Love Letter to Lebron #3

Dear LeBron,

I fully admit--I was drinking the Koolaid.

Everything about the Cavs seemed to be great, and they were indeed great--winning more games than any other team in the NBA for two seasons, and enjoying five consecutive years of playoffs. Except that they weren't great. You were great, LeBron, and that is were the greatness ended.

I previously wrote about how sad I was that you left. I then wrote about how you could fix your tarnished image with the fans of the NBA. Now I write to say that, while I still don't agree with the manner in which you did it, your decision to go and play in Miami was absolutely the right choice.

The supporting cast you left behind in Cleveland is good enough to be the absolute worst club in all the NBA. I don't even need to dress this ugly monster up. Their record speaks for itself. Is there one player on the Cavs team that would start for any team in the NBA that is over .500? It's really easy to argue no.

Your former coach Mike Brown is a commentator on the NBA channel. He couldn't even land a gig on ESPN or TNT, let alone another head coaching job. From the top down, this organization is run much the same way you run your marketing team. It's a rich guy who's great at something else, handing out jobs and responsibilities to buddies and taking far too much bad advice.

I guess I should have realized this when Gilbert unceremoniously dumped Michael Reghi from the TV announcer chair in favor of his former roommate. I could have seen it again when faced with millions of dollars in free cap space, Danny Ferry, who had no executive experience whatsoever, used all of it to secure long-term deals with aging players that the didn't fit. Or the relentless drive to get every old and busted former star currently playing in the vain hope that you wouldn't know they were grasping at straws.

But the worst was the hiring of Mike Brown. I hated it when it happened, and I still hate it. You don't take the most gifted offensive player of his generation and team him with a defensive-minded rookie head coach. That was just unforgivable. The talking heads in studios treated the Cleveland offense like the laughable plod it was. Charles Barkley was especially funny about it. I used to hate hearing them say it. I used to argue that it wasn't that bad. Oh yes. It was that bad. Their offense was basically: throw it to LeBron and let him do something.

Wade, Bosh and you are starting to gel. The Heat still lack an effective center. Z is too immobile to play the up-tempo style that suits the rest of you, and that might result in some problems in the playoffs, but you are the most exciting team in basketball, and a pleasure to watch.

Right now I feel like smacking Dan Gilbert upside the head. That could have been the Cavs. If he'd have known what he was doing. Instead of getting young guys to fly around with you, we got Shaq and Ben Wallace--five years after they'd played their best basketball. Now the Cavs are the worst team in the NBA, and there's really only one person to blame.