Cavaliers’ David Blatt garners Euroleague Coach of the Year award
July 7, 2014The return of LeBron James plus Johnny Manziel and Josh Gordon – WFNY Podcast – 2014-07-07
July 7, 2014Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski wrote on Monday that the real driving force behind LeBron James returning to Cleveland is more agent Rich Paul than LeBron James. According to Woj, Paul has confided in several that bringing LeBron back to Cleveland is something of a “mission” for him.
In order to clear the cap space that they need to sign LeBron James –while retaining Anderson Varejao– the Cavs reportedly have a deal in place for Jarrett Jack to go to the Brooklyn Nets, but need a third team to make the trade work.
“The biggest obstacle remains unloading the contract of Jarrett Jack. The Cavaliers have found a landing spot for Jack and his $6.2 million annual salary in the Brooklyn Nets, but only if the Cavs can find a third team to take on Brooklyn’s Marcus Thornton, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Cleveland is offering Thornton and future draft considerations as incentive to absorb his $8.7 million expiring contract, sources said. The Cavaliers need to unload more contracts and have made 2013 first-round pick Sergey Karasev, among others, available in deals, sources said.”
One reason for Paul to push LeBron’s return to Cleveland is monetary. Cavs forward Tristan Thompson is also a Paul client, and it would seem that James’ return would likely have to coincide with a Thompson extension. Thompson has been a decent player, but realistically isn’t worth what a rookie contract extension will pay him.
Wojnarowski also writes that if the Cavaliers clear the cap space needed, but James signs elsewhere Cleveland will set their sights on free agents Channing Frye and Trevor Ariza.
[Related: David Blatt named Euroleague Coach of the Year]
43 Comments
If it happens, mind you I’m highly skeptical I’m just having fun with the idea, who cares why! The Frenchman played me the first time I didn’t think he’d bolt even though I could understand why he did. This time I’m thinking I don’t see him returning but man if I’ve ever wanted to be more wrong it’s this time!
This is an important question. There is a lot of talk about how this is the reverse of 2010, and in many ways it is. The biggest difference is that Lebron has a meeting with Riley scheduled. As long as that is the case, I think they have the best shot. They can offer him the most money and they already have a tremendous supporting cast. (I don’t attribute the loss this year to a bad supporting cast.)
Another factor that I can’t get out of my mind is Wade opting out. It would be completely inexplicable if Lebron hadn’t promised him that they would re-sign together. Wade will make about 15 million less on the open market than he would have made on his old deal.
if you thought this story ‘lebron is a puppet of rich paul if comes to cleveland’ sounded like a riley headgame leaked to woj, this tweet leaves no doubt.
“Within Heat, still confidence they’ll keep LeBron James. They know difference between his agent’s agenda, and James’ strong mind of his own.”
so let me get this straight: if lbj is interested in returning to his home and playing with three number one overall picks and his old friends AV and TT for the greatest euro coach of the last couple decades, it’s because rich paul hypnotized him.
talk about agenda.
sort of pathetic to see woj be a willing tool for the heat.
https://twitter.com/WojYahooNBA/status/486180212263366656
“they already have a tremendous supporting cast. (I don’t attribute the loss this year to a bad supporting cast.)”
okay, I’ll bite….. what do you attribute it to then?
Riley playing a dangerous game….. and he loves it.
Meh, Rich Paul is his agent. He hasn’t gone rogue. He’s just working for his client. Whatever directives he was given, he’s following through on them. It doesn’t hurt to have the agent on your side.
Clearly no decision has been made. So we wait & see. If Jack gets traded in a salary dump, then I’ll really get excited.
How dare you make blind Cleveland fans consider he may not come back!
The media as a whole has become a willing tool for the Heat (and LBJ).
“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”
– Eric Cantona
so the puppet master is a posse member who owes every dollar he’s ever made, every client he’s ever signed, to LeBron. Even after posse member nearly torched LeBron’s marketability with the brilliantly conceived and executed “Decision.” Sure he is.
Ok, a few off my chest while we’re waiting for Rich Paul to make his decision:
– For the past two years I’ve been warning everyone that you can’t just consider Lebron’s intentions, better first consider whether Vindictive Dan can stomach the idea of His Royal Posse and Gloria once again calling him at all hours and sapping his time and energy at will. But just taking a meeting with Paul answers that, and made me lose a little respect for Gilbert. Even if he’s an incompetent owner with poor impulse control I kinda respected the “screw you too” billionaire attitude, and his defiant tone in Raab’s book. All youse who said Dan would forget all that if an opportunity seemed at hand were right.
– In 2010 Miami had the Prince of Effing Darkness pacing in the hallways at IMG with his box of rings. In ’14 Cavs have the Lerpy Lithianian stuffed into a little jet
ready to talk about, what, Euro coaches? The good school systems? Playoff-less Kyrie re-signing? Still suspect this is a ruse from the guy who can’t live without attention but now has figured out how to get it without being such an obvious attention whore, using henchmen and silence to do his standard flirting act.
– If He returns I will enjoy the Cavs much more. I will thoroughly enjoy watching one of history’s greatest players right in the middle of his prime. It will be great sports. But I won’t root for him the same way. And honestly, will be a little relieved when he announces that he’s met with Riley and is convinced the “retool” is in progress.
Too big a discussion for this thread but in short, the Heat expected from day one to get a ton of talent together and then win by showing up. In the finals, the Spurs were better prepared and played harder with a substantially less talented supporting cast.
Put differently, in basketball, there is only so far improving the roster will take you. There are limited possessions and limited roster spots. You can have a strong inside presence – or you can have Chris Bosh at PF/Center. You can have role players who play good defense, or you can have Ray Allen. Once you max out the roster, you have to play the games, and THAT is where the Heat were thoroughly outclassed, both in effort and in coaching.
If you read that into Woj’s tweet, I fear that you may have the Lebronitis as well. To remain healthy as a Cleveland fan, you need to remain disengaged. Talk about it as though it doesn’t matter to you either way.If and when Lebron comes, there will be enough time to be passionate about it. Until then, we are dressing ourselves up for another massive Cleveland humiliation.
ooh aah cantona!
i hear you and get your point but view this from the exact opposite angle:
it makes much more sense for lebron to come to cleveland than anywhere else and those who can’t separate from their own hurt of four years ago to evaluate the scenarios critically and then to recognize the strength of the cavs’ hand have their own health issues manifested in PTSD-like denial syndrome symptoms.
The Decision was maverick carter’s thing, not rich paul’s. may seem a minor nit, but i don’t think it is. paul strikes me quite different from carter. wiser.
Paul is certainly doing one hell of a job repairing his image in Cleveland.
I don’t watch any of the sports talk shows particularly on ESPN but if the unimaginable does happen and LBJ returns you best believe I’ll tune in! I wanna see some talking heads explode namely Skip Bayless who can return to hating on James again.
You mentioned in your original post that the Heat’s failure in this year’s finals was not the supporting cast.
Then you move to your reply in which you state LeBron was limited by the resources given to him (strong inside presence v. Chris Bosh, Ray Allen instead of role playing defenders, effort and coach).
All of which would be “the supporting cast”.
Seems like we were able to tidy that up without too big a discussion.
i’m looking forward to a new simmons’ call for a rule change. and what will the new Heat Index feature be called? Cavalier Attitude?
whoops.. just got ahead of myself there for a second. **reels it back in..**
Someone tell Windhorst to bring a coat.
No, maybe I didn’t express myself clearly. What I meant to say was that the Heat chose those players because of their skills, and in choosing them gave up some other skills. If they had chosen players with more athleticism or defense or inside presence, they would have sacrificed the shooting and versatility they got from Bosh and Allen. The Heat made a choice to prioritize certain talents over others, and when they lost because of worse coaching and worse effort, of course it appears that they were weak in the areas they chose not to emphasize.
Happy wife, happy life.
haha, note the subtle dig at woj simultaneous with the riley headgame squashing in this broussard tweet. elegance in under 140 characters.
Guess we are talking about the same thing in two different ways then.
At the end of the day; as was in 2010 LeBron’s supporting cast was not constructed in a way he feels comfortable to continue with.
It seems a stretch to think that Paul has gone “rogue”. LBJ has to know the Cleveland option is being explored thoroughly.
The cynic in me, however, believes this is a tactic to get Tristan his money first, then forget about Cleveland all together.
If Paul is trying to sell LeBron on Cleveland because Paul sees greater financial potential, I don’t think he’s going rogue so much as doing his job as an agent. LeBron could still choose to stay in Miami.
“Meh, Rich Paul is his agent. He hasn’t gone rogue. He’s just working for his client. Whatever directives he was given, he’s following through on them. It doesn’t hurt to have the agent on your side.”
This. If LeBron stakes his near-future to his agent’s desire to make a Tristan Thompson commission, then he’s not the Global Icon businessman that he thinks he is.
No, that’s not the same thing. By your standards, imagine if the Heat could add Derrick Rose and Roy Hibbert. Everyone would spend the season thinking they would be tough to beat. When they lost in the finals, you’d say that the roster was flawed because they didn’t have good shooting from their guards, and their center wasn’t athletic enough. The Cavs in 2010 had a couple borderline all-stars, if that. The Heat in 2014 had Lebron, another max+all star player, and two fading superstars. It is unreasonable to expect improvement on that even though some of their role players were merely role players.
I think you’re right, Kanick, Carter not Paul came up with the decision. (But ok, if Paul’s the “smart one” in the band and influential, did he stop it?). Still, I don’t believe anyone manipulated LeBron into leaving here at 25, and less chance of anyone doing so at age 29. Including his wife. Doubt that wifey tweet meant what everyone here plus chaos-loving media wants it to.
And also, for Paul to just solicit serious interest from Gilbert is a P.R. win for LeBron. As in: how bad could 2010 have been if he already is doing backbends to get him back?
Particularly true for “normal” schlubs like you and me (I forget LeBron’s exact phraseology), if we assume that distance from home is the thing that determines a wife’s happiness; but for guys like Mr. James, the same factors simply don’t apply. The distance between Miami and Akron is functionally no different for them than the distance between Columbus and Akron is for us. Money acts like a warp drive, bending time and space and making the travel between two distant points much easier. The more digits before the decimal point, the easier the travel. I’m sure Mrs. James loves Akron, and I’m equally sure she can do so in-person whenever and however often she wants to.
Wait, you are saying it was unreasonable to expect to upgrade their 2014 roster?
Would you be saying the same had they landed Lowry and Gortat?
Would you be saying the same if Arinson showed he was willing to pay into the luxury?
Maybe it was a task to upgrade that roster, certainly not unreasonable.
With so much erroneous “reporting” what are the chances everything hinges on a TT contract extension? I really doubt that.
You beat me to posting this, good work Jim.
If Lebron comes back to the Cavs, my absolute favorite part will be the shocked, incredulous petulance of Bill Simmons.
and not just his near future; I’d say his total “brand”. No way he can take another 2010 hit to it.
i dont know about this. my family moved between my 7th and 8th grade. it was disruptive. getting your kids established and not having to move them through their formative years applies to the super rich as well as schlubs.
savannah being able to charter a jet to hang out with with her buchtel friends is not the same as being able to call and meet her friends 8pm tonite to hang out with her buchtel friends.
i dont know why the bond to akron is so hard to fathom. he bought SVSM football uniforms and donated a mill for a new gym. i didnt force savannah’s IG of akron and i doubt she didnt know the message it implied. it’s not like i’m making this up.
i get that these are touchy-feely things and sports reporters and sports readers are more comfortable talking PER and max contracts and so it’s being ignored. it shouldn’t be.
He’s all over ESPN these days he doesn’t have to come back. Funny thing is I remember him on MS&LL in his flannel and jeans. Long ways from the sport coats these days.
And who knows maybe the Cavaliers do something for Paul and his client in Thompson by trading him to Minnesota as part of a package for KLove. As said Thompson is nearing new deal time Minnesota would have a lot of cash to throw his way.
And lets not forget LeBron’s love for Akron St. Vincent Mary’s and how it’s been reported by multiple people that he would like his sons to attend his alma mater.
Absolutely right. And exactly why I don’t think her happiness is what is driving this train. Moving the kids only happens if you move the kids. I consider NE Ohio my home, and miss it, and count down to every visit, but that doesn’t mean I’m moving my family and kids to be there. But if I could afford it, I’d still be home all the time. Monthly; bi-weekly, you name it. If I believed in social media, I might even post it.
[Seriously, no, not that significant – at least not as significant as we want it to be; as neither you nor I nor anyone other than her (and maybe her family) knew what that phrase meant. Maybe they had a vacation or trip home scheduled. Maybe Private Santiago liked to get up early and pack in the morning – – wait, wrong discussion . . . ]
Of course they should have looked to improve incrementally, like all teams should all the time. But that was not a roster that was inherently flawed or should be due for a major overhaul. If their new point guard picked in the 20s is better than their previous two point guards picked in the 20s, and they got another big body to account for Haslem’s age, and replaced a couple players who retire or leave, that ought to suffice.
I thought about that briefly but Lebron is nobody’s fool and he is not likely to rent out his free agency to make TT an extra couple million (and his buddy an extra 200k.)
Cavs down to 15/1 to win it all next year. Not bad for a non playoff team.