Cavs Board

I’m relatively impatient in general. But at least as it relates to the Cavaliers, I think I’ve been the opposite most of my fan life. That would be the obvious statement I suppose. They’ve yet to win an NBA Championship and that is kind of the whole point, but I’m speaking more to the roster moves they make and the time it takes for them to accomplish the goals that mainstream media lay out for Danny Ferry.

I don’t get all that rattled by drawn-out contracts battles, at least not with the role players. I understand that there is no miracle fix for a roster loaded with bloated contracts that can be exercised at any moment. It takes a willing third party team looking to amend mistakes of their own, or time for guaranteed contracts to expire. Fortunately, the NBA will always have the Knicks, and roster mistakes are in no short order.

From 2005 on, it’s been an impossible set of circumstances for the Cavs when faced with how to significantly upgrade the team around Lebron. Sure their have been some player resignings (Drew, LBJ himself, Anderson Varejao, Pavs) and a couple of minimum salary additions (David Wesley, Devin Brown), but by in large, the Cavs made a calculated risk, put a whole lot of money behind that risk, and in the world of guaranteed contracts found themselves stuck.

Danny gets the chance at a redo, at the latest in 2010. Today’s NBA offers two clear paths. Do teams use their expiring deals as tradebait and limit themselves to the malcontents, bad deals, old players, or expiring contract players who are shopped annually (hello Zach Randolph!)? Or, alternatively, do you wait out your own team’s bad deals, let them get off the books, and then attempt to make your additions through the unrestricted free agency market (something that Portland could be attempting to do with Raef LaFrentz’s deal), one which is notorious for driving up salaries and the years needed to get deals done(hello James Posey!)?

That is where the Cavs are at. Many of the trades Ferry has made in the last year have largely been seen as victories. Dealing Larry, acquiring Delonte, bringing in Mo Williams…. all these things seem to have been more positive than negative to the fanbase (albeit Mo is still an unknown, but so little was given up). Given what Ferry has done since 2005 managing to move some of his own worst deals, really makes me want to see what Ferry can do when given his best collection of trading assets to date.  

You never know when a Pau Gasol situation will emerge where a good player whose largely seen as worth his money is traded simply because a team is spending at an unacceptable level for the ownership.  Those are the situations you pray for as fans of opportunistic teams who don’t seem to blink at overpaying (hello Ben Wallace!).

But there’s the other path. The one that could blow up in your face and leave you with nothing, because there is no safety net. The one that asks the fanbase to wait until 2010, and the uncertainty of unrestricted free agency to try to net one of the big dogs (Bosh, Amare, Wade) to play alongside Lebron. Patrick McManamon of the Akron Beacon Journal has already hinted at it publically. It’s something we’ve all thought about privately. But it’s a path so riddled with uncertainty, I can’t help but hesitate to embrace the unknown. McManamon writes:

Everyone has been focusing on the cap space of the New Jersey Nets or the New York Knicks or Athens, Greece, but the Cavs quietly have manipulated themselves to the point that they have more salary-cap room than anyone for that offseason.

The Cavs have almost $30 million in cap space — and that counts James’ salary, which will go away when he opts out of his final year.

As of today the Cavs have four players under contract (sort of) in 2010-11: James for $17 million (though he’s probably going to be a free agent), Maurice Williams for $9.3 million, Daniel Gibson for $4 million and J.J. Hickson on a team option for $1.5 million.

That’s it.

Wally Szczerbiak’s contract expires after this season.

Ben Wallace goes after two seasons.

So does Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Other players surely will be added to the roster, but the Cavs won’t add anyone who will compromise their ability to bring in talent in 2010.

First let’s get this out of the way.  Patrick’s article does not take into account fully what other teams will be able to do between now and then to free up even more money.  The Cavs will not be alone.  The summer of 2010 has gotten far too much coverage to think that GM’s aren’t scheming league-wide.  That doesn’t make the above scenario impossible.  It just makes it harder to orchestrate.  

Don’t kid yourselves.  That is not an easy scenario to plan for.  Ferry has shown patience and shrewd maneuvering, but there’s a long history of the best laid plans blowing up in team’s faces. This summer the Clippers saw that plan fall apart first hand. Instead of retaining their superstar (Elton Brand) and adding the other big name on the UFA market (Baron), they got Baron Davis and filled the void of the departing Brand with Marcus Camby. Not exactly what they hoped for. That plan required them to let Maggette walk, and to top it off, Kaman didn’t exactly do the PR department any favors with his Benedict Arnolding (that’s not a verb…. but it is now).

As for the Cavs, 2005 saw Michael Redd spurn the Cavs despite what appeared to be the perfect “intangible” mix to counteract the extra year Milwaukee was able to offer him back in 2005. Cleveland was his hometown, he was a star at Ohio State, and he could have played alongside the league’s top talent (although not in 2005) with a skill set that all but guaranteed him as the perfect fit. Instead the Cavs ended up with Larry Hughes. Not Ray Allen. Not Joe Johnson. Larry Hughes. The fanbase is the one who should have tattoed tear drops to their faces. It’s been three straight years of “well it will get better…next time the Cavs can’t possibly do worse”.

So what then do the Cavaliers do to remedy their current roster woes? Two years is an eternity, and while WFNY and Cavalier Attitude have already done a great job of discussing who could be out there in 2010, I think it’s equally relevant to try to take an unbiased look at where the Cavs will be, and how they’ll be portrayed entering what will undoubtedly be the most important summer in team history.

Amar over at Cavalier Attitude had this to say when speaking on the likelihood of the Cavaliers obtaining Amare Stoudemire:

So don’t be surprised if the Suns start falling apart at the seams this season. This is a team that desperately needs to get younger and find more pieces to build around for the future. Just Stoudemire by himself, unlike just James by himself in Cleveland, won’t be enough for the Suns to keep improving down the road with everybody around him retired and no young players around him.

It’s time we as a fan base look in the mirror.  Should the Cavs decide to wait out their bad deals and enter 2010 with a huge pile of money and dreams of Lebron/Bosh or Lebron/Wade or Lebron/Amare, then they will be a shell of a roster.  

To have the full complement of money that they could assemble, it would require allowing Wally, Z, Ben, Anderson, and Sasha all to walk away thus freeing up their money.  

Sure the Suns could be stripped and old by that point, but they’d still likely have Barbosa (our Mo equivalent), Diaw, Robin Lopez (a young big…our JJ equivalent but more in the Varejao mold), and Alando Tucker along with Shaq’s 20 million dollars off the books and Nash’s 14 million.

What I’m saying essentially, is that Amar’s statement above would largely apply to the Cavs as well, since they’d need to rid themselves of nearly all their assets even just to take the chance on luring a guy like Bosh or Stoudamire.  That’s not even considering that it would require “the other superstar” to come to a team that could offer them less money to be the second fiddle to LBJ.  Check out the same statement Amar made, but slightly revisited.  It’s not that far off from the situation the Cavs are faced with:

So don’t be surprised if the Suns Cavs start falling apart at the seams. This is a team that desperately needs to get younger and find more pieces to build around for the future. Just Stoudemire by himself, unlike just James by himself in Cleveland, won’t be enough for the Suns Cavs to keep improving down the road with everybody around him retired and no young players around him.

Olympic summers like this one foster hope, because superstars played as a team, and things like patriotism and love of the game are the story lines for what drive guys, but that doesn’t apply in today’s NBA.  Marion couldn’t coexist as part of team.  He wanted his.  Redd had the chance to join a better team, but stayed as the big fish in the small Milwaukee pond.  It’s foolish to think things will be as easy as simply waiting out a couple more moderately successful years with this current Cavs incarnation and then turning the roster spots of Wally, Ben, Z, Snow, and Sasha into a perennial All-Star.  

It would require sacrifice from another team’s superstar both monetarily and on the court.  It would require patience from Lebron and the type of commitment to the Cavs that no one truly knows if he would make before seeing who Ferry could lure.  And it requires Ferry to pass on the opportunity to turn limited overpaid players, into more talented players because of their attractive contract status… one that can’t be used if their deals are allowed to expire.  That’s a lot of faith to place in a “best case scenario” when “well we’ve got Lebron, that’s the difference” has yet to produce any beneficial second banana results.

I think it’s pretty obvious what way I feel.  I would love the idea of Chris Bosh alongside Lebron James.  But call me the pessimist.  I think the trade market has proven far easier to navigate for Ferry than the free agency market, and until I see something to indicate that big money deals like Greece aren’t truly what drives most players, then I’m not buying into the “well he’ll come to Cleveland for less money to play with Lebron as second fiddle” dreams.

Yep….obligatory poll time…..

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