Saturday Slam: The Cleveland Cavaliers are falling apart

The Cleveland Cavaliers appear to be falling apart at the seams. During the past couple of weeks, reports have surfaced that Kyrie Irving wants to be traded and LeBron James will exercise his player option to leave Cleveland in the summer of 2018.

NBA source said today: "This will be LeBron's final season in Cleveland. He is 100 percent leaving. Relationship with owners beyond repair."

— Chris Sheridan (@sheridanhoops) August 16, 2017

With both reports coming from credible reporters, it's safe to say that the Cleveland Cavaliers are on the verge of collapsing. The only thing that can save them now is an NBA championship in 2018 and the chances of that happening look very bleak. As crazy as it sounds, the Cavaliers are on track to be without both LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in 12-18 months.

What you might be wondering is how did this happen? Weren't these guys building a dynasty in Cleveland? The answer appears to lie in the fact that neither James nor Irving have much faith in the front office. While he should certainly be credited for helping the team win their first NBA title, owner Dan Gilbert needs to take a lot of heat for this happening. For Gilbert to have his two superstars both wanting out reflects very poorly on how he has ran the organization during the last couple of years.

Part of it might stem from the way in which Gilbert handled James' initial departure from Cleveland. Rather than taking the high road and wishing him good luck in Miami, Gilbert cried like a spoiled brat and threw one of the biggest hissy fits ever seen by a professional sports owner.

When James did return, Gilbert failed to bring in a competent head coach. Both David Blatt and Tyronn Lue have been nothing more than figure heads on the bench. Their job has been to open up the gym before practice, close the gym after practice, and talk to the media. That's pretty much it. Not once have I or anyone else who follows the NBA viewed them as legitimate coaches.

In addition to failing to hire a good head coach, Gilbert also made the fatal mistake of allowing Andrew Wiggins to be traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Kevin Love. To be fair, LeBron James was the one who pushed for this trade so he deserves a lot of the blame for that happening. All the same, Gilbert could have still done more to keep Wiggins and try to explain to James why Wiggins was actually the better player to have on the team both in the present and in the future.

The only thing the Cavaliers have going for them right now is that it's 2017 and not 2018. Both James and Irving want to win more than anything. If Dan Gilbert and his chums in the front office can pull a rabbit out of their hat and make some amazing trades before the trade deadline, maybe things will be different in a year. I highly doubt it, though. With the way things are going, this team will be lottery bound heading into the 2019 NBA Draft and they'll be back to square one, hoping to land another #1 draft pick.

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Why Anthony Bennett Is Not A Bust, But Rather The Victim Of A Horrible Decision Made By The Cavaliers

                                            image from: espn.go.com 

Cavaliers rookie power forward Anthony Bennett is having the worst statistical season of any overall #1 pick.  Basketball-Reference.com  released an image of the PERs (Player Efficiency Rating) of all #1 draft picks over the past 24 seasons to give us some perspective on how bad Bennett is playing. What the image showed was that Bennett's PER is 1.1 and Kwame Brown (considered by many to be the worst #1 pick of all-time) had a PER of 11.2 during his rookie season. With these kinds of numbers, many basketball analysts are already saying that Anthony Bennett is the worst #1 overall pick of all time and thus the greatest bust of any #1 overall pick. While I agree that he very well may be the worst #1 overall pick of all time, I don't think it is fair to call him a "bust". What I will do is explain why Anthony Bennett isn't a "bust", but rather the victim of a horrible decision made by the Cavaliers' front office.

Before I explain why Bennett isn't a bust, I should probably first define what "bust" means. "Bust" is a word used to define a player who fails to live up to his or her expectations, with those expectations usually being lofty. Players who are expected to be franchise changing players and fail to live up to those expectations are usually the players who are categorized as "busts" due to their high expectations. Players under this category are Greg Oden, Shawn Bradley,  and sadly Len Bias. To use examples from the NFL,  Quarterbacks JaMarcus Russell of the Raiders and Ryan Leaf of the Chargers meet this criteria as well. These are guys who were drafted with tremendous hype from not only the teams that drafted them, but all of the media and analysts. These were players who were "can't miss" players who were sure to turn around their franchises in a very short period of time. These were guys expected to turn their respective franchises into championship caliber teams.

With this definition now in mind, it suddenly doesn't seem as though Anthony Bennett really is a bust. As a matter of fact, he isn't even in the discussion. Bennett being drafted #1 overall and failing to deliver isn't the same as being hyped by all the media as the second coming of Karl Malone and failing to deliver. If Bennett had been viewed by all of the media and draft analysts as this "can't miss player" like another Karl Malone, then he would certainly be a "bust". But he wasn't. As a matter of fact, he was a viewed a borderline top ten pick in a weak NBA draft.

In my mock draft (not that I'm a draft expert), I had Bennett going #10 overall to the Portland Trail Blazers. In other mock drafts, I saw him going anywhere from 5 to 10.  When he went #1 overall, everybody was shocked and couldn't believe it. Certainly Nerlens Noel, Alex Len, or Victor Oladipo would go #1 overall. But no, the Cavaliers instead decided to role the dice on Bennet, which up to this point has blown up in their face. To make things worse, Bennett is suddenly being compared to all #1 overall picks ever taken when he shouldn't even be in the same conversation as them. But being picked #1 overall suddenly has his name being brought up in conversations that include LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, Patrick Ewing, and Hakeem Olajuwon. Among #1 picks  that didn't pan out, he's suddenly the new Kwame Brown or Michael Olowokandi.

Those of us in sports media world need to be careful how we view Bennett's struggles as a #1 overall pick. Rather than focusing all of our energy and attention on him, we need to instead focus our attention on the Cleveland Cavaliers and their moronic front office. Specifically their general manager Chris Grant and owner Dan Gilbert. These guys need to take all the heat and blame for drafting a kid #1 overall when the rest of the basketball world didn't feel as though he was that kind of talent. If the Cavaliers really wanted him, why didn't they trade down to get him and get more picks? By drafting him #1 overall they had to know that there would be a ton of hype on him that wasn't warranted, making this selection an incredibly horrible PR move in addition to being a stupid basketball decision. The story of Bennett's struggles as a #1 overall pick shouldn't be treated as a #1 overall pick failing to deliver. It should rather be treated as a front office failing to show competence at properly evaluating NBA talent.

---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord  for the latest NBA news.