Hosts: Sonny, Rich, Kevin and Ryan

In this episode, we toured the NBA’s Central Division and broke down each team’s shot at the postseason. The Detroit Pistons bring back their core for another run at glory, but will they still have enough to hold off the Cavs? The Cleveland Cavaliers have a new point guard, but much of the same problems: No help for King James. We also talked about the young, promising teams in Chicago, Indiana and Milwaukee.

 

 Standard Podcast [20:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’ve seen LeBron James do some remarkable things in his five year NBA career. Last season, he led an awful Cavaliers team to the NBA Finals and this season, LBJ won his first scoring title and brought the Cavs within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals. If you missed James’ miraculous 45 point effort yesterday, you missed what we’ve known all along. LeBron James has historic ability and arguably the most pathetic supporting cast in the NBA. To aid the Cavs in building a championship team around #23, I offer a few offseason pointers for general manager Danny Ferry.

Look Into Replacing Mike Brown: Ideally, the Cavs could have crashed out in the 1st round, allowing them to enter into discussions with Mike D’Antoni. Brown’s IQ is right up there with the backboard at Quicken Loans Arena. After James’ dominating 1st half, Brown began the first half by calling several consecutive plays for gumpy center Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Imagine James in an up-tempo system with a true point guard. He’s one of the strongest finishers we’ve ever seen, but he’s probably playing at about 75% of his true ability because of Brown’s awful system.

Take out the trash: This is made difficult because of the contracts some of these guys have. Hacks like Ben Wallace (signed through 2010), Zydrunas Ilgauskas (2010) Wally Szcerbiak (2009) have large, inflexible contracts that are nearly impossible to move. A friend of mine made an incredible point during yesterday’s game. The Cavs have over $20 million tied up in defensive “specialists” Wallace and Anderson Varejao…but simply cannot have them on the court at the same time.

Read the rest of this entry »

If someone were to ask me to give LeBron James criticism, I’d be hard pressed to create a substantial argument.  Tuesday’s game one debacle, however, revealed that the King is a mere mortal just like you and I.  Going 2 for 18 from the floor is just something that LeBron isn’t familiar with.  And something even more unlikely than LeBron’s game one disaster is a repeat performance of equal or greater disappointment.

Some nights, you just don’t have it.  How many lay-ups rattled in and out of the rim that night?  He’s a better player than that and he’s out to prove it.  Kobe Bryant was awarded the MVP hardware on Wednesday but, if you ask me, the King of Cleveland should have been the one hoisting the hardware.  No player does more for their team than LeBron does for the Cavaliers.  Before you scroll down and start cussing me out in the comment box, hear this.  There must be a distinction between the best player in the league and the most valuable.  Kobe Bryant is hands down the best player in the world.  Does he do a myriad of things that make the Lakers appear to be unstoppable?  Absolutely.  I contest LeBron does more.

Delonte West; an unproven commodity who has played for three teams in two years and isn’t a reliable scoring option but is capable of running the point despite looking like a 12 year old who stumbled into Quicken Loans Arena hoping to see Mickey Mouse on Ice.  Wally Szczerbiak; a wily veteran who makes a living on the three point line…but just barely.  Ben Wallace; a once cherished beast in the paint whose age has caught up with him while the days of 21 rebounds, 8 blocked shots, and 1 point are long gone.  Zydrunas Ilgauskas; soft Russian who spends way too much time taking shots from the elbow and not enough time swinging his communist elbows around in the paint.  This is what LeBron James has.  There aren’t any All-Stars on this roster.  There aren’t even any players on this roster who require the opposing team to game plan against.  Then theres the King, a guy who goes for 30, 9, and 8 a night and, if he doesn’t, the Cavs don’t win.  It’s that simple.  The Cleveland Cavaliers are a 15 win team sans LeBron.  With him, they’re the reigning Eastern Conference Champs and a team capable of either laying an egg and losing by 20 or blowing a team out of the water with a superhuman performance on any given night.  This is the essence of why LeBron James is the most valuable player in the league, more so than the best player in the league in Kobe Bryant.

For the third straight year, the Wizards had the fortune of facing LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs. Absent pretty much everyone last season, the Cav’s sweep of the Wiz in the first round was essentially a given. This year, with the recent return of Hibachi Arenas, the Wizards felt like they had a swagger that they could take into the series. To take it further, Wizards guard DeShaun Stephenson kicked the sleeping dragon and called LeBron “overrated.”

DeShaun, let me break something off for you. Overrated is a guy who scores 11 points a game and gets 3 assists a game challenging a guy who is bigger, stronger, faster, and scores 30 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists a game. Overrated is the 15 points you’ve scored in the two losses in Cleveland while LeBron has gone for 30 and 32 respectively. Overrated is that shitty growth you have on your chin after making a stupid agreement with Drew Gooden to grow out shaggy beards. Overrated is your entire Wizards team that is once again in a 2-0 hole because you decided to call out arguably the best player in the NBA.

I should also mention that Brendan Haywood is a punk and a bitch. That flagrant, though it looked worse than it probably was because LeBron was off-balance, was unwarranted and uncalled for. I get that Washington is trying to send a message that they’re going to play physical. I get that they want to rough up LeBron in the series. There’s other ways to do it, Brendan. My suggestion is that you take that double flagrant, take your 10 points and 7 assists, take all that smack talk you and your boys were running to the King before the series started, turn that sumbitch sideways, and stick it straight up your candy ass.

There’s no denying the fact that Lebron James carried a mediocre Cavaliers team all the way to the NBA Finals last year. When the offseason came and went without any sort of acquisition, the message was clear: This is Lebron’s team and with him, the sky is the limit. But the last week has proved that without King James, the Cavs are a mess. A complete, total mess.

With James on the mend because of a sprained finger, the Cavs have had to make do without their star for the last three games. The result? Three straight losses with a scoring average of about 75 points. Is there another team in the league that reliant on a single player? Hell, I’d take my chances with the Lakers minus Kobe Bryant over the Lebron’less Cavs.

Cavaliers coach Mike Brown, who rarely jumps on his team publicly, expressed disgust with its performance.

“I want to see them fight,” Brown said. “I didn’t see any tough or any grit as a team out there.”

Without Lebron, this team is hopeless. And to add to the Cavs’ misery, free-agent bust Larry Hughes is also out for the next few weeks. Is it ironic that LeBron’s MVP hopes are growing more because of injury than his stellar on-court play? Without his gaudy numbers, the Cavs are proving each and every night that they’re one of the worst teams in the NBA without #23 on the court.

With the Spurs out to a commanding 2-0 series lead against the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, the conclusion to this series seems to be inevitable. With that in mind, I have a few thoughts on the series that I’d like to burn on instead of giving you a recap that you probably already know about.

• LeBron James is alone on the floor. I don’t think Michael Jordan could do more with that supporting cast than James has. There’s no reason for the Spurs to exhaust defensive energy on anyone other than James because nobody else on that Cavs team wants to make a shot.
• Watching the Cavaliers might be one of the most frustrating things on the planet. I don’t think I’ve seen a team so bipolar in my life. They can play like the best team in the league and transition to tanking like the worst team in the league literally within minutes. It’s truly remarkable.
• Tony Parker is out of his mind right now. He’s reminding me a lot of Allen Iverson when the 76ers went to the Finals in 2001. His knock against him was his ability to make shots, but you can go ahead and throw that out the window. Dude is about as automatic as it gets driving to the hole and shooting the J.
• LeBron might be the third or fourth best player on the floor right now. I already mentioned Parker, and you can go ahead and start talking about Tim Duncan as probably the best power forward to ever play the game. Big Fundamental has been bastardized by many, including myself, for being boring. Boring or not, he’s as undeniable as it gets on the low post both offensively and defensively. And even though I’d like to take a blunt object to his head, Manu Ginobili has been absolutely lights out off the bench. That three pointer with the foul he had last night essentially sealed the deal for the Spurs. When he’s your sixth man, you know you’re in good shape.
• How about the play of Robert Horry, especially down the stretch here. Horry has been playing defense I don’t think even he knew he could play down low. Three blocks in the first half last night, are you serious? His game is more than just Big Shot Bob, it’s turning into Complete Package Bob.
• Note to Mike Brown: Don’t sub out LeBron. Brown pulls LeBron after just four minutes in the first quarter and sits him the entire quarter because of foul trouble. With a player like LeBron and a lack of surrounding talent like the Cavs have, you have to leave him in. Trust that your star player will be smart enough not to pick up his third foul. James needs to play all 48 minutes next game regardless of foul trouble. The Cavs are a completely different team without him.
• Someone notify Drew Gooden that he belongs in the low post. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen that douchebag step out and shoot the mid range. Granted he hits one every now and then, but come on. Don’t run your offense through a power forward trying to knock down 12 footers. And on the topic of Gooden, that inbound play in the first quarter where the Cavs picked up a shot clock violation was pathetic. The best thing you can come up with is a Drew Gooden inbound for a three pointer? I don’t believe that for a second.

Well, that’s about all I have for now. I’m not sure when game three is, but what I do know is that it’s not taking place in the near future. The NBA’s scheduling is flat out ignorant. I don’t have anything else to say about it so I’ll just leave you with that.