I know that roster looks horrible now. But they were undefeated at home. They played elite defense. Mo Williams was supposed to make the leap to be a consistent secondary scorer, like Terry finally did last year. In the NBA the regular season has a strong correlation to the playoffs - there has never been a team dominate the regular season like that, get all the hype heading into the playoffs, and then be dismissed as not being built to win.

Those 2 Cavs teams are a huge disappointment historically. You can't just dismiss them. It's way too easy to write them off after it's over. They were favored for a reason.

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Dominique never made it to the conference finals in Atlanta for a reason. Same with Bernard King in NYC.

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Neither player was on a dominant regular season team like the Cavs. Neither player was on a team that was favored to win the title as late as the 2nd round [Edit: 3rd round - I forgot they cruised to the ECF in 09] before having a bizarre meltdown.

[This message has been edited by InternetFan02 (edited 5/14/2012 12:30a).]

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Those 2 Cavs teams are a huge disappointment historically. You can't just dismiss them. It's way too easy to write them off after it's over. They were favored for a reason.

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And pretty much everyone knew they were flawed in that they had no solid secondary player. They had no one to take the pressure off LeBron. They had no one they could count on to create besides LeBron.

They won a lot of games, but the 2009 season had basically 4 teams. 3 in the East and one in the West. Heck, only 4 teams in the East had a record over .500. The West had a bunch of teams clustered in the 50-54 win range, but none were considered serious threats.

There were only 4 good teams in the NBA. The Cavs had the best player in the NBA, but the other three good teams had them killed with their 2-7 guys and it isn't even close.

Did you know: Lebron has taken more shots to win/tie in the final 24 seconds of the game in the playoffs at this point in his career than Kobe had, and converted them at a much higher percentage?

And what does Lebron have to show for it?

we'll find out soon enough. He sure as hell never got to play with the most dominant big man of our generation in his prime though like a certain other who gets (wrongly) compared to MJ.

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They won a lot of games, but the 2009 season had basically 4 teams. 3 in the East and one in the West. Heck, only 4 teams in the East had a record over .500. The West had a bunch of teams clustered in the 50-54 win range, but none were considered serious threats.

There were only 4 good teams in the NBA. The Cavs had the best player in the NBA, but the other three good teams had them killed with their 2-7 guys and it isn't even close.

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having 4 elite contenders is not abnormal. And you're comparing the 2-7 players in terms of what we know in 2012. For example no one would have told you that Gortat was significantly better than Varejao in spring 2009. The Cavs excelled at team defense.

We have a 3 year trend now of Lebron's teams being favored to win a series and suddeny folding without much of a fight.

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For example no one would have told you that Gortat was significantly better than Varejao in spring 2009.

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Seriously? Who didn't know Gortat is better than Varejao by 2009?


EDIT: flipped the names

[This message has been edited by Ulrich (edited 5/14/2012 10:32a).]

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And you're comparing the 2-7 players in terms of what we know in 2012. For example no one would have told you that Gortat was significantly better than Varejao in spring 2009. The Cavs excelled at team defense.

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We all knew that Z was washed up. He averaged 7 and 5 in 20mpg that year. And he was Bron's starting center.
We knew that Boobie Gibson was worthless. He averaged 7 points on 39% shooting that year.
We knew that Mo Williams was a below average player that benefitted from having LeBron take all the perimeter heat from him. As a scorer, ok. As second fiddle on a championship team? Terrible. Look at him now. In the LAC-MEM series, he was 7th in minutes on the Clippers. Passed by by such amazing players as Reggie Evans, Randy Foye and Caron Butler. And Nick Young will probably pass him shortly since Nick is actually making his shots.
Delonte West? When he is your starting point guard, you have serious team problems. He is an OK combo guard for coming off the bench if you like a lot of BSC on your team. But as a starter in any role?
Varajao is Varajao. Flops, looks like sideshow Bob and plays D. In 2009, he was an 8.6 and 7.2 player and was probably the Cavs second best player.

Legitimately, the Cavs had no second banana. Mo Williams is probably best as a scorer off the bench as a 4th option. Delonte is probably best heavily medicated.

That was a bad team then, and it is a horrible team now.

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We have a 3 year trend now of Lebron's teams being favored to win a series and suddeny folding without much of a fight.

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Wasn't that the Dallas Mavericks in 2006-2010?

What's your point of comparing Lebron's Cavs to Dirk's Mavs?

I feel like in the next couple years after Lebron wins a ring, we're probbaly going to look back on these conversations and feel a little silly about the things we were saying about Lebron despite the mounds of evidence to the contrary.

The Mavericks had been written off by all but the most rabid MFFL homers until Dirk had his amazing run last year. Ad LeBron is an all-around better player than Dirk with better players around him than Dirk had.

Dirk never led his team back to elite contending status after 2007 - that's why they were written off. Lebron's teams have been favored to win the title based on regular season success and projecting into the playoffs for the last 4 seasons now.

Lebron is far and away the best player in the league, and one of the best in the clutch. Better than Kobe.

claym711 cannot be a real person. If so, what an absolute moron.

what did he say in his last post that is inaccurate?

Clay is a real person and a good Ag. And based on your posts Simple, he knows a lot more about basketball than you

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And based on your posts Simple, everyone who has ever lived in any period of time in any universe knows a lot more about basketball than you

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Has Kobe EVER gone for 32 and 15? Even once?

Kobe can score with the best scorers of all time, but he is over-appreciated by people too stupid to recognize the incredible importance of non-scoring productivity. Nobody fills up the stay line like Lebron. Dude is amazing, and unselfish. I don't recall him ever pouting and refusing to take a shot. The Lebron hate over the move to Miami is strange. It's irrational, even.

I hate ESPN for their publicity, Dwayne Wade for his flopping, and dislike Lebron for some of his media antics, which means I want Miami to lose... but Lebron is still a great ballplayer.

I'm a big Lebron fan(obvious if you read my posts on the board)...but it's completely fair game to criticize him for the bull**** he pulled in regards to "The Decision".

I will preface that by saying it was not him as much as it was Jim Gray and Maverick Carter talking courtside at a game, along with ESPN's influence to turn that into a circus...but Lebron employs Maverick, so he is ultimately to blame for some of the stupidity that came as a result of that.

[This message has been edited by Bunk Moreland (edited 5/14/2012 8:02p).]

Lebron was asked to do "The Decision."
He agreed because it made a million dollars for charity. Hard to criticize that, in my opinion.

ehh...it was concocted by Jim Gray and Maverick, they approached ESPN, and LBJ agreed. Maverick is Lebron's business manager...Lebron got bad avice by his business manager. But I agree he took all of the (for lack of a better term) heat for the whole event, when he was just a pawn for bigger interests.

LeBron could have said no to The Decision.

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Did you know: Lebron has taken more shots to win/tie in the final 24 seconds of the game in the playoffs at this point in his career than Kobe had, and converted them at a much higher percentage?

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LeBron could have said no to The Decision.

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He could have. And the Boy Scouts would be one million dollars poorer.

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He could have. And the Boy Scouts would be one million dollars poorer.

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Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell.

For it: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lebron+vs+kobe+clutch+stats

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He could have. And the Boy Scouts would be one million dollars poorer.

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Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell.

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http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/lebrons-decision-was-awful-but-his-charities-are-thankful?urn=nba,wp2143

Yes, but I was mistaken. It was actually more than two million dollars.

And LeBron could have very easily found another way to make the exact same amount of money for the Boy Scouts. Actually, I thought it was the Boys & Girls Clubs but I guess that doesn't matter for the sake of this argument.

Mr. Clutch just bricked 2 FT's with less than a minute left down by 1.

[This message has been edited by Junkhead (edited 5/15/2012 8:35p).]

mr clutch has also played 40+ minutes defending the 4 and scored at least 10 in the 4th quarter.

your obsessed hatred is sad.

Well at least he touched the ball a couple of times on that last possession. He made zero attempt to dribble inside the 3-point line and couldn't pass the hot potato fast enough, though.

Good MVP passing there to get the balk out of his hands.