Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Commitment

Yay! A major NBA writer says that LeBron is going to re-up with the Cavaliers! Of course, said writer is Peter Vecsey (what? Does that change things for you?)

An appreciably well-wired roundball entrepreneur believes LeBron James will re-up with the Cavaliers for three years, a possibility he almost certainly would not entertain had Mike Brown been retained -- something GM Danny Ferry fiercely advocated doing, hence his resignation.

Should no championships be churned out during that time frame, my source is convinced LBJ will bolt for Jay-Z's Brooklyn with a clear conscience, figuring he gave Cleveland a full decade.

Obviously, believe no LBJ rumor until LeBron signs on the dotted line. Especially rumors coming out of the New York Post.

I'm torn on LeBron signing a new three year deal. On one hand, the Cavs are 1,000,000,000 times better with LeBron than without, so at some point, beggars can't be choosers (as much as it sucks) and you sign LeBron for whatever number of years he wants.

On the other hand, it's really hard to run a (competent, successful) franchise while the cornerstone holds a gun to management's collective head. LeBron's undecided future is hurting the Cavs with their current coaching search and it came into play last summer when they pursued Trevor Ariza.

I know LeBron wants to keep his options open but I don't see how he'll be successful (like, multiple titles successful) unless he really puts down some roots.

4 comments:

Nick said...

Name superstars that have multiple rings... Magic, Jordan, Bird, Bill Russell, Kobe... how many of them won rings with multiple teams? That's what I thought, Shaq of course being an exception winning 1 of his 4 in Miami with D Wade, and Robert Horry winning 7 titles with 3 different teams (but then again, Robert Horry was never a superstar)

Brian said...

Shaq is a great comparison for LeBron. This is Shaq to me:

1) Supreme physical specimen.

2) Natural talent so amazing that it covered the holes in his game.

3) Got some titles purely because 1 & 2 were such an overwhelming combination.

4) Loves being famous.

5) Is cool with winning but doesn't NEED it.

6) The stats make it hard to criticize him, but nobody will argue that Shaq only did about 75-80% of what he could've as far as basketball goes.

Ben said...

LeBron definitely has too much Shaq in him for my tastes. What did Simmons say in his book... Shaq is a guy with a A- career who thinks he has an A+.

LeBron always puts up the numbers, but unless you watch the games, you can't tell if the 26-7-6 he dropped was LBJ going thru the motions or not. I'm not sure many general NBA understand this.

Watching this Boston-Los Angeles shows me how far away both LeBron and the Cavs truly are. Both Boston and LA have had role players step up and carry the team (ironically, the only non-LBJ Cavalier to step up against BOS was everyone's favorite playoff goat, Mo Williams) and it's astonishing how HARD these guys are playing on both ends (Big Baby's effort puts both Shaq and Jamison to shame).

davemanddd said...

i really don't fault antawn jamison's performance against boston. after all, he wasn't the coach who made the decision to put him on kevin garnett exclusively. i still think that brown made a very big mistake, huge, in not playing jj hickson more during that series. he was the one guy who boston had no answer for during the regular season and yet brown just neglected to use him like he should have. it was obvious that jamison couldn't handle kg and yet brown wouldn't make the adjustment. that's on him, not jamison. d