While We’re Waiting… Cleveland Free Agents, LA Radio Host Backpeddles and Sully Staying?
February 18, 2011Daniel Gibson Will Take His Shot, But Should He?
February 18, 2011
Two fellow New Yorkers – one still a Clevelander at heart – sat down to discuss a slew of topics. While LeBron James and Cleveland were only a small part of the published interview, Esquire Magazine was kind enough to provide the full sports-related discussion in detail.
In it, Cleveland native Scott Raab and comedian/Knicks fan Chris Rock talk about the last year of player movement with in the NBA. Rock plays the “I told you so” card a few times with regard to James, pretends to be an NBA general manager and ultimately says it comes down to the weather and being 25-years old. Naturally, it’s published in the middle of February.
A few excerpts:
On what the Cavs should have done: I don’t even see what the big story is. The owner’s an idiot. Why is the owner an idiot? I said it on television — you can look it up. I was at a Lakers game — they were probably playing the Knicks. It was on TNT, and Kenny and Mark Jackson and whoever interviewed me on the sidelines, they asked me about LeBron. I said, “They should trade him.” I said it, on national television.
I said you should trade him. I said any owner, any big-ego owner would take this shot. You could’ve got any player — you literally could’ve got Kobe Bryant. You could’ve got any player you wanted. You could’ve gotten literally any player outside of Kevin Durant and Dwight Howard. Any player. You could’ve got any two or three players you liked. I said this on national television. You could look it up — you’re a writer.
After Raab asserted that Cleveland thought James was coming back: Why would you think he’s coming back? People move from Cleveland to Miami every [expletive] day. They don’t move from Miami to Cleveland.
On last year’s playoffs: You’ve got to realize this, too: The Cleveland Cavaliers last year, when you look at the playoffs, when you look at the final eight teams, they had the worst team. […]
You take Kevin Garnett out of the Celtics, they’re still a playoff team. You take Dwight Howard off of [expletive] Orlando, they’re still a playoff team. You take LeBron James off of the Cleveland Cavaliers, they’re a lottery team.
You can catch the whole thing here. Rock goes on a bit further to compare Mo Williams to B.J. Armstrong, says that he wishes James would have stayed – for the betterment of the sport overall, and then, for perhaps the 12th time in the interview, says it all comes down to the weather.
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(Photo: REUTERS / Lucy Nicholson)
20 Comments
Bad: Esquire beating a dead horse.
Worse: Beating someone beating a dead horse.
Fern you have the best icon. Go Bobcats! Go Rufus!
If he wasn’t a comedian, I’d think he was crazy. Trade the league MVP when the team has the best record in the NBA? Anyway, yeah, beating a dead horse. Cleveland will always be a punchline. I just hope I get to see a championship before I die at this point.
Hey you got one [explitive deleted], but you missed an F-Bomb, fyi.
Chris Rock sounds like he’s enjoying his gradual slide into complete irrelevance.
Shouldn’t he be working on that sequel to “Grown Ups” that nobody’s waiting for?
Technically, he’s not wrong. Bosh would have followed LeBron to Milkwaukee if he would have told him so. The Raptors wanted to negotiate a sign-and-trade and the Cavs were more than willing to oblige. LeBron just didn’t want to stay.
It’s like Cleveland is the only city in America to be cold and snowy in the winter.
Chris Rock in the same article called various people racists (again)….it gets old when that’s the only thing in your creative pocket.
@7: Cleveland is a perpetual punchline. We really need some image rehab, unfortunately we’ve not the leadership to pull it off.
Chris Rock is just being honest. He’s an entertainer. Who really cares what he thinks anyway?
I think Scott Raab’s incessant whining on the subject is more annoying than anything that comes out of Rock’s mouth. Everything from his incessant “#whoreofakron” tweets – to the book he’s writing on the subject…enough already. We get it. It doesn’t mean we want to hear more whining on the subject. He forgets, we’re Indians fans. We know how to get over this kind of crap better than anybody.
So Chris Rock thinks he’s a genius because he says Gilbert should have traded LeBron? They would have called Gilbert an idiot if they did trade him.
I’m not sure how the weather plays into a discussion about a sport that is played INDOORS.
NY and Chicago have the same kind of weather anyway.
It is 60 degrees right now. Weather is nice here in Cleveland.
When will people stop talking about LeBron leaving Cleveland? Seriously, I’m asking. Will it ever go away or are we going to talking about this 10, 20, or 30 years from now? Hindsight is 20/20 and of course it would’ve be great to trade LeBron and get players, but everyone in northeast Ohio and everyone in the Cavs organization thought we could win a championship last year. Also, I think if we took last years teams minus LeBron and everyone was healthy then we wouldn’t be a lottery team.
because Chris Rock said we could have gotten Kobe for LeBron, that means we could have gotten Kobe for LeBron 🙂
(nevermind that Kobe is the one player in the league with a no-trade clause or that Denver can’t even get Dano Gallinari and Wilson Chandler from the Knicks for Melo)
I agree with @13. No mas, no mas
the rub is had lebron been traded mid-season, we all know perfectly well he would have said he was planning on staying in cleveland all along. it would have been a lie, but he would have said it. and the media would have believed him. it was a lose-lose situation.
Unfortunately, I think we’ll never hear the end of the LeBron saga. Maybe a title will erase it.
It’s like The Drive and The Shot. Those moments will live on until a Cleveland team wins it all.
Exactly @17 – this stuff will plauge us and rightfully so until the day we bring it home….
Maybe instead of trading Z at the deadline last year, we should of traded LeBron, had his contract bought out and then signed him as a free agent a month later…
Jesus. Can you imagine the fallout if the Cavs had traded Lebron? It’s actually scary to think about.
It’d have been just as big of a media storm and the fanbase would have been just as angry. Of course, the only difference: that anger would be aimed at the organization. Gilbert would have been a marked man. The way it went, he’s a regional hero (and casino owner).
As hard as it has been, letting him go was the right move. I’m not a big NBA fan, but it seems like the best way to succeed in the league is to be beyond horrible for several years, stock up on high picks, clear cap space, and hope you are lucky enough to have the first pick when a Lebron, Durant, etc. style superstar is available and then hope you can get the pieces around him.