Cavs’ best bet to keep LeBron? No one else tempting, insider suggests

Colton Jones Amico Hoops

Brian Windhorst has been covering LeBron James since he was a high school phenom at St. Vincent-St. Mary’s in Akron.

With James having to decide on whether to pick up his $35.6 million player option for the 2018-19 season by June 29, Windhorst sees LeBron remaining with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a very real possibility, for one specific reason.

Appearing on the Woj Pod with host Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN with fellow guest, Bobby Marks, formerly the assistant general manager of the Nets, Windhorst explained his rationale succinctly.

“I think the Cavs’ greatest situation, is that there’s no other great situation,” Windhorst said. “And that may end up keeping LeBron put.”

Windhorst touched on several Cavaliers-related topics, including the NBA Draft Lottery, set for Tuesday in Chicago, the much-speculated-on Brooklyn pick, which Cleveland acquired as part of the Kyrie Irving deal Aug. 22, and whom the Cavs might select in the draft June 25, or if they will trade it.

“This draft pick that they are about to make is enormous,” Windhorst said. “First off, because it’s Cleveland, we have to see what happens Tuesday because these dudes win lotteries. I know they’re down to two percent, or whatever, but they are in the same slot they were when they won the Kyrie lottery.”

Windhorst told a story about how Cleveland almost incredibly won the draft lottery four consecutive seasons and who it just missed out on in the one of the four it didn’t win.

“Let me tell you what’s crazy, I don’t know if everybody knows this,” he said. “So they won three lotteries over the course of four years. One of them was with the Clippers pick. The year they did’t win, was the year that the Pelicans, they were the Hornets then, the Pelicans won to get Anthony Davis. And here’s the crazy thing — the Cavs and the Pelicans had the same record and they did a coin flip. And the way the coin flip worked, the Pelicans got this set of Ping-Pong balls. If the coin doesn’t go (that way), then the Cavs would’ve won that lottery, too. Even their slot won, that year.”

So, aside from the immediate task — taking on Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals for the second consecutive season — what lies ahead for Cleveland?

“First, the Cavs have to go through the lottery. And Dan Gilbert fully expects to move into the top three… because why wouldn’t he?” Windhorst said. “Like I said, they won three of four and the fourth one, they lost on a tiebreak, otherwise it would have been four in a row. So, first off, they have to see that happens on Tuesday. So let’s say the percentages hold and they don’t move up from eight.

“So then that becomes a vitally important draft pick. Do you draft a guy there who you think pairs with LeBron, or do you draft a guy there that maybe doesn’t pair with LeBron? And here’s the challenge, unless LeBron breaks from his past, when the season ends, there’s not going to be an exit interview, he’s just going to leave. And then there will be no conversations with LeBron James about what to do with the draft pick.

“‘And, hey, LeBron, what about your option that you have for next year on the 29th? Are you going to pick that up? Are you interested in picking that up? What if we trade the No. 8 pick for Player X?'”

Which puts the Cavaliers in quite a difficult position.

“Unless LeBron changes his modus operandi, he will go dark,” Windhorst said. “So ideally, if you had a player who was much more invested in the team… which by the way, this is one of the things about when people say LeBron is the GM, yes, there are times when LeBron exerts pressure on the Cavs franchise and tries to force them, or leverage them into doing things. At the same time, he runs away from that at times because he doesn’t want to take ownership of decisions because he wants to be able to have the freedom to blame the organization and/or leave the organization.”

James has a track record of doing exactly that, Windhorst explained.

“For example, this happened in Miami (in 2014). The Heat draft Shabazz Napier because LeBron has touted him as being one of his favorite players or favorite player in the draft,” he said. “But they weren’t on the phone with LeBron saying, ‘Hey, do you want us to take Napier? Yeah, yeah take Napier.’ He fit the profile of a player that Pat Riley likes, which is a guard who had played three or four years, very similar actually in profile to Dwyane Wade — championship-level player who played three or four years. It wasn’t like Pat Riley hated the guy, but the concept that LeBron’s told the Heat take Shabazz Napier and then bolted on them is just not accurate. Once the season ends, you can’t get him, forget about it. You’re not getting him on the phone.”

Windhorst tried to explain how things could work come draft night for the Cavaliers.

“(Oklahoma’s) Trae Young is an interesting character. I know that Dan Gilbert probably loves the concept of taking Trae Young. He would be very excited maybe to get his hands on him and he may be available in that spot,” he said. “Trae Young, a perimeter shooter alongside LeBron, could potentially be… I don’t know how good Trae Young is going to be. I’m no scout. But that could potentially be a tremendous one-two punch, especially if Trae Young is the type of player that some people think he will be, but other people think he’s going to be not as good. Other people are afraid of that being a bust pick. OK, that’s a classic example.

“Or, do you take a pick as if LeBron is not going to be there? Do you take Michael Porter Jr., for example? If it comes down to Michael Porter Jr. or LeBron James, you’d love to be sitting next to LeBron and having him have input on this as to where this is going to go. But I just don’t think that’s going to happen. So the Cavs are going to kind of have to go blind.”

Windhorst explained how James has played with only a handful of first-round draft picks who actually played as rookies.

“One thing I’m going to point out about draft picks and LeBron — in his career, he has played with only four first-round draft picks. In other words, guys who got drafted and played with LeBron as rookies. Four,” he said. “And they are Luke Jackson, who hurt his back in the first summer league and was never a factor in the NBA. That’s one. Shannon Brown, who the Cavs didn’t even pick up his third-year option. J.J. Hickson, who was a prospect and had some good moments with LeBron, but certainly, LeBron didn’t get excited about staying with the Cavs to play alongside J.J. Hickson. And Norris Cole, who was like the 28th pick and basically drafted to be a backup point guard, which is what he did.”

Which brings us to this — what should the Cavaliers do in respect to how it affects James’ choice on his player option?

“So, if you’re LeBron James and those are the four guys that you have seen coming in, you’re not going to get excited about about a first-round draft pick. You’re just not going to get excited about it,” Windhorst said. “He never had a Jason Tatum come up and play alongside of him. He never had any of these influxes of talent. He’s 33 going on 34. Selling him on a guy who may be really good in two or three years, that’s just not going to go.”

Which might mean a trade, such as Cleveland did in 2014 when it drafted Andrew Wiggins with the No. 1 overall pick and then traded him and another former No. 1 overall pick, Anthony Bennett, to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Kevin Love.

“LeBron probably would love to see what they could fetch for the eighth pick, or let’s say they get lucky and hop up to No. 3,” Windhorst said. “I’m not sure that LeBron is that excited about playing with Luka Doncic. Even if that draft pick may end up setting the franchise in a great position in two or three years.

“So that’s the issue — their big piece to improve the franchise, their biggest trade asset and their biggest piece to improve their franchise is a draft pick, which is not something LeBron has been deeply involved with before.”

Entertaining article about Lebron's effect on his team comraderie:

https://www.thescore.com/nba/news/1542905/



Excerpt:

Last month, Richard Jefferson called James the No. 1 camaraderie guy he’s ever been around at any level of basketball. And it goes beyond just fostering an environment for handshakes.

James regularly organizes team outings on the road, whether it's getting together to watch other NBA games, or group dinners with a standing invitation for any teammates who wants to come.

When Clarkson and Nance joined the Cavaliers at the deadline, the open environment fostered by James was something they noticed immediately.

“It’s just a culture that’s been established here,” Nance said. “Whether it’s a dinner or a movie, the culture here is about trying to be more than just teammates, but to be friends. In Los Angeles, we were still establishing a culture, nothing was set in stone, not like it is here.”

“(LeBron) always makes us feel like we’re a part of something,” Clarkson added.

12 years ago today Gilbert Arenas steps to the line to try to ice the clinching game for the Wizards against the Cavs. Lebron walked up to him and said something. Gilbert promptly missed both free throws. Damon Jones hits game winner seconds later.

https://twitter.com/timelesssports_/sta ... 0333032448

Well Arenas answered a question from a fan about what LeBron said to him at the line.

Draft Lottery is at 7:30 eastern tonight, immediately before playoff game starts.

Go Nick Go

Jason Lloyd

@JasonLloydNBA
1h1 hour ago
First player on the court this morning? LeBron James, all alone,. shooting by himself

The bow tie didn't bring us luck this year. At #8 where we were supposed to be.

Trae Young please!

I would have been asking for him had we been anywhere 4 and up.

Live by the three, die by the three. Take it to the hole.

How is LeBron James always one move ahead? Let’s ask the scientists.

by Sally Jenkins May 18

Much as his brute-strength shoulders and legs define LeBron James, it’s the stuff in his head that elevates him. If James has shown nothing else as the Cleveland Cavaliers struggle through the Eastern Conference finals, it’s the quality of his mind. What would a cellular analysis of his brain show? Maybe a flock of starlings.

There isn’t much reason to stay interested in an 0-2 series in which the Cavs have been borderline uncompetitive against the Boston Celtics in the fourth quarter, but it’s worth watching to the end if only to see whether James will pull off one of his memory tricks. His amazing recall has led to more than one comeback, and is at least as much of a force as the form that produced 42 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in Game 2. Try a viewing experiment the next time James takes the court: analyze his head, and not his body. Watch him scan the game and store it upstairs.

Much has been made of James’s show-offy display of memory in his postgame analysis of Game 1. Replay it and notice not just the accuracy but the detail: In narrating six sequences in proper order, he noted the time on the shot clock, who took each shot and missed what, where the ball was inbounded from, and Jayson Tatum’s use of a Euro-step and right hand on a layup. When he was done, listeners broke into applause.

I ran James’s feat past some noted neuroscientists to see if it impressed them as much as it did the rest of us. “Fascinating,” said Jocelyn Faubert, research chair in visual perception at the University of Montreal. “Quite beautiful really,” said Andre Fenton, professor of neuroscience at New York University. “It’s remarkable,” said Zach Hambrick, a cognition-performance expert at Michigan State. “But not surprising.”

It’s not surprising because researchers are seeing an ever more articulate connection between cognitive science and human performance.

“This is one of the bedrock findings in research on human expertise: that experts have superior memory for information within their domain,” Hambrick said.

Human performance studies have shown that what seems to be “photographic memory” is really extrapolation based on habit-worn paths of knowledge, the vestiges and traces left in the brain by experience.

In a famous study of chess players by Adriaan de Groot in the 1960s, pieces were shown on a board for five seconds and then removed. The players were asked to recall what they had seen. Novices remembered only weakly. The more expert the player, the more pieces they could recall, and which piece was where.

“Grand masters could recall everything,” Florida State performance researcher K. Anders Ericsson said.

But that’s not all. Masters of games don’t just build static memories, but show a remarkable ability to intuit. James’s anticipation is inseparable from his memory.

In a study of elite soccer players cited by Ericsson, competitors were shown a game and the screen was halted at an unpredictable point. Asked to recall the positions on the field, the best players not only remembered who was where, but also predicted where they would go next.

“They were able to assess where players are going, as opposed to where they are right now,” Ericsson said. “A momentary picture wouldn’t do that job.”

Hambrick cites a study of expert baseball and cricket players, which showed what happened when their view of the pitcher was partly obstructed: they became as confused as amateurs. This is because they are so used to having “advanced perceptual cues,” to predict where the ball will cross the plate.

Think about the processes involved as James scans the court while moving down the floor. The optic nerves absorb and transmit small peripheral details, then shift to a sudden zoom focus as he throws a glancing no-look bounce pass that hits Kevin Love in the hands in mid-stride. Then his attention broadens again stereoscopically to capture the whole floor. The cognitive flexibility to go in and out of those states fluidly, is highly learned. And yet little short of magic.

“To manage all those systems, that is a form of intelligence,” Faubert said, “and we shouldn’t be afraid to say that.”

Most magical of all is what’s required to build those spatial maps in James’s head. In 2014, researchers John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser won the Nobel Prize for explaining how the brain navigates. They answered a simple but profound set of questions: How do we perceive position, know where we are, find the way home? They discovered the brain’s “inner GPS,” that makes it possible to orient and plan movement. O’Keefe found that a specific cell in the hippocampus throws off a signal to mark a specific place. The Mosers added to this by showing that neurons in the entorhinal cortex fire in fields with regularity. When they drew lines corresponding to the neuronal activity, here is what they saw: a grid. LeBron James has a geometric projection in his brain that acts a computational coordinate system. And so do you.

But wait. How does the hippocampus store distinct memories of similar events? How can James’s brain discriminate between multiple similar memories? Why don’t all crossover moves look as indistinguishable to him as spots in a parking garage? Fenton published a possible answer to this question in a paper this week in the journal Neuron. The “place” signaling by neurons is not so much a constant remapping, he suggested. It’s actually highly synchronized. Think of the neurons in James’s head as birds. Starlings. “Like a flock of starlings that takes on different formations while still maintaining cohesion as a flock,” Fenton said.

“He’s not recording, like a videotape,” Fenton says. “He’s not rebuilding. He doesn’t rebuild a picture of what is going on, he watches it evolve continuously and fluidly, there is a flock and it’s moving down the court and everybody has a place, all these birds form a structure, and the structure is important. We call it a flock. He calls it a play.”

We all have this remarkable combination of projection and flow in our heads, to varying degrees. You have it when you drive to work or do a job on deadline.

“It’s actually what you and I and all beings do,” Fenton said. “He’s not an enlightened being.”

Your brain has learned a series of models over your life and is constantly drawing computations. James’s just works better than yours on a basketball court because he has spent more time mapping that space.

“These people are masters of assessing the likelihoods of things,” Fenton said. “If I have an amazingly good set of models and expectations — of my opponents, of my teammates and how the ball will move — it can look like I am totally omniscient.”

I guess Bill Russell does have a claim to GOAT too:



TheBillRussell
✔
@RealBillRussell
Thank you everyone for the kind thoughts, yes I was taken to the hospital last night & as my wife likes to remind me I don’t drink enough. On my way home & as most my friends know I don’t have a heart to give me trouble @NBA @celtics @TMZ @TMZLive @NBAonTNT @MSNBC @YahooSports

2:08 PM - May 19, 2018


Sean Grande
✔
@SeanGrandePBP
The GOAT gonna win 11 Twitter titles in 13 years with a game this strong. https://twitter.com/RealBillRussell/sta ... 3849730049 …

3:38 PM - May 19, 2018

Russell was darned good

Arguing over generations is futile, but 11 titles in 13 years works no matter when you played. And no arguing who was the key guy on those teams. The titles started RIGHT after he was drafted.

I'd probably put Russell on my frontline with Jabbar; and the 3 J's to fill the rest of the starting lineup. Bird as 6th man?

Well Tom Heinsohn was drafted the same year as Russell. I know most of our generation knows him as an announcer but he was a very good player in his day, averaging over 20 points a game a few times and over 18 for his career. Team already had Cousy too.

The year after drafting Russell and Heinsohn they beat the St Louis Hawks for their first championship. Can anybody here name one player from the Hawks roster? I can't. And I even looked it up a couple weeks ago cause I was having a debate over this exact subject with a Celtics fan friend of mine. I looked at Hawks roster then, still can't tell you one guy on their roster.

And the Celtics only beat that Hawks team by 2 points in Game 7. And beat that Hawks team for the title 3 of Russell's first 4 years in the league.

My point being, that team and Russell was men amongst boys for much of his career. It wasn't until late in his career that they finally started running into another very talented team, Wilt's Lakers.

My buddy posted a meme of Russell with his 11 rings and said GOAT. I said, well I guess by your argument Sam Jones is the second best player ever because he had the next most rings.

I will never be impressed by the title argument.

And you are right, tough to debate guys from different generations.

Russell was 6'9 or 6'10 & 220 and he was a center.

Lebron is 6'8 255 and a small forward.

How would Russell done if he faced big men from the last 25 years or so? His ceiling would have been a Karl Malone type power forward, in my humble opinion. Which isn't bad. That is not a knock at all, obviously. Just don't think he would be in the discussion as GOAT.

Imo, the key to last night's game was, LeBron taking the ball to the basket. There were several stretches though that gave me concern. Love played 4th quarter with 5 fouls and the chucking up 3's. Cavs were fortunate that Boston didn't make them pay for all the turnovers.

Andy Bailey @AndrewDBailey (NBA writer for Bleacher report and covers Utah Jazz)

LeBron James' career playoff ranks

Points: 1st
Field Goals: 1st (after tonight)
Free Throws: 1st
Steals: 1st
Minutes: 1st
Win Shares: 1st
Wins Over Replacement Player: 1st
Defensive Rebounds: 2nd
Assists: 3rd
Games: 5th
Rebounds: 7th
Blocks: 16th
Offensive Rebounds: 25th

LeBron James has 86.2 playoff Wins Over Replacement Player.
Michael Jordan, who's in 2nd place, has 61.7.
The gap between those two is 24.5.
Isiah Thomas is 21st all time with 24.2 playoff Wins Over Replacement Player.
There's a whole Hall of Famer between Lebron and MJ.

The rate version of Wins Over Replacement Player is Box Plus-Minus, and LeBron James is 1st all time in that too. Both regular season and playoffs. And the lead is huge in both.