Good Guys pre-LeBron era. But this may be the worst team in Cleveland Cavaliers history

Only 8 players tonight? That's a money saving scheme that Dolan could be proud of.


Thank God for EA Sports and their Dynasty Modes...

[Orenthal]

^I live through all but Stepien and seems like those were worse. Always seems worse when its staring you in the face. Unless you like fist-bumps to the head of Darius Miles, Diop/flop, Wrong Rim Ricky, and Wagner pooping himself.

8 guys has less to do with money and more to do with injury and lack of talent. (Only debating the hyperbole, not positive on this team.)

[Spin]

It just seems like a team that's trying will bring in guys on a 10 day or 20 day. Looking at the cap, it seems Gilbert is slashing payroll to match expected attendance. A Dolan technique. Which IMO backfires as less people go, resulting in more cuts.

OR he's just tanking for a higher draft choice, which he said last fall wasn't the answer.

[peeker643]

The difference is that Stepien didn't have 6 years of excellence behind him. There was the Miracle of Richfield sandwiched between 6 years of shit on either side of it (for the most part). There was also a less than engaged fan base when Stepien took the reins.

It wasn't 20k per night and miliuons around the world watching the Ted Stepien owned Cavaliers and there was never going from a league-high number of wins to likely the worst record in basketball.

This is worse for me. I loved the original Cavaliers unconditionally and I grew up expecting them to be bad. With a one or two year exception they were bad and that included Stepien's horrific tenure. But having 6 years of playoff basketball, a Finals appearance and a couple years of the best record in the game sets a different standard.

Stepien was a deep hole but not all that much deeper than the expansion Cavs and any team through the early 80's. The LeBron Cavs pulled us out of that hole and then we were shoved back in to the depths we thought we'd never see again in one televised event.

This is worse. The only question now is if/how we pull ourselves out of the hole. And now there are a lot more people watching us try than there were 30 or 40 years ago.

[GodHatesClevelandSport]

Bulls record the year after Jordan left (for good): 13-37

Year after that: 17-65

Then 15-67, 21-61, 30-52, 23-59.

Took them seven seasons to post a winning record following Jordan finally leaving.

That's what the Cavs are looking at.

[Orenthal]

It just seems like a team that's trying will bring in guys on a 10 day or 20 day. Looking at the cap, it seems Gilbert is slashing payroll to match expected attendance. A Dolan technique. Which IMO backfires as less people go, resulting in more cuts.

OR he's just tanking for a higher draft choice, which he said last fall wasn't the answer.

Gilbert has stated publicly that the Dolan technique is a loser. He also said he felt the team would be competitive. Even Dwyer has stated he only saw this level of suck happening because of our dealing veteran talent. I don't think Gilbert expected the team to be this bad, and that has hastened his decision to go the Presti route. I mean guy is tweeting about Manny freaking Harris.

He is going the youth route. Guys like Harris and Samules where signed for that reason. Gee, the NBDL rookie of the year, bumped Danny Green of the roster for that reason. It doesn't happen overnight, and I find it odd the people clamoring the most are the same that predicted "the suck" and whose remedy is now being followed.

Us being rumored in a Wallace deal also blows up the spending question. We take on an additional 22 million in salary by making that move. IMO we haven't had enough move one way or the other to judge Gilbert. There is no plan B to losing a guy like LeBron, and all the previous moves had us in position to win it all for 3+ years. That is all I ask for...

[peeker643]

Gilbert has stated publicly that the Dolan technique is a loser. He also said he felt the team would be competitive. Even Dwyer has stated he only saw this level of suck happening because of our dealing veteran talent. I don't think Gilbert expected the team to be this bad, and that has hastened his decision to go the Presti route. I mean guy is tweeting about Manny freaking Harris.

He is going the youth route. Guys like Harris and Samules where signed for that reason. Gee, the NBDL rookie of the year, bumped Danny Green of the roster for that reason. It doesn't happen overnight, and I find it odd the people clamoring the most are the same that predicted "the suck" and whose remedy is now being followed.

To clarify my perspective:

I have no issue with going young and rebuilding. I'm simply saying that it's tougher to watch after the past six years of relevancy than it was to watch 'the suck' when it's all you knew and seemingly perpetual.

Competetive relevancy as we know it is over for the next few years at best. That's a bitter pill to swallow right now.

[Orenthal]

^Won't argue what one feels a worse Cavaliers season. Also won't pretend this doesn't suck. I'm wait and see on Gilbert moves post LeBron/rebuild.

[Madre Hill, Superstar]

Bulls record the year after Jordan left (for good): 13-37

Year after that: 17-65

Then 15-67, 21-61, 30-52, 23-59.

Took them seven seasons to post a winning record following Jordan finally leaving.

That's what the Cavs are looking at.

Bulls first-round draft picks during that period:

Elton Brand (#1) and Ron Artest
Marcus Fizer (#4), Jamal Crawford (#7 in a trade for Chris Mihm), and Dalibor Bagaric
Eddy Curry (#4)
Jay Williams (#2)
Kirk Hinrich (#7)
Ben Gordon (#3)
Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khrypa (#2 in a trade for LaMarcus Aldridge) and Rodney Carney

That's some Paxsonesque drafting there, Lou.

[peeker643]

Bulls record the year after Jordan left (for good): 13-37

Year after that: 17-65

Then 15-67, 21-61, 30-52, 23-59.

Took them seven seasons to post a winning record following Jordan finally leaving.

That's what the Cavs are looking at.

Bulls first-round draft picks during that period:

Elton Brand (#1) and Ron Artest
Marcus Fizer (#4), Jamal Crawford (#7 in a trade for Chris Mihm), and Dalibor Bagaric
Eddy Curry (#4)
Jay Williams (#2)
Kirk Hinrich (#7)
Ben Gordon (#3)
Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khrypa (#2 in a trade for LaMarcus Aldridge) and Rodney Carney

That's some Paxsonesque drafting there, Lou.

Good post. That's abysmal as it turned out. Phil Dunphy needs to be right way more often than he's wrong on the personnel side.

[Orenthal]

^It is why a pick of Perry Jones scares the hell out of me.

[Madre Hill, Superstar]

Good post. That's abysmal as it turned out. Phil Dunphy needs to be right way more often than he's wrong on the personnel side.

Exactly. I've got a not-bad feeling, given Brown Boobie Hickson and what we've seen of Eyenga, but the proof really comes in June.

[GodHatesClevelandSport]

Bulls record the year after Jordan left (for good): 13-37

Year after that: 17-65

Then 15-67, 21-61, 30-52, 23-59.

Took them seven seasons to post a winning record following Jordan finally leaving.

That's what the Cavs are looking at.

Bulls first-round draft picks during that period:

Elton Brand (#1) and Ron Artest
Marcus Fizer (#4), Jamal Crawford (#7 in a trade for Chris Mihm), and Dalibor Bagaric
Eddy Curry (#4)
Jay Williams (#2)
Kirk Hinrich (#7)
Ben Gordon (#3)
Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khrypa (#2 in a trade for LaMarcus Aldridge) and Rodney Carney

That's some Paxsonesque drafting there, Lou.

Good post. That's abysmal as it turned out. Phil Dunphy needs to be right way more often than he's wrong on the personnel side.

Those are bad picks? Really?

Most teams would KILL for a draft record like that.

Elton Brand has averaged 19 ppg for over 10 years. Cavs fans were begging for Ron Artest to come here last season. Jamal Crawford just won Sixth Man of the Year last year, no? He was in the running, I know that. Eddy Curry had some decent years. They did manage to trade him for a bag of goodies. Jay Williams was looking like a solid player before he hopped on a motorcycle. Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon are both decent players. Tyrus Thomas is at least an average NBA player.

It wasn't awful drafting that ruined the Bulls. Trading Elton Brand and Ron Artest for garbage did them in.

[peeker643]

Bulls record the year after Jordan left (for good): 13-37

Year after that: 17-65

Then 15-67, 21-61, 30-52, 23-59.

Took them seven seasons to post a winning record following Jordan finally leaving.

That's what the Cavs are looking at.

Bulls first-round draft picks during that period:

Elton Brand (#1) and Ron Artest
Marcus Fizer (#4), Jamal Crawford (#7 in a trade for Chris Mihm), and Dalibor Bagaric
Eddy Curry (#4)
Jay Williams (#2)
Kirk Hinrich (#7)
Ben Gordon (#3)
Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khrypa (#2 in a trade for LaMarcus Aldridge) and Rodney Carney

That's some Paxsonesque drafting there, Lou.

Good post. That's abysmal as it turned out. Phil Dunphy needs to be right way more often than he's wrong on the personnel side.

Those are bad picks? Really?

Most teams would KILL for a draft record like that.

Elton Brand has averaged 19 ppg for over 10 years. Cavs fans were begging for Ron Artest to come here last season. Jamal Crawford just won Sixth Man of the Year last year, no? He was in the running, I know that. Eddy Curry had some decent years. They did manage to trade him for a bag of goodies. Jay Williams was looking like a solid player before he hopped on a motorcycle. Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon are both decent players. Tyrus Thomas is at least an average NBA player.

It wasn't awful drafting that ruined the Bulls. Trading Elton Brand and Ron Artest for garbage did them in.

Yeah, bad results IMO. When you're picking at an average of 3rd in those years you need to do better than Hinrich, Curry and Fizer. In your defense, I don't know what they spun those choices into though. And I'm way too lazy to see who was picked after their selections in each year.

[Orenthal]

Brand was traded as part of getting either Chandler or Curry.

[GodHatesClevelandSport]

Yeah, I don't know what all those guys were traded for without looking it up, or who they could have drafted instead.

I just look at that list of players and see a lot of talent.

[Spin]

Something that contributes to the suck level is, for decades when one team fell apart, one of the other two were starting a run.

In the 80's it was the Browns. In the late 80's the Cavs started coming on, and had a nice run through the 90's. In 94 the Tribe arrived. When that fell apart the Browns briefly looked like a playoff team. Then the ping pong balls fell into place for the Cavs.

Now, we have the Cavs seemingly reduced to ruble by LeBron (and several others) leaving, the Browns starting over again, and the Indians in such a funk it's hard to imagine them in two World Series in three years, let alone remember it.

Call me what you want. I always say if you can be a Cleveland fan for 44 years (or more) and not be a bit of a cynic, you may need help.

[Spin]

The difference is that Stepien didn't have 6 years of excellence behind him. There was the Miracle of Richfield sandwiched between 6 years of shit on either side of it (for the most part). There was also a less than engaged fan base when Stepien took the reins.

It wasn't 20k per night and miliuons around the world watching the Ted Stepien owned Cavaliers and there was never going from a league-high number of wins to likely the worst record in basketball.

This is worse for me. I loved the original Cavaliers unconditionally and I grew up expecting them to be bad. With a one or two year exception they were bad and that included Stepien's horrific tenure. But having 6 years of playoff basketball, a Finals appearance and a couple years of the best record in the game sets a different standard.

Stepien was a deep hole but not all that much deeper than the expansion Cavs and any team through the early 80's. The LeBron Cavs pulled us out of that hole and then we were shoved back in to the depths we thought we'd never see again in one televised event.

This is worse. The only question now is if/how we pull ourselves out of the hole. And now there are a lot more people watching us try than there were 30 or 40 years ago.

I started watching hoops in the Stepien years. You can call me a lot of things, but bandwagon jumper is not one. LOL.

I took my family to a game against the Knicks in the post-Good Guys era, and they got throttled by 50 points. None of them have been back since.

Maybe it was Bron leaving. Maybe it was having the best record last year. Maybe it's because the Browns and Indians do nothing to sooth our wounds. This time it just seems different.

[Madre Hill, Superstar]

Most teams would KILL for a draft record like that.

The only guy on the list you'd want on a championship contending team is Ron Artest. Maybe early model Elton Brand, though what he turned into after the Sixers showed him the money has me a little doubtful. The jury will always be out on Jay Williams. The rest are a bunch of busts and empty stat chuckleheads.

Eight picks in the top ten, four in the top three, and the closest you found to a franchise guy or All-Star was Elton Brand. I'll leave it at that.

[StewieG]

In fairness to Brand, he had a nasty achilles injury that, from what I've heard, has limited his mobility since it happened.

[JJN]

Brand is putting up 15/9 with a PER of almost 20 this year FWIW.

[diminishingskills]

Yeah, bad results IMO. When you're picking at an average of 3rd in those years you need to do better than Hinrich, Curry and Fizer. In your defense, I don't know what they spun those choices into though. And I'm way too lazy to see who was picked after their selections in each year.

We'll give you a pass, since you maxed out your health insurance before January 1st was even in the books.

I think more than lousy drafting, the Bulls' experience shows that (a) you have to be lucky to get your high picks in the years when the true superstars are in the draft and (b) you have to be smart enough not to deal them for shiny beads.

In 1999, the Bulls had the #1 pick in a draft that had one superstar type in Brand. Even at that, Brand wasn't a LBJ/Bird/Shaq/MJ type superstar -- but a guy who you could build around. (The next few picks were Stevie Franchise, Braon Davis, Lamar Odom, and Jonathan Bender.) Then at #16, they took Artest, probably the best value pick in that whole draft -- there was NOTHING in that draft after Artest. Problem was, within two years, the Bulls had dealt both those guys.

In 2000, the Bulls had the #4 and #7 picks in what may have been the worst draft in modern NBA history. When Kenyon Martin and Stromile Swift go 1-2, you're lucky to get a flaming bag of shit at #7.

In 2001, the Bulls again had two top picks, taking Chandler at #2 (technically, the CLips took him there, then traded him to the Bulls for Brand) and Curry at #4. That was the year when HS players were all the rage, and teams had visions of KG dancing in their heads.

In 2002, the Bulls took Jay Williams #2. All we'll ever know about him is that he was much better with a basketball than a crotch rocket. That was a pretty weak draft anyway -- the next four picks after Wiliiams were Mike Dunleavy, No Clue Drew, Skita, and (cough) Dajuan Wagner. Once again, it's not like the Bulls passed on MJ to take Sam Bowie.

In 2003, the Bulls had the #7 pick in one of the strongest drafts in history. Problem was, the top players (LBJ, Melo, Bosh, and Wade) were long gone by the Bulls' pick. They took Hinrich, who has been a useful player, and as good as anybody who came after him in that draft.

In 2004, they took Ben Gordon #3. I would have hated that pick, just because I've always hated Gordon's game. But looking at who came after him (Shaun Livingston, Devin Harris, Josh Childress), it's again not a terrible mistake (I would have preferred Harris myself in real-time). Then they took Luol Deng at #7 -- again, a guy who has proven to be as good as anybody who came after him.

In 2005, the Bulls didn't have a #1 pick (I think that was the pick they had dealt to PHX to get Deng).

In 2006, the Bulls drafted Tyrus Thomas with the #4 overall pick. He hasn't been a great player, and Brandon Roy was still on the board when the Bulls drafted. But so were Shelden Williams, Patrick O'Bryant, and Saer Sene (all guys who would go later in the top 10).

If we're going to draw any conclusions from the Bulls' experience, it is: if you're going to suck, suck in a year when there are good players available in the following draft. Of course, that's like saying "to get rich, make more money". I don't think we can really fault the Bulls too much for their drafting; it's not like they left other potential superstars on the table to take the players they selected.

While it argues against the suffering that most Cleveland fans seem to think are their birthright and destiny, the Cavs were very, very lucky to get their #1 pick in the year when the best player of the past 20 years entered the draft. Had the best player in 2003 instead been Kwame Brown, or Michael Olowokandi, or Andrea Bargnani, we wouldn't have had any 60-win seasons.

This point is also why I've chafed at the whole idea of tanking a couple of seasons in order to improve long-term. Yes, that is the way to get the star-level players who can drive you to a title. Other than that one Pistons team, every NBA champ of the past 30 years has had at least one superstar on it. But there are also a lot of flops and busts at the top of the draft. I don't like luck as a business plan, even though that seems to be the way to win in the NBA.

[peeker643]

I can buy into that DS. Your pick will be only as good as the draft itself makes sense. I'm just saying that on the surface those guys they got are extremely bleh IMO and they didn't do a very good job in spinning what they got into anything that was much better.

Hope all is well.