The Redemption of the King. Vince McKee

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Acquiring Talent

      for LeBron

      It was a quiet off-season. The team signed only one free agent of note: Devin Brown, a five-year veteran who had spent time with San Antonio, Denver, Utah, and New Orleans. He was a solid backup shooting guard, and with Larry Hughes’s injury concerns, the Cavaliers needed to have a reliable backup. The night before the opening game, the team received some good news: They had come to terms on a contract extension with Sasha Pavlović, who was holding out at the time. He would not be ready for the first few games but would return to action in time for their six-game West Coast road trip only a few days away. Cleveland got off to a slow start with the holdout of Anderson and an injury that kept LeBron out for seven games. It was looking as though a return to the finals would be a much harder and longer journey than the prior season.

      The Cavaliers were still struggling to find their stride and slumped into a 14–17 record as the calendar turned to 2008. It was at this point that the team finally snapped out of its coma and got hot, eventually turning it around and achieving a winning record later into the season. As the Cavaliers entered into the last week of February with a 30–24 record, there had been rumors for a while that the Cavaliers chemistry wasn’t as good as prior years and that a major shake-up could happen. Despite the winning record, general manager Danny Ferry still felt that the team needed a change in order to return to the later rounds of the playoffs.

      On February 21, 2008, Danny Ferry pulled off a blockbuster that no one saw coming. He took part in a three-team trade with the Chicago Bulls and Seattle SuperSonics that would change 25 percent of the Cavaliers’ roster. As part of a three-team trade, the Cleveland Cavaliers traded Donyell Marshall and Ira Newble to the Seattle SuperSonics and sent Shannon Brown, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, and Cedric Simmons to the Chicago Bulls; the Chicago Bulls traded Joe Smith, Ben Wallace, and a 2009 second-round draft pick (Danny Green was later selected) to the Cleveland Cavaliers; the Chicago Bulls traded Adrian Griffin to the Seattle SuperSonics; and the Seattle SuperSonics traded Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West to the Cleveland Cavaliers. It was a crucial trade that brought on high risk but also the chance for a very high reward.

      Roda explained why it was crucial for the trade to happen and his belief regarding why it occurred:

      They had to bring in some veterans. They were coming in off of a season where they had been beaten in four straight games in the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. Even though some of the games were close, they needed to tweak the roster since they were already figuring out how to try and keep LeBron James as a player in Cleveland. So when you’re doing whatever you can to make him happy and make the team better, you need those two things in concert and have to do both if you want to get it done. They were trying to show him that they were going to do everything that they possibly could to make the Cavaliers a championship team and keep them at that level. I give Danny Ferry all the credit in the world. Was it the greatest trade? Clearly no, because they didn’t win a championship. But Danny Ferry had the pressure of trying to find the best deals out there to improve the Cavs chances of winning and also keep LeBron James. Danny was doing his job as a general manager to bring in the most talent he could to maintain the level of play for the Cavaliers at a championship level and keep LeBron James happy, so that is why he went all in. I give Danny Ferry a lot of credit—instead of just standing by and doing nothing, hoping that they would get back there again, they went all in. It didn’t work out, but I at least appreciate a general manager [who] if he’s going to go down, he’s going to go down swinging. Danny tried numerous times to get the right pieces and parts to make this a championship team. Unfortunately, they were unable to get back to the finals that season.

      Carman also gave his thoughts on the big trade:

      When you look at it now, that was the beginning of them trying to see what is going to be in the future. I have always thought that LeBron was so young that at this point, they were trying to see who they could bring in to please him. Now there is a difference in the resolve of LeBron that there wasn’t back then. We were already wondering if we could hold on to him, and he very much let that go on. He catered to those who believed he would leave for New York or Los Angeles. I think that there was a little bit of distrust in what he was going to do. You were hanging your hat on LeBron and wondering what he was going to do from time to time. You just tried to make him as comfortable as possible and make some moves to try and help him. It was to see if he could really help himself because he wasn’t willing to sign a long-term deal. Well, if you’re not willing to sign a long-term deal in your early 20s, why would big-name free agents come here to play with him and want to sign a long-term deal to play with him? There was too much of a chance of the rug being pulled out from other free agents if he left. Let’s be honest! Years later when he did leave, players like Mo Williams were upset, because he knew that he had to stay on a team that wouldn’t be good without LeBron. That’s just how these guys think. It is not an anti-fan thing or anything like that. It’s an opportunity-being taken-from-them type of thing. There are some real hurt feelings there. There’s always that “what if” players have in the back of their mind. I don’t think Danny Ferry was willing to make other moves because of trust issues. I think we were saving too much not to make moves until then because we were getting too farsighted and not enough nearsighted. I think it was too little too late with some of the pieces they got.

      It was a gutsy move by Ferry, but one he had to make to strengthen the team for another run deep into the playoffs. Hughes had been too injury prone and inconsistent, making him expendable. He wasn’t the solid number-two scoring threat that they had needed him to be when they signed him to the large free-agent deal in the summer of 2005. Drew Gooden had never quite reached his potential many thought he had when he was picked fourth in the draft several years earlier. Gooden was loved by the fans and his teammates, but Ferry knew that the trade wouldn’t be possible unless he included Gooden in it.

      Mires believed that Delonte West was the key part of that deal:

      Delonte West was the key of that trade. I realize people like to make snarky Delonte West jokes, but he was the key in that trade. Shaq O’Neal even said he would play anytime with Delonte West because he has that dog in him. He’s just a street fighter … that hungry player who’s going to fight for everything that you have. He is the kind of guy that when you’re in a dark alley, I’d rather have him covering your back than a 10-foot giant. He was so key, just look at the difference that last season after he fell apart—that was a big part of the reason the Cavs struggled at times in 2010. Not just legal problems, but he struggled with mental problems as well. He was sick with bipolar and other issues.

      The team reacted well to the new cast of players, as the Cavaliers won the first seven of nine games after the trade. It was going to take time to mesh, but the new players showed they were hungry to play well and contribute right away. They finished the regular season at 45–37 and looked poised for another run at the Eastern Conference Championship.

      The Cavaliers’ first-round opponent was a familiar foe: the Washington Wizards. It would be the third straight season the team had to face Washington in the opening round. The Wizards had their “Big Three” ready with Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison poised to do everything they could not to get beat again. The Cavaliers were ready for the Wizards to come out strong and fight them hard the entire game. In the end it took a 32-point performance by LeBron, and the Cavaliers took game one 93–86. The Wizards had led after the first and third quarters, but the Cavaliers used a 28-point fourth quarter to overcome them for good.