LeBron Made His Bed
Unfortunately for those of us who love great basketball and hate stupid basketball fans, 2016 is the year that LeBron haters might actually have a legitimate argument against James’ greatness. Make no mistake: It is largely LeBron James’ fault that his Cavaliers teams the past two years have been so unsuccessful in the NBA Finals. Not because of his play, or his leadership, but his “executive” decision making.
For the entirety of his second stint in Cleveland, James has been the de facto GM for the Cavs. He’s periodically been lauded for his involvement in the business side of the organization while maintaining the title of best player in the world. He’s embraced that GM role, but now it’s time for him to take responsibility for his actions: The Kevin Love — Andrew Wiggins trade just might go down as the reason LeBron James probably isn’t going legitimately challenge Michael Jordan in the greatest ever conversation, and he has no one to blame but himself.
To be fair, while in hindsight the trade looks like James’ Waterloo, at the time it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Love was an established scorer who could shoot 3’s and had a great passing touch that made up for his lackluster defense. Wiggins was a celebrated, but young and raw prospect who wasn’t a great shooter and tended to disappear in games.
Fast forward to the 2016 playoffs; Love is a putrid, leaking garbage sack on the defensive end, and can’t seem to find any sort of rhythm on offense (as has Kyrie Irving, but that’s a different article). It’s hard to imagine Wiggins, who won Rookie of the Year in 2015 and generally is considered a possibly being any less valuable than Love throughout the playoffs, unexperienced as he may be. While he definitely won’t ever say it, there isn’t any doubt that James regrets not mentioning Wiggins in his Sports Illustrated homecoming letter.
Now Cleveland is down 2–0 to a Golden State team made up of a superstar and players who are good at both offense at defense, not specialists in one or the other. While the Cavaliers might not have been as offensively dynamic with Wiggins, without a doubt they would have been much better defensively, just as they were in the 2015 Finals without Love.
Whether James was concerned that without an established star he would be wasting the last of his prime years, or overestimated his ability make up for his teammates bad defense, his and the Cavs organization’s decision to trade for Love is a failure.
No one can predict the future, and there’s always a fair amount of risk involved with decisions of that magnitude, but the reality is that Kevin Love is a massive reason Cleveland is playing so poorly against the Warriors, and he’s a Cav because of LeBron James.
