Excess baggage

Baron Davis' career has followed a fairly typical story arc for an NBA player of his skill level.

At his best, he's been a star. Not a league-defining superstar, but a prolific scorer and the best player on his team. It was the role he filled during his first career stop with the Hornets and during his most productive career stop with the Warriors.

His stint as a 20 point per game scorer in Don Nelson's 78-r.p.m. Warriors offense artificially inflated his value, and in 2008 earned him a 5-year, $65 million contract from the league's sucker-betters, the Los Angeles Clippers.

Davis was overpaid. His contract began to strain the Clippers, and they started looking for a team to take the lead weight off their hands.

Thursday, the Clippers found their dance partner in the Cavaliers. The Cavs are armed with the deep and open pocketbook of owner Dan Gilbert and were in the market for a first-round draft pick, which the Clips were willing to part with, if it meant offloading Davis' contract.

Exit Mo Williams and Jamario Moon, enter Davis and what appears to be a second lottery pick in the 2011 draft.

In Cleveland, we know the trade was made for the pick. Davis is collateral damage. He won't be here when the Cavs start making their upswing through the Eastern Conference in a few years -- or at least, that's the plan.

But in the interim, the Cavs are stuck with Davis. He's signed for two more years and due about $28 million over that span, so his contract is going to be difficult to buy out in any type of lump sum. The length and size of the contract also mean he'll be nearly impossible to trade until the 2012 offseason at the earliest, when his deal with reach its final year. And by then, a new collective bargaining agreement will likely be in effect, throwing another spoonful of uncertainty into the recipe.

The finances make the Davis situation a calculated risk. His attitude is a wild card that makes the deal combustible.

Davis has long been known as a mercurial player. He's quarreled with coaches and has never been afraid of expressing displeasure with a situation. His most famous friction was with Byron Scott, when Scott coached Davis in New Orleans. Davis once likened Scott to a dictator in an interview.

That would be the same Byron Scott who now coaches the Cavs. Reportedly, the two have smoothed things over from their Hornets days. But distance alters perception. With the two sharing a locker room again, proximity could cause old arguments to resurface.

Then you factor in the losing, and the fact that Davis is going from warm-weather L.A. -- his hometown -- to cold-weather Cleveland. If Davis was losing in L.A., he was at least comfortable. In Cleveland, he'll be losing, in unfamiliar surroundings, enduring miserable weather and reunited with a coach he couldn't get along with five years ago.

It doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for a successful career stop.

Ultimately, it's up to Davis to be accepting of his new situation, and if he isn't, that's his problem. He's a 31-year-old veteran, and he should be expected to suck it up and play hard for his substantial paycheck, no matter where his team calls home or what place it occupies in the standings. But that brings accountability into the equation, which is a foreign concept to much of the NBA.

Davis might not play hard. He might not get along with Scott. He might produce a lousy attitude. And unfortunately, that does become the Cavs' problem, especially next year whenever the Cavs' two lottery picks venture onto the practice floor for the first time.

Davis is a veteran with all-star credentials. He's going to pull weight with any young players. He's going to be a role model of sorts. The question is, what will Davis be teaching? How to use a screen to get open, or how to sabotage your coach? How to set up the offense, or how to get your touches and chucks, and forget about everyone else?

A lot of Cavs fans want to see Duke point guard prospect Kyrie Irving in a Cavs uniform next season. If you want Irving, you do not want Davis to be his first mentor in the NBA unless you can somehow ensure that Davis the all-star will be doing the teaching, and not Davis the moody diva.

Somehow, Scott and his staff are going to have to ensure that the latter Davis shows up, because unless Davis suffers a major injury that keeps him away from the team for a long period of time, they'll have to figure out how to assimilate Davis and all his idiosyncrasies into a team of wet-clay youngsters that will begin a critical formative process starting next season.

This might be a throwaway career stop for Davis, but after this season, it's not a throwaway period of time for the Cavs. Those two divergent viewpoints have to be reconciled. Something tells me it's not going to be easy.

The Cavs should receive high marks for making the deal. Dan Gilbert once again opened his wallet and paid big money to try and benefit his team's on-court product. He assumed a burdensome contract to get a draft pick that, properly used, can help expedite the Cavs' rebuilding process. Chris Grant deserves a thumbs-up for waiting until the deadline to get the highest possible pick.

One NBA columnist thinks Mo should have been dealt last summer. If he had been dealt last summer, it likely would have been to a playoff team. So the Cavs could have received a pick at 20 or below by dealing last summer, or they could have gotten an unrestricted lottery-bound pick by waiting. Decisions....

Of course, this is a draft weak on star power, and you might be able to get the same type of player with the third pick that you could with the 13th. I'll still take my chances with a pair of high picks. If any cream rises to the top during the NCAA Tournament, I'd want a shot at it.

That's the good part. The more iffy part is life with Baron. You can hope for an injury -- which just seems wrong -- you can hope for a mature, professional Baron Davis to show up. Or you can hope all of this is avoided and the Cavs negotiate a buyout with Davis by the end of the month.

Davis is supposed to report to the Cavs by Saturday. If that doesn't happen, that last plot might thicken. Stay tuned.

You're the man now, Dan

The king is dead. But he can still play like one when he's motivated enough.

Maybe LeBron will wilt against the Celtics or Magic in the playoffs again next spring. Maybe his time in Miami will yield no rings. Maybe he'll retire closer to verbal sparring partner Charles Barkley than personal idol Michael Jordan on the spectrum of NBA superstars.

We can watch that play out over the next five months. But what is certain is LeBron's superlative talent, which by itself is more than enough to polish off one of the league's dregs in an early December regular season game.

National media scribes are hailing LeBron's 38-point effort in a 118-90 obliteration of the Cavs on Thursday night as a triumphant return to his old stomping grounds. LeBron gets the laurel wreath and we get painted as petty scoundrels who would dare boo such a majestic talent for having the audacity to leave our smelly burg for bigger and better things.

But LeBron's performance could have been predicted. Maybe he fed off the jeers. Maybe he was back in his comfort zone playing on the court he called home for seven years. But more likely, he was facing a team that simply didn't have the personnel to stop him.

That's the real story to come out of Thursday's game. The Heat can measure success based on the rings they win or don't win. The Cavs' forthcoming challenge is based on survival. This team is in a world of hurt, and the responsibility of yanking this franchise out of the muck will fall squarely on the shoulders of a very rich man from Livonia, Mich. who sat courtside and simmered as the Heat toyed with the Cavs.

The man is Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, now the central figure of the franchise with LeBron drinking in the vices of Miami.

Gilbert has a history of making smart business moves. He's shown an ability to get creative with developing revenue sources. But he's also a very emotional person, and he took LeBron's departure quite personally.

Gilbert did have reasons to be angry. LeBron cut off all contact with Gilbert in the weeks leading up to his decision. There were strong indications that LeBron had inappropriate contact with members of the Heat, including Dwyane Wade, while he was still under contract with the Cavs.

Then LeBron turned his departure into an hourlong TV spectacle, rejecting us in front of an international audience.

Gilbert flew off the handle with an open letter roasting LeBron in the hours following "The Decision." And you could make a case that he hasn't flown anywhere near the handle since.

Now, Gilbert's obsession is showing the world how LeBron, his cronies and the Heat conspired to wrong him and his franchise. He's retained a legal team, which is reportedly going through records as far back as 2008, trying to find evidence of collusion and premeditation that Gilbert can drop on the desk of David Stern.

In Cleveland, we think it's cool to have a justice-minded owner willing to go the Woodward and Bernstein route to try and take down LeBron. But at what price?

What is obsessing over how LeBron wronged the Cavs and Cleveland really going to accomplish? LeBron is still going to make his one or two trips to Cleveland over the next six years, he's probably going to administer beatdowns more often than not, and his teams will be far more successful than the Cavs, regardless of whether he's now a member of the Heat for life, or has yet another team in his future.

LeBron's not going to jail for this. He didn't commit a statutory crime, no matter how much damning evidence Gilbert can dredge up. He's not going to be kicked out of the league. He won't get suspended. He probably would, at most, incur a fine.

As for the Heat? The most severe punishment the league could levy against the Heat for improper contact with LeBron would be revoked draft picks. The Cavs currently own two future Miami first-rounders as part of the sign-and-trade the two teams orchestrated to complete LeBron's defection.

Is using those picks in 2017 and 2019 a fair price to pay for having a conspiracy theory proved right?

To step back and look at Gilbert's behavior since LeBron's departure, it seems as if he's more focused on getting even with LeBron than tending to the sorry state of his team. It's still early, there hasn't been enough time for events to unfold, but it's a disturbing trend to keep an eye on.

At some point, the obsession with LeBron-hate will subside for even the most passionate of fans. And all that will be left is the reality that the Cavs are a league bottom-feeder facing a lengthy rebuild. Gilbert needs to admit that reality. There is a time for stubborn defiance, and a time to cool off and get rational.

Now that LeBron has come back to Cleveland and made his emphatic statement of dominance over his haters, now might be the time to let LeBron go and let nature run its course in South Beach, where it is far from guaranteed that three massive egos are going to be able to adapt enough to win a single title, let alone form the dynasty expected of them.

Now is definitely the time for Gilbert to assess where his team is, and where he is as an owner. Along with Rock Financial and Quicken Loans, the Cavs are another of Gilbert's ventures poised to hit the skids in a down economy. Gilbert needs to tend to the Cavs like he would any of his other businesses when they're hurting.

When Gilbert took over the Cavs, many in Cleveland worried that he'd become a meddlesome owner who would make ill-informed decisions on personnel and treat the Cavs like a personal toy. Instead, he proved himself as one of the best owners a Cleveland team has ever had, pumping money into the franchise infrastructure, building a new practice facility, making improvements to his team's arena, and signing off on extra payroll burden to try and win a title.

With LeBron gone, the Cavs need that smart-yet-aggressive owner to remain in the building more than ever.

If Gilbert keeps stalking LeBron while the Cavs continue to crumble, he's back to being the owner we feared we were getting when he bought the team in 2005.

LeBron's defection was motivated primarily by greed, and it set the Cavs back at least three to five years. That's LeBron's fault. If it leads to long-term losing or the ruination of Gilbert as an NBA owner, that's Gilbert's fault.

Hopefully Gilbert can stop throwing darts at his LeBron pictures long enough to realize that.

An undeserved reputation

Byron Scott's Cavaliers are burdened with a prefabricated identity this season. No matter how good or bad they are, whether they wallow among the league's dregs or compete for a playoff spot, they will be The Team That Lost LeBron.

It's branded on them, a scarlet letter, a garish tattoo.

The lack of LeBron will be the prism through which the Cavs are entirely viewed by fans and media alike. It will devalue them, it will make them the subject of ridicule whenever they visit a city. Fans will chant, columnists will take jabs at them in the local paper, the opposing team might even give the Cavs some LeBron love during the road team introductions.

(If the Cavs could have a nickel for every time the opposing team will play Will Smith's "Miami" during visiting introductions, they'd be $2.05 richer by the end of 41 road games.)

Even in the safe haven of Cleveland, where (some) fans still dare to wear wine and gold, LeBron's shadow still blocks out the Sun. We look at the current Cavs roster, and all we see is no LeBron, and ergo, no shot at a title.

When we look at the current Cavs roster, we see some iffy building blocks in J.J. Hickson and Ramon Sessions, and a cast of veterans that are of no use to a team that just had its its soul sucked out several months ago.

So, what's the use? You need a superstar -- or multiple superstars -- to win titles in the NBA. History has proven that. The Cavs have no superstar. So it's time to start pitching deck chairs off the Titanic. Liquidate the inventory. Everything must go. We're slashing prices.

Mo Williams, Antawn Jamison, Anderson Varejao, Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon -- anything and everything older than 26 that's not nailed down. This team need to be a 15-67 club within two years. It's the only way to draft high enough to get the superstar you need to win championships. Because if you don't, you're stuck in the purgatory of mediocrity, somwhere between the last lottery picks and the lowest playoff seeds.

It's the worst place to be in the NBA. Not a contender, and not bad enough to get the draft picks to get the star power to become a contender.

That is true. The middle of the pack is NBA purgatory. But let's back up for a second before we convince ourselves that you're either a 60-win team, a 60-loss team or on a treadmill to nowhere.

Finding yourself in the middle of the NBA pack isn't purgatory in and of itself. Teams get long-term sentences at Mediocre Alcatraz when they pay players more than they're worth.

If your team doles out max contracts like Halloween candy, your team is probably playing role players like stars, which is the definition of "bad contract" in the NBA. If a team has multiple 5-year, $60 million contracts on the books, it will likely be stuck treading water until those contracts becoming tradeable.

The Cavs do have some long-term contracts on the books. The contract with the most potential to be cumbersome is Anderson Varejao, who is signed through 2014 and will make $9.1 million in the final guaranteed year.

Beyond that, only Mo Williams and Ramon Sessions have contracts that the Cavs will, in all likelihood, be obligated to honor past the 2011-12 season. Mo has an $8.5 million player option for the 2012-13 season.

Daniel Gibson and Chirstian Eyenga have team options for 2012-13. The Cavs can give J.J. Hickson a qualifying offer after that season.

Other than that, Antawn Jamison's contract expires after the 2011-12 season, and there is nothing else that would make you believe the Cavs are stuck in a long-term trajectory of mediocrity. If they need to get worse to get better, the opportunity will definitely be there in a couple of years.

For the short term, we'd all have more clarity about the current Cavs if we could view them apart from the LeBron elephant that is no longer in the room. If LeBron never played for the Cavs and everything else was the same, what would we see?

The Cavs now employ their most accomplished coach since Lenny Wilkens. Byron Scott was a member of the Showtime Lakers as a player. He was hired into the coaching ranks by Rick Adelman. On Adelman's staff in Sacramento, Scott learned the Princeton offense from fellow Kings assistant Pete Carril -- the former Princeton coach who brought the offense to the mainstream. As a head coach, Scott took the offense to the Nets and Hornets, and used it to help expedite success at both stops.

The Princeton offense relies on passing, screens and ball movement. It is designed for a team like the Cavs with no true go-to scorer. The NBA version of the Princeton is modified because of the way teams play defense, and the fact that plays have to develop quicker due to a shortened shot clock. But the principles of passing, cutting and screening to create open looks for teammates is still true.

Based on media reports, Scott believes he has some pieces in place to successfully run his system. Scott thinks Andy Varejao is an ideal Princeton center due to his active feet and screening ability. The Princeton also requires multiple guards who can initiate the offense, which the Cavs now have in Mo Williams and Ramon Sessions.

Put it this way: if you could completely erase LeBron from your mind, look at this team in the vacuum of the here and now, and make a judgment, we'd be intrigued by what Scott is implementing. We'd want to see Chris Grant get on the phone to other GMs and add more pieces to this team, not scuttle the ship.

Yes, history says you do need a cast of stars to win a title. But getting and keeping those stars will be exceedingly difficult in the NBA, particularly if a lockout this coming summer yields a starkly different financial structure for the league, such as a hard salary cap.

As it is, LeBron has set the precedent: superstars do not want to play in a town like Cleveland. If the current rules stay in place regarding free agency, the next time the Cavs get their hands on a superstar, they might as well turn right around and offer him to the highest bidder.

Putting it bluntly, it's nice to think of an NBA dynasty taking shape in Cleveland. But the chances of it happening are virtually nil. In a league in which six teams have won 29 of the last 31 titles, the Cavs would be extremely fortunate to win even one fluky title at any point in the future.

With that in mind, it's probably better to build the Cavs around a coach's system instead of a superstar's talent. It presents the best possible chance for a team like the Cavs to win consistently in the future. To that end, we should be willing to give Scott and this team a chance to prove that they're worthy of being the rebuild, as opposed to the prelude to the rebuild.

But to have that mindset, you, as a fan, need to stop viewing the Cavs as a band of non-LeBrons.

The Cavs are already going to encounter enough of that sentiment every time they make a road trip this season.

Game Seven: A love letter from next May

May 4, 2011: Miami, Fla.

Cavs 115, Heat 112 (OT)

Cleveland wins series, 4-3.

Admit it, you saw this coming. Yes, it was a 1-seed with a 69-13 record playing an 8-seed with a 43-39 record that required an 8-2 finish to even get that high. But as much as your inner Clevelander didn't want to admit that you saw this coming, you did.

It was probably during Game 3 when LeBron James tried to dunk on Ryan Hollins yet again.

Hollins filled in admirably when Anderson Varejao re-injured his already-ailing ankle in Game 1, effectively ending his involvement in the series. But LeBron tried repeatedly to make sure Hollins knew his journeyman place in the league's pecking order, by repeatedly driving at Hollins and scoring on him. LeBron threw down a series of particularly vicious dunks on Hollins in Miami's victories in in Games 1 and 2.

By Game 3, Hollins had enough, and when LeBron soared in Hollins' face for yet another poster dunk, Hollins threw every ounce of his 7-foot, 240-pound frame into LeBron's 265-pound wall of momentum, upending LeBron, drawing a flagrant foul and starting a scuffle under the basket that drew a technical foul on LeBron.

The skirmish was a dose of savory bloodlust for 20,562 packed into The Q, many in the crowd -- it seemed, anyway -- on hand solely for the purpose of rooting against LeBron, who was making his first Cleveland appearance as a member of the Heat after missing both regular season games in Cleveland -- one with elbow tendinitis and one with back spasms. They were the only two games LeBron missed all season.

With Hollins asserting himself and a waterfall of vitriol cascading on LeBron from 360 degrees, the Heat started to buckle. The Cavs, who were down 11 at the time, stormed past, led by 27 from J.J. Hickson and 22 from Mo Williams, to gut-check the Heat 111-92.

The Heat, who had seldom been challenged en route to cruising to the NBA's best record, were offered their first real test of the season. The test of courage, fortitude and stamina that all great NBA teams must pass in order to become champions.

The Heat didn't fully collapse, but they were visibly jolted for the remainder of the series. Their air of invicibility, the inevitability of their coronation as not just champions for a year, but a decade's ruling dynasty, was wiped away with a well-timed squirt of wine and gold Windex.

LeBron probably remembered it well from the regular season success and playoff collapses of his last two years in Cleveland: when you're really, really good and rolling teams with ease, the regular season can become an endless parade of rose petals at your feet, as people with cameras and microphones are falling over themselves to sing your praises.

But the playoffs are a bitch. And they get more icy, frigid and unconcered with your ego as the rounds progress.

In this case, LeBron didn't have to wait until the conference finals for his slice of humble pie. He didn't even have to wait until the semifinals. Unlike in past years, when powerhouses like Orlando and Boston bested LeBron, this year, with two superstar wingmen, LeBron felt the bile well in his gut against his old, declawed former employer.

But we didn't totally realize it at that point. There was still basketball to be played.

With Mo Williams exhibiting a proficiency for playoff basketball that was beyond anyone's wildest dreams in years past, the Cavs rode his 30 points to a Game 4 win that knotted the series heading back to South Beach. Late in the first half, Dwyane Wade's drama queen of a hamstring tightened up for approximately the 458th time this season, negating his effectiveness for the remainder of the game. As it was, Wade was averaging a paltry 14 points per game in the series and looked like a glazed ham at times, content to camp out on the wing and wait for LeBron to do something with the ball.

But, as vulnerable as Miami looked in the first two games in Cleveland, they were still perfectly capable of defending their home court, where they lost just three times during the regular season.

The Heat looked like they righted the ship in Game 5, throat-stomping the Cavs with a 30-8 run to start the game, and never letting the Cavs creep closer than nine points the rest of the way, winning 108-89 for a 3-2 series lead.

Surely, this was the backbreaker for the undermanned, undersized, undertalented Cavs. Like a small college coach trying to get his team out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament, Byron Scott was coaching from the book of Norman Dale, Gene Hackman's coach with the checkered past from "Hoosiers." Scott was going just six deep on his roster at times, relying on a season's worth of conditioning, pinpoint shooting and play execution to compensate for the raw size and skill of the opposition.

If Scott brought his team to American Airlines Arena in Miami ahead of Game 1 with a tape measure to prove that the rims are 10 feet off the ground just like in Cleveland, you really couldn't blame him. It was that kind of disparity.

But somehow, the Cavs weathered three losses in Miami with their season still alive.

Game 6 dawned with LeBron making a conscious effort to get Wade and Chris Bosh involved in the offense early. It had been so tempting for LeBron to drive right into the core of the Cavs' weakened defense that he had spent much of the previous five games looking for his own shot.

The strategy seemed to work, as a rejuvenated Wade had 12 first quarter points and Bosh had 10 several minutes into the second quarter. Miami prodded the lead out to seven, then 10, then 12, 15 and 17, and by the half, 19.

Crisis averted, it seemed. Games 3 and 4 were an aberration, and the Heat could relax and start getting mentally prepared for Round 2. But all upset bids have one thing in common: the right people stepping up and seizing the moment at the right time.

Ryan Hollins did it in Game 3. Daniel "Boobie" Gibson would do it in Game 6.

Gibson knows all about Game 6. It was his 31-point outburst in Game 6 of the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals that sent the Cavs to their only NBA Finals appearance to date. Except Gibson was in the middle of the rotation for that series. For this series four years later, he was coming off five games in which he logged a grand total of six garbage time minutes.

But Scott had an inkling. Gibson's shot looked sweet in shootaround that morning, so he decided to put Gibson on the floor in the second half.

It started harmelssely enough. A three from the wing to cut Miami's lead to 16. Miami got the bucket back with a Wade three at the other end. But then Gibson hit another. And another.

And another.

And another.

And a floater in the lane.

And another.

With each bomb, the Cleveland crowd became a deafening typhoon of decibel power. First a jet at takeoff, then the space shuttle. The Heat felt that feeling welling into their collective esophagus again.

Miami's lead died a death at the hands of small, gnawing rodents: 14, 11, 13, 10, 12, 10, 8....

Another Gibson three-ball inside of 50 second put the Cavs up by three, and they never relinquished the lead. The 105-100 win sent the series back to Miami for a deciding seventh game.

Which brings us back to the here and now. The Heat, with the weight of a foretold legacy on their shoulders. The Cavs, who hadn't fought this hard and long to have it all end on a warm weeknight in Miami. The fans of Cleveland, who still feel their jaw muscles tighten whenever LeBron appears in that No. 6 Heat uniform.

But Game 7 wasn't about any of that. It was about survival. About best-laid plans thrown to the roadside in favor of doing whatever it took to survive.

Neither team led by more than six. Neither team did the sport of basketball any favors. There were rocks off the glass and rim-chipping bricks. LeBron airballed a three, Ramon Sessions countered with an airball of his own. There were unforced turnovers, botched rebounds and blown defensive assignments as both teams fought their own physical and mental exhaustion in a series that was far longer and more emotionally-charged than anyone on either side anticipated.

In that spirit, both teams missed a chance to win the game with less than 10 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. In overtime, even the Miami crowd struggled to keep up its intensity, the scoreboard inciting the fans to make noise, and receiving diminishing returns each time.

In Cleveland, you were waiting for LeBron to make a bucket, Bosh, Wade, someone. A kickout to Mike Miller for a three. Someone had to insert the dagger. But the Heat kept forcing up bad shots, and the Cavs did just enough right to arrive inside of 24 seconds with a 112-112 tie and the ball.

Gibson's perplexing three-point attempt sailed off the mark and carmoed off several players before ending up in the hands of Hickson. For the first time since his rookie year, the pump-fake move that had been his crutch for much of his first couple of seasons actually worked. He drew Bosh's sixth foul and managed to chuck the ball high enough that it bounced off the rim and fell in with 10.7 seconds to play. The subsequent made free-throw put the Cavs up by three.

Miami spent what seemed like half an hour trying to diagram a play for the final seconds, and all it netted was LeBron James, above the key, dribbing the clock down to three seconds before jab-stepping and hoisting a 35-foot three-ball that missed wide left.

The Cavs bench raced toward their teammates on the floor, interlocking in a mass-embrace by the scorer's table, jumping in unison. Impossible achieved. World shocked.

Scott raced toward his team and was eventually mobbed by a hobbled Varejao in street clothes, assaulting his coach in much the same way a St. Bernard assaults his owner after a long day at work.

"I have no words right now," Scott later told reporters. "Thirty years in this game, multiple NBA titles, two Finals as a coach. And I've never been a part of anything like this. It's just incredible."

On the other side, Wade sat on the Miami bench and maintained a glassy-eyed stare at the floor for about 20 minutes after the final buzzer. LeBron stormed off the court for the fourth straight year, offered the Cavs no handshake, and only made a 90-second appearance for the media about an hour after the game ended. But he did keep his jersey on, in breaking with his Cleveland tradition of yanking his jersey off immediately following an elimination loss.

"We lost. I got nothing else to break it down for you," he explained in a curt tone during his brief media session. "Maybe we're supposed to learn a lesson that we haven't learned yet. I don't know."

LeBron is starting another long summer, kicked off by his most humiliating playoff loss to date, to digest and meditate on what just happened.

The Cavs? They have no such time. An hour after the game ended, as LeBron was delivering his comments to the rolling cameras, the Cavs were already packed up and preparing to leave for the airport. No time to party on South Beach for Scott's gang. They have a second-round series with the winner of the Atlanta-Chicago series to prepare for.

Tomorrow is another day of practice for the Cavs at Cleveland Clinic Courts. In the NBA playoffs, normalcy is the reward for winning.

Chasing the story

Whether Brian Windhorst wants to be or not, he's a celebrity by association.

If Paul Hoynes left The Plain Dealer's Indians beat to cover the Florida Marlins or Tony Grossi traded in his Browns credentials for a Dolphins press badge, it would be nary more than fodder for blogs and message boards -- and short-lived fodder at that.

You may love their work, hate their work or be completely apathetic toward their work, but the point is, a good beat writer is supposed to be like a good waiter. As a reader, you're only supposed to notice them when they mess up. When they're on, the team is the story and the writer is just a byline.

I write that from personal experience. I covered sports for newspapers all throughout my college years, and I worked a city beat as a young reporter. Nobody is supposed to care who you are as a reporter. You're the conduit between the news makers and the news readers, nothing more.

But Windhorst is something more. His newshound mentality and reporting talents landed him the Cavaliers beat reporter job as a young reporter at the Akron Beacon Journal in 2003. That also happened to be the year that ping-pong balls dropped LeBron James into the Cavs' lap.

Windhorst is an Akronite like LeBron. He graduated from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School six years before LeBron. He honed his journalism skills at nearby Kent State. Like any basketball-following Akronite, he knew about LeBron before the rest of the state and country took notice.

But when LeBron and Windhorst ended up on different sides of the microphone in the same locker room, their stories became intertwined. And it will stay that way, with Windhorst following the news trail of LeBron and his handlers, probably until LeBron retires from basketball.

That is why Windhorst is leaving The Plain Dealer, his employer since 2008, and Ohio in his rear view mirror to cover LeBron and the Miami Heat for ESPN.com. And that is why Windhorst is experiencing his own form of local backlash -- a mere fraction of the venom spewed in the direction of LeBron in July, but a startling level of fan anger aimed at a departing beat reporter.

This week, message boards and other internet outlets have been ablaze with fan opinion on Windhorst's departure for Miami. Some accused him of being an unabashed LeBron shill. Some accused him of being a willing participant in the ESPN pro athlete public relations machine. Some have accused him of sacrificing his journalistic integrity, assuming that he will head to Miami to write fluff pieces on LeBron in exchange for an ESPN-financed pay bump.

Admittedly, the last point did enter my mind. If ESPN was offering Windhorst a large sum of money to head south and pen articles lionizing the Heat's collection of star talent, it could still be difficult to say "no." Being totally honest, I know I'd find it difficult to turn my back on more money and winters in Miami in exchange for writing pieces that are less than completely objective. It's human nature.

But that's pure speculation. For Windhorst's part, he made the media rounds this week, talking to WTAM, WKNR and Scene Magazine about his impending departure.

He called it "a difficult decision." He admitted that this might not end well for him, but he wanted to get out of his comfort zone as a reporter. He told Tony Rizzo on WKNR that he's walking into "a buzz saw" in Miami, carrying the double-edged burden of having covered LeBron in Cleveland -- where he wasn't a favorite of LBJ's handlers due to his objectivity -- and working for ESPN.com, at which LeBron's is reportedly spitting mad over a tell-all story on an allegedly wild party LeBron threw in Las Vegas over the summer. A story that was pulled by ESPN soon after it was published.

Windhorst told Rizzo he could have been perfectly happy staying in Cleveland and covering the Cavs' rebuilding process, but he is taking the route that allows him to cover the bigger stories.

From that standpoint, I can understand Windhorst's departure. Windhorst covered the Cavs for seven years, but he is really in the business of covering LeBron. He cultivated sources around LeBron and was at the center of the throng analyzing LeBron's every word, gesture and action for his entire Cavs career. Leaving the LeBron sphere to remain in Cleveland and cover Ramon Sessions is a waste of the sources that Windhorst has worked hard to develop and keep.

Obviously, it's a perspective that ESPN was willing to pay for. But the logic of the situation still doesn't do a lot to smooth over an often-rejected fan base that is watching yet another sports scene pillar leave for greener pastures.

We don't handle rejection well in Cleveland. And Windhorst's departure feels like rejection. He might be ESPN's go-to guy on LeBron, but for us, he was the voice of reason, perspective and inside information for seven years when we were hanging on every morsel of Cavs news. Windhorst's blog, first at the ABJ and later at the PD, became required morning reading from October through May, and anytime in the offseason when trade rumors became thick.

His Twitter page was refreshed thousands of times each day by office workers around Northeast Ohio, looking for trade deadline news or reassurance that Delonte West was emotionally right and ready to play that night.

I'd like to say Windhorst was a print version of Ernie Harwell or Vin Scully, painting a picture of the action for his audience. But he was more like FDR giving a fireside chat over a crackling speaker of a World War II-era radio. He was Winston Churchill giving reassurance to glass-nerved Britons bogged down in the London Underground tunnels during The Blitz.

In the trying times of sports contention for a city that hasn't seen a title trophy in 46 years, when the national scribes and talking heads had LeBron signed, sealed and delivered to destinations from the Hudson River to Hollywood, Windhorst was the voice that pulled us back from the ledge and gave us logical reasons to keep the faith. And maybe teach us a thing or two about the ultra-complex NBA salary cap while he's at it.

That's why we feel like we're losing someone this week. That's why we feel, in some form, a degree of the hurt we felt when LeBron left.

It's not enough that LeBron had to leave. Now his gravitational pull is causing us to lose the one person who could, more than anyone else, help us make sense of it all.

And the worst part (or best, depending on how you look at it) is that we can't fault him for doing it.

Code of honor

We're better in Cleveland. At least we think we are.

No, not the city itself. We're firmly second-rate in our own minds. But when it comes to rooting for our sports teams, nobody can tell us that we're anything but number one.

No fan base has had so little to show for so much loyalty and passion over the years. We stick with our teams like glue, we develop static-cling emotional attachment, we debate on message boards, we read volumes of fact, opinion and stats, we allow anyone who is willing and able-bodied to take a crack at being our Moses, whether it be LeBron James or Charlie Frye.

We defended Albert Belle when the rest of the country hated his thermostat-bashing, trick-or-treater chasing butt. Through voice and volume, we intimidated the NFL into making a replacement franchise for Cleveland a priority.

And despite it all, we've received no championships for our trouble. No lasting moment in the Sun. Just a lot of betrayal and cruel jokes at our expense. And if the outlook for this town's sports teams is as universally bleak as it appears to be, we aren't going to have that itch scratched anytime soon.

At this point, you kind of have to assume that the next legitimate contender in this town might be five years away or more. The Browns, because of the NFL's built-in parity rules, stand the greatest chance of reaching contention first, but regardless of who is running the show, that franchise always seems to make five bad moves for every good move.

The Indians are financially overmatched, with an alienated fan base that might not fill Progressive Field even if the team gets off to a hot start one of these years. Look to the case study of the 2007 season for proof.

The Cavs aren't winning anything until they find another LeBron. Enough said.

Three teams, and nothing but flat prarie (or scorched desert, depending on your outlook) as far as the eye can see. And absolutely no promise that what is over the horizon will be any better.

At some point, even the most steadfast Cleveland fans -- the ones who will proudly wear a 2003 Kelly Holcomb jersey through downtown Pittsburgh as an act of pure defiance -- might start to ask their inner selves if there is a point to it all.

You'd be excused if you did want to ask that question. Going to bed on Sunday with a rope of pain looping your scalp from temple to temple, the result of an evening of quiet seething over another Browns loss -- and the alcohol that probably accompanied it. The mind-numbing college lecture that every Indians season seems to become. The knowledge that LeBron almost certainly quit on the Cavs last spring, knowing full well that he was paving his way out of Cleveland.

And yet, we come back for more, year after year. We fall madly in love with any Cleveland team that shows even a glimmer of potential as a title winner. We're that desperate. We'll suffer to no end, hoping for that final championship-parade payoff.

Not only that, we wrap ourselves in a cloak of righteuosness as we suffer. We're dedicated. We're not like those fair-weather fans in Miami. We're not a city of transplants like Atlanta, Phoenix or Tampa. We were born and raised here. Our fandom was passed down from our fathers and grandfathers. We live and breathe the very essence of our teams. We sacrifice and bleed for them. We identify with them on a DNA-structural level. They are us. We are them.

To which Miami fans answer: "That's nice. You do that. We're going to go watch LeBron and the Heat win by 30, then we're going to the beach."

Those so-called fair weather fans in the Sun Belt? They pick sports up and put it down whenever it suits them. We look down our noses at a fan base that doesn't even think about the Marlins until they're in the NLCS. We're appalled that such lax fan support is rewarded with two World Series titles in the span of six years. Then, Miami was rewarded with an NBA title in 2006, and chances are very good they have more Heat parades coming.

All for a fan base that, save for the Dolphins and maybe the University of Miami football program, really doesn't cling to sports in any meaningful way.

But maybe Miami has it right. Maybe they do deserve the titles they've won because they approach sports in the right frame of mind. They put sports in its frivolous place. They don't look to local sports teams for regional or personal vindication, or to provide a metaphorical sword of justice to wield when assailed by fans of a rival team.

Yes, Miami has beaches, warm weather and points of civic pride that Cleveland quite obviously doesn't have. But it's a state of mind more than anything else.

The fans in Miami and across the Sun Belt know what we in Cleveland refuse to admit: there is no honor in suffering for a sports team. To emotionally martyr yourself, week after week, month after month, coming back for more time and time again, it's about as futile as trying to get anywhere by running on a hamster wheel.

Cleveland has, quite possibly, the most unhealthy fan/team relationship of any major U.S. city. It's a clingy, needy, desperate, one-sided relationship in which the fans keep giving and giving of themselves, in the hope that the love will be requited in the form of that long-sought championship parade that seemingly every U.S. city has experienced in the past half-century except for Cleveland. But the teams always let us down, without fail, and it creates even more emotional baggage.

I've seen the cycle of abuse play out since the days of The Drive and The Fumble, and those older than me have even earlier examples.

Instead of mocking Miami, Tampa and Atlanta, maybe we should strive to be more like them. We should care less about sports in Cleveland. That doesn't mean we stop supporting the local teams, but as a source of joy and misery, the grown men who play games for millions of dollars a year should be far down the list of what moves us.

If for no other reason, change your outlook to achieve this: when a Steelers fan tries to give you the business about the Browns' latest calamity, you can say something like, "Oh, really? I didn't see it. I was at the park with my family on a beautiful fall day."

That is a liberating feeling.

Summing it up

This is what it’s like to sit down and write a column about LeBron James leaving the Cavaliers and Northeast Ohio behind:

I’m sitting on the balcony of my new apartment in Willowick on a summer morning. It’s the first time in a week that the heat and humidity have relented to the point that sitting on the balcony is reasonably comfortable.

Off to my right, Lake Erie. Directly in front of me, the complex’s other building. Off to my left, the shopping center across the street, framed by green trees to the horizon.

Right, center, left. Left, center, right. No words coming to mind. No entry point emerging. I keep looking up from my laptop screen in an endless oscillation from vista to vista, side to side.

LeBron James is too big of a character. He meant too much to the region. There were so many other players involved in this production. It’s stunningly complex, will be a painful subject for years to come, and can’t possibly all be understood by viewing the saga through a single prism.
I truly have no idea where to begin.

After some time has passed and the longer morning shadows begin to slip under the balcony railings on the other building, a breakthrough – sort of. Art gives way to science. The only way to understand this is to chew, swallow and digest. Break everything down into its constituent parts.

I scan across my panorama one more time, then look back down at my screen with a little bit more purpose.

We gave LeBron too much credit for being one of us.

Something about Clevelanders – we really want and need to believe that our heroes identify with us. That they sympathize with our pain as fans and want to make it right. We projected that onto LeBron more than anyone because of where he was born.

LeBron makes mention of The Drive and The Fumble, and it tugs at our heartstrings. He gets on stage at a Rock the Vote concert and tells us he loves us and he’s not going anywhere, and it makes us fall in love all over again.

To LeBron, however, it was likely forgotten as soon as he said it. He didn’t remember until some guy with a microphone asked him about it.

It’s not slick marketing or self-promotion. It’s the in-the-moment utterances of a kid who is fascinated by his ability to manipulate the masses.

Truth is, LeBron isn’t one of us. He stopped being one of us as soon as Nike made him a millionaire before he was drafted in 2003. He never espoused the same values, he was never “in touch” with what we were feeling, he never had a special connection to the area he called home. Not any more so than you or me. And plenty among us would prefer to live among palm trees if given the chance. It’s only being honest.

LeBron is Hollywood. He is Manhattan. He is South Beach. He is a jet setter, one of the beautiful people, rich beyond the wildest dreams of 99.5 percent of the American population. The only thing that attaches him to Ohio is his birth certificate. His lifestyle, his values, his acquaintances, none of it was at home in our unglamorous, unremarkable region.

In Miami, he’ll be able to indulge in every trapping of celebrity 101 for young males: fast cars, beautiful women, exclusive dance clubs, VIP parties. And he’ll be able to do it after every home game. At age 25, the spoils of a town like Miami are a major benefit for someone like LeBron, who is known for hosting his share of jet-set shindigs.

David Justice had much the same attitude when he played for the Indians. Cleveland, he thought, had nice enough people, but the town just wasn’t his scene. His teammates nicknamed him “GQ” for a reason. Of course, when Justice departed via trade in 2000, he did so much more gracefully and graciously than LeBron just did.

Maybe it wasn’t the deciding factor in why LeBron left for the Miami Heat, but there wasn’t a lot beyond basketball keeping LeBron here. Which is 180 degrees from what we believed (or wanted to believe) prior to the past week.

Can you make LBJ the centerpiece of a championship team? Maybe not.

Prior to LeBron’s defection, common wisdom stated that all great players wanted to have their own team, so obviously LeBron would never want to join forces with another alpha dog. You would never have seen Michael Jordan team with Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas or Larry Bird. Not on the NBA stage, anyway.

There was the dynamic between Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant on the Lakers teams of early last decade, but those two thrived on being adversaries, constantly one-upping each other. And neither could lay claim to having been a Laker first. Both arrived in Los Angeles in the summer of 1996.

LeBron has shown now that he does not think like that, possibly because he’s simply not an alpha dog. That’s not his personality, no matter how much he is marketed to the contrary.

He is, plainly put, going to Dwyane Wade’s team. When Wade, LeBron and Chris Bosh were unveiled in their Heat uniforms on Friday, LeBron and Bosh flanked Wade. That is the team dynamic in Miami moving forward. No matter how far Wade scoots over on the pedestal, the highest perch can only hold one pair of shoes. And those belong to Wade.

Second-in-command might be the ranking for which LeBron is the most suited. This is a guy who has never looked totally at ease taking the last shot. A guy who has never totally grasped the concept of what it means to make your teammates better. A guy who has shown through his actions that his competitive fire doesn’t burn as brightly as it does with some other great players. That he is not above shutting down mentally when a nagging injury means he might look less than dominant on the court.

In other words, LeBron might be totally cool with letting someone else take the last shot. Whether it’s a fear of failure and/or being the goat, or that he simply isn’t the assassin that Kobe is and Jordan was, he might be more comfortable inbounding the ball to Wade and getting out of the way when the clock is about to reach “0.0.”

So if LeBron is fine with never being held in the same esteem as Kobe, Jordan, Magic or Bird – and, judging by the fact that he has agreed to join another superstar’s team, he is – the move to Miami might be a stroke of brilliance for LeBron. It means winning with a vastly reduced pressure factor. Perfect for a guy who might have been miscast as a king all along.

There is no “LBJ” in “team.”

With all of that in mind, it was quite possibly a futile pursuit to try and build a championship team around LeBron. And if that is the case, it was definitely misguided for Dan Gilbert and Danny Ferry to make LeBron the foundation of the entire organization.

LeBron couldn’t help but overshadow every player the Cavs put alongside him. It led to the widely-held belief around the country that, year in and year out, the Cavs roster consisted of LeBron and a band of scrubs – an assertion that might have been closer to fact five years ago, but certainly not over the past two seasons.

If we can assume that LeBron will function better as part of an ensemble of superstars, that surely wasn’t going to happen in Cleveland. As a result, no matter who the Cavs put around LBJ, he would always block out the Sun for his teammates with his massive presence.

It’s not healthy for one player to carry so much weight on a team. And with the Cavs, LBJ’s influence extended to all parts of the organization – from the locker room all the way up to the owner’s office. If you put every last egg in the basket of one player, it’s almost certainly a recipe for disaster. This past Thursday evening, the earthquake hit.

Is it possible to sell out for winning?

I used to think that giving up money for the sake of winning was noble. Then I saw LeBron give up everything he had supposedly stood for to this point in his life in the name of chasing rings. And I now realize that obsessively coveting anything – be it money, fame, championships or anything else – can corrupt a person.

This is the topic that cuts right to the heart of our hurt as a city and region.

We wanted LeBron to stick with us until he delivered a championship to the city. To recognize that it will be a hard road to the top, riddled with disappointment and setbacks, but the tougher the journey, the sweeter the victory. We wanted him to embrace the burden of being Cleveland’s sports savior, recognizing that some of the greatest players in NBA history had to wait for the balance of their careers – sometimes until quite late in their careers – before they tasted a drop of championship champagne.

We wanted him to acknowledge that championships are extremely hard to capture, aren’t a birthright, and to continue to fight the good fight, figuring out new ways to exercise his vast talents, until the last pieces fell into place and the long-sought title was achieved.

That would have been the harder route to take, but the route with more honor.

But that’s not the route LeBron took. Haunted by visions of being, as he put it, “31 with bad knees and no titles,” LeBron abandoned his home region, sold out any chance of being perceived as loyal ever again, and any hope of becoming a self-made champion, in favor of trying to stamp out championships assembly-line style on a ready-made contender in Miami.

In a quarter-century, 50-year-old LeBron might look back and think 25-year-old LeBron was pretty stupid. But right now, 25-year-old LeBron thinks this is a good idea.

Perhaps the greatest error in LBJ’s line of thinking is the concept of “his time.” Jordan had his time. Kobe is having his time. The assumption with LeBron has always been that, at some point, every great player has his dynasty. And if you don’t have a dynasty, you aren’t a great player.

So after being turned back in the playoffs the past two years, LeBron panicked. Now he’s trying to force-feed a dynasty into existence with Wade and Bosh. It might happen. But when LeBron looks back after his career at how it was all achieved, he might realize that the rings aren’t as shiny as he thought they would be, considering what he had to give up to win them.

LeBron was a monster created.

It takes a lot of work from a lot of people to turn a kid from a green 18-year-old rookie into someone narcissistic enough to have his free agency decision broadcast on an hour-long nationally televised special. Vain enough to demand that pursuing teams visit him, not the other way around. Callous enough to completely cut off communication with Cavs owner Dan Gilbert in the days leading up to his decision.

When you seldom hear “no,” when everyone around you is mostly interested in pleasing you, lest they get booted out of your circle of trust, chances are your ego will overinflate and your sensitivity toward other people will begin to erode. If everyone around you is figuratively casting rose petals at your feet, sooner or later you’ll really believe that you are better than everyone else, and that no spectacle is too great a display for you.

You will also begin to believe that you owe nothing to anyone, that you can toy with the people swirling around your personal vortex, and if you cause damage to them or their endeavors, that’s their problem.

LeBron has been doing this for a few years now. He damaged the Cavs’ ability to sign free agents by not committing to the team long term. Last summer, Trevor Ariza balked at taking the Cavs’ midlevel exception offer because of the uncertainty surrounding LeBron. The uncertainty of LeBron’s future ramrodded the Cavs into an “all or nothing” mindset, making trades with only the present in mind, and in the case of the Antawn Jamison deal this past February, saddling the team with an aging player signed to an expensive long-term contract. It’s a move the Cavs might not have made if not under the threat of losing LeBron to free agency.

Of course, it does take two to tango, and former GM Danny Ferry wasn’t forced to add Jamison, or Shaq, or anyone else. But the common – and correct – assumption is if the Cavs didn’t show LBJ they were doing everything in their power to win a championship, it would significantly damage their leverage at the bargaining table this summer.

LeBron might have had a Miami rendezvous with Bosh and Wade in the works since the Olympics in 2008. It might have been his first choice all along. But whether it was or it wasn’t, he strung the Cavs along since then, damaged their ability to improve the team, possibly damaged their cap flexibility in the short-to-medium term, all in the name of stoking the fire of intrigue this summer.

Then, when the summer finally arrived, he messed around some more, waited until most of the other major free agents committed somewhere, then left the Cavs, and to a lesser extent the Bulls and Knicks, holding the bag.

Even in the cutthroat world of professional sports, you don’t work other people over like that unless you have a massive superiority complex.

But for a guy who has spent his adult life ruling over everything he surveys, the results are predictable.

So, where to go from here?

I’d like to tell you that the Cavs are better off without LeBron. That they can just as easily do without the manipulation of a destructively narcissistic and egotistical 25 year old.

But the Cavs aren’t better off. They’re worse off, and will be for quite some time. Even if LBJ will never ascend to the levels of Kobe or Jordan in the spectrum of NBA all-time greatness, he is still a superstar who made playoff 1-seeds and later-round postseason appearances possible.
Now, that’s not possible for the Cavs anymore.

Dan Gilbert and new GM Chris Grant have said, at varying decibel levels, that the Cavs will remain committed to winning, both in the short and long term. Perhaps words meant to cushion the blow to their season ticket renewals. But I wonder if that is the right path.

Unless the Cavs can get another superstar in a trade, or at least several star-caliber players, it will be extremely difficult to rise above the low playoff seeds in the coming years. And that is the worst place to be for an NBA team – not good enough to contend for a title, not bad enough to draft high enough for star-level talent.

There is absolutely no reason to stay on a treadmill of 35 to 45-win seasons, year after year. But that is where I fear the Cavs will land if Gilbert refuses to sign off on a rebuild.

The windfall trade that replenishes the team with star power may be out there. The Cavs have negotiated a sign-and-trade to complete LeBron’s acquisition by Miami. The sign-and-trade will deliver a large trade exception and a package of draft picks – which might be used soon as part of a badly-needed “big splash” deal.

But a deal like that isn’t guaranteed. And even if the Cavs manage to rebuild the roster in short order, the Eastern Conference is so stacked at the top with potential powerhouses like Miami, Boston, Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago, it will be very tough for a post-LeBron Cavs team to swim upstream against that current over the next few seasons.

But the Cavs do have assets which they can use to get better, and Gilbert seems more determined than ever to outmaneuver LeBron’s defection. There is no apparent reason the Cavs should need to bottom out to the pre-LeBron levels of the 2002-03 season, when the team went 17-65. But in a league driven by star power, the Cavs don’t have any right now, and until that changes, they aren’t going to have much weight to throw around in the East.

After getting all of that off my chest, I exhale, relax the muscles around my eyes and let the light flow back in.

As I type out those last few paragraphs, I glance up from my monitor and gaze out at the lake – at its midsummer blue best. Sailboats are on the water. Earlier in the morning, an ore carrier cruised in the distance from west to east.

Off to my left, there are still cars on the road, still people walking into the supermarket in the shopping center across the way. LeBron is no longer a Cav, and life still goes on under a sunny, warm early July blessing of a day.

It turns out that maybe … just maybe … LeBron James isn’t that important after all. And that’s a very empowering thought.

The Gunslinger

The Cavaliers are an unstable organization with an uncertain future. They have no coach, a rookie general manager and a superstar free agent who is going to do a lot of observing of offseason moves, in Cleveland and elsewhere, before committing to a team.

If there was ever a time to strive for consistency and stability, you'd think now would be it. But at least in the mind of Dan Gilbert, it's not.

The alternative was to maintain the status quo, retain Mike Brown and give Danny Ferry no reason to step down as general manager. But faced with the reality of back-to-back league-leading regular seasons with not even an NBA Finals berth to show for it, Gilbert saw a system that needed an overhaul.

So overhaul he did. Mike Brown, arguably the most successful coach in franchise history, was shown the door after two straight years of lackluster playoff performances against other contenders.

Ferry, who has always been in Brown's corner, likely didn't agree with the decision. But if he was to stay on as GM, he at least wanted to maintain full control over basketball operations -- and hire his own coach.

Gilbert wanted to remove total autonomy from Ferry's job description, opening the door for a big-name coach who might want some say in how the roster is constructed. Ferry didn't like what he was hearing, and with his contract expiring, saw the opportunity to bow out. Chris Grant, Ferry's top assistant, has taken over the general manager's role. Gilbert was emphatic in his assertion that Grant is not a placeholder, and will not carry an "interim" tag on his title.

But that doesn't mean that Grant will have final say on all basketball matters as Ferry did. He could end up developing a specific specialization, such as the draft. Grant has handled the Cavs' drafts for the past few years. He could end up as a puppet GM -- George Kokinis to a new coach's Eric Mangini. That's a setup that is bound to end badly, but that's another discussion.

What we know for certain is that Gilbert is the only figure lending any stability to the Cavs organization right now, and he is in the process of installing his second leadership regime with no guarantee that LeBron is coming back.

There really isn't a blueprint for what Gilbert is trying to accomplish. LeBron is the only selling point that would attract a big-name coach to Cleveland. Landing a big-name coach is a major key to reassuring LeBron that the Cavs are committed to winning titles. So how do you sell a big-name coach on coming to Cleveland when the superstar that makes the job attractive is waiting to see if you can make the hire -- and might still bolt even if you do make the hire?

A only if B, and B only if A. It's a maddening Catch-22. How can Gilbert do it? We're getting our first case study in Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.

Several days ago, Gilbert reportedly offered Izzo a lot of money -- up to $6 million a year, double his salary at Michigan State -- to come to Cleveland and root the Cavs in the philosophy of dogged competitiveness and staunch defense that has helped lead the Spartans to six Final Four appearances and a national championship in Izzo's 15-year tenure.

At first glance, it looks like a well-connected Michigan State graduate in Gilbert overvaluing Izzo as the be-all, end-all who can cure everything that is wrong with the Cavs. But once you start peeling back the layers on Gilbert's line of thinking, the interest in Izzo does make a bit more sense.

Despite a vast improvement in roster talent over the past two years, the Cavs regressed at the defensive end. When you look at the small army of defensive liabilities they added to the roster -- namely Mo Williams, Shaq and Antawn Jamison -- it's easy to blame Ferry for the shift away from defense.

But Gilbert is right to look to the coach to set the tone for defense, and Izzo would coach defense -- not just on a cerebral level, as Brown did, but on a level that promotes mental toughness and aggression.

Izzo has no NBA experience, but his college success has made him a national celebrity, which means he has the presence to coach someone like LeBron, who is knowledgeable about college ball and likely appreciates Izzo's body of work.

But would the money, even an outright cause-effect guarantee that Izzo's arrival would signal LeBron's return, be enough to lure Izzo to town?

It would be wise to assume not. Like a lot of in-demand college coaches, Izzo can use Gilbert's hot pursuit to put a scare into the Michigan State athletic director's office. And scared executives can be far more giving of both praise and money.

Darn near worshipped throughout much of his native state of Michigan, with a sterling reputation that has been buffer to a mirror shine, there just isn't a lot of incentive for Izzo to do more than listen to the Cavs and keep his mouth shut long enough to make Michigan State sweat a bit.

Maybe he'll see an extra three million greenbacks a year and cave to Gilbert's siren song, but the cash is all Gilbert really has to work with. His vacant coaching position could be a dream job or a prison sentence, depending on LeBron's loyalty.

And if Izzo says no, Gilbert has to find another coach to try and court. And once again, he has to sell any coach worth pursuing on the mere possibility that LeBron is coming back. And that's as basketball power broker and LeBron entourage member Wes Wesley is trying to convince anyone within earshot that LeBron is on the fast track to the Chicago Bulls.

As the Summer of LeBron warms up, it seems as though Dan Gilbert is more of a gunslinger than any of his players could ever hope to be. About a month after his players tip-toed out of the playoffs with one of the most tentative postseason performances you'll ever see, Gilbert is sticking his neck far out in pursuit of improvements to his team -- and by extension, in pursuit of LeBron's signature on a contract.

At a time when it would seem that the proper plan of action is to get in the blast bunker and lock the door, Gilbert has dismantled the bunker and begun a search for new raw materials.

It's either going to be a significant triumph or a massive failure. But at least he's going to try, which you have to admire. Having said that, you are fully allowed to admire Gilbert's moxie with your hands over your eyes, peeking out from between your fingers.

Who are the Cavs?

It's been nearly two weeks since the Cavs slammed the door on our fingers with a head-smacking second round exit at the hands of the Celtics. It's enough time to do some digesting of the situation.

Much has been, and will be, made of what happened in the Cavs six-game ouster, their wet-rag performances in the four losses. Was it LeBron's damaged elbow? LeBron's damaged ego? Mike Brown's inability to coach effectively during games? A player revolt against Brown's failure to adequately settle on rotations? Or were they simply an underperforming team that ran into a red-hot Boston team?

All fair questions. But you're not going to find any mining for answers in this space.

The reason is simple: that doesn't matter. What happened against Boston is yesterday's news. The point is, the Celtics won the series, the Cavs' season ended, and now it's time to pick up the pieces.

What is abundantly apparent is that the Cavs of next season will, in all likelihood, look far different. Right now, there is a tug of war going on within the Cavs' ranks over the future of Brown and his staff. It's hard to imagine that Brown will retain his job after back-to-back 60-win seasons with not even a Finals appearance to show for it. But then again, Browns coach Eric Mangini looked as good as fired early last December, so stranger non-firings have happened.

Danny Ferry's contract is running out. If Dan Gilbert doesn't retain him, or Ferry elects to pursue other avenues, the Cavs will have no head of basketball operations until they hire someone else.

Then there is the LeBron soap opera. He'll be a free agent on July 1, and a few teams -- Cavs included -- might be kicking around the idea of signing him. In case you hadn't heard.

And even if LeBron, Brown and Ferry all return next season, there is simply no way the Cavs can endure the playoff humiliation they just endured without some organizational scarring. It's safe to assume the "team of destiny" mindset and can-do attitude that permeated the organization over the past two seasons will be severely withered, if not entirely dead. Even with mostly the same team returning next year, any optimism will likely be diluted with caution, or even outright cynicism. Even if the players and coaches try to fight it, it's going to be impossible to escape the widespread criticism from the fans and media.

For certain, no one who follows the NBA will be predicting the Cavs to even sniff the Finals in the spring of '11, LeBron or no LeBron. They now have a richly-deserved reputation as a regular-season dynamo that can't win in the playoffs. The Dallas Mavericks of the East.

If LeBron does re-sign with the Cavs, it's possible that the honeymoon between he and his home region fans will have ended. He simply withdrew from serious competition for the balance of three games against Boston, all blowout losses. His reputation took a major hit in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio.

If LeBron does re-sign, we'll still appreciate him and we'll still cheer for him, but the elephant is now in the room. He quit on us during a time when he had everything to play for. No matter what he does in the regular season, the footnote at the bottom of the page will say "He'll just choke in the playoffs again." It will be that way until he wins a title.

And that's if he comes back. If he signs elsewhere, hell be reviled every bit as much as Art Modell. This is the new reality for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

So where do they go from here? The Cavs need more than sanding and polishing. It's not just about acquiring guys to match up with Dwight Howard or Rashard Lewis anymore. The Cavs, as an organization, have some questions to answer about who they are and what they want to be moving forward.

If I was a basketball doctor, this is the prescription I'd write. It's not a cure-all, but it might get this team on a 12-step plan to recovery.

Mike Brown does need to go.

Say what you will about scapegoating the coach, but it's time for new blood on the sideline. It's time for a new voice in practice and in the locker room.

Brown is a typical example of a coach who no longer fits his role. The Cavs have changed a lot since Brown took the helm prior to the 2005-06 season. Back then, the Cavs were an undertalented group that lacked discipline and good basketball fundamentals. Brown was the protege of quality coaches such as Gregg Popovich and Rick Carlisle. He understood that defense can take a team that lacks offensive talent and turn it into a winner.

From 2005 to '08, Brown was the right man for the Cavs job. The Cavs were a playoff underdog, and it was Brown's defensive scheming and constant preaching of defensive fundamentals and effort that led them to some of the proudest moments in franchise history: a six-game thriller over the Wizards in 2006 -- LeBron's first playoff series -- then nearly upsetting the Pistons in the next round. A Finals run in 2007. A near-upset of the Celtics as a 45-win team in 2008.

But then, in the summer of '08, Gilbert opened up his pocketbook and let Ferry acquire Mo Williams. The following summer, Shaq arrived. This past winter, it was Antawn Jamison.

Through a series of blockbuster trades, the Cavs amassed one of the best collections of offensive talent in the league. They didn't need to play like a gritty underdog anymore. They could win most games by outscoring the opponent. Suddenly, Brown's coaching was obsolete in the minds of the players, whether they would admit it or not.

In the span of about a year, the Cavs went from needing a coach who harps on mechanics and fundamentals to a coach who can manipulate a room full of egos for maximum effect. They need a basketball psychologist. But that's not Brown's strength. He's a basketball bookworm who has always been most comfortable in the film room and toting a dry-erase clipboard.

The Cavs, quite simply, need a veteran winning coach if they aspire to continue on as a veteran winning team. Brown will find work again, probably leading a team that is in need of "Winning Basketball 101" tutoring, like the '05 Cavs were. But he doesn't fit the Cavs now, and won't in the future.

The Cavs are, at their heart, a running team.

If the Cavs do end up firing Brown, they need to hire a coach who will nuture this team's true DNA, which was starkly absent in the playoffs when the team played slow, passive basketball.

The Cavs are a running team. They are an offensively-gifted team. It's time to stop pretending that they are anything else. They are not a lockdown defensive team. They are not a grind-it-out halfcourt team. They are an uptempo team that should be focusing on small lineups, increasing possession volume, increasing shot volume and viewing turnovers as a necessary evil -- forgivable as long as you keep pushing the ball and finding open shots.

For much of this season, Brown and Shaq combined to turn the Cavs into a slow-down team. When Shaq injured his thumb and spry youngster J.J. Hickson moved into the starting center spot, the Cavs had their hottest streak of the season.

It's not a coincidence. Over the past two seasons, the Cavs have always been at their best when they trotted out small, fast lineups that could run and score. When you looked up and down the lineup at athletes like LeBron, Hickson, Williams, Delonte West and Anderson Varejao, it was easy to see why. The Cavs' best players have been fast, active players. LeBron is the best fast break player in the league by a wide margin.

But the loss to Orlando in the '09 Eastern Conference Finals occurred, and the Cavs' brass decided the best courst of action was to get bigger and stronger. Shaq fits the Cavs' makeup like an army boot fits Cinderella. Anthony Parker was reduced to a spot-up jump shooter, far from the dynamic role he had with the Raptors. Zydrunas Ilgauskas looked out of place as a starter in '09, and completely unfit for the floor as a reserve in the just-completed season.

If the last two seasons teach nothing else, it's that you shouldn't make moves just to match up with one team. A good team like the Cavs has an identity, and that identity is created by the makeup of the team. And the Cavs are a fast break team.

So, what to do about it?

It would be a moderate shock if Ferry wasn't retained as the Cavs GM, but whether he or his successor is running the show, it's time to build a team that can be competitive, interesting and draw fans to the The Q whether LeBron returns or not.

First off, hire a coach who is willing to let this team run while still keeping defense relevant. The time will come when defensive effort will be needed, but the coach needs to trust that a veteran team will know when that time is, or at least will be able to turn on the effort with very little prodding. And if they don't play D, they lose those games. That's how you get a team to be accountable.

The Cavs don't need to have a 24/7 obsession with defense, as Brown believes. After so many years, you don't need to drill them on it like you're drilling third-graders on multiplication tables.

Second, find a point guard who can run an uptempo offense. The ideal candidate would be relatively young, lightning quick, have a tremendous handle, reliable midrange jumper and the presence to command the floor. In other worse, someone who can allow LeBron to move without the ball -- but more than that, someone with the ego and voice to dictate the game to LeBron. It could be a tough task. LeBron isn't used to not having control of where the ball goes, and he is most certainly not used to being told what to do.

Mo Williams is not that guy. Nor is Delonte West. They are auxiliary scoring options, not floor generals.

If I'm dreaming, I'm looking at Chris Paul, the current centerpiece of the cash-strapped Hornets -- a team that has a lower-cost future point guard to develop in Darren Collison. My faith in humanity would be restored if the Cavs could land Paul, who also happens to be one of LeBron's best friends in the league.

If I'm being more realistic, I'd be looking at Grizzlies guard and Ohio State product Mike Conley, Kings guard Beno Udrih and Rodney Stuckey of the Pistons. The Timberwolves also have a small army of point guards, including the rights to Spanish phenom Ricky Rubio.

If you have a point guard who can run a fast-paced offense, it's time to put the young legs out there -- mainly Hickson. J.J. should be the starting center for this team moving forward. He is undersized at 6'-9", but if he isn't starting at center, that means a slow, lumbering guy probably is. And while it's true that centers are the outlet-pass guy and don't necessarily need to be fast, it's also true that the other team is getting all five guys back on defense while your center ambles into the frontcourt. So you either slow up the tempo or play five-on-four for the first 8-to-10 seconds of the shot clock. Enough time for the other team to set their defense.

With that in mind, it's time to bid adieu to Shaq and Z. Shaq, it was real. Thanks for your time. Z, No. 11 will hang from the rafters in a few years. But your time as a Cavs player is over.

A fast-paced, active team will be competitive without LeBron and likely remain a 60-win contender with LeBron. In either case, the Cavs make the best of their situation. With LeBron, they're an offensive juggernaut. Without LeBron, they can still win, and the gate receipt apocalypse that many are predicting for the post-LeBron Cavs might be diluted, if not averted entirely.

Yeah, there is still the little thing about beating Boston and Orlando in the playoffs. A small, fast Cavs team might still have trouble handling Dwight Howard and Boston's beefy frontcourt. But after the frustrating playoffs exits of the past two springs, you have to think positively:

If you're going to get drilled by Orlando and Boston every spring, you might as well look good doing it.

Slump of a career

First off, I'm going to try really hard to not bury the Cavs prematurely.

The fact of the matter is, this series isn't over. Some approximation of the Game 3 LeBron and Game 3 Cavs could show up in Game 6. Boston is already further than they were supposed to go in this postseason and the Cavs' backs will truly be against the wall. LeBron once again has something personal to prove, like never before in his seven NBA years. The Celtics have had some of the same inconsistency issues as the Cavs, and they've strung together two great games. They're due for a flat game.

So there is still a chance, more solid than grasping at straws, that this series will find its way to a seventh game. And as we know, Game 7's are a completely different animal from any other type of playoff game.

Now, having said all of that ... severe damage has been done to the Cavs, and to LeBron James, in this series. Damage that might alter the future of the Cavs and LeBron, and will certainly alter our perception of who is now a disgraced king.

Unless the Cavs find that championship-level switch that we've been waiting 10 games for them to flip, unless they win the last two games against Boston and ride that momentum to series triumph over Orlando in the Eastern Conference Finals and the Western Conference champion in the NBA Finals, the Cavs are going to look a lot different next season, and LeBron -- whether he's still here or playing for another team -- will have an elephant in the room with him. And the only way that elephant is going to leave the room is if LeBron wins a championship. Or perhaps multiple championships.

Mike Brown will be fired, probably very quickly after a Cavs elimination. He wasn't dealt the greatest of hands in the past three months, needing to work Antawn Jamison into the rotation just as Shaq left the stage with a torn thumb ligament, then being forced to adjust his rotations on the fly when Shaq returned for Game 1 against Chicago. And as has been discussed many times in this space, the Cavs being forced to accommodate Shaq on the fly is like asking the Indianapolis 500 to accommodate a dump truck on the fly.

That aside, Brown's rotation-adjusting has always been an area of criticism. He tends to add to the upheaval when things aren't going right by mixing and matching willy-nilly. At this point in the season, if you can't give players defined roles, you are going to anger them and mess with morale. That is exactly what has happened in this series. Shaq was biting his lip after Game 4, when he was benched for all of the fourth quarter. Bench players such as J.J. Hickson and Jamario Moon, who have both given the Cavs solid minutes in this postseason, have seen their playing time jump all over the board from game to game.

In Game 5, forgotten man Zydrunas Ilgauskas suddenly got the call in the first quarter as Hickson remained buried on the bench. Then, seemingly for the first time since the days of James Naismith and wooden peach baskets, Daniel Gibson made an appearance when things really got desperate.

Brown has had to deal with upheaval. But he's also had a month to smooth his rotations out, and he's making things worse, not better. He's coaching himself out of a job at the moment.

Danny Ferry might be gone as well, if for no other reason than as an accompaniment to Brown's firing. His contract is up after this season and there has been no apparent progress toward an extension. Maybe Ferry wants to make sure he has a place on a lifeboat if the Cavs do indeed strike the iceberg that is now looming mere yards off the bow. Or maybe Dan Gilbert is leaving the door open to try and attract a big name such as Gregg Popovich, Larry Brown or Pat Riley to Cleveland with the promise of the combined coach and general manager's roles, and the unchallenged authority that goes along with it. Not to mention the loads of money.

Whatever the reason, if this downward trajectory continues for one more game, there is a very good chance the Cavs' power structure will look much different next season.

The roster will look much different. A month ago, I was certain that the Cavs would retain Shaq for at least one more season. Even at 38, there is no one who affects the game on a foundational level the way Shaq does. Now, I'm fairly certain that Shaq is a one-and-done failed experiment. His low-post game, once the most reliable weapon in the NBA, has been reduced to travels, off-arm push fouls and some of the ugliest hook shots you will ever see. Ironically, his foul shooting has been perhaps his biggest strength thus far in the postseason.

If the Cavs could somehow get past Boston, Shaq could actually become more of a factor against the Magic. Kendrick Perkins, with his girth and ability to prevent ideal post-up positioning, is a tougher matchup for Shaq than Dwight Howard, who is slender by comparison.

Mo Williams might find his way onto the trading block, and probably should. He's having an overall miserable series. But he's also a streaky volume shooter who has been forced into a specialist's role since the Jamison deal. He no longer fits here the way he is going to have to fit in order to be successful. The Cavs need a more traditional point guard to fill Mo's role.

But anything that might happen with Brown, Ferry, Shaq or Mo is mere deck chair shuffling compared to the questions that will surround LeBron if this is how the Cavs end their season.

For the first time in his career, LeBron is showing real weakness. He is showing what might be fatal flaws. He is playing terribly, he is submitting to the will of his opponent, he is withdrawing emotionally, and he is doing it all with a thousand-yard stare that is usually reserved for those who have seen the horrors of war.

His injured elbow excuse left the building after his Game 3 mastery. To look at what LeBron has become in this series, there is no way you can blame it all on an injured joint. This is much deeper and much more serious. What we've seen out of LeBron in this series is a lack of interest and a lack of heart. Even he doesn't seem to know what is going on. The best he can offer up is "I spoil a lot of people with my play," delivered to the media after Game 5. Basically saying, "I've been so good for so long, you should expect that at some point, I won't play well."

You'd have to think that Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant would have committed hara-kiri before they'd admit to something like that in the middle of a playoff series. Something is really wrong with LeBron, and it's going really wrong at the worst possible time -- right before he becomes the most coveted free agent in the history of professional sports.

It would be foolish to think that this series is going to cool teams on pursuing LeBron. There are too many desperate teams out there with cap space and blind faith that LeBron is all they need to become relevant again.

But there is a long road, filled with wrong turns, between relevancy and championships. Just ask the Cavs.

LeBron will make money for himself and his team, no matter where he goes, or if he chooses to re-sign with the Cavs. But LeBron's legacy as a great player will be directly tied to the number of rings he wins, and what we're seeing right now is a superstar player who has an opportunity to build his legacy as a winner, and he's letting it slip through his fingers almost willingly, met with little more than a shrug of the shoulders and a "Yeah, these things happen sometimes."

If LeBron doesn't have one foot out the door, it's entirely possible that he has one foot in the offseason. It's possible that he's not playing hard because he doesn't want to risk a major injury, or worsening his elbow, on the eve of his free agency.

It's entirely possible that LeBron's real "championship" is his next contract, and his parade is the national tour he will begin in early July, hopping from city to city so that powerful team executives can grovel at his feet.

And it's entirely possible that we're watching LeBron get broken down into his constituent elements right before our very eyes: ego, greed, vanity, hubris and emotional fragility. And playing like a champion, but only on his terms, when it best suits him.

LeBron's character is among the last things I thought I'd ever have to call into question. But it's his character that is losing this series right now. I am one loss away from never looking at LeBron the same way again.