Erik Cassano's Weblog

Excess baggage

2011-02-24T20:40:00.003-05:00

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.

Awaiting further instruction

2011-01-03T21:46:00.009-05:00

For years, the Browns have needed a First Monday in January Guy.

The first Monday in January is normally the start of the offseason for perennial dregs like the Browns. It's the day when the postmortem begins. It's the day when the front office takes stock of what went wrong and starts formulating the initial steps to try and fix it.

It's also the day when the coach often gets fired.

Mike Holmgren was brought to Cleveland and paid a lot of Randy Lerner's money to be the man making the calls on the first Monday in January. To be the organizational guru who can identify what is wrong with his team and how to correct it.

Monday, he made his first big call, firing Eric Mangini after a second straight 5-11 season. It's a move that is at the same time defensible and questionable.

In a business driven by wins and losses, Mangini didn't improve. In the division, he didn't improve, leading the Browns to a 1-5 record for the second straight year. His team appeared poised for bigger and better things after a pair of impressive wins over the Saints and Patriots, then fell apart in the second half of the campaign, sustaining embarrassing losses to the Bills and Bengals, and punctuating the season with a 41-9 humiliation at the hands of the Steelers.

But the Browns played competitive football for all but the final game. Mangini got the most out of a very limited roster for the season's first three months. Injuries to Colt McCoy and Scott Fujita slicked the Browns' second-half slide.

This truly was a judgment call for Holmgren, and by his own admission during his afternoon press conference, he hadn't totally made up his mind on Mangini's fate until Monday morning.

"I didn't sleep very well (Sunday) night," Holmgren said during his press conference, as quoted on Cleveland.com. "I was up a fair amount of the night thinking about this, thinking what I might have to do and trying to make the correct decision."

Mangini is a good coach. Not a great coach, but a good coach. Which is far more than we can say for any other Browns coach in the expansion era. The Browns might gain more from Mangini's replacement, or they might not. But they definitely lost something with his dismissal. They lost the coach who did the initial dirty work of taking the Browns from a circus of ineptitude to something resembling a competent, professional organization. And he took a lot of heat from the players and media to get there.

Mangini came in with the wrong idea about himself as a football guru in the mold of Bill Belichick. He botched the 2009 draft and alienated former GM George Kokinis. But when the time came to reform, Mangini swallowed his pride and became a team player with Holmgren.

He's a better coach than he was two years ago. His time in Cleveland made him a better coach. You could make a case that Mangini deserved a shot to see his vision for the Browns through to completion, maybe with a new offensive coordinator and a couple of new receivers.

That's what makes all of this more than your average bilge-water purging of NFL coaching flotsam. That's what makes this potentially a polarizing move by Holmgren.

Holmgren has placed himself on the hot seat by doing exactly what every one of us wanted him to do when he took the team president's job a year ago: put his stamp on the organization and make this a Holmgren team.

That's about to happen. Holmgren the football executive is about to build an entire franchise in his image. He plugged in his front office last year, and it yielded arguably the best free agent and draft class of the Browns' expansion era. Now we get to see if the former coach who has thrice tread a Super Bowl sideline has the right stuff to hire the best possible coach for this team.

But really, what is Holmgren's vision for the Browns' on-field product? It might still be murky, even to the man himself. Which, honestly, is a little disconcerting for those of us who want to see the most accomplished Browns executive since Ernie Accorsi move forward with a definitive plan for rescuing the franchise from the NFL's sewer.

It would be one thing if Holmgren were dead set on building the Browns around the West Coast offense and Bill Walsh football. That was never going to be Mangini. Sometimes, the pieces just don't fit. But according to Holmgren's comments on Monday, even that isn't an absolute. He says he wants the best candidates. He'll beat the shrubs looking for the best coaching candidates, no matter what corner of the football universe they come from.

"If I hire a coach, I'm going to hire a coach," he told reporters. "He's going to run what he runs, what he's comfortable with, what he knows. Will (the West Coast system) be a part of the consideration in the process? Absolutely, but I'm not going to interfere that way as the president"

Holmgren stated he won't return to the sidelines himself at this point, which eliminates the possibility that Holmgren was angling for the job all along. Apparently, he truly wants to build this team from the executive level.

So what does Holmgren want? The best possible people. That broad definition serves as Cleveland's guiding light for the time being. Maybe the coming weeks and months make the picture a little clearer. For now, we have a team president with respect-demanding credentials discarding a decent coach with room to improve for an undetermined better coach.

Holmgren has the hammer and chisel. He could sculpt a classical masterpiece to rival Michelangelo's "David," or he could scuplt a backyard garden gnome. Right now, this really could go either way.

Frankly, I was hoping for a little more from Holmgren. And I'm going to be hoping for a lot more in the coming months.

On winter's doorstep

2010-12-21T22:40:00.004-05:00

Last Wednesday, Bob Feller died. Last Thursday, the Sun came up -- as much as it can in Ohio, on one of the shortest days of the year.

Last Thursday, life went on. Just as it went on when Art Modell gave Baltimore a new lease on NFL life at our expense. Just like when we had to suffer the final-straw indignity of watching him win a Super Bowl five years later. Just like when LeBron told us we weren't good enough for him anymore, mere months ago.

There was something of a numb feeling about last Thursday. Like waking up the morning after Game 7 of the ALCS three years ago, Game 7 of the World Series 13 years ago, after the AFC title games in '86 and '87. It's over. It's really over.

Yeah, those were games. This was a life. But Feller represented so much about Cleveland that we want to remember. With his passing, we lost one of our most important links to that past, when Cleveland was the stately lady of the lakeshore, the manufacturing mecca that helped build America into a 20th Century world power on the sweaty brows and strained muscles of the men and women who went to work at the factories and mills each day.

A time when billowing smokestacks were a sign of profit and riches, not an environmental taboo. A time when the Indians were winners, a World Series parade was fresh in everyone's memory, and Cleveland was the polar opposite of the national punchline it would become in the ensuing decades.

Paul Simon wondered where Joe DiMaggio had gone. But even when times became less simple and supposed American innocence withered in the face of social change and war in Southeast Asia, the Yankees still had Mantle. A decade later, they had Jackson and a pair of World Series titles. Then Donnie Baseball, then Derek Jeter and more titles. Now their roster is a monument to excess, even by their own standards. The cupboard was either stocked, or on its way to being stocked.

DiMaggio has been gone for 11 years. But DiMaggio's Yankees never really died. The names just change.

In Cleveland, the days of Feller are truly never coming back.

So it's fitting that Feller left us in December. A moment of silence at 7:05 p.m. before the first pitch of a midsummer home game wouldn't have yanked us out of our charmed summer existence nearly enough. We need the winter to meditate on the loss of Feller and everything he means to us and our history. We need him to not be there to throw out the first pitch of spring training, as he has been for years. We need March to become April, May, June and July, and all of the routines of what promises to be another mundane, non-contending Tribe season have a gaping hole where Feller used to be.

Then, we'll know what we've lost.

Last Thursday, the Sun came up cold and distant, offering little more than filtered light-droplets from behind hazy clouds. Downtown, street grates belched steam that covered salt-encrusted roads and sidewalks. The cold air sliced against open skin at the slightest movement.

If you wanted to pay tribute to Feller at his statue on the plaza by Gate C at Progressive Field, you had to want it. And people did come. At 10:30 in the morning, a few items lay on the base of the statue, which was splattered with salt residue like every outdoor surface in Cleveland.

A bouquet of yellow flowers. A small American flag, draped over itself. A package of sunflower seeds. A red capital A cut from a wooden block, to honor Feller's service on the U.S.S. Alabama during World War II. On the back, a note scribbled in pen:

"Mr Feller, thanks for fighting for our freedom!! Rest in peace & here's your lucky 'A!!'"

Cleveland's only sporting king is gone. Jim Brown wanted to make movies. LeBron wanted to go to school with the cool kids. That leaves Feller. A proud man with a lion's heart and an ego to match. The perfect combination of dominance and cockiness that exemplified our town, our region, in a different time, when you put a baseball career on hold indefinitely to go fight for your country because it was the right thing to do, then came back and helped your team win a World Series a few years later.

Anything was possible, and it wasn't just the hollow bloviations of a local political candidate stumping for votes.

Above the trinkets left at the Feller statue on Thursday morning, a yellow bow hung from Feller's bronze pitching hand. It's frozen in the split-second in which Feller is at the apex of his delivery, left leg airborne, ready to shove a 98-mile per hour heater down the throat of Ted Williams, or buckle DiMaggio's knees with a table-drop curve.

This was Feller at his zenith. Cleveland at its zenith. Something to admire. Something to fear. Something to reckon with. Something that now exists only in black and white and bronze.

You're the man now, Dan

2010-12-03T08:53:00.013-05:00

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.

Sea change

2010-11-27T21:25:00.007-05:00

This is The Rivalry. This is The Game.

It's the State Up North. It's Woody and Bo. It's more than football. It's 200 years of antipathy built up between two neighboring states that once fought over the squatting rights to Toledo.

To suggest that it's anything less would be to reject your roots. Blasphemy in its most brazen form. The records aren't supposed to matter. The recent history of the series isn't supposed to matter. What matters is this November, this Saturday, somebody is going to win The Game. And you hope its your side.

That's how it's supposed to be. That's how it was. But even those who believe in the sanctity of the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry with the fervor of a faith-healed tent revivalist have to start wondering where the spice went.

The Buckeyes' 37-7 pummeling of Michigan on Saturday was anticipated. It wasn't supposed to be a game. Ohio State is a top 10 football program one loss in Wisconsin removed from national title contention. Michigan's program has devolved into a one-trick pony, reliant almost solely on whatever magic carpet sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson is capable of weaving.

The win was Ohio State's seventh straight against Michigan, their longest streak in the series, which dates to 1897. Buckeye supporters are quick to point out that it's a lopsided stretch of payback for all the years that the Wolverines swung John Cooper from a noose on the town square.

In Jim Tressel's first six years on the job, when he was matching wits with Lloyd Carr and coming out on top all but one year, it was indeed a reversal of fortune, with Carr playing the role that Cooper had played prior to 2000.

But after Ohio State bested Michigan in a 42-39, No. 1 vs. No. 2 thriller that sent the Buckeyes to the national title game, things started to change. Carr retired a year later and Michigan wooed West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez to Ann Arbor. Rodriguez promptly began an attempt to revitalize the Michigan football program in a way that you could argue is far more suited for Conference USA than the Big Ten.

Rodriguez is trying to pound the square peg of a gimmicky spread offense into the round hole of what has traditionally succeeded in the cold-climate Big Ten: defense, ball control and a good kicking game. Michigan has none of the above.

No coincidence, since Rodriguez took over in Ann Arbor, Ohio State -- along with much of the rest of college football -- has been beating up on the Wolverines. The Buckeyes have torched Michigan by a combined score of 100-24 in the past three matchups.

Even when Michigan was whipping Cooper's Buckeyes around like a rag doll for most of the 1990s, the games were still contests. The largest margin of victory for Michigan over Ohio State during Cooper's tenure was 28 points in 1991. The teams frequently met with bowl implications for both sides.

Now, a 7-5 2010 campaign is an improvement for Michigan, which went 5-7 a year ago. There is nothing for the Wolverines to play for by late November, except the role of spoiler. And against Ohio State's deep, talented squad, that's not enough to force an upset.

Which is why, from the south side of the border, Saturday's game had a very "playing Indiana in mid-October" vibe to it. You show up, you take care of business, you go home. As long as you don't have a colossal brain cramp, you're winning the game. It's just a matter of by how much, and how sharp you look while you're winning.

At some point in the future, if Rodriguez can't make the Wolverines any more competitive than what he's shown in his first three seasons, he'll be fired. And the replacement will assuredly have a background in more traditional Big Ten football. And the Wolverines will rise again.

But even if that happens, it's beginning to look like the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry might be undergoing a permanent redefining. Next year, Ohio State and Michigan will, barring a last-muinute change of heart from the Big Ten front office, be headed to separate divisions.

The game will remain on the calendar as the regular season finale for both teams. But its place on the schedule will be more ceremonial than anything else in the championship-game, Cornhusker-infused Big Ten of 2011 and after.

Gone forever will be the days when the Buckeyes and Wolverines will meet with the conference title on the line. They won't even be able to meet for a division title. Even if they're battling for their respective division titles, The Game might be The Prelude to a Rematch in the Big Ten Championship Game the following week.

The weight of the game will be laregly circumstantial in the coming years. Ohio State's games against division rivals such as Penn State and Wisconsin will have more weight in terms of getting the Buckeyes to the conference title game. Ohio State won't have to worry about a tiebreaker with Michigan.

And this all assumes that Michigan will reclaim its position as a national powerhouse at some point soon, and isn't looking at an extended stay with Purdue and Illinois in the middle of the Big Ten pack.

It will always be The Game. It will always be a border war. But it's not a marquee matchup anymore. And it might never be again -- at least as we've come to know it.

Value proposition

2010-11-09T23:47:00.010-05:00

For the past year as fans, we've operated under one unwavering assumption when it comes to the Browns:

Mike Holmgren is the key to success, in the short term and long term. Therefore, the Browns must do whatever is necessary to keep Holmgren in the fold. If that means allowing Holmgren to scratch his still-existent coaching itch on the Browns' sideline, so be it. No matter how much improvement Eric Mangini shows, losing Holmgren to another organization would cancel it out a hundred times over.

So even if Mangini can demonstrate marked, steady on-field improvement as evidence of his staff's effectiveness, if Holmgren wants the headset, Mangini gets the boot. Is it fair? No. Is it worth it to keep the man who helped mold Brett Favre into a Hall of Famer? Yes.

Up until the Browns delivered the Saints a trick-play induced haymaker in New Orleans, that line of thinking wasn't even questioned. Over the bye week and heading toward the showdown with New England this past Sunday, there was some cause for debate, but most fans still couldn't stomach a Browns team with Mangini but no Holmgren.

But then at a press conference last week, Holmgren reiterated, in a roundabout way, his desire to return to the coaching ranks. Then Mangini took his old mentor Bill Belichick out behind the woodshed in a 34-14 roasting of the Patriots over the weekend. Mangini outclassed Belichick in the battle of coaching wits, which is kind of like out-thinking Stephen Hawking on the subject of theoretical physics.

Now, it's fair to open the floor to debate: if the time comes when Randy Lerner must decide whether to allow Holmgren to take over his team's coaching job, or risk losing him to another team's open coaching position, what decision should he make? If Mangini's team continues to trend upward, is it really in the best interest of the organization to pull the plug on his tenure just to make sure the more-accomplished Holmgren stays put?

What exactly do the Browns need from Holmgren, and is it possible that he has already put all the thumbprint he's ever going to put on the Browns?

When Holmgren agreed to take over as president of the Browns last December, he was taking over a team with no general manager and a severely-frayed coach who had been worn down by endless media criticism, the stress of turning over a roster that included human hand grenades like Kellen Winslow and Braylon Edwards, and the fracturing of his relationship with former GM George Kokinis.

The Browns of last year were in desperate need of a strong guiding hand, and Holmgren provided that almost immediately. He oversaw the hiring of Tom Heckert as GM. He dusted Mangini off and determined that the young coach was a fixer-upper, not recycle-bin wreckage.

As pointed out in a New York Times article from earlier this week, Mangini reached a moment of self-realization in January of this year. From that point forward, he became more committed to his coaching and more committed to his health, dropping weight, attempting to kick a chewing tobacco habit and -- above all -- listening to the three Super Bowls' worth of experience Holmgren was willing to impart on his quasi-pupil.

The result has been a renewed Mangini, fitter, happier, and finally past his Belichick-wannabe phase. The new Mangini is more open, self-effacing, even funny at times. Above all, he's a more confident coach who now has developing people skills to pair with a Belichick-bred football acumen.

If this really is a complete new beginning for Mangini, he's reaching a rebirth at the green age of 39. He could be the Browns' coach for a decade or longer, which would be a refreshing change from the organizational carousel we've had to endure, while the likes of Belichick and Bill Cowher stay nestled in their coaching jobs for 10 to 15 years or longer.

Holmgren, by contrast, is 62. Chances are, he wouldn't last more than five to seven years in any coaching job. That could certainly be enough time to win the Browns a Super Bowl, but once Holmgren leaves, the regime shifts again, and the Browns are right back in a state of upheaval.

At his advancing age and vast experience level, Holmgren's best possible impact on any organization is the impact felt after he leaves. Did he hire the right successors? Did he teach them the right things? Can the organization still move forward and win once Holmgren has moved to his retirement villa?

With that in mind, the best possible outcome for the Holmgren Era is one where Mangini turns into one of the most successful coaches in Browns history, Heckert reaches the Bill Polian class of roster architects, and ultimately, Holmgren becomes an unncessary layer of management.

Ultimately, the Browns don't want an organization where Holmgren has to stick around and ensure that everyone is doing their jobs right. The Browns want an organization where Heckert and Mangini are so good at their jobs, it would be an insult to keep Holmgren on the payroll as a babysitter.

Whether we realize it or not, Holmgren not only got the ball rolling in that direction, the ball might already be most of the way there. Not to a Super Bowl berth, but to an organization capable of building and sustaining that type of team.

There is still drafting to do, still coaching to be done, still decisions to be made at all levels of the Browns organization. But this franchise is already miles ahead of where they were 11 months ago. Holmgren could still stick around for another year or two and help some more -- and there is a good chance he will -- but if the Cowboys or Vikings come calling and it becomes apparent that Holmgren is going to be pacing the sideline somewhere in 2011, the Browns and Holmgren can still part ways with a clear conscience on both ends.

Holmgren still has some gas left in the coaching tank, and he might be the right coaching hire for a veteran team trying to make a Super Bowl push. But for the Browns, he's probably not the right coach. He's the right president. And in the U.S., presidents have term limits. It keeps the balance of power in check and ensures progress.

In leveland, progress needs to come in the form of Heckert and Mangini leading the Browns to better days ahead, and continuing it after Holmgren has hung up his whistle for good.

An undeserved reputation

2010-10-24T11:55:00.004-04:00

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

2010-10-19T21:42:00.006-04:00

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 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

2010-10-05T23:27:00.006-04:00

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

2010-09-28T18:33:00.006-04:00

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.

The past is history

2010-08-26T22:21:00.008-04:00

As a football player, Jim Brown deserves all the respect in the world. Even today, 45 years after he abrputly walked away from football at age 29, he is still one of the defining players in the history of the NFL.

His career rushing record of 12,312 was an all time record that stood until Walter Payton surpassed it in 1984. Since then, seven other rushers have passed Brown's mark, set in the days of 12 and 14-game schedules, and yet Brown is still regarded by many knowledgeable students of football history as the greatest running back -- and perhaps the greatest player -- to ever set foot on an NFL field.

He is certainly the greatest player in Browns history. If anyone were to take that title from Brown, he would have to be a truly special player. Brown's combination of size, speed, coordination and power made him the perfect physical specimen for the gridiron. His intense competitive spirit made him a winner -- something that LeBron James, who was briefly considered the co-greatest athlete in Cleveland history with Brown, might have benefited from this past spring as the Celtics were mopping the floor with Cavs in the playoffs.

Brown deserves to be remembered and revered for his contributions to the Browns organization in his playing days. No other Browns player will ever wear No. 32, and when the Browns introduce their ring of honor next month, Brown's name should be the first revealed, even before Otto Graham, Paul Brown or Lou Groza, who all won more championships than Brown. It is because Brown was that great as a player, and he is that important to the history of the organization.

....To the history of the organization.

Brown has still hung around the Browns organization, on and off, since retiring. But football was never really a priority of his once he pulled off the shoulder pads for good. He sowed his wild oats as an actor in Hollywood, he threatened to return to action with the Raiders in 1983 when Franco Harris was within striking distance of his all-time rushing record. He became a community activist by founding the Amer-I-Can program, helping to steer inner-city youths in Los Angeles away from gangs and drugs.

But he was still Jim Brown. And when Randy Lerner assumed control of the Browns after his father's death in 2002, he needed an advisor. Someone with a football background who could give him an insider's perspective on what to look for in front office personnel, coaches and maybe even scouting players.

Brown had his hand up, and Lerner couldn't say no to an all-time great. Brown was hired on as an executive advisor to Lerner, reportedly making a six-figure salary in the role.

If Brown was a figurehead, a community ambassador in charge of making public appearances on behalf of the team, there would have been no harm in giving a revered alumnus a cushy front-office job. But, based on what has happened since Mike Holmgren took the reins of the team last December, it appears Brown held real sway within the organization.

Earlier this year, Holmgren told Brown that his services as an advisor were no longer needed, essentially firing Brown on the spot. According to media reports, the Browns have also curtailed their monetary contributions to the Amer-I-Can program.

Brown was understandably upset, and now a rift exists between the rushing great and the team with which he has been virtually synonymous for almost half a century. There is reportedly a significant chance that Brown will not show up to the team's ring of honor introduction ceremony during the Browns home opener on Sept. 19. Even if he does show up, it might be with a coating of ice.

Perhaps at some point in the future, the relationship can be repaired. But at this point, how Jim Brown feels about the Browns, and his dismissal from the organization, just isn't important.

Right now, keeping Brown happy should be pretty far down the list of priorities for a team that has been one of the league's laughing stocks since returning to action in 1999.

Jim Brown, at 74 and with little pro football experience over the past 45 years, would appear to not know very much about how to run a modern NFL team. If he has been the man advising Lerner on the Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel hires, on giving Eric Mangini total control of the football operations, the evidence would seem to bear that out. And if Lerner took Brown's advice to heart, it simply underscores how unqualified he was as the decision-making head of an NFL franchise, and how relieved we should all be that Holmgren agreed to take over the top decision maker's role.

Really, Lerner tabbing Brown as an advisor on football matters makes about as much sense as Larry Dolan hiring 91-year-old Bob Feller as an advisor on baseball matters. Feller has the same advisor qualifications as Brown. He was an all-time great on the field, and he's opinionated. That's about it.

If Brown did have Lerner's ear to the point that Holmgren felt he needed to dismiss him in order to achieve the rank and file he desired, then showing Brown the door was unquestionably the right move, no matter how hurt Brown might be. Knowing that Brown is fiercely proud and rather temperamental, chances are he wasn't going to take his dismissal laying down. There was going to be some kind of public backlash from Brown. It's just the way he is.

Holmgren should simply continue to remain positive about the matter, demand that everyone else in the organization do the same, and go about his business secure in knowing he made the right move.

Holmgren is in the business of this team's present and future. Of trying to rescue the wayward expansion Browns, give them an organizational rudder and pilot them back to contention. If any visitors from the team's past are trying to pass Holmgren notes, coaching from the sidelines like overzealous soccer dads, telling him what they think he should do, it's needless clutter at best and an outright insult to Holmgren at worst. Holmgren shouldn't, and won't, put up with the possibility of that.

The Browns owe a lot to Jim Brown: gratitude, respect, his name engraved on any team plaque or monument that is worth anything. But they don't owe him a job. And they certainly don't owe him the chance to put his rubber stamp on personnel moves.

Jim Brown is an integral part of the Cleveland Browns' past. But only the past. It took Randy Lerner about eight years to finally hire someone who could stand up and tell him that.

The Browns, boiled down

2010-08-21T16:01:00.004-04:00

In this town, we love to analyze football. And we really love to analyze the Browns.

Sometimes I wonder if we, as a fan base, out-think ourselves. We're so thoroughly schooled in the nuances of the sport, in the theory of roster-building, from an early age that we sometimes forget to answer the simple questions first.

We look at the construction of the rebuilt linebacker corps, the lack of depth at wide receiver, the mostly-young secondary, the committee situation developing at running back, the Swiss Army knife that is Josh Cribbs, and we try to mash it all together into some kind of blackboard-filling calculus equation that will determine, beyond a reasonable doubt, the trajectory of the upcoming season.

But sometimes, the most basic questions are the most important. And in the case of this year's Browns, I keep coming back to two main questions that will likely determine the course of the season:

Can the roster stay mostly healthy? Can the Browns get good quarterback play?

Injuries and poor QB play have dogged the Browns since returning to the league 11 years ago. The two most successful seasons since the relaunch, 2002 and 2007, featured a relatively healthy squad and spikes in the performances of Tim Couch, Kelly Holcomb and Derek Anderson.

The seasons in which the team was on its fourth center by opening day? When Charlie Frye looked like he might not even make an Arena Football League roster? The Browns were a league doormat.

You don't need to be scientific about it. Quarterback is the most important position on the field. It's not left tackle. It's not tailback. The quarterback is the field general. Think beyond the passing game to the sum total of what is expected of a quarterback, and you'll realize that if he is bad, the offense is bad, the team doesn't score points and wins are hard to come by. End of story.

There is a great burden on Jake Delhomme and Seneca Wallace to be not just capable passers, but the veteran offensive backbone that the Browns have lacked for most of the past decade.

Injuries are a fact of life in sports, and football and particular. On the pro level, the sport features extremely large and fast men slamming into each other at high speeds. Knees buckle, ligaments rupture, bones break. Every team has a busy medical and training staff.

You simply hope that your team's best players don't suffer serious, season-ending and career-jeopardizing injuries. The Browns haven't had a lot of luck in dodging those types of injuries.

On both fronts, there are reasons to be encouraged, however.

Delhomme is under the microscope for a woeful stretch of football that began with a playoff game in January 2009 and continued throughout the following season, when he threw eight touchdowns and 18 interceptions, paving the way for his release by the Panthers. At the very least, 35-year-old Delhomme has a great deal of incentive to prove that he's not washed up.

Behind him, Wallace's combination of arm strength and leg speed make him useful as a change-of-pace option under center, and if necessary, step in as the starting QB.

During training camp, the Browns had some fairly typical injury problems to deal with. Dave Zastudil is done for the year with a recurring knee injury. D'Qwell Jackson has his second chest muscle injury in as many years. Rookie Montario Hardesty is having knee problems, much like he did for three years in college. But so far, it's nothing that most other NFL teams aren't going through.

The Browns roster is built up to the point that there shouldn't be large-scale questions about the talent level of the team. National scribes are quick to assess the Browns roster as thin on talent. They are thin on elite talent. They don't have a lot of star power. But they do have talent in the form of young prospects and role players. A roster like this could become a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

To succeed, this Browns team has to assume the role that so many Cleveland teams have to play -- that of the gritty, overachieving underdog. Nobody expects Cleveland to make much of a splash this year. The AFC North is a beast, with three other teams that all, rightfully, have Super Bowl aspirations. The Browns could show a great deal of improvement this year and still end up in last place with little more than a one or two-game improvement over last year's 5-11 mark. The schedule, which also includes dates with the Saints, Patriots and Jets, could simply be that difficult.

But it's also not unrealistic -- fanciful, maybe, but not unrealistic -- to envision a scenario in which the Browns show the backbone and fortitude that they so often haven't exhibited in years past, snag a few surprise wins and end up at 10-6 or 9-7.

It does start with the tone set by Mike Holmgren in the president's chair. It has a lot to do with the personnel decisions made by Tom Heckert, and how Eric Mangini and his staff cultivate the roster handed to them by the front office. It all matters.

But if you can assume the experience of Holmgren and Heckert is bound to make the team better on a foundational level, if you can assume that Jerome Harrison will continue to be fast, Shaun Rogers will continue to be big and Josh Cribbs will continue to be a great playmaker, then there are only a few hinges upon which this season will pivot. There actually isn't a lot standing between 5-11 and typical Cleveland pessimism, and 10-6 with rampant optimism.

Can Delhomme have a bounce-back year in a new setting, and can the starters around him stay off the injured reserve list?

It could be that simple, or it could be that complicated.

New design

2010-08-21T15:48:00.002-04:00

After five and a half years, it was time for something different, which is why you're now looking at a Blogger customized template. The background photo is a Blogger stock photo. The huge bright blue photo under the title is mine. It's a little too big, but an attention-grabber none the less.

Summing it up

2010-07-12T13:07:00.005-04:00

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

2010-06-07T22:52:00.004-04:00

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.

Tradition trumps history

2010-06-02T21:48:00.003-04:00

There are few places where the past and future dance around each other more than they do in Major League Baseball.

Few entities combine a strict adherence to the laws of the past, written and unwritten, with landscape-altering gimmicks that completely break from the past.

Baseball is the sport that can't implement a salary cap, thanks to more than 100 years of contentious labor relationships between players and owners, and that baggage it has packed to this day. So while the NFL, NBA and NHL have succeeded to a degree in leveling the competitive balance between small market and big market teams, baseball is still a sport in which the privileged few spend about 90 percent of the time ruling over the less-privileged many.

Baseball is the sport with two leagues playing by two different rules because, roughly 40 years ago, American League owners liked the idea of having a professional hitter designated specifically to take the pitcher's turn in the batting order, with the idea that it would increase offense. The National League decided against it, and since 1973, the designated hitter has been a battle line in the war between new school and old school.

Baseball is the sport that embraced artificial turf first, but it's the sport that loathes the memory of the symmetrical, cylindrical multi-purpose stadiums that kept the artificial turf industry afloat for more than 30 years.

Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, then counteracted it with the introduction of the unbalanced schedule a few years later. Now, the Indians sacrifice dates with the Yankees and Red Sox not only to play the Reds and Pirates, but also to play the Tigers and Twins 19 times a year.

Baseball is also the sport in which umpires still have virtually unquestioned authority. And Wednesday night in Detroit, unchecked human error crept into the equation in the Tigers-Indians game, robbing Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga of a perfect game.

Replays showed that Tribe hitter Jason Donald was out, and it really wasn't that close. With two outs in the top of the ninth, Donald hit a grounder to first for what would have been the 27th and final out of the game. Detroit first baseman Miguel Cabrera picked the ball cleanly, and delivered a throw to Galarraga covering first.

The throw was a little low, but Galarraga corralled it with little difficulty and put his foot on the bag. A freeze-frame showed Donald's lead leg was about a half-step away from the bag when Galarraga had the ball in his glove and his foot on the bag. But umpire Jim Joyce -- an accomplished umpire with more than 20 years on the job -- called Donald safe.

It was a flat-out blown call. An honest mistake, to be sure, but a major mistake. One that corrupted what should have been a historic night.

It would have been a continuation of one of the great statistical anomalies that make baseball distinctive. Heading into this season, 18 perfect games had been thrown in the history of Major League Baseball. Dallas Braden threw the 19th on Mother's Day. Roy Halladay threw the 20th this past Saturday. Galarraga should have had the third perfect game in less than a month. But Joyce's error, and baseball's unwillingness to put processes in place to correct it, left Galarraga with what is likely the most hollow one-hitter in baseball history.

Jim Leyland and every Detroit coach, player and fan within audible distance emphatically disputed Joyce, who argued back. Confronted later with the evidence, Joyce was quick to admit his error.

"I just cost that kid a perfect game," he told a reporter afterward. "I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay."

But once Joyce's arms went out in a "safe" signal, there was no turning back.

Perhaps Bud Selig and the rest of baseball's policymakers feel that, by putting 100 percent of the burden on umpires to get the call right, they're forcing the umpires to stay sharp by promoting total accountability. What baseball doesn't want is a setup like the NFL, where replay all but drives officiating, where side judges will routinely get out-of-bounds and possession calls wrong, seemingly guessing on the right call, knowing that coaches will challenge the call and replay will correct any mistake.

But what baseball has is a replay policy that has changed little from the days of Honus Wagner and Napoleon Lajoie. In the past two years, baseball has begrudgingly instituted replay on home run calls, allowing umpires to review whether a ball was fair or foul, or if it hit above the line that separates the outfield wall from the stands.

But on questions of balls and strikes, safe or out, not much has changed from the horse and buggy days.

Balls and strikes are, admittedly, another animal altogether. Baseball couldn't possibly institute a system in which every questionable ball and strike call is reviewed, or games would take six hours. But on the bang-bang play at first, the swipe tag on the stolen base attempt, the diving catch that TV replays showed to be a trapped ball -- in this era of high definition television feeds and 12 different camera angles, there is just no excuse to get those calls wrong anymore.

It's time for baseball -- the sport of the designated hitter, interleague play and the all-star game that determines homefield advantage in the World Series -- to cease clinging to the archaic ideal that replay technology will somehow corrupt the purity of the game, or turn umpires into robots. Because the only thing that's getting corrupted is history in the making.

Jim Joyce failed Armando Galarraga on Wednesday. But the office of the commissioner failed Joyce. Now Joyce is shamed and Galarraga might never scrape so close to greatness again.

That's a crime. But the real crime occurs when Selig and his cronies avert their eyes and continue to pretend that it's a bygone era where nothing can be done about it.

Who are the Cavs?

2010-05-22T19:19:00.007-04:00

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

2010-05-12T06:28:00.003-04:00

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.

The fire inside

2010-05-08T10:05:00.006-04:00

It's been long enough that we've forgotten what a later-round NBA playoff series is supposed to be about.

When is the last time a Cavs playoff series has taken us on an emotional roller coaster like this? The Celtics series two years ago? The Eastern Conference Finals against Detroit in 2007?

Last year, the Cavs crumpled up the Pistons and Hawks and threw them in the wastebasket. Then they fought uphill all the way against Orlando. They looked invincible for eight games and utterly mortal for six.

But within a series, we haven't experienced this kind of violent oscillation between elation, despair and elation for at least a couple of springs. A second-half comeback in Game 1, on the receiving end of a beatdown at home in Game 2 and dishing out a beatdown on the road in Game 3.

The net result is still positive, however. The Cavs lead the Celtics two games to one and have wrestled back the homecourt advantage they lost in Game 2. Regardless of the outcome of Sunday's Game 4, the Cavs won't come home in a desperate situation. Tuesday's Game 5 is either a pivotal game or a closeout game.

Saturday's off day was a chance to drink in everything that has happened to this point.

What have we learned about the Cavs? More importantly, what have we learned about LeBron James?

LeBron is a complicated superstar. In any given game, the Cavs are a mirror reflection of LeBron's competitive state of mind, so by extension the Cavs are a complicated team. A very good team, but complicated all the same.

He wants to write his name alongside those of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Kobe Bryant. But LeBron really isn't like those guys. His personality isn't the same. How he approaches challenges isn't the same. The place where he stokes his competitive fire isn't the same.

LeBron's desire to dominate and win can burn as bright as any that has burned inside an NBA superstar. But unlike the internal conflagrations of Jordan, Bryant and Bird, who are generally regarded as the three of the most cutthroat competitors to ever play basketball, LeBron's fire inside doesn't start on the inside.

LeBron doesn't have a gland from which acid wells and rage radiates. He doesn't have a gland that automatically makes his blood run reptilian cold at the fourth-quarter, Game 7 hour of reckoning.

He is, by most accounts, a pretty nice guy. His default setting is to shake hands and hug opponents before the game. He's tried to rein that in a bit over time. Even so, it's fine to be diplomatic, even friendly, no matter if it chafes those of us in the armchair quarterback brigade who are waiting on the Jordanification of LeBron. Because that's a transformation that will never come without a brain transplant.

LeBron needs outside adversity to trigger his seek-and-destroy response. He has to endure embarrassments like the Game 2 debacle. He has to sit back and stew over it for a couple of days, listen to the doubters, listen to those who would say that LeBron has finally met his personal kryptonite, and it's an elbow boo-boo.

What he can't manufacture from within, at least to the level of a Jordan or Bryant, he can distill from the words of the detractors who are getting set to carve his team's epitaph in solid granite, two games into a series.

Three days of criticism and preparation later, the Celtics got a fully-fuming LeBron who, for the first time all series, relentlessly attacked the basket, forcing Boston's frontcourt into head-on collisions and fouls. When the Celtics tried to pack the paint, LeBron shot over them. His teammates fed off the energy, as Antawn Jamison and Delonte West had solid games, and Shaq finally looked serviceable.

The elbow? It didn't stop LeBron from 38 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. Which could lead many of us to believe that the tentative play from Games 1 and 2 was more the result of not getting mad enough, as opposed to an effort to protect his sore wing.

This momentum pendulum will continue to swing back and forth. Boston is now the team that is stewing. They will make adjustments for Game 4, and if LeBron and his teammates aren't ready to respond, the Celtics will likely tie the series. If the Cavs are able to keep attacking, Game 5 could be the gateway to a third conference finals appearance in four years.

It will hinge on LeBron and how vicious he wants to be, which will likely be the direct result of how much he is provoked. Hopefully it won't take repeated embarrassing losses to keep LeBron's internal fire stoked at a championship temperature.

Anatomy of a slump

2010-02-22T07:49:00.010-05:00

If you've gotten through the last three Cavaliers game without suffering a complete loss of composure, I applaud you.

The Cavs' first three-game losing streak since early 2008 was everything that we fear about the future of the season, wrapped up in one neat, four-day package. Three losses against playoff teams --- two against title contenders -- in which you had to wonder, even for a split second, if it had been wise move to send Zydrunas Ilgauskas away for Antawn Jamison in the middle of the season. The last three games looked, in part, like the product of messing with a good thing.

The streak consisted of losses against Denver, Charlotte and Orlando -- three teams the Cavs could face in the postseason. They're virtually guaranteed of facing at least one. The Nuggets' overtime win at The Q was the Cavs' first home loss since just after the new year, and completely a season sweep of the Cavs. Friday, the Bobcats handled the Cavs for a third straight game. They're undefeated against Cleveland since acquiring Stephen Jackson earlier this season.

Sunday, it was deja vu in Orlando. In a re-enactment of last season's Eastern Conference Finals, the Magic won all the fourth-quarter battles, Dwight Howard put all of the Cavs' big men in foul trouble, Mo Williams played terribly and the Cavs lost in central Florida yet again.

So what gives? Why does the pre-all star break juggernaut suddenly look overrated, overinflated and ripe for the taking post-all star break?

As is usually the case when things go awry, it's an onion, and we have to peel back the layers.

1. The trade did mess things up, at least short-term

Whether or not you want to believe that a cloud of bad karma now hangs over the Cavs organization for ending a 14-year relationship with Z, the fact remains that the trade removed a rotation player and replaced him with another rotation player in Jamison, who will likely be starting at some point this week.

Though Jamison brings an inside-outside game to the power forward spot -- something that could be very useful come playoff time -- to get him, the Cavs had to disrupt the delicate balance at the center spot. Shaq and Z worked as a tandem because they took some of the load off of each other's aging legs. With Z gone, Anderson Varejao becomes the full-time backup center. His offensive game most closely resembles that of a center, but his defensive game is more of a power forward's, as he flies around the wings and paint bothering whoever has the ball. He's not always going to stay in the post and defend the rim, in other words.

As the center spot thins out, the power forward spot is about to become very crowded as Leon Powe gets set to return, maybe as early as this week. Jamison, Powe and J.J. Hickson can only play the four-spot in most lineups. Jamison is going to get his minutes, which means Mike Brown has some potientially difficult decisions to make dividing up the remainder of the minutes.

Stepping off the court, the locker room needs time to adjust as well. Though Z and Jamison are both team-first players, the Cavs still lost a locker room mainstay and have replaced him with a guy who is trying to learn the ins and outs of the Cavs' team culture. Every team is a little different, and Jamison is trying to get used to sharing the locker room with dominant personalities like LeBron and Shaq, Delonte West's quirky sense of humor, and so forth.

Ironically, in the extremely short term, Amar'e Stoudemire might have made an easier transition than Jamison. Stoudemire is a freelancer. He takes the ball and scores in isolation. There isn't a lot to negotiate there as long as Stoudemire is allowed to get the ball where he wants it. Jamison, on the other hand, because he's a team-oriented player with a broader skill set, has a lot more adjusting to do when he arrives on a new team.

2. A slump was bound to happen sooner or later

If a winning streak goes on long enough, a team is going to grow a little complacent. It's human nature. If you're not challenged for a while, you tend to go on auto pilot.

The Cavs tied a team record with 13 straight wins heading into the all-star break. You can't entirely accuse them of zoning out, because they did have emotional wins over the Lakers and Magic in that stretch. But after watching the Cavs extensively over the past two years, I've noticed that the longer the Cavs go without a gut-check moment, the harder it's going to hit them when it does come.

Last season, the Cavs went 8-0 through the first two rounds of the playoffs. They won each game against Detroit and Atlanta by double digits. They made it look really, really easy. Too easy.

Then came their second nine-day layoff of the postseason, as they waited while the Celtics and Magic went seven games in the other conference semifinal series. Then came the deflating Game 1 loss against Orlando. The Cavs were reeling and searching for answers from that point forward.

The same thing kind of happened over the past week. A long layoff, plus a major trade, plus a deflating loss to Denver coming off of the all-star break. But at least it's still February and the Cavs still have a sizable lead in the conference. If your gut check comes with 25 games to play in the regular season, you still have time to get back to the drawing board and figure things out. If the gut check comes in late May, you're in trouble.

3. They need practice time

Monday is the first time since the Jamison deal that the Cavs could get into Cleveland Clinic Courts and have a nice, long practice. Long, full-speed practices are where the major sanding and polishing happens. It's where players get to know each other's games and coaches define roles. Then you can bond at the whirlpool/ice tubs afterward.

With a inconveniently-timed road trip that began 24 hours after the all-star break, the Cavs have been surviving on light practice and shootarounds since the trade. Shootarounds are maintenance. Full-speed practices are constructive and cathartic after a rough stretch.

4. Admittedly, the Cavs have simply played some tough teams

The Cavs might have been on a three-game losing streak even without the disruption of the all-star break or the trade.

Denver, Charlotte and Orlando are all tough tests for the Cavs. The Nuggets have two killer scorers in Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups, enough size to bang with the Cavs down low and some good shooters on the wings.

The Bobcats are a riddle. They have some size and athleticism, but they don't possess any vexing matchup problems for a team like Cleveland. It doesn't really seem like they should give the Cavs so many problems, but Jackson, Gerald Wallace and Ray Felton seem to feast every time the see wine and gold.

The Bobcats do have some advantages against Cleveland: Jackson is one of the few players in the league capable of checking LeBron (maybe the best LBJ defender in the league at this point) and with new acquisitions Theo Ratliff and Tyrus Thomas added to a big man corps that already included Nazr Mohammed and Tyson Chandler, the Bobcats can defend Shaq with volume if not skill.

But when it comes down to watching Charlotte push themselves over the top thanks to the shooting of Felton and D.J. Augustin, it's mind-numbingly frustrating.

Orlando is a known quantity. As much as ESPN's John Hollinger might like to debate over whether anything has really changed between the Cavs and Magic from last year to this year, we still generally know where things stand.

Shaq will always play Howard tough as long as his body allows. Jamison has an extensive history of playing well against the Magic, and playing good defense on Rashard Lewis. Switches won't find Delonte on Hedo Turkoglu anymore. Vince Carter still has a career's worth of evidence that says he will seldom outplay LeBron James in the fourth quarter of a head-to-head matchup -- as happened on Sunday.

It would be wise to assume that Mo will continue to not play well against Orlando, for whatever reason. His shots just don't seem to fall when he sees the Magic. Which makes Jamison's ability to replace Mo's usual 17 to 18 points per game all the more important.

That is perhaps the most compelling argument in favor of the Jamison trade, even if it means struggling in the short term.

Right move, right time

2010-02-17T22:05:00.008-05:00

Antawn Jamison isn't Amare Stoudemire. He's not a prime-of-career superstar who could team up with LeBron James to rule the NBA for the next seven years.

Jamison is 33. He's under contract until the age of 36. By then, even a guy who has aged as gracefully as Jamison will likely start to show wear on his treads.

He's on the back nine of his career, his contract isn't the most flexible, he doesn't possess mind-blowing athleticism, and at 6'-8" he's a little undersized for an NBA power forward.

That's pretty much everything negative you can say about Jamison, wrapped up in three short paragraphs.

Perhaps that's the most amazing thing about the Cavs' deadline prize, acquired late Wednesday in a three team trade with the Wizards and Clippers. The Cavs acquired Jamison and Sebastian Telfair in a deal that cost them Zydrunas Ilgauskas, sent to Washington, and their 2010 first-round draft pick, sent to the Clippers.

If there is no such thing as a perfect trade, Danny Ferry just came darn close in acquiring Jamison. It's the right trade at the right time for the Cavs and for Jamison.

A Stoudemire trade would have been filled with intrigue, a couple large forkfuls of risk and a whole lot of water cooler debate over whether Stoudemire could fit with the Cavs, or whether he would sign an extension this summer, or whether he could be re-molded into at least a competent defender.

Whereas the prospect of a Stoudemire trade was spicy salsa to Cavs fans, the Jamison deal is comparative steak and potatoes. Tried and true sustenance from one of the league's rock-solid players.

And if you're the Cavs and talking NBA title this June, that's exactly what you need. A Stoudemire trade might have passed with flying colors, but more likely in the longer term as Stoudemire spent the next how-many-ever months getting deprogrammed of his offense addiction by Mike Brown and his staff, and re-programmed with a mentality that values defense and setting up teammates.

There probably would have been some friction and bumps in the road, at the very least.

With Jamison, there is no rolling of the dice from a basketball standpoint. As an outside-shooting power forward, he is just what the Cavs need to open up operating space for Shaq and LeBron inside. As a wide, muscular post player, he can get his shot off with his back to the hoop, box out with authority and defend bigger forwards. As a locker-room leader who is widely regarded by coaches, players and media members as one of the true class acts of the league, he brings none of the selfishness and maturity issues that might have been present wth Amare.

And what does Jamison get out of the deal? His best shot at a ring. Jamison has shown an ability to self-motivate and seize the moment in years past.

Keep in mind that Jamison was the guy who played purely on pride against the Cavs in the 2007 playoffs. With Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler on the shelf with injuries, it was Jamison who kept fighting over the course of a four-game Cleveland sweep, which must have seeemed like a hopeless proposition at times. But Jamison still showed up to work with his hardhat on, averaging 32 points and nearly 10 rebounds in the four games.

Jamison brings the Cavs their most talented presence at the big forward spot since Carlos Boozer spent his first two NBA years here before taking the back door out of Cleveland. It's a hole the Cavs have struggled to fill with everyone from Drew Gooden to Donyell Marshall to Anderson Varejao to J.J. Hickson. The latter two will now back Jamison up.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the Cavs didn't have to part with Hickson in the deal? Over the past week, there has been much hand-wringing by fans on message boards over the wisdom of giving up Hickson, who has started to show promise over the past month. Both Phoenix and Washington originally demanded Hickson from the Cavs. But Wednesday, Washington backed off their Hickson demands, and the Cavs managed to make a deal without involving their best youngster.

Even though the Cavs dodged having to part with Hickson, the trade did come with a price. The Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst reported late Wednesday that the mood around team headquarters was rather bittersweet. The Cavs finally landed a player they had been coveting for quite some time, but in the process, had to ship away the longest-tenured Cav in Ilgauskas.

Ilgauskas could -- and likely will -- request a buyout of the remainder of his expiring contract from the Wizards. It's hard to imagine that he'll finish the season anywhere but Cleveland, but it's now out of the Cavs' hands. Z and his agent have to negotiate a buyout, and begin entertaining offers. He can return to the Cavs 30 days after completing the buyout, but in the interim, he's a free agent, and if for some reason he sees fit to sign elsewhere, the Cavs can't stop him.

But sentimentality can't rule trade talks. The Cavs felt they needed the upgrade that Jamison provides, and Z -- now little more than a backup center -- was worth the price.

Hopefully Z comes back. But in the event he doesn't, the price was still right. So many times, teams hit the trade market trying to find the right match, scrambling to make the pieces fit, mixing together odd-tasting three-team concoctions in the quest to find the right pieces to the puzzle.

In the Cavs' case, there was no guesswork when the team decided to focus squarely on Jamison. He is a hand-glove fit for what the Cavs are trying to accomplish, and it just so happened that the Cavs had the large expiring contract that the soon-to-be rebuilding Wizards wanted in return.

It's the third time in as many years that Ferry found the right match for his expiring contracts. He acquired Mo Williams in much the same way in the summer of 2008, and Shaq last summer.

If the Jamison deal works out like those deals, the Cavs have to be considered the favorites to win their first NBA title in franchise history this June.

To Amar'e, or not to Amar'e?

2010-02-14T22:42:00.007-05:00

In the past, whenever I've written an analysis column about a developing situation, the situation invariably reaches an outcome shortly thereafter, rendering the column stale.

So if by the time you read this, Amar'e Stoudemire is a Cav, you're welcome. If by the time you read this, Stoudemire is a Sixer or making his way to South Beach to join the Heat, my apologies. But chances are, something is going to happen soon, climactic or anticlimactic.

Here's what we know as of Sunday evening: The Cavs have a strong interest in Stoudemire. Danny Ferry has been in hot pursuit of the Suns forward since Friday. On Saturday, a deal looked to be imminent, per multiple media sources. On Sunday, things cooled a bit. The Cavs are still very much in the thick of the Stoudemire discussions, but it looks like Philadelphia is among the other teams that could make a play for Stoudemire. Miami is also on the radar, but might not have the ammo to get a deal done without involving a third team, which is often a difficult trick to pull off.

The Cavs' interest in Stoudemire appears to be legitimate, but the highly-publicized flirting might also have something to do with forcing the Wizards' collective hand on the Antawn Jamison front. Washington completed a seven-player trade with the Mavericks on Saturday, shipping off the large contract of Caron Butler in the process. In jettisoning Butler, the Wizards might have created enough salary relief to retain Jamison, or they might have run the white flag up the pole in preparation for a complete implosion or rebuild. That's for the Wizards to know and for us to maybe find out at some point.

What we do know is that while the Wizards sport a poker face, the Suns are addressing all suitors for Stoudemire. And because of that, the likelihood of a Stoudemire trade is growing while the likelihood of a Jamison trade stagnates.

The Suns are kind of past the point of no return with Stoudemire. Whether by design or not, they've negotiated his departure from Phoenix in public for the past several days. It sends Stoudemire's camp a powerful message that Suns management is convinced that they can't re-sign the five-time all-star, and that they're determined to get something of value for him before he can opt out of his contract this summer and potentially leave as a free agent.

Once you've gone down that road as a team, it's very difficult to pull back and mend fences. The Suns are putting themselves in a position where they're almost forced to deal Stoudemire by Thursday's deadline.

That works in favor of the Cavs and other teams in pursuit of Stoudemire. As opposed to having no pressure to deal Stoudemire, the Suns appear to find themselves under a great deal of pressure to make a deal happen. The Suns have essentially gone from seller to buyer.

What are the Cavs selling? Reportedly, J.J. Hickson and the expiring contract of Zydrunas Ilgauskas. There is reason to believe that other teams, particularly the Sixers, might be able to put together a more attractive offer from a talent standpoint, but the Cavs' offer might represent the tastiest bait for the Suns for two reasons:

First, Z's contract would offer Phoenix the chance to get under the luxury tax threshold -- a savings of around $10 million, according to The Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst. The Suns could --- and probably would -- buy Z out, getting that money off the books sooner rather than later.

Second, if you were in the Suns' shoes and looking for a younger, cheaper Stoudemire to groom for the future, Hickson would fit the bill. At about 6'-9" Hickson isn't nearly as tall as Stoudemire, and his ceiling isn't as high, but they play largely the same game around the basket. And Hickson's midrange jumper has tons of room to improve in the coming years, much like Stoudemire's has. In the Suns' uptempo offense, the offensively-talented Hickson could grow into a key piece of Phoenix's future.

If Ferry can turn this trade from a hot rumor into reality, it would represent his BlackBerry magnum opus. Bigger than the lopsided Mo Williams and Shaquille O'Neal trades. Bigger than the six-players-out, four-players-in face lift of the February before last. Because this would be the long-sought, prime-of-career superstar brought on board specifically to give LeBron James a superstar-caliber running mate and, by extension, a reason to commit to the Cavs long term this summer.

Of course, Stoudemire would have to agree to an extension himself in order to make the grand plan truly take root. But the Cavs would hold Stoudemire's Larry Bird rights and, as a result, be able to offer Stoudemire the max contract he seeks, above what any other team can offer. The same rules that apply to the Cavs with LeBron.

Odds are very good that bringing Stoudemire into the fold would increase the Cavs' competitive standing both during the season and the offseason in the coming years. That's important, but you can argue that's not the most important issue at hand right this minute.

The most important issue is the spring of 2010, and whether the Cavs can win the NBA title. At the all-star break, the Cavs sit atop the NBA wth a 43-11 record and a franchise record-tying 13 game winning streak. They're a combined 4-0 against the Lakers and Magic -- the two teams that tormented them a year ago.

It's hard to imagine things going much better for the Cavs than they are right now. It would be anywhere between reckless and crazy to mess with the team's mojo.

Yet, adding Stoudemire could do just that. On one hand, Stoudemire is a more talented and athletic version of Hickson, so it's not like Mike Brown would have to completely retrofit the offense to accommodate Stoudemire. He'd be catching the ball while move toward the basket, taking quick dishes from LeBron for dunks and, in general, having his job made a whole lot easier surrounded by Shaq and LeBron -- two of the best passers in the game at their positions.

That's in theory. And the theory assumes that Stoudemire is content with living off of whatever the other four guys on the court give him. For a superstar used to receiving a lot of touches and scoring 20 points per game -- and playing for a contract to boot -- the theory might run into some problems when put into practice.

If Stoudemire is content with a drop in shot volume for the remainder of the season, if he's willing to be a team player and sacrifice some of his face time for a shot at a ring, the Cavs could become a historic juggernaut, armed with one of the greatest frontcourts in the history of the NBA. They could level the rest of the league like an atom bomb, burn through the playoffs like a time-release napalm canister and make those of us at the victory parade wonder why it took 46 years to win a title.

If Stoudemire is more concerned with his stat line and how many zeroes he can expect on his next contract, he could just as easily become a selfish, destructive, ball-hogging, shot-forcing dissenter who could make you pine for the days of Hickson starting at power forward.

It's the definition of high-risk, high-reward. The Cavs want to deliver the bold brushstroke that makes a compelling closing argument to LeBron. But at the same time, no argument could be more compelling than holding the Larry O'Brien Trophy aloft on Public Square this June. That's the cinch-lock case for not making any move that could potentially hinder the Cavs' chances of winning a title this year.

No player, no coach and no executive can guarantee a championship outright. Everyone plays a hand, but in most cases, the talent, coaching and front office brains are raw materials. Championships are won by circumstances. Players stay healthy and accept their roles, coaches adapt and lead effectively, and maybe there are some more fortuitous bounces along the way.

The dominance the Cavs are demonstrating right now can't be guaranteed year to year. Doing anything to harm this team's ability to win a championship this year is downright criminal. But leaving a legitimate superstar like Stoudemire on the table because you fear a negative outcome is reckless, crazy and criminal, too.

This is why Danny Ferry makes the big bucks. To lose sleep over this very conundrum. I'm glad he's the one making the call, and I'm glad I'm not in his shoes right now.

Shaq Comes Alive

2010-02-03T23:00:00.011-05:00

Shaquille O'Neal's first two months in a Cavaliers uniform required a big-picture definition of success.

If you were to believe that the soon-to-be 38 year old man-mountain was going to help the Cavs win a title, you had to believe in what he could give the team in the long run. Because on a night to night basis, he looked like a fading star whose time had come and gone.

You had to pin your hopes on his ability to rise to the occasion against marquee opponents, such as the work he did in battling Dwight Howard to a draw in the Cavs' cathartic November victory in Orlando. Or his 11 point, 7 rebound showing in the Cavs' Christmas Day drubbing of the Lakers in Los Angeles.

You had to try and remind yourself that the ultimate measuring stick of Danny Ferry's decision to trade for Shaq last June will be in Shaq's effectiveness against the likes of the Lakers, Celtics and Magic. And that verdict won't be rendered until late spring.

How he plays against the Memphis Grizzlies in December? That's pretty much irrelevant, you had to convince yourself. Shaq only has so much gas left in the tank, and he needs to save it for when it really matters. If he coasts through some of the less-competitive parts of the schedule, it is still worth it if he's neutralizing the frontcourts of other contenders in late May and June.

That line of thinking is entirely rooted in logic. Ferry didn't trade for Shaq to beat the Grizzlies, Knicks or Bulls. The Cavs prior to Shaq's arrival could do that just fine. They needed Shaq to neutralize the matchup disadvantages that caused them to go a combined 3-8 against the Magic and Lakers last season, including playoffs.

As the mediocre Shaq showings piled on top of each other, you had to cling to that ideal. It's not about minutes, points or rebounds -- Shaq is on pace for career lows in all three categories -- it's about stuffing Howard in the lane, about not letting Pau Gasol receive the ball wherever he wants it. It's about doing the things that don't necessarily show up in Shaq's stat line, but will definitely show up in the stat lines of opposing big men, in the form of smaller numbers.

And yet, even if you succeeded in maintaining that big-picture line of thinking, there was this persistent, bugging thought gnawing at the base of your brain as the 2009 portion of the schedule progressed.

Shaq really didn't look good out there. He looked out of sync. He looked uncomfortable in his role as a defensive enforcer first, rebounder second and low post scorer third.

He looked a little out of condition, like his summer reality series, "Shaq Vs.," really wasn't the new spin on offseason conditioning that he thought it would be. He was playing 21 minutes a night, and looked as if stretching to 26 minutes would require the postgame use of an oxygen mask and wheelchair.

Even with a reduced offensive role, Shaq still needed some touches in the post, and every time the ball went inside to Shaq, it turned the Cavs offense on its ear. The Cavs won 66 games last season by using smaller lineups and playing to LeBron's strengths -- incredible speed and power. The Cavs were at their best when they could play fast, penetrate to the basket and create open looks for jump shooters.

Accommodating Shaq means slowing all of that down, and giving him a chance to dig his toes in on the left block. Mike Brown was sort of stuck in limbo, not wanting to abandon the high-velocity approach that made the Cavs an unstoppable juggernaut against 27 of 29 teams last year. But he also knew that in order to make the Shaq experiment work, he needed to get the big guy involved.

The net result was Shaq received some touches in his low-post comfort zone, but not a lot of them. To his credit and in a reversal of his attitude at other career stops, Shaq never once uttered a word of public complaint. His steadfast motto was "Witness Protection." Whatever he needed to do to enable LeBron to win games, that's what he said he wanted to do.

But it harmed his game. His shots fell flat. He jumped like he was bolted to the ground. Younger, quicker opponents routinely smacked the ball out of his hands. Missing games early in the season with a shoulder injury didn't help matters.

His season reached its nadir in back-to-back losses at Memphis and Houston in early December. Against Memphis, he was abused by Ohio State product Mike Conley on a pick and roll that led to the Grizzlies' game-winning basket in overtime. The next night, Chuck Hayes, a 6'-6" center-in-name-only, outplayed Shaq the whole time the two shared the floor.

The red flags were up. Knowledgeable basketball people e-mailed Brian Windhorst, Cavs beat reporter for The Plain Dealer, declaring the death of Shaq's career. It was hard to argue the evidence, even if you were dead-set on evaluating Shaq based solely on how he played against other contenders.

Luckily, the regular season lasts five and a half months, not two months.

Looking back, his effort against the Lakers on Christmas Day was something of a turning point. It's happened gradually, but Shaq is back to being Shaq. A late-30s Shaq, but definitely Shaq.

In the game following the Christmas beatdown of the Lakers, Shaq atoned for his performance in Houston by registering his fourth Cavs double-double in the rematch with the Rockets at The Q. That in and of itself wasn't noteworthy, but it was back-to-back productive games. It was a start.

The production was still kind of sporadic, but he managed a 17-point effort against Washington in early January. Four days later, in Portland, he compiled his best all-around effort: 11 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists and a big lip-smacker on actor Daniel Baldwin, who was sitting behind the basket when Shaq came tumbling his way.

The good games were becoming more frequent for Shaq. As important, he looked like he was beginning to enjoy his role and fit into the Cavs' scheme.

But Shaq didn't truly become a load-bearing wall for the Cavs until January 19. Since then, he's really flourished.

Jan. 19 is when Mo Williams sprained his shoulder against the Raptors. Along with the gut-check knowledge that the Cavs' second-best scorer could be on the shelf until March, Brown was also faced with the question of how to replace Mo's offense.

In past years, Mo's production would have been replaced piecemeal-style. LeBron would take more shots, Delonte West would take more shots, and the bench would need to step up and assume more minutes and shots.

This season, the safety net weighs a conservatively-estimated 325 pounds. Which is good, because Delonte went to the sideline with a broken finger in the very next game, removing even more scoring from the floor.

Though Brown certainly didn't consider it an ideal situation to ramp up Shaq's touches and minutes so suddenly, and with two and a half months of regular season still left to play, his hand was forced. Shaq would get the ball on the block and take more shots.

The 15-time all-star, four-time NBA champion and future hall of famer responded like you'd expect a 15-time all-star, four-time NBA champion and future hall of famer to respond: he stopped fooling around, focused on the task at hand and has been getting the job done.

Over the past week, Shaq has been playing his best ball as a Cav. He scored 22 points on 8-of-10 shooting against Indiana, and followed that with 16 points and 12 boards against the Clippers, and 13 points and a season-high 13 boards in the rematch against the Grizzlies, a runaway Cavs win.

This is how Shaq, and the Cavs, will need to play in the later playoff rounds if they're to have a realistic shot at the franchise's first NBA title. Even though Shaq is playing more than Ferry or Brown would prefer, it's comforting to know that Shaq Diesel was still in the garage and functional while Shaq Lemon was rattling and clunking through the early stages of the season.

And it's relieving to know that the Cavs are learning how to play, dominate and win with Shaq as a focal point of both the offense and defense.

Maybe how Shaq plays against the Grizzlies in the dead of winter does count for something after all.

Overtime overview

2010-01-29T19:05:00.017-05:00

The NFC Championship Game sent the Saints to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. It also had the type of ending that only the NFL can provide:

One team, one drive, one possession, one field goal. The Vikings offense never took the field. From the moment Minnesota lost the overtime coin toss, they were fighting a steep uphill battle. As soon as New Orleans' high powered offense crossed into Minnesota territory on the ensuing drive, a field goal attempt was well within sight. From that point on, the game essentially hinged on the accuracy of Garrett Hartley's kicking leg.

It is true that the Vikings -- and more specifically, Brett Favre -- created their own mess. Favre killed a shot at what could have been a game-winning field goal attempt by hip-shooting the ball straight to Saints defensive back Tracy Porter on an incredibly stupid throw with seven seconds left in regulation.

But that interception doesn't change the fact that the events of the game from that point forward still shine a much-needed light on the NFL's overtime rules.

The NFL's sudden death overtimes rules, which have been in place for the playoffs since the 1940s and in place for regular season games since 1974, essentially takes the overtime format the NHL used prior to 2005 and attempts to fit it to football.

There is a timed period -- a full 15 additional minutes in the case of the NFL and five minutes in the case of the NHL -- in which the game proceeds under regulation-time rules, except the NHL now permits one fewer skater on the ice. The first team to score, wins. If the timed period ends and neither team has scored, the game ends in a tie. In order to remove the anticlimactic tie-game outcome, the NHL instituted a shootout system in 2005 as a fail-safe means of determining a winner. If the overtime period ends in a tie, a series of penalty-style shots determines the game.

A tie is still a possible outcome in an NFL game, though it's rare. The last NFL tie occurred between the Eagles and Bengals in 2008, and before that, between the Falcons and Steelers in 2002. It's so rare, after the '08 tie Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb confessed that he didn't even know an NFL game was allowed to end in a tie.

The argument in favor of the current NFL overtime system says that it has rarely failed to decide games. That's true, but it's also true that football possessions are completely apples and oranges when compared to hockey possessions.

In a hockey overtime period, both teams are likely going to have multiple opportunities to take possession of the puck and create a scoring chance. In football, there is no face-off. There is a coin toss, kickoff, and the receiving team takes the ball and drives it down the field. If the offense is successful and the team's kicker has a strong leg, the team that loses the coin toss will never get a scoring chance. The probability of an win-loss outcome is high, but the system is inherently not fair. Both team battled through 60 grueling minutes to reach overtime, and the outcome can hinge on what side of the coin is facing upward.

In the interest of fairness, the sudden-death format isn't the best fit for a game like football. There are other ways to handle overtime games, methods that can produce definite outcomes while allowing each team to have a reasonable chance to win. Let's take a look at a few of them. Some are more practical, some are a little more creative.

Sudden death -- first team to six points

This method is the one I tend to favor. It takes the current overtime rules and eliminates the "win the coin toss, drive the ball and kick the field goal" scenario, which is the most damning argument against the current NFL overtime setup.

In a nutshell, if you win the coin toss and don't want to give the ball to the other team, you need to score a touchdown. If you kick a field goal, the other team still gets the ball back. If they score a touchdown, they win. If they kick a field goal or fail to score, you get the ball a second time. From there, if you can kick a second field goal, you win.

The setup doesn't completely eliminate the kicker from the game's outcome, but it makes the kicker a less pivotal player. It also encourages teams to drive for the end zone instead of field goal range.

Ultimately, this method ensures that if a team succeeds in preventing the other team from having an overtime possession, it's because they earned it by putting the ball in the end zone. If neither team can get the ball into the end zone, field goals can still determine the outcome, but it would be a more difficult task than under the current rules.

College rules

Sometimes called the "Kansas Plan," this is the method made famous after it was adopted by the NCAA. It's also used in various forms by the Canadian Football League and high schools in states around the U.S.

Essentially, it's a hockey shootout adopted to football. Offenses take possession of the ball at attempt to outscore each other in rounds of drives that usually start deep in the opponent's territory. In NCAA-sanctioned college football, the drives start at the defense's 25-yard line. If your offense is on the field in the top half of the first round and you score a touchdown, the other team has to match your touchdown in the bottom half of the round or you win the game.

If you kick a field goal in the top half of the round, you must keep the other team to a field goal or less in the bottom of the round. If the other team answers your field goal with a touchdown, you lose.

The NCAA alternates which team goes first in each round. After the second overtime round, if a winner has not yet emerged, extra points are ruled out and teams must go for two-point conversions after touchdowns. Interceptions and fumble recoveries can be returned for scores by the defense per NCAA rules, but in high school, turnovers usually result in a dead ball and the end of the possession.

This method of overtime makes for great TV. Every football fan in Ohio remembers Ohio State's thrilling, pressure-packed overtime win against Miami in the 2002 national title game. The only trouble is, if overtime goes four or five rounds, the final score and final statistics can really get thrown out of whack.

What was a tightly-contested 17-17 game in regulation can suddenly sprawl into a 45-38 final in which the second-rated defensive team in the league plummets to ninth based on giving up three or four short-field touchdowns in overtime. The NFL values its stats and rankings, and defensive coordinators around the league probably wouldn't be keen on the idea of an offense-biased overtime that has the potential to kill a defense's reputation.

It's a little different in college ball, where dominant defensive teams are few and far between. But in the NFL, where many teams pride themselves on their defense, this style of overtime has hand grenade potential in league meetings.

Move the kickoff spot up to the 40 yard line

This setup would move the kickoff spot up 10 yards from normal regulation kickoffs, which are booted from the 30 yard line. The idea is to increase touchbacks and regularly pin offenses deep in their own territory, which would presumably make it more difficult for a team to take the opening kickoff and immediately drive into field goal range. Putting the offense on a long field increases the probability of fourth-down punts, and therefore, changes in possession.

Here's the problem: If the team that fields the opening kickoff returns the ball to the 10-yard line and the ensuing drive nets little to no additional yardage, that team would then be forced to punt from deep in their own territory, or even their own end zone. Unless the punter uncorks an 80-yard cannon shot downfield, there is a good chance the other team will take over with favorable field position to -- guess what? -- take the ball, drive into field goal range and win the game.

In a roundabout way, it penalizes the team that wins the overtime coin flip. And in the event that the team receiving the opening kickoff is able to pick up a couple of first downs but the drive stalls, the other team is likely taking possession deep in their own territory, setting up a see-saw of drives beginning deep in the offense's territory, and reducing the chances of a scoring opportunity.

The object is to make overtime fair, not kill all scoring chances.

Five-minute periods, with rotating kickoffs

This is sort of a modified shootout format. The clock doesn't stop, so team that wins the opening kickoff doesn't have a lot of time to drive the ball into field goal range. They're basically forced into a hurry-up offense from the outset. If either team fails to score in five minutes, the clock expires and the team that received the first-overtime kickoff must then kick the ball off to the other team at the outset of the next overtime period.

It increases the chance of each team having at least one possession, but this is also a tiring way to run overtime. It's basically a series of five-minute sprints until someone scores. By the fourth or fifth overtime, offenses and defenses would begin to succumb to fatigue, increasing the possibility of injuries and, in hot weather, dehydration.

Full overtime period, followed by a field goal "shootout"

Want to put the game at the feet of the kickers? Make them an absolute last resort. Play a full 15-minute overtime period without sudden-death rules. If the game is still tied at the end of that period, do what the NHL does and decide the game with a shootout. Or in this case, a "kick-out."

Pick a field goal distance that is makeable for NFL kickers, but not a slam dunk. Say 45 yards. Each team lines up, 11-on-11, and attempts one field goal. If both kickers make or miss their attempts, the shootout goes to a second round with the order alternated. If both kickers make their attempts, the line of scrimmage is pushed back a couple of yards, requiring a 47 or 48 yard attempt. If the game still isn't decided, a couple additional yards of distance, and a 50-yard attempt. And so on, until a winner is determined.

If both kickers miss in a given round, the distance stays the same for the next round.

By the time the distance reaches 55 yards and beyond, a missed field goal is only a matter of time.

If you don't like putting kickers in such a powerful position, this isn't the overtime setup for you. But then again, how is it really different from the current overtime rules?

Fighting back

2010-01-23T11:29:00.010-05:00

Over the span of an 82-game NBA regular season, the statements made in December and January are generally lost by the time the winter ice thaws.

By the time warm weather arrives and the league's playoff brackets have been pared down to a final four, the battles of wintertime are pages in dusty, seldom-opened history books.

With that in mind, what the Cavs did to the Lakers in two regular season meetings this year could have little to no bearing on what might happen should the teams, who lead their respective conferences, meet again in the NBA Finals.

And yet, it's hard to deny that something happened in these two games, spaced a little under a month apart.

Cleveland won both games, 102-87 on Christmas Day in Los Angeles and 93-87 at The Q this past week. It's a feel-good story for the Cavs. They lost both matchups against the Lakers a year ago, and there is reason to believe that, had they made it past Orlando in the Eastern Conference finals, the undersized Cavs would have been overmatched by the long, limber and skilled frontcourt of the Lakers.

This year, a physically bigger and noticeably more determined Cavs team overpowered the Lakers for about six of a possible eight quarters of basketball.

But the Cavs beat the Spurs twice in the 2006-07 season. It didn't prevent a dominating sweep at the hands of San Antonio in the '07 Finals. So why should we look upon these two wins as anything more than a couple of regular season wins that allow Cleveland fans to puff out their normally-sunken chests a little more than usual?

Because it is entirely possible that the Cavs are to the Lakers what the Lakers were to the Cavs last year -- the worst kind of matchup. And it's entirely possible that fact is not lost on the Lakers.

For all of their versatility and talent, the Lakers do have a potentially-fatal flaw that can be exploited by the right kind of team. The Lakers can be out-muscled, physically overpowered. And when that happens, they tend to go numb. Instead of battling harder, they become frustrated.

Basketball pundits -- certainly those from the L.A. area -- chalked the Christmas shellacking handed out by the Cavs to a hungry challenger facing a reigning champion that didn't take the game as seriously as it should have.

There is an element of truth to that. The Lakers were sitting pretty. The Cavs were trying to avenge last year's embarrassment. Sometimes, you just can't manufacture enough motivation. The Cavs kept momentum on their side by winning hustle play after hustle play. And then -- at least in the minds of the L.A. crowd -- the refs starting jobbing the Lakers, which led to a shower of foam fingers from the stands as the fans in attendance made complete jackasses of themselves.

It was an ugly loss for the Lakers. And what do you do with an ugly loss in the middle of the season? You learn your lessons, wash your hands of it and move on.

A successful veteran team like the Lakers, the defending world champs and two-time defending Western Conference champs, would almost certainly use a loss like that to jolt themselves awake, make the necessary tactical and mental-preparation adjustments, and be ready for the rematch with the Cavs four weeks later.

At the outset of the rematch, the Lakers did look a lot more prepared mentally. They raced out to a 9-0 lead and stretched the lead out to as many as 11 in the first half. The Cavs made their runs, but the Lakers kept out-maneuvering Cleveland, getting buckets when they needed them and maintaining their lead into the third quarter.

But then, that "something" from up-column happened. Something clicked into place. No one knows exactly when it happened, but the Cavs started to impose their will on the game. With Mo Williams on the sideline with a sprained shoulder, with tall, athletic swingman Jamario Moon also injured, with Delonte West giving the Cavs virtually nothing thanks to suffocating defense from Kobe Bryant, the Cavs still managed to dictate the game to the Lakers as the second half wore on.

The Cavs took their first lead at 60-59 in the third quarter, and the Lakers started to submit to what the Cavs were throwing at them. Specifically, a relentless physical assault in the paint and a whole lot of LeBron.

The Lakers didn't try to fight back with muscle. They hit some three-pointers that kept a win within grasp, but they really didn't have an answer -- or try to find an answer -- for Cleveland's power game.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign for the Cavs is that they won at a playoff pace. In the fourth quarter, the game slowed into a deliberately-paced cross between a chess match and Greco-Roman wrestling. Both teams tried to control the ball and use the shot clock. It wasn't pretty. But it was intense.

If you took the second game between the Cavs and Lakers and dropped it into the middle of June, it would find itself right at home. Or at least the Cavs would. The Lakers, they might need to do some remodeling.

After the game, both Bryant and Phil Jackson addressed the Lakers' lack of physical presence, specifically pointing the finger at Pau Gasol. The skilled seven-footer is supposed to serve as the most vexing interior matchup problem any team has to face when game-planning for the Lakers.

Gasol ended up with 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting. That's following his 11-point, 4-of-10 effort on Christmas Day.

As much as Shaq was never designed to defend the pick and roll, Gasol was never designed to play mosh-pit basketball. His greatest strength lies in his post moves around the hoop, not in his ability to muscle the ball onto the rim. He can go around and over, but seldom through, his defender. When he's being guarded by the human wall that is Shaq, the mismatches are evident.

The Cavs won the rematch by winning the game in the paint. With Leon Powe slated to come back after the all star break, and the door open for Danny Ferry to acquire another forward before the Feb. 18 trade deadline, the Cavs' grip on interior basketball could strengthen as the playoffs approach.

As for the Lakers, everything is relative. In the Western Conference, they are the bullies on the block. Surrounded by mostly finesse teams, they have unparalleled size and strength in being able to trot out Gasol, Andrew Bynum, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest. The vast majority of teams in the league don't have an answer for that challenge. Last year, the Cavs were among that vast majority.

This year, armed with Shaq, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, an improved Anderson Varejao and the potential future contributions of Powe, the Cavs are one of the few teams that can give the Lakers fits.

It's not a guarantee of beating the Lakers four times in seven, if that's the matchup come June. But the Lakers have now seen the new-look Cavs -- bigger, stronger, tougher -- and they don't like it one bit, whether they admit to it or not.

That, in and of itself, is something to file away for later in the year.

Power hungry

2010-01-13T19:14:00.009-05:00

With Thursday's game in Utah, the Cavaliers will have reached the midpoint of the 2009-10 season. Next Monday, January 18, will mark one month and counting until the NBA's trade deadline.

In the often-referenced words of Yogi Berra, it gets late early around here.

For the Cavs, a team pulling out all the stops to try and win the NBA title this spring, time is especially of the essence. Danny Ferry isn't just trying to win a championship. He's making his closing arguments to LeBron James, who will dive headfirst into the free agent waters on July 1. Ferry has to show LeBron that the Cavs are capable of fielding not just a championship contender, but a championship favorite kind of team -- one of the two or three teams each year that sits on the league's ruling council. At or near 60 wins, a top-two conference seed and a regular participant in the late May and June playoff rounds.

A general manager's ability to piece together that kind of team is often governed by circumstances he largely can't control. Primarily, money and opportunity. A GM needs access to well-stocked coffers supplied by the team's owner, and he needs other GMs who want to make a deal.

In the past two years, Ferry has turned Dan Gilbert's money and several trade opportunities into Delonte West, Mo Williams and Shaquille O'Neal. This summer, after acquiring Shaq, he took the free agent money that Ron Artest and Trevor Ariza turned down, and used it to sign Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon.

The Cavs roster is more athletic and versatile than it was even a year ago. Over the past two years, through several rounds of trades and opportunistic signings, the Cavs have done a lot to close the talent gap on the likes of the Lakers, Magic and Celtics.

But when you're trying to win a title and keep your everything-star from seriously considering flying the coop, the roster is subject to a few extra layers of scrutiny from eyes both inside and outside the organization. Every scratch, dent, pit, chip and dimple is held up to the light and examined for its championship-derailing potential.

For the Cavs, the eyes keep going to one area on the floor in particular: The power forward position.

J.J. Hickson has started there for most of the season. He's a second-year player, and while he has demonstrated tremendous athletic ability at times, he also coasts through long stretches of games, sometimes looking lost on the floor, sometimes just looking like he's not all that interested in competing hard.

No one player has probably made Mike Brown's blood pressure rise more this season than Hickson. He's benched Hickson for remainders of games after a mental goof, usually at the defensive end. Sometimes Hickson responds well, but often, the message seems to whistle over his head.

Hickson isn't a bad apple. But he is out of place as the starting power forward on this team. He's working on remedial coursework while the veterans on the team are enrolled in the doctoral program. Honestly, Hickson probably belongs on a young, rebuilding team where he can grow with players who are similar in age, with a coach who can afford to keep playing him through his mistakes.

The Cavs' situation is simply too high-pressure for the team to live with Hickson's growing pains, particularly as the stretch run and playoffs approach.

The other option is starting Anderson Varejao alongside Shaq, which Brown tried at the outset of the year. But Varejao seems to be at his best when he's coming off the bench as a change of pace. His game most closely resembles that of a center, anyway. Outside of the paint, he's really not much of a scoring threat.

That leaves an outside acquisition as the only other means of upgrading the power forward spot between now and the deadline. Ferry apparently has recognized the need for a legitimate starting big forward, and all signs point to him being aggressive in attempting to make a trade in the next month.

But Ferry has to find a dance partner before he can make a trade. Fortunately, there are a few teams that might be willing to give the Cavs a starting forward for the right price. And thanks to the expiring contract of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the Cavs would be able to pay the price.

Here are a few of the options Ferry might conisder:

Antawn Jamison, Washington Wizards

He's by far the player the Cavs -- and the fans -- want the most. At 6'-8" and about 235 pounds, Jamison is actually something of a small forward-power forward combo. He was utilized mostly as a small forward during earlier-career stops in Golden State and Dallas, but switched exclusively to the four-spot after arriving in Washington, where he's in his sixth season with the team.

Jamison is 33, so he's not as spry and athletic as he used to be. But he's aged gracefully, all things considered. He has managed to stay away from major injuries throughout his career and has kept himself in great shape, so he plays younger than his age.

The most attractive aspect of Jamison is the balance of his game. He really has no fundamental weaknesses for a player at his position. He can spot up and shoot jumpers with range out to three-point territory, he can put the ball on the floor both facing the basket and posting up, he can defend bigger players and he rebounds.

To boot, he's one of the game's really good guys. In the midst of the recent Gilbert Arenas gun flap -- which included a widely-circulated picture of Arenas making a pistol-gesture with his fingers while other players, Jamison included, laughed -- it was Jamison who stepped up, apologized for the picture and appealed to Wizards fans to keep supporting the team.

In short, Jamison is the kind of guy you'd never not want on your team. That's the biggest problem where the Cavs are concerned. The Wizards appear to be on the precipice of a major rebuild, so whether they can get the league to void the remainder Arenas' contract or not, the logical plan of attack would be to start trading off veterans for younger players and more cap flexibility down the road. But the Wizards are so hungry for good PR right now, they might view Jamsion as the guy they need to be the face of their franchise until his contract ends in two more seasons.

If the Wizards did decide to trade Jamison to the Cavs, Z's expiring contract and Hickson would likely be theirs. Even if Washington GM Ernie Grunfeld abhors the idea of trading Jamison to the team that tormented the Wizards in the playoffs for three straight years, that's still a pretty good haul for a team looking to get younger and cheaper.

Troy Murphy, Indiana Pacers

This might actually end up becoming the most likely trade scenario for the Cavs. Some fans will undoubtely be upset if the trade deadline yields Murphy instead of Jamison, but the truth is, Murphy might be the most readily-available power forward out there for a team like Cleveland.

The Pacers probably wouldn't try to extort a king's ransom for Murphy. Rumors have swirled that Murphy isn't all that happy with Pacers management, and he's not a centerpiece player for Indiana in the same way Jamison is for the Wizards. He's owed about $12 million next year, and it's entirely possible that the non-contending Pacers would take an expiring deal in return just to get him off their books.

Murphy isn't the dynamic all-around player that Jamison is, but he does bring some assets to the table that fit what the Cavs need. He's a "stretch four" -- a power forward with three-point range on his shot, who will force opposing big men to venture out of the paint to contest shots. The benefit of having a big man who can shoot from long range is that it opens up more operating space for Shaq inside. Throughout his career, Shaq's teams have always had the most success with him when they could pair him with a perimeter-shooting power forward.

Murphy will rebound to the tune of eight to nine a game, so he's not adverse to going inside and mixing it up a bit. He's slow afoot and not regarded as a good defender, but Brown once got Sasha Pavlovic to play good defense in stretches. After that, I believe anything is possible.

At 6'-11", adding Murphy is virtually like adding another seven-footer to the roster. Against teams with other tall frontcourts, like the Lakers and Magic, the more height, the better. And if none of that fits Murphy into the Cavs' long-term plans, his $12 million expiring could become a major trade chip for next year's deadline.

David West, New Orleans Hornets

The Hornets have been on every media member's short list of teams most likely to blow up the roster and start over. The Hornets have been among the NBA's biggest disappointments for going on two years and a rebuild appears inevitable.

If that's the case, West will likely be among the first out the door since he can fetch both cap relief and young talent in return.

West was a 20-point, eight-rebound player heading into this season. This year, however, he's attempting more than two fewer shots per game over last year, and his scoring average is down to 17.5 per game. Still very good, but not trending in the right direction.

There is a school of thought shared by members of the media and message board communities that says West is riding the coattails of Chris Paul, benefitting from the attention paid to Paul by defenses, combining it with a consistent midrange jumper, and using it all to masquerade as a borderline-elite scoring forward. West has some obvious scoring talent, but he was a bit player prior to Paul's arrival. You can look up his career stats and be the judge.

LeBron could have much the same effect on West, and he would certainly be an upgrade over what the Cavs current trot out at the power forward. But there are better options out there.

Mehmet Okur, Utah Jazz

At this point, it's a stretch to think Utah would start shedding salary. They're still in the playoff hunt in the Western Conference. But if Utah did decide to punt away a big contract to save some money, Okur would be high on their list. He makes $9 million this year, and is signed for two more years.

Okur is a step down from even Murphy as an overall player, especially if the Cavs were to play him at power forward. But Okur does fit the stretch-four mold. He is a 6'-11" natural center who can step back and shoot the three. He's a career 37.8 percent three point shooter, and shooting the longball at a 39-percent clip this season. If you need a catch-and-shoot three-point gunner with height, Okur can fit the mold.

While we're on the subject of the Jazz, let's get the Carlos Boozer thing out of the way now: No. He has an expiring contract, the Cavs have an expiring contract to trade, so that's not going to work -- even if the hatchet has been completely buried and forgotten from Boozer's defection in the summer of '04.

Zach Randolph, Memphis Grizzlies

If all else fails, why not take a stab? He's insane and locker-room powder keg, but he's having a monster season, averaging 20 points and 11 rebounds per game. A motivated Z-Bo is an absolute beast on the block.

The Grizzlies are actually one of the surprises of the league so far. They're in the playoff hunt, and that alone will probably keep Randolph off the market. But if Memphis suddenly falls out of contention and wants to trade Randolph, and if the Cavs have had nothing but doors slammed in their face on their power forward quest, maybe Z-Bo fits in some kind of freaky, alternate-universe kind of way.

A delicate situation

2010-01-08T18:31:00.006-05:00

It would be so easy for Josh Cribbs to look like the good guy in his contract dispute with the Browns.

He has been told to play the role of the good soldier on numerous occasions. The ongoing message from Browns management -- in all its changing forms -- to Cribbs has been "Do what is asked of you, and we'll take care of you when the time is right."

Cribbs has done all that and one heck of a lot more, last month virtually dragging the Browns to their first win over the Steelers in six years. With an NFL record eight career kickoff returns for touchdowns to go with punt return scores and a mastery of the kick coverage game, Cribbs has already cemented himself as quite possibly the greatest non-kicking special teams player the league has ever seen. His playmaking ability out of the "wildcat" formation on offense is an extension of the quick moves and superb field vision he displays on kick returns.

He is, quite simply, a unique talent. You can certainly make a case that within the past half-decade, Cribbs and left tackle Joe Thomas have already staked their claim as the best Browns players of the expansion era.

Now, Cribbs wants his salary to match his accomplishments and abilities. No harm there. Three years ago, he signed a six-year, $6.8 million deal that included a $2 million signing bonus. For a young player who was signed as an undrafted free agent from Kent State in 2005, that was big money and big-time security.

But this year, with Cribbs a certifiable NFL star, the $600,000 he made this year looks relatively paltry. He wants starting receiver money, like Chicago's Devin Hester -- one of the few return men in the league who is in Cribbs' class. Hester signed a four-year deal in 2008 worth up to $40 million. But Hester has been exactly that this year -- a starting receiver. Cribbs flopped as a starting receiver, and outside of kick returns and coverages, is relegated to taking direct snaps a few times a game.

Cribbs began to make waves over his contract in the second half of the season. He put a self-dictated end-of-season deadline on getting a new deal. That didn't happen. Then Mike Holmgren officially began his job as the new team president, and Cribbs knew the man he needed to talk to was in town.

One of the first acts of the Holmgren regime was indeed to offer Cribbs a new contract. But it wasn't anything close to what Cribbs and his agents had in mind. The Browns reportedly put an offer on the table worth about $1.4 million per year.

Better than $600,000? Certainly. The type of money that a game-changer like Cribbs should be making in the NFL? Probably not.

Which is why Cribbs could have very easily spun this situation 100 percent in his favor within the court of public opinion.

It was a lowball offer. It was insulting, as Cribbs' agents declared. It reeked of a new management regime hastily shoving an offer across the table to see if Cribbs would bite. If the Browns were going to make that kind of an offer to a guy who has been one of the team's very few consistent high performers for the last five years, they probably needed to just table discussions until Holmgren could hire his general manager and the club's big thinkers could come up with a better plan.

But the only person who might be handling this worse than any member of the Browns is Cribbs himself.

If he wants to threaten a holdout, fine. If he wants to threaten to demand a trade, fine. Even Hester did that prior to signing his new deal. Unfortunately, in the NFL's contract negotiating system, which is decidedly antiquated in a lot of ways, raising a fuss is the only way a player can generate any leverage.

But maybe the fuss should be saved primarily for team management. Instead, Cribbs is spewing histrionics via his Twitter account and any microphone that can pick up his voice. This past week, when he showed up at the team's Berea headquarters to clear out his locker for the season, he told the assembled media that he believe he had played his last game for the Browns. He told the media that he said his permanent good-byes to the team training and medical staff.

On Twitter, his comments have included "I don't believe I made the to do list for the team in 2010" and "I just hate being taken advantage of ... What else is new?"

There is a lot of water left to tread between where the Cribbs-Browns negotiations sit, and the irreconcilable differences that could lead to a trade. Chances are still very good that he and the Browns will be able to find a common ground and Cribbs will be in uniform, if not for organized team activities this spring, then for training camp in July. This isn't even close to over.

Which is why Cribbs declaring his relationship with the Browns over and done with, and doing it publicly time and again, seems a little less like hardball negotiating tactics and more like a petulant grade-schooler storming up to his room and slamming the door.

Cribbs is trying to get the fans and the media opinion columnists to come down hard on the Browns under the threat of having to watch him play for another team. But facts are facts. Cribbs is under contract, he has no legal way under NFL rules to force the Browns' hand into giving him a raise or trading him, and Holmgren hasn't yet hired a GM. The GM would logically be the executive who would handle contracts and salaries, not Holmgren.

Maybe there was no good way out of this for the Browns. Maybe if they tell Cribbs to sit tight a little while longer while Holmgren hires a GM and pieces together his management team, Cribbs gets impatient and we arrive at the same Tweets and media spout-offs that have occurred this past week.

But after watching the Browns disgracefully lowball Cribbs, and then watch Cribbs throw a multimedia temper tantrum, I'm beginning to think stall tactics are the approach Holmgren should have used.

The Browns' front office, under construction yet again, is apparently in no shape to carry forth high-pressure contract negotiations at the moment. So they shouldn't have tried.

And for Cribbs, a simple "no" followed by a simple, privately-delivered "I'm not coming back here without a new deal" would have sufficed. Act like the experienced veteran you want your salary to reflect. Not like a sniveling rookie being told to run laps for the first time.

Weighing the options

2010-01-07T10:46:00.009-05:00

By the time you read this, you may already know Eric Mangini's fate as Browns coach. The situations is fluid, and changeable by the hour.

By as the hours have gone by this week, the one constant has been uncertainty. New team president Mike Holmgren appeared in front of the cameras at his first official Browns press conference on Tuesday, essentially saying that he'd like to have a decision on Mangini's future soon. But not too soon. It could be by the end of the week. Or maybe he extends his self-imposed deadline for more consultation, maybe a subsequent meeting with the team's first-year (and possibly last-year) coach.

As we slog through the murky swamp that has become Mangini's Browns future, we can't help but wonder whether even Holmgren himself was anticipating this touch-and-go decision process.

When Holmgren agreed to take the reins of the franchise a couple of weeks ago, he might have had a pretty good idea of how he wanted to proceed. Which is to say, his own coach and his own general manager. The type of organization Holmgren wanted to build here -- rooted in his Bill Walsh-based upbringing as a coach -- is in stark contrast to Mangini's background, heavily influenced by Bill Belichick, who is a branch on the Bill Parcells coaching tree.

On top of that, the results produced by Mangini offered no reference that favored keeping his job. When Holmgren took the job on Dec. 21, the Browns had just won back to back games against Pittsburgh and Kansas City, but they still stood at a bottom-feeding 3-11.

Heroic performances by Josh Cribbs and Jerome Harrison aside, the decision for Holmgren was as easy as a snap of the fingers. Season ends, Mangini gets his walking papers, and Holmgren sets about finding a coach and GM who have the same football philosophies that he does.

But we're talking about the Browns here. It can never be that simple. Something with tentacles always comes along and inks the water.

The ink cloud came in the form of the season's final two games, against Oakland and Jacksonville. The Browns won both games. You could even say they won both games convincingly. The Raiders definitely aided their own demise with serial personal fouls in a 23-9 Browns win, but it was still a game the Browns pretty much controlled start to finish.

In the season finale last Sunday, the Browns jumped out to an early 10-point lead over the Jaguars and seemed to control the flow and pace of the game for 60 minutes. The final score read 23-17, but it wasn't quite that close.

In short, taken purely within its own context, December 2009/January 2010 was the Browns' most successful month of the expansion era. Four wins, one loss, and that loss to San Diego way back on December 6 contained a furious fourth-quarter rally that fell short. The month contained their first four-game winning streak since 1994 and their first four-game streak of 160-plus rushing yards since 1968.

Production appeared from all directions. The accomplishments of Cribbs and Harrison are well-documented, but the Browns also received noteworthy contributions from lesser-known names on defense, like Matt Roth, Marcus Benard and Ahtyba Rubin. Joe Thomas and Alex Mack continues to grow as current and future stalwarts of the offensive line. Lawrence Vickers played a key role in helping Harrison roll up a series of 100-yard rushing efforts.

The Browns came together in the season's final month. You can say it was because of Mangini or in spite of Mangini, but the key fact is that Mangini was presiding, and it has forced Holmgren to soften his stance on how he wants to move forward.

Holmgren has to consider both the pluses and minuses of keeping Mangini on board, even for just next season, with no guarantee afterward. When laying everything out on the table, here are the factors Holmgren has to be looking at:

Why Mangini should stay:

1. Maybe Mangini was right all along

Maybe it is a process. Maybe it took almost a year for Mangini to instill his own brand of discipline on a resistant roster. Maybe it took that long to weed out some of the dissenters and negative influences like Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow and Jamal Lewis. Maybe going from Club Romeo to something resembling a real NFL team was actually this difficult.

If that is the case, it would be a setback to stomp the sprouts growing from the seeds Mangini has sowed in the past year.

2. Mangini grew as a coach this year

At times, it's easy to forget that Mangini is only 38 -- a tyke by NFL head coaching standards. He's still growing in his job as much as his players are. And he underwent a great deal of growth this season.

Mangini came to town like a tornado. Fresh off the ego rush of being given total control of the football operations by Randy Lerner, Mangini quickly became enthralled with the idea of himself as an authoritarian ruler. His disciplinary tactics were heavy-handed (who can forget the story from the preseason, when Mangini reportedly fined a player $1,700 for not paying for a bottle of hotel water?). He was aloof toward the media. He grated on players. Jamal Lewis criticized Mangini for allowing too much contact in practice. Rookie running back James Davis was lost for the season due to a shoulder injury on a post-practice contact drill that was reportedly approved by Mangini.

But Mangini's attitude seemed to soften considerably when GM George Kokinis parted ways with the team in November. Kokinis alleged that Mangini went over his head on personnel decisions, including the Edwards trade, effectively undermining Kokinis' decision-making power over the roster. Kokinis, a longtime associate of Mangini going back to their days as interns with the Belichick Browns, was escorted from headquarters in Berea, which tends to make you think he had some choice words for Mangini on his way out the door.

With his GM gone, the losses piling up and speculation rampant that he was doomed to be a one-and-done coach in Cleveland, Mangini seemed to shift from a dictator with a grand scheme to a coach just trying to win each Sunday and save his job.

Perhaps, over the course of the season, Mangini went from being the team, to being a team player. If that's the case, the idea of keeping him around for another year becomes a lot more palatable.

3. Rob Ryan

In the end, this probably won't be anything that Holmgren considers when deciding Mangini's fate, but hiring Ryan as defensive coordinator is easily the best personnel move Mangini has made. Ryan looks like a cross between Santa Claus and a drifter, but he's inherited the defensive smarts of his dad, Buddy Ryan. And he's a passionate leader, which players latch onto. Ryan has taken a defense of mostly no-names and gotten them to play over their heads on more than one occasion this season -- most notably in the win over the Steelers.

The stats might not bear it out, but Ryan is an excellent defensive coordinator. Unfortunately, if Mangini goes, Ryan probably goes, too.

Why Mangini should go:

1. Differences in team-building and coaching philosophies

Obviously, the most glaring reason why Holmgren and Mangini can't coexist. You don't hire a French instructor to teach a Spanish class. And that's the essential difference between Holmgren's football background and Mangini's. It's no one's fault. It's just a fact of life in this situation.

2. Should the last month really make up for the previous 11?

The ledger still says Mangini did a lot more wrong than right over the past year. The draft netted Alex Mack and Mohamed Massaquoi, who both look like keepers. But for a team that was slated to pick fifth overall, Mangini's trade-down draft strategy looks like an overall goof. David Veikune, a non-contributor taken in the second round, is the poster boy for Mangini's draft-day ineptitude.

You could make a case that Mangini bungled the quarterback competition in training camp, waiting way too long to name a starter. And there is no question that there was a major communication breakdown between he and Kokinis over personnel authority, which led to the breakdown of their relationship.

3. Star search

Mangini doesn't like to deal with the egos of star players. He'd rather build a team of role players that is greater than the sum of its parts. Holmgren's background includes the likes of Joe Montana, Steve Young and Brett Favre. He wants stars, particularly at quarterback.

Asking Mangini, who can come off as aloof at times and has well-documented shortcomings as a communicator, to oversee an egotistical starting quarterback who needs equal parts butt-kicking and shoulder-massaging, might not be the best idea. As we saw in '08, when Favre and Mangini attempted to coexist with the Jets. It was the last season for both QB and coach in that organization.

The new czar in town

2009-12-21T22:53:00.010-05:00

Mike Holmgren is coming to town. Monday, after nearly a week of meetings and suspense, he accepted the role of Browns team president.

If you want a team czar with football chops, a guy who has won everywhere he's gone, a guy who was a leader -- not a support staffer -- on a Super Bowl winner, Holmgren is your man.

That's good news. But that's not the best news. The best news is who Holmgren is slated to replace as team president.

No, not Mike Keenan. He's the team's main business operations guy, and will transition to the role of chief financial officer.

I'm talking about Randy Lerner.

For way too long now, Lerner has been the Browns' football czar by default. As the team's owner, it has ultimately been up to him to staff the president's, general manager's and head coach's positions. In an organizational setup than began with the hiring of John Collins in 2004 and survived through inertia to this year, the team president was not technically part of the football chain of command, instead leaning more toward the business side of the operation. That removed another layer of authority between the owner and the general manager.

As a result, Lerner's inadequate administrative thumbprint has been all-too-visible on the Browns for the past seven years. From Collins to Phil Savage to Romeo Crennel to Eric Mangini, Lerner kept hiring decision-makers who were untested in, and ultimately proven to be ill-suited for, their job descriptions.

Every Lerner football hire has been a step-up hire. Savage from scouting director to GM. Crennel from coordinator to coach. Mangini was the coach who would be czar, but he turned out to be a very weak czar, so the job fell back to Lerner.

Holmgren is a step-up hire, too. He's never been a team president. But his history in spotlight positions -- and success in those spotlight positions -- suggests that this hire will be a little different.

As team president, Holmgren's job is going to primarily consist of looking at things from the business-cliche "30,000 foot level." His job will be one of vision, team-building and delegation. At first, he might be more involved in the relative minutiae of deciding who should occupy the 53rd spot on the roster, who makes the final cut in training camp and how to best utilize Josh Cribbs. But over time, he'll have his GM and coach making those judgment calls.

Ultimately, Holmgren is in place to eradicate a firmly-entrenched losing culture by installing a system of leadership based on structure, accountability, discipline, and a cultivating a winning attitude from the GM's chair down to the practice squad.

It's something the Browns haven't had in a long, long time: an umbrella-type leader who rules over the Berea facility with an authoritative air. Someone to build standards and a strategic plan for the future, and make sure everyone is living up to that plan. If someone isn't, there are consequences ready and waiting.

With Lerner splitting his time and attention among Cleveland, Long Island and Birmingham, England, and not really having a dominant personality to begin with, he is ill-suited for the role of organizational godfather. Savage survived a coup d'etat of sorts from Collins, leaving him as the organizational go-to guy, but it was evident over the ensuing years that A) his people skills were lacking and B) he was mostly at home in a rental car, jaunting between college towns to scout next year's draft class.

Mangini also has issues with his people skills, and at 38 and with just three previous years as a head coach under his belt, was not experienced enough for the task of singlehandedly running an NFL franchise.

The result was what you'd expect when no one is adequately steering the ship. The often-mentioned "rudderless suck" that has defined the Browns for the past 10 years.

That's the real value of Holmgren. It's not really in his ability to coach X's and O's -- unless he at some point names himself coach, in what would be a pretty blatant mistake on Holmgren's part.

It's not his ability to run a draft-day war room, his roster management, his ability to make trades and free agent signings, or his ability to groom Brady Quinn as an NFL passer.

Holmgren's real value to the Browns, the area in which he needs to succeed above all others, is in finding guys to do all of the above. And then finding guys to replace those guys when they are inevitably hired away by other teams, because you've become one of the league's model franchises and everyone is trying to emulate you.

That's how teams like the Patriots, Colts and Steelers leave the rest of us scratching our heads at their year-in, year-out success, with their ability to take seemingly no-name players and coaches and turn them into hot properties.

It's all in the organizing of the organization. And organization is what the Browns have lacked since returning to the league.

With Holmgren on board, we can now envision a world where Lerner can ping-pong from Long Island to Cleveland to England and back, make sporadic appearances in Berea and at games, hide from the media's microphones, enjoy an afternoon brandy, whatever he wants. And no Browns fan needs to care because Lerner's involvement in the football operations extends only to his writing hand, which he uses to sign the checks.

I don't know about you, but that's a world I can't wait to live in.

A win that's worth the price

2009-12-11T16:00:00.008-05:00

At this point in the Browns' seasons, wins are the enemy.

Wins drop you in the draft order. Wins keep Eric Mangini employed, and might even convince Randy Lerner that it's OK to move forward with Mangini as the primary personnel decision-maker.

When you're 1-11 and four games away from euthanizing, burying and forgetting about this season, wins do nothing but provide false hope and impede long-term progress.

On Thursday, the Browns won. They likely did most or all of the above -- deprive themselves of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft, secure Mangini as the coach at the outset of next season, possibly cause Lerner to hold off on hiring a general manager, and made the fans hope, however so slightly, that maybe some faint pulses of light are filtering through the fog that has entrapped this franchise for way too long.

Against 30 other teams, it would have been a meaningless win that did exactly what the evidence says it did -- more harm than good.

But this wasn't the other 30 teams. This was the Pittsburgh Steelers.

If you've lived on either side of this border rivalry between two cities separated by less than 150 miles of interstate, you know the history. Recently, it hasn't been much of a rivalry. The Browns had lost 12 straight to the Steelers, the last win coming at Heinz Field on Oct. 5, 2003.

How long ago was that? The following month, Michigan beat Ohio State 35-21 for their last victory over the Buckeyes to date. That's how long ago.

The Browns hadn't beaten the Steelers in Cleveland since Sept. 17, 2000. How long ago was that? A rookie from Penn State named Courtney Brown was the star of the game with three sacks.

There were excruciating near misses over that span. A 16-13 overtime loss in 2002, when the Steelers had a would-be game winning field goal blocked, but the ball stayed behind the line of scrimmage, allowing for a recovery and successful re-kick. A wild card playoff game at the end of that season in which the Browns held a 17-point second half lead, only to let it evaporate and lose, 36-33. A last-minute Willie Parker touchdown in 2006. A missed Phil Dawson 52-yard field goal attempt in 2007, which would have tied the game as time expired.

There were blowouts, too. Since returning to the NFL in 1999, the Browns have been blanked by the Steelers four times, by scores of 43-0, 22-0, 41-0 and 31-0. They held the Browns to seven points or less another five times.

But the biggest discrepancy of all: over that span, the Steelers have won two Super Bowls. The Browns have managed two winning seasons.

It's been a long, strange, crazy, heartbreaking, confusing, frustrating road for the Browns these past 10 years. The twice-yearly beatings at the hands of the Steelers, the declarations of the rivalry's death by members of the local and national media, all of it just served as the most pointed reminder that the Browns have fallen from glory, and hard. The one-time New York Yankees of professional football had become the Los Angeles Clippers -- a team with losing in its DNA.

Better talent, in the form of star players -- the kind a team is supposed to get when it drafts first overall -- is ultimately the only way the Browns are going to amass the bricks and mortar needed to turn their fortunes around. But that's not all of it. You need talent to win. But you also need to have your heart in it. You have to be invested physically, mentally and emotionally in wanting to win.

Thursday night, we saw for the first time in a long, long time a Browns team that cared. Really, truly cared. Thursday night, we saw a maligned coaching staff leading an offense and defense that was undermanned and undertalented, but still playing like this game meant something. Everyone from one-man wrecking crew Josh Cribbs to unheralded rookies like Marcus Benard started playing like they were sick and tired of losing to the Steelers and finally wanted to do something about it.

The Steelers, for their part, were fighting for their playoff lives. They had lost four straight and had fallen to 6-6 heading into the game. Ben Roethlisberger was a career 10-0 against the Browns. Maybe they viewed this game as a free throw, a chance to relax, get an easy win against a devastated team and right their ship. Or maybe the Steelers really can't bail water fast enough to prevent their ship from sinking.

Whatever happened, the Steelers looked completely frazzled by the different looks that defensive coordinator Rob Ryan threw at them. Roethlisberger was sacked eight times. Rashard Mendenhall was Pittsburgh's leading rusher, amassing a pedestrian 53 yards on 16 carries.

Still, through all of it, Pittsburgh hung tough and remained within a touchdown in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter is when Roethlisberger, like all great quarterbacks, becomes an escape artist and pulls drive-saving completions out of his nether regions.

Thursday, it wasn't there. Roethlisberger moved the ball, but looked utterly mediocre in doing so. The deadly efficiency with which he normally marches his team on game-winning and game-tying drives was absent. Needing a touchdown to tie with time running thin, he didn't penetrate any further than the Cleveland 39 yard line before David Bowens knocked away a 4th-and-6 pass, essentially sealing the game.

When Bowens knocked the ball away and began celebrating, I knew for certain that it was right for the Browns to win this game. They needed it. They worked for it. They deserved it.

We, as a city of football fans, deserved it.

After the game, Phil Dawson -- the only Brown to experience every loss to the Steelers since 1999 -- was found with moist eyes in the locker room. He had pointed to the fans in the Dawg Pound after the game, the ones who were sticking around in the open lakefront freezer, steaming the wind-chilled sub-zero air with their trademark barking.

"This was for them," Dawson told The Plain Dealer. "I just wanted to let them know how much I appreciate them. It was a moment like this that you want to share with them. I hope the people in Cleveland enjoy this one because they really deserve it."

High emotion at the end of a miserably cold game near the end of a lost season. Tears of joy after finally breaking the shackles of submission. Dawg Pound fans returning the sound and fury of the late '80s to the shores of Lake Erie, for at least one night.

That's why this is still a rivalry. That's why Thursday night was worth a couple of spots in the draft. That's why this game means more.

Opportunity knocks

2009-12-07T20:16:00.006-05:00

From the start of training camp until the end of November, Delonte West was a man on the edge.

Delonte was a man on the edge emotionally, on the edge of domestic turmoil and on the edge of pending legal proceedings from his September weapons-related arrest. Because of that, he was a man on the edge with the Cavs. He has spent the past few months hovering around the team's fringes, involved, yet not all that involved.

Early in the season, he was practicing with the team, but not activated as Danny Ferry and Mike Brown continued to move very cautiously with their troubled player. Aided by pressure on Brown from LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal, he returned for a Halloween showdown with Charlotte. He scored 13 points, but was largely ineffective in the ensuing three games. Following the Cavs' win in New York on Nov. 6, he was deactivated again, missing another four games in the span of 11 days.

It was during this time that Ferry reportedly made a hard push for Stephen Jackson, who had grown disenchanted with the Golden State Warriors. Jackson is a swingman with his own checkered past, but loads of scoring talent and defensive ability. Jackson is 31 and signed to a horrible contract that will saddle his team for another three seasons as Jackson creeps into his mid-30s, but at a time when the Cavs were about to resign themselves to moving forward without Delonte, Jackson was a worthwhile acquisition to pursue. Statistically, he could replace West and then some.

But Warriors coach and organizational overlord Don Nelson had other ideas. The Charlotte Bobcats were offering Vladimir Radmanovic and Raja Bell, who could both help the Warriors at some point this season. The Cavs were reportedly offering up the unreliable West on the condition of a buyout. If Nelson turned down West, the Cavs' remaining stable of tradeable pieces included Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who would fit Nelson's uptempo style like a down jacket fits a Caribbean cruise, and other assorted bits and pieces at the end of the bench.

To put it another way, all Nelson could hope to gain from the Cavs is cap relief, and cap relief probably wasn't enough for one of the Warriors' two best players. There also might be something to the swirling rumor that Nelson didn't want to reward the malcontent Jackson with a trade to a contender in Cleveland.

Whatever the reason, Jackson is now a Bobcat, and the Cavs were left with Delonte's dicey situation, and the knowledge that how his season plays out might have a great deal to do with how the Cavs' season plays out.

As long as Delonte is a Cav, he's an important part of the team. With a versatile skill set, indefatigable legs and the ability to play relentless defense on bigger guards, he simply brings too many assets to the table to become an extra on the set. There is no real way for a team to reduce its reliance on a player like Delonte, unless it wants to completely replace him with another player.

Stephen Jackson and Delonte West together is an either/or proposition. With Jackson on the roster, Delonte would have been reduced to a bit player, making do with the scraps of playing time that Brown throws his way, hoping for a teammate's strained groin or pulled hamstring to bump him up in the rotation. Every time Delonte arrived for a game or practice, he would have found himself surrounded by reminders that he's unreliable, damaged goods, that his superiors have deemed him unfit for a key role on a winning team.

It might have been the ruination of Delonte's career as we know it. Or at the very least, the ruination of his time with the Cavs.

Delonte needed another chance. He needed opportunity to knock yet again. And that's exactly what he received when Nelson decided to send Jackson to Charlotte instead of Cleveland. In the weeks following Jackson's trade to Clarlotte, Delonte has re-emerged as the do-everything handyman who was so critical to the Cavs' success last year.

A week ago Saturday, Delonte pulled a 10-point, 10-assist game out of nowhere, helping the Cavs rout the Mavericks. He followed it up with an eight-point game in a blowout win over Phoenix.

This past Friday against Chicago, he had an emotional downswing, going scoreless and playing just over five lethargic minutes before Brown pulled him. Earlier in the season, it might have foretold another two-week inactive spell. But Delonte delivered his most encouraging signs yet on Sunday.

Not only was he active for Sunday's win over the Bucks, he was the MVP of the game. In 24 minutes, he scored 21 points, helping the Cavs to erase an early 11-0 deficit and spurring an unreal 29-0 run that turned the rest of the game into a scrimmage.

It's not time to get swept up in Redz-mania just yet. He's still mired in a volatile point in his life. He's still afflicted with bipolar disorder and will be for the remainder of his life. Chances are, he's going to miss games between now and the end of the season, whether it is due to emotional issues or his pending legal proceedings. It would be folly to assume that a uptick in game performance signals the all-clear.

What the past four games does demonstrate is that Delonte is starting to play with the same confidence he showed last year. His recovery between the Chicago and Milwaukee games would seem to show that he's figuring out how to manage his emotional swings effectively -- at least to the point that one bad day doesn't become two bad weeks.

No one -- not even Delonte himself -- knows if he can continue on this upward trend for the long haul. But it looks like Delonte is going to try as hard as he can to stay on the court and deliver more games like he has over the past week and a half.

Perhaps out of necessity more than a willingness to trust in Delonte's stability, the Cavs are giving him the chance to stick around and reclaim his status from last year. There are many ways it could go right, and many ways it could go wrong. The certainty is the four-plus months of basketball left to be played between now and the start of the playoffs, time enough for just about any course of events to unfold.

For now, the relationship between the Cavs and Delonte West might be a little short on trust, but long on need. Delonte is seizing the chance to play himself back into the meat of Brown's rotation, and it seems like the Cavs are backing off the search for his replacement.

If Delonte stay put, the rewards and risk are both significant. The relationship between player and team needs to remain constructive and productive through June if the Cavs are to have a realistic shot at winning the 2010 NBA title.

The center of attention

2009-11-28T12:00:00.012-05:00

If you've followed the Cavaliers for any or all of the past 13 years, it has been easy to develop an emotional attachment to Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

Between 1996 and 2001, he missed two full seasons, and all but five games of a third season, recovering from repeated bone breaks in his feet. The frustration for Z, the Cavs and Cleveland fans was compounded by the fact that his talent was undeniable. In his delayed rookie season of 1997-98, he averaged 13.9 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game, and was named to the NBA's All-Rookie First Team.

But the foot problems just wouldn't go away. Faced with the possibility of crippling himself by continuing to play basketball, he seriously considered retirement. He decided to make one last go of it with an extensive restructuring of his left foot -- which accounted for five of his seven foot fractures -- that was aimed at taking stress off the navicular bone, in the midfoot, which kept failing.

The 2000 surgery led to another year of painful rehabilitation, and a tenuous-at-best grip on his career. When Z took the floor during the 2001-02 season, no one really knew what to expect. He played in 62 games, starting 23. His 11 points per game was gravy. The big victory was his presence on the court.

If Z could have finished out his playing days as a serviceable backup, it would have been considered a minor miracle by anyone who watched his five-year battle with brittle feet. But Z was only getting started. As the 2002-03 season progressed, it became apparent that the restructuring surgery had been a rousing success. He averaged 17.2 points per game, still a career high, and -- most importantly -- played in 81 of a possible 82 games. The only game he missed that year was due to a technical-foul suspension.

But the Cavs won just 17 games that year. The 2003 draft was the type that changes franchises, and the Cavs wanted a piece of the action. More specifically, the Akron high school phenom, LeBron James.

When the ping-pong balls of the NBA draft lottery handed the first pick to the Cavs, LeBron's future as a Cav was sealed, and Z was suddenly an important supporting cast member of the Cavs' resurgence.

The ensuing six seasons have brought Cleveland the spoils of LeBron: The franchise's first NBA Finals berth in 2007 and a 66-win season a year ago. But the past six seasons have also seen Z age from smooth moves and a silky jumper to a just-plain-slow spot-up jump shooter.

The game has changed. Now 34, Z has aged as gracefully as one could expect, given the amount of metal in his feet, but the center spot has been taken over by an assortment of freakishly good athletes.

When Z entered the league, the center spot was the sole property of muscle men and back-to-the-basket players. Shaquille O'Neal was the gold standard -- huge and pumped, but never to be mistaken for a high wire act. The other dominant centers of the time included Hakeem Olajuwon, Alonzo Mourning, David Robinson and Dikembe Mutombo. All great in their own ways, but without question fitting the old-school mold of a center.

Then Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan came of age, and the era of the power forward-center hybrid arrived. The wing-scorer play of Amare Stoudemire upped the ante on what a center could and could not do. Then in 2004, Dwight Howard arrived. The strength of a center, the athleticism of a forward, and a tremendous leaper to boot.

By the time Howard and the Magic got through with dispatching the Cavs in last spring's Eastern Conference Finals, it was apparent to those inside and outside the organization that if the Cavs wanted to win the four playoff series necessary to claim the NBA title, Z just wasn't going to cut it as the starting center anymore.

So Danny Ferry traded for Shaq. Even at 37 and slowing down, Shaq still brings a dimension of size, power and defense to the pivot that Z could never hope to bring.

The net result: When Shaq is healthy, Z now comes off the bench. In the closing years of his career, with seasons' worth of aches and pains taking their toll, it has been a difficult adjustment for the Lithuanian big guy.

Coming into games from the bench means coming into games cold. The muscles that you worked so hard to limber in pregame warmups start to contract. The post touches and perimeter shots you were used to getting at the outset of every game are no longer there. For Z, who was used to filling a certain role for so long, coming off the bench is more than a mentality shift. It's a shift in his state of being. So far, his game hasn't reacted well.

Through Friday's loss at Charlotte, Z had started six of a potential 16 games. His minutes per game are down about three from last year (24.3 from 27.2). While his minutes per game have fallen off somewhat, his points and rebounds per game are way off. He's averaging 7.1 PPG after having never averaged fewer than 11 PPG in any previous season. His 6.2 RPG is on pace to become his lowest per-game rebound total since he averaged 5.4 RPG in 2001-02 while returning from his reconstructive foot surgery.

However, the biggest red alert comes from his shooting percentage. Z is a career 47.5 percent field goal shooter. His 15-to-18 foot jumper has set standards for reliability that car companies can only hope to match. But this year, it's just not there. Through Friday, he was shooting 37.8 percent from the field, and the struggling has bled over to his free throw shooting. A career 78.1 percent free-throw shooter, Z is shooting a mere 71 percent from the stripe so far this season.

If Z can't shoot it like Z, his on-court value to the team decreases dramatically, especially when the Cavs have to face another elite team that poses athletic mismatches for Z on the defensive end.

We're quickly arriving at what might be an unavoidable conclusion: The level of competition provided by the frontcourts of the NBA's other elite, plus the arrival of Shaq, might equal Z as a mismatched part. In which case, his $11.5 million expiring contract is best put to use in a trade for a player who better fits the Cavs' schemes.

With the Cavs preparing themselves to move forward without Delonte West if need be, it would seem that Ferry should want to thoroughly investigate any opportunity to add a high-caliber shooting guard to the roster. Ferry reportedly made a hard push for Stephen Jackson, but the Warriors balked at the Cavs' offer and sent Jackson to Charlotte.

Power forward is another area of potential need. Though J.J. Hickson has, on the whole, looked pretty good since moving to the starting lineup several weeks ago, power forward is still not a team strength -- particularly if Z continues to struggle and Anderson Varejao has to log big minutes at center. Leon Powe could add some beef to the big forward spot upon his return, but that won't be until February at the earliest -- and it would be better to remain conservative with your Powe expectations, given that he'll be returning from an 8-to-10 month rehab stint.

If Ferry can add a perimeter-shooting power forward, the so-called "stretch four" who can help clear out operating space for Shaq, LeBron and Mo Williams in the paint, he has to take a serious look at it.

Ultimately, the best option might be to part ways with Z. It's a potentially painful decision that Ferry could have to make. Z and Ferry are friends going back to their days as Cavs teammates. Z is the longest-tenured Cav, he's waded through a lot of medical adversity and bad basketball to get to where he is, and it would be a sweet stanza of poetry if he could someday be on the podium as the Cavs are passing around the Larry O'Brien Trophy as the NBA champions.

But that celebration might never arrive unless Ferry deals Z for a player who can help this team win in May and June. Right now, Z is having a hard enough time doing his part in November, let alone next spring, when he'll have another season's worth of wear and tear on his aging body.

There is the often-referenced possibility of a trade-and-buyout scenario, which would allow Z to return to the Cavs 30 days later, but once Ferry pulls the trigger on a trade, that matter is between Z and the team that receives him. Z might want to return to the Cavs because his ties to the team are so deep, because of his loyalty to Ferry, or because he'd like a shot at a ring, even if it means riding the end of the bench. But it would be wise to not assume any of that.

It might come down to the decision to sacrifice Z, his tenure with the Cavs and everything he has meant to the team in the LeBron James era, for a better shot at a title -- and maybe by extension, a better shot at keeping LeBron happy and in a Cavs uniform after this season.

It might be heartbreaking for Ferry to make that trade, but considering what's at stake, the heartbreak could become exponentially worse if Ferry doesn't find the right trade and execute it between now and the February trade deadline.

Remembering why I'm thankful

2009-11-25T18:38:00.003-05:00

In Cleveland, you have to want to be thankful.

In a town where the economy is badly damaged, jobs are drying up, the population is shrinking and the sports teams haven't delivered a major league professional title in 45 years, it's incredibly easy to focus on the ways in which we're the gum on the bottom of fate's shoe. It's far too easy to look down the road and see a Cleveland in which LeBron James has left and is winning championships elsewhere, in which casinos have become a failed experiment that haven't driven any type of growth except crime.

It's way too easy to look to the heavens and ask, "What have you done for me lately?"

That's why we need the holiday season in this town.

Not the retail-driven, hyper-commercialized, big-box retailer, buy-the-perfect-present holidays. The holidays of quiet reflection, looking back on the past year and taking stock of your life.

It's fitting that Thanksgiving kicks off the season. Because before you can look to the spoils of Christmas morning and the hopeful promise of a new year, you need to remember what you have right now. Even if you need to search the folds of your brain for your source of gratitude, it's worth the time. You might even learn something about yourself in the process.

Need some encouragment? Let me set the example. Here are some of the things, great and small, that I'm thankful for this holiday season:

In Cleveland, I can make it across town in 35 minutes

When you get right down to it, Cleveland is just the right size. Big enough to be a substantial metropolitan area, but not so big that commuting becomes a migraine-inducing struggle. In most cities, major traffic jams are a fact of life and urban commuting is a part-time job that you hold in addition to your full-time job.

It's been driven home to me the past couple of years, ever since my girlfriend (now fiancee and wife by next September) moved here from the Toledo area. I live on the west side. My fiancee lives in Lake County. We often drive back and forth to see each other during the week, despite the fact that our apartment complexes are separated by 27 miles.

In Cleveland, it's possible. In Atlanta, for instance, it would be a lot more difficult. Atlanta's outerbelt is often choked with traffic by mid-afternoon. Their rush hour commonly lasts 3-4 hours, and their non-rush hour daytime traffic is like Cleveland's rush hour volume.

Three successful 5Ks

I've been running on a fairly regular schedule for almost two years. But it wasn't until this past summer when I decided to start taking running more seriously.

I always hated running growing up. It made my sides hurt and my lungs burn. But I decided to, in small increments, fight through my body's temper tantrums and get myself to the point where I could run a sustained 3.1 miles. In October, I ran my first 5K and won the second place award for my age group. I ran two other races in October and November.

Am I fast? not by a long shot. I run 5Ks in about half an hour. But I ran them, I didn't sustain any injuries and I can officially say I've taken a path in life that I thought I'd never take. It leads to a finish line at the end of a road race.

I'm looking forward to more 5Ks, and maybe 10Ks, in 2010.

Sunsets over Lake Erie

One of the great advantages of spending time in Lake County is that the Lake Erie shoreline starts to veer sharply to the northeast. As a result, each summer you get a front-row view for some of the best water sunsets east of California.

Sometimes, you can kind of forget that Cleveland is, at its heart, a marine city. A drive up the Lake Erie coast at sunset puts you back in touch with your inland sea roots.

Melt Bar and Grilled

Only about five miles from my apartment. A nationally-recognized sandwich paradise worth the trip -- when you can get a table, that is.

Every Cavs game I've seen in person since 2003

No matter what happens after this season, I've seen LeBron James play in person dozens of times. I've seen him bring 20,000 people to their feet with a mind-blowing dunk, an emphatic block, a physics-bending pass. I've been in the vortex of sound. I've seen with my own eyes what he is capable of.

And now, I can also say that I've seen Shaquille O'Neal in person. Time is running out for that.

Jim Tressel's continued dominance of Michigan

I'm marrying into a family of Michigan and Detroit fans. The benefits are immeasurable.

Three ballparks within easy driving distance

So the Indians aren't winning? Don't find the atmosphere at The Prog to be all that fulfilling? There is always the Lake County Captains at Classic Ballpark, and the Lake Erie Crushers at one of the hidden gems of the Cleveland area, All-Pro Freight Stadium in Avon. I frequent all three parks in the summer, but the Crushers' digs are quickly becoming a favorite.

Oberin College's campus

I first visited the campus in 2006. You might have your opinions about the college or the town, but the square at the center of campus is a great, and picturesque, relaxing place. I try to get out to Oberlin just to walk around and snap photos at least once or twice a year.

Failing at failing

2009-11-22T14:54:00.004-05:00

What the Browns did in losing to Detroit 38-37 on Sunday was pretty remarkable.

Yeah, they built a 24-3 lead after weeks and weeks of historic offensive ineptitude. Yeah, they entirely blew said lead. Yeah, they rallied to take a 37-31 lead into the final minutes. And, yeah, they had the game won until Hank Poteat's pass interference call turned a game-ending Brodney Pool interception into first-and-goal with no time on the clock.

And, I might add, the ensuing Browns timeout gave Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford a chance to recover from an injury suffered when he was leveled on the final timed play. Stafford dragged himself back into the game and threw the winning touchdown pass to Brandon Pettigrew with literally triple zeroes on the game clock.

But none of that is as amazing as the fact that I felt absolutely nothing afterward. Don't misinterpret that. I didn't feel numb. I felt nothing as in, I changed the channel and busied myself doing other things.

Leave it to the Browns: They don't even know how to frustrate me properly anymore.

Sunday's game had all the makings of a thriller. No lead was safe. Stafford and Brady Quinn were slinging the ball like Dan Marino and Johnny Unitas. Stafford finished with 422 yards passing and a 112.7 QB rating. Quinn finished with 304 yards and a 133.1 rating. Neither team relied much on their ground games. Jamal Lewis was the contest's leading rusher, with 75 yards on 24 carries.

Three touchdown passes in the game covered 40 yards or more: Quinn touchdowns to Mohamed Massaquoi (59 yards) and Chansi Stuckey (40 yards), and a Stafford hookup with Calvin Johnson (75 yards).

And that's before you even get to the screwball ending -- a Browns speciality since returning to the league in 1999.

This game was the direct descendent of the '90s run-and-shoot fad. Of Air Coryell and the American Football League. Observed through the lens of a single football game between two teams, this was everything that makes you want to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and watch football. You don't even have to be a fan of either of the teams playing to enjoy a high-scoring shootout. It's great TV, and probably even better in person.

But it was impossible to take Sunday's game without context. And the context is what made this game about as compelling as a marathon research session involving dusty encyclopedia volumes at the local library.

Both teams were 1-8 heading into play. They were bottom feeders at the season's outset, and have actually been worse than advertised. They were consigned to the trash heap a while back. The Lions, who play indoors at climate-controlled Ford Field, only drew a crowd of 43,000, microscopic by NFL standards. The lack of a sellout lowered a blackout on more than half of the state of Michigan, and most of northwest Ohio.

If anything, this game should have been shown outside of Michigan and Ohio, in markets that just wanted to see an entertaining football game. Instead, most of the country got a far-more-meaningful but lower-scoring wrestling match between Indianapolis and Baltimore, won by the still-unbeaten Colts 17-15.

In Ohio, and I can only guess in Michigan as well, this game was killed, gutted and cooked before it even arrived in the kitchen. From the standpoint of a Browns fan, it really didn't matter what Quinn did today against a terrible Lions pass defense. It didn't matter what receiver stepped up. It didn't matter if Lewis found the fountain of youth for one more game. It didn't matter if Kamerion Wimbley looked like an actual pass rusher for one game.

It just didn't matter because the Browns are toast this year, there is a strong possibility that they're headed for another rebuild, that the coaching staff is going to be replaced and the roster once again gutted by a different decision-maker with different philosophies on building a team.

Essentially, this was an exhibition game that occurred about three months too late. There is no way this game could serve as a building block. There is no way this game could serve as any pinpoint of light, foretelling of better days ahead. Not against the post-Matt Millen Lions, a team that is 2-8 and already two wins better than last season.

Actually, this wasn't an exhibition game. Exhibition games generally accomplish something, even if it's just paring down the roster. You find out something about your team -- or at least your players -- during the preseason.

This game was an old-timers reunion game played by 20- and 30-somethings. The Browns and Lions should have been wearing sneakers on the feet and flags on their belts. And what happens at the end of an old timers' game? You grab a beer and reminisce about the glory days. Really, as a Browns fan, what else is there right now?

The Browns didn't just fail on Sunday. They failed their fail. They took a game that should have had some meaning, a game with an ending that should have made me grumpy for the rest of Sunday and a good portion of Monday, and turned it into nothing with their performance in the previous nine games.

Here is the message the Browns' big thinkers need to hear: Want to get fans up for these kinds of games? Play them in September, when the season still has a pulse, before your radio broadcasts become background static for home winterization projects. Then use the momentum from those games -- some of which you'll hopefully win -- to carry the team into fan-drawing, late-season contests that have this foreign substance on them called "playoff implications."

As of now, I really don't care if Quinn outduels Dan Fouts circa 1981. It's way too little, way too late to make me care.

Building the perfect Pippen

2009-11-16T20:36:00.010-05:00

The Cavaliers were lauded for their team chemistry all last season. They played as one, stood as one, cheered as one, won as one. They did it for 82 regular season games and two playoff sweeps.

So what if the Cavs roster lacked the top to bottom talent of the Magic, Lakers and Celtics? The 2008-09 Cavs were a shining examples of a team as greater than the sum of its parts. It wasn't about LeBron James finding his Scottie Pippen or his Shaquille O'Neal. It was about team. All for one, one for all, as the Cavs' marketers will tell you.

We believed it, right up until the Magic ended the innocence in six games of the Eastern Conference Finals. The teamwork withered against Orlando's vexing matchup challenges. LeBron turned himself into a one-man scoring show and killed the offense in the process. His teammates couldn't hit shots. Mike Brown's coaching was woefully inadequate.

The disappointing loss scrawled over the poetry of last season, and got people both inside and outside the organization thinking about basketball, once again, as more of a science than an art.

Danny Ferry went out and got what he hopes is a reasonable facsimile of Shaq in 37-year-old, past-his-prime Shaq. You might have to sit him sometimes, just to save some tread on his tires, but if last week's road wins at Orlando and Miami are any indication, he still has enough strength and savvy to help a team win when it counts the most.

Ferry's stabs at adding height to the perimeter have panned out reasonably well so far. Anthony Parker has found a home as the starting shooting guard. Jamario Moon's productivity has escalated over the past couple of weeks.

But something else happened over the summer, away from the rolling cameras. It involves LeBron, J.J. Hickson and a mentoring relationship that goes a lot deeper than most.

Over the summer, LeBron took a personal interest in the Cavs' second-year power forward. As a 20-year-old, Hickson had a difficult rookie season in the NBA. He averaged 4 points and 2.7 rebounds in 62 games before a back injury ended his season early. He often looked overwhelmed at the professional level after spending just one season at North Carolina State. Hickson showed flashes of his raw talent, but was frequently a defensive liability, and Brown yanked him from games early and often.

A youngster buried on a team of established veterans, a team with championship aspirations that couldn't afford to let him play through his growing pains, Hickson appeared destined to join Shannon Brown and Luke Jackson among the host of recent Cavs first-round draft busts.

But circumstances aligned differently for Hickson, who might stand to become the Cav who benefits the most from the team's unceremonious playoff ouster last spring.

For LeBron's entire NBA career, the Cavs have tried to pair him with a frontline second scorer -- his own Scottie Pippen, if you will. While it's folly to think that just because the sidekick formula worked for Michael Jordan, it is a necessary ingredient for every superstar-led championship team, there is logic in the idea that a superstar would want a legitimate second scorer alongside him, someone else that the opposing defense has to worry about stopping each night.

The attempts date back to Ricky Davis in LeBron's rookie season. That didn't work so well. The Larry Hughes experiment could have gone better. When Mo Williams arrived, it was the closest thing to a Jordan/Pippen, Magic Johnson/James Worthy two-man setup we had seen during the LeBron Era.

But against Orlando, Mo regressed into a spot-up jump shooter, which choked off his dribble-driving, pesky-energy game. He looked like anything but a Pippen figure against the Magic.

When LeBron shuffled into the offseason, he was once again a king without an attendant. Maybe that's why he didn't just take Hickson under his wing this summer. He virtually turned him into a blood relative.

If no one else was going to provide him with a Pippen, LeBron was going to build his own Pippen. Hickson is the subject of his grand experiment. Talented enough to be a legitimate second option scorer, young enough to be molded.

True to his best-at-everything approach to life, LeBron didn't cut any corners. Hickson jetted around the country with LeBron, working out with him, appearing at basketball camps, eating meals and spending leisure time with LeBron.

In one summer, LeBron gave Hickson a thorough grounding in NBA basketball -- how to play it, how to live it, how to operate as part of a team.

Now that the season has started, LeBron has begun to test-drive his new creation. He has frequently taken a backseat at the basket, preferring to set up Hickson for his shots. Mo and Shaq -- likely at the urging of LeBron -- have done the same.

It was ultimately Brown's decision to move Hickson into the starting lineup the weekend before last, but it wouldn't shock me if behind-the-scenes campaigning from LeBron had something to do with the change. It was likely a move born from Hickson's marked progress in practice, plus Brown's willingness to trust that his superstar will do what it takes to make the lineup change work.

So far, the change has been an amazing success. The increased playing time has worked wonders for Hickson, who in his first four starts vaulted from six points in 13 minutes against the Knicks a week ago Friday to 20 points in 38 minutes in this past Saturday's win over the Jazz. In that game, he scored on drives and jump shots, and -- as The Plain Dealer's Brian Windhorst pointed out in his game notes -- was on the floor for the final play of a close game. That is a major vote of confidence from Brown. It means that Hickson is now truly being treated as a starter.

Four games is a very small sample size, and he's still making plenty of sloppy mistakes, such as losing his handle on the ball and failing to cleanly handle passes. But for the first time in his young career, it seems like Hickson's deep reservoir of raw talent has been tapped.

If Hickson demonstrates continued progress over the remainder of the season, the Cavs have just found a starting forward for years to come. A starting forward who can probably average 16 to 20 points per game, and with some more fundamental work on defense, can easily average seven to eight rebounds per game.

All of which begs the question, if LeBron is putting this much time and effort into turning Hickson into an integral part of the Cavs' future plans, why would he ditch Hickson at the end of the season to go elsewhere? LeBron isn't trying to do the Cavs a favor by grooming his replacement. The world of professional sports doesn't work like that. He's not developing a close relationship with Hickson just to be nice. He can be friends with Hickson and show him the ropes without turning him into a personal protege.

It seemingly wouldn't make a lot of sense for LeBron to go to these lengths to groom Hickson if he didn't intend to stick around and reap the benefits.

Of course, there is a lot of basketball left to be played between now and next summer. Time will tell how much the lessons of LeBron impact Hickson. Time will tell if Hickson does, in fact, develop into LeBron's second-option, Scottie Pippen sidekick figure.

But if he does, you'd have to believe that LeBron would have a hard time justifying leaving the known for the unknown of the struggling Knicks or Nets, or a potentially-complicated and delicate balancing act with Dwyane Wade on an otherwise-threadbare roster in Miami -- and taking an upfront pay cut from what the Cavs can offer to do so.

There are seven and a half months for all that to shake out. But it appears that J.J. Hickson has suddenly -- or maybe not-so-suddenly -- become a key player who could help determine the future plans of both LeBron and the Cavs.

Sending a message

2009-11-08T21:58:00.008-05:00

Next Monday, the eyes of the football-watching world will somehow find their way to Cleveland via ESPN. That's because, somehow, the Browns found their way onto the Monday Night Football schedule for 2009.

It's a divisional game versus the Ravens, an AFC Championship Game participant a year ago. Outside of Baltimore, Cleveland and the football junkie section of the U.S. population -- the kind that would watch the Rams play the Lions, even with no rooting interest, just because it's football -- there is no reason for anybody to build their evening around this game.

The Ravens, trendy Super Bowl picks at the outset of the season, are kind of sputtering along at 4-4. They'll be coming into town fresh off a 10-point loss to the suddenly-successful Bengals, stuck in the wild card chase pack behind Pittsburgh and San Diego.

The Browns are 1-7, and needed a botched kick return to even get the "1" on their record. They haven't even been competitive in six of their seven losses.

When these two teams met in Week 3, the game was so comically lopsided that Brady Quinn was benched for Derek Anderson halfway through. Anderson injected maybe half a quarter of life into a stone-dead Browns offense, but the Ravens still cruised to a 34-3 win.

It's a game ESPN would probably like to hand back to CBS for Sunday airing. The Browns would probably just as soon skip out on the national publicity right now, too. A 27-point pounding is bad enough on a regional Sunday broadcast. A 27-point pounding in front of the nation -- an apathetic nation, granted, but still all 50 states -- is exponentially worse.

It is against this backdrop of an underachieving football team playing a bottom feeder on the NFL's biggest weekly stage that an enterprising Browns fan would like those of you unlucky enough to have tickets to tell Randy Lerner, and the nation, how you really feel about the state of your team.

"Dawg Pound Mike" Randall, one of the more visible Browns fans (you can tell it's him by the giant dog bone he wears on his head), along with fellow Browns fan Tony Schafer, want everyone in attendance to refrain from entering the seating bowl prior to kickoff. Just long enough to let ESPN begin their broadcast and present their establishing stadium shots with no one in the stands.

It seems the primary objective of Randall and Schafer is to create more accountability on the part of Lerner and the front office. He wants Lerner to address the fans publicly and take his verbal lumps for the sorry state of the Browns organization.

Randall and Schafer received several thousand e-mails from other fans supporting their stance and demanding more accountability out of Lerner and the team's football decision-makers. They presented some of the e-mails to Lerner during a meeting last week, The Plain Dealer reported.

If Randall and Schafer want to lead a demonstration, fine. Public demonstrating has been an integral part of the American experience ever since a few guys threw crates of tea into Boston Harbor. But if Randall and his crew want real change and real accountability, a delayed mass sit-down in front of a disinterested nation isn't the way to do it.

Why? A few points:

1. You're not telling Lerner anything he doesn't already know.

The team is awful. The fans are upset. We demand answers. We want the responsible feet held to the fire for this mess. Lerner knows this.

It's not like he's going to see an semi-empty stadium, possibly receive an inbox full of hate-mail, and suddenly have a grand epiphany in which he finally realizes that the team is awful, the fans are angry and he'd better do something about it.

Lerner knows the state of the team. The trouble is, his attempts to change the team's fortunes have gone only slightly better than the Hindenburg's attempt to land at a windy airfield in Lakehurst, N.J. in 1937.

In other words, don't mistake incompetence for inattentiveness. Lerner isn't failing as an NFL owner because he's not listening to the fans' pleas for change. He's failing as an NFL owner because his administrative decisions have been terrible.

2. Fan protests, as a general rule, don't improve team performance.

Orioles fans staged a walkout from a game at Camden Yards in 2006. Pirates fans tried the same tactic with a planned walkout in 2007. Management of those teams obviously heard their fans loud and clear. The Orioles just finished a last-place 64-98 season. The Pirates just finished a last-place 62-99 campaign. Both protests have been long forgotten by the baseball-watching public.

Voice your frustration all you want. Just don't expect the management of your favorite, struggling team to suddenly turn over a new leaf. Or in the case of the Pirates, find the money to compete with the big-market bullies.

3. The nature of the protest seems flawed.

The primary problem I see with a delayed sit-down is Randall, Schafer and their backers are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. To enter the stadium and hang out on the concourse until kickoff is kind of like trying to send McDonald's a message by continuing to eat there, but only using the drive-through instead of walking through the restaurant door. In the end, you're still plunking your money down and shoveling their food into your esophagus.

The walk-in protest has drawn enough national attention that ESPN and the people around the nation who do tune in will know why the stands are next to empty at kickoff, if this protest indeed is a success. So in that sense, it will draw attention. But there will be other establishing shots over the course of the game, other blimp shots, other pans of the crowd. It seems like it wouldn't make a very strong statement if the opening shots show empty stands and the halftime shots show a raucous, supportive crowd.

You want to support the players, even if you're angry at management. You also paid a lot of money for those seats that get you on TV. I get that. But the net result might be a wishy-washy protest that generates little to none of the desired effect -- which is apparently to make a lasting statement about the fans' displeasure with the state of their team. You're going to have a heck of a time making that kind of impression if you're still in attendance and spending your money on concessions and merchandise.

4. With that in mind, there is one sure way to make your voice heard.

As a fan, what is the one variable you control in all of this? What is the one foolproof way you can let Browns management know you're unhappy with their job performance?

You might be sitting on it right now. It's called your wallet.

If you aren't happy with how Randy Lerner is running the Browns, answer with apathy. How do you do that? You don't buy tickets. You don't purchase or renew your season ticket plans. You don't buy the gear, you don't buy concessions, you don't go out of your way to watch the team on Sundays.

You let the team play in front of dwindling crowds with sagging TV ratings. You send NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell unmistakable signs that the bungling of Lerner and his minions is wilting what has historically been one of the NFL's strongest fan bases.

You, as a lone fan, can't put the screws to Lerner. But as a unified force of disposable income-spending football fans, you can send a message to the guy who can put the screws to Lerner. The one main guy who outranks Lerner in the NFL hierarchy. The one guy who can, if necessary, pressure Lerner into selling the team.

If you're among those who are going to join Dawg Pound Mike in playing to the cameras next Monday, have fun with it. Just don't expect it to make Lerner jump out of his chair or make Eric Mangini sweat bullets.

The real protest that fans can initiate is much quieter. It's the sound of cash registers not ringing and silent televisions on Sunday afternoons.

Randy's last stand

2009-11-05T19:23:00.012-05:00

Color me a daylong sucker, but while most Browns fans think Randy Lerner would rather be watching soccer, I think he still cares a great deal about the Browns.

I think this season in particular has gnawed at his stomach like no other. I think the staredown of his team as they left the field at halftime of last Sunday's loss to the Bears was the product of real anger, not something contrived for the cameras.

The problem is, emotional attachment alone doesn't make you a good owner. If it did, we could all own a professional sports team and do quite well at it. The compounding problem is, Lerner doesn't seem to realize that. It's that fact that is killing the Cleveland Browns.

Lerner is stuck between two lines of thinking. On one hand, he's a fan. He's the son of the deceased patriarch of the expansion franchise. He has ties to the Browns going back decades. He has a lot tugging on his heartstrings when it comes to this franchise.

On the other hand, it really seems like he doesn't want to be bothered with the grunt work of organization building. He keeps looking for the one leader who can singlehandedly take the Browns, turn them around and make it all better. In his desperate search for that football mind, he's been swayed by the likes of Phil Savage and Eric Mangini, neither of whom deserved the level of authority they were given.

At this point, it's probably folly to think Lerner is going to reform, that he's going to suddenly develop organizational leadership skills that he hasn't exhibited before. With that in mind, it would appear that Lerner is doomed as an NFL owner, as his Browns continue to sink to horrifying depths that would make an outside observer believe that, sooner or later, something has to give.

But there is one pinhole of light remaining for Lerner. One last stand he can take before casting his ownership regime to the recycle bin of NFL history -- or before someone such as NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell forces him to do it.

And the best news for Lerner is, it involves someone else making the football decisions.

From my seat, I can look past all the ineptitude, bad decisions and muddying of the Browns name that has occurred on Randy Lerner's watch if he will make his last effort to put a winner on the field his best one.

Lerner needs to use his inherited deep pockets to hire an experienced football organization builder. Keep working on Ernie Accorsi if he's not yet entirely open to coming out of retirement for a few years. If you're going to tap the Patriots for anything, tap them for Floyd Resse, who reportedly was waiting to hear from the Browns last winter.

There is a method to making this happen, and in principle, it's not all that difficult. You find a football organization leader and roster builder with a track record of being really good at what he does, and you hire him to do that job. You don't hire big names or word-on-the-street up-and-comers, and give them more control and responsibility than they've ever had in their careers. That's not foundation-building. That's dice-rolling.

Once the Accorsi or Reese figure is in place, you give him the authority to hire a former coordinator as head coach, or an uber-scout to groom as his successor, because he'll likely have had success making those kinds of judgments about football people.

Even if the foundation-builder Lerner hires is up there in years and only intends to hold the job long enough to get the wheels of progress turning and groom a successor, it's still miles better than what Lerner has right now. It's still miles better than anything the Browns have had since returning to the league 10 years ago.

Experience and competence at the organization's highest rungs tends to directly correlate with success on the field. The last time the Browns had an experienced football man running the show from 30,000 feet was the last time they fielded a contender. Accorsi was the chief architect of the Bernie Kosar-led Browns of 1985-92.

Now, Lerner has a chance to perhaps reunite Accorsi and Kosar as mentor and protege, if he can do enough convincing and wave enough greenbacks around. Kosar might make a fine NFL executive. He certainly has the brains, coupled with a deep desire to return to football. But if Lerner were to hire him as team president or GM outright, it likely would fall under the same general heading of placing authority in the hands of someone who is not adequately trained to handle it.

The final piece of the puzzle is acceptance on the part of Lerner. If the experienced football operations director he hires wants to dismiss Mangini, or if Mangini himself doesn't want to submit to an extra layer of authority, then Mangini is gone with no questions from ownership. If the incoming leader thinks the system is bad and the roster stinks, and he needs to blow it all up and start from scratch, so be it.

If things need to get worse before they get better, it's still an improvement over things getting worse, then declining even further.

For Lerner, the stakes are even higher than wins and losses and ticket sales. The condition in which Lerner leaves the Browns will determine how the Lerner name is remembered in the high-profile pantheon of NFL owners. For all the self-made success Al Lerner created, for all of the Lerner family's philanthropic endeavors, if Randy Lerner leaves the Browns as a mess, that's what the public will associate the Lerner name with from here on out.

Randy knows that. That's a big reason why he has been hesitant to cut his losses, sell the team and move on. But it's becoming clear that the Browns cannot continue in their current state of tumult without increasingly severe levels of fallout reaching Lerner. Sooner rather than later, he'll be forced to the crossroads of either improving the organization or letting go.

Lerner almost certainly has only one bullet left in the chamber. He can probably make one more significant regime change before he is forced to sell the team.

He needs to make this one count. He needs to make the hire he should have made in the first place.

Acting on Acta

2009-10-26T21:53:00.003-04:00

As the Manny Acta Era begins in Cleveland, I have a confession to make:

When word reached the media that the Indians had whittled their managerial search down to four names, I wanted the biggest name of the bunch. I wanted Bobby Valentine.

I wanted Valentine because he has loads of experience, he's been managing pretty much nonstop since 1996, and above all, he's the ultimate anti-Mark Shapiro guy.

Valentine is an old-school manager like Mike Hargrove, but with an eccentric personality that I thought would be a breath of fresh air in an Indians organization that had become bogged down with Moneyball-style analysis and process worship. I wanted Valentine to come in on the first day of spring training wearing Groucho Marx glasses and slinging shaving cream like Trot Nixon. Anything to make baseball fun again for the Tribe's now-youthful roster.

Then, Valentine came to town for the in-person portion of his interview. No one knows what went on behind closed doors, but when Valentine met with the media, he gave a series of rambling responses to questions, ultimately admitting that he did very little research on the Indians or the American League in preparation for his meeting with Team Shapiro.

That in and of itself shouldn't have excluded Valentine from consideration. There will be time to memorize every name on the 40-man roster. I'd be more concerned with his coaching philosophies than whether he can rattle off every pitcher who toed the rubber for the Indians this past season. But what it did show was a lack of preparedness, which could be indicative of Valentine not taking the job opportunity seriously enough.

After that interview, Valentine was all but excluded from consideration. That left Acta, Dodgers bench coach Don Mattingly and Columbus Clippers manager Torey Lovullo.

Of those, the Indians wanted Acta by far the most. He was the lone remaining candidate with Major League managerial experience, a progressive thinker who values the baseball numbers game and a virtual walking encyclopedia of Major League Baseball rosters.

In short: Acta is a Shapiro guy. Like Wedge was a Shapiro guy. But maybe even more so. When the Indians officially hired Acta as the franchise's 40th manager on Sunday, you'd have to think Shapiro was walking on air.

The hire came as something of a surprise, considering that the Astros -- a team with significantly deeper pockets than the Indians and an aggressive owner in Drayton McLane -- had also offered Acta their vacant manager's position. But when Acta and the Astros reportedly had trouble coming to terms on money, the door slid open and Shapiro got his man.

So what did the Indians get in Acta? And how, exactly, is a guy with so many philosophical similarities to Shapiro going to clean out the cobwebs of the Wedge Era?

He can start by relating to players better than Wedge was relating to them by the end of his tenure.

Wedge was decidedly new-school in some ways, but in terms of handling players, he was a modern-era John McGraw tough guy. I'm convinced that Wedge saw himself as something like a spaghetti western Clint Eastwood, and expected the same from his players. Be the strong, silent type. If you're hurt and you can still move, shut your yap and play through the pain. Complaining equals whining equals weakness.

Of course, we all know that a clubhouse of 25 guys is going to contain many different types of personalities. Some can play the role of the lone cowboy, as Wedge idealized. Some are a little more high-maintenance than that. Those are the guys Acta will have to do a better job of connecting with.

Acta will also need to develop a rapport with, and teach, some of the Latin American players that floundered under Wedge. This is a critical connection, because Acta shares a common broad background with the Tribe's foriegn-born Latino players. Born in the Dominican Republic, Acta is the first native Latin American manager in Tribe history. Al Lopez, Dave Garcia and Pat Corrales -- Acta's former Nationals assistant coach -- were all Tribe managers of Latin American descent, but all were born in the U.S.

Players from Latin American baseball factories such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are, in many cases, taught the game differently than the far-more-structured upbringing that governs the maturation of American-born baseball players. In the U.S., players move from Little League to travel teams to AAU ball, high school ball, advanced summer leagues and maybe college before ever playing a single pitch of pro ball. By then, a U.S.-born player could be 22 or 23.

Acta followed the route that so many young Caribbean players take. He was signed by the Astros as a 17-year-old and was in Double-A ball by 20. He had to learn American baseball on the fly while still a teenager.

Maybe Acta can turn Fausto Carmona and Rafael Perez around, or maybe he can't. But it's an important element to his new job. Carmona represents the front of Acta's rotation next year, and Perez a key member of the back of his bullpen. If his background as a young Latino player can help him reach the young Latino players on the roster, that would be a huge asset for Acta.

One thing you shouldn't hold against Acta is his won-loss record in two-plus seasons as manager of the Nationals. Nor should you assume that just because he was fired by the worst team in baseball midseason, he must be no good.

John Lannan, he of the 9-13 record and 3.88 ERA, was Washington's best starting pitcher last season. He made 33 starts. The Nationals' rotation also included Jordan Zimmerman (3-5, 4.63), Garrett Mock (3-10, 5.62, 28 starts), Shairon Martis (5-3, 5.25) and Craig Stammen (4-7, 5.11). Washington's lineup was topped by Ryan Zimmerman (.295, 33 HR, 106 RBI), Adam Dunn (.267, 38 HR, 105 RBI) and Josh Willingham (.260, 24 HR, 61 RBI). Beyond that, no one cracked 60 RBI or even double digits in home runs.

In short, the Nats' struggles had a lot more to do with the experience level and talent on their roster than anything Acta did or did not do. And when teams lose, managers tend to get fired, deserved or not.

So aren't the Indians in the same boat with the experience/talent question? Quite possibly. But apparently Acta developed an interest in building young teams, or he wouldn't have taken the Indians job.

It's that interest that makes him an intriguing choice to take the reins on this lastest Tribe rebuild.

If Acta is a Shapiro type of guy, that's not entirely a bad thing. It means he's organized, understands the value of making sound administrative decisions and won't make those decisions without the data to back them up.

The fact that Acta is a Shapiro-type guy who believes in Shapiro's organizational principles, yet isn't a product of the Indians organization, might mean that we could have the best of both worlds: a forward-thinking manager who isn't institutionalized by the Indians Way. A guy on the same philosophical page as the front office, but with enough outside influence to bring some different perspectives to the table.

There will be time for the big picture to become clearer. For now, he has to get down to business with his players, which he'll start doing this week. Those are the relationships that will, in the end, determine if Acta's tenure in Cleveland is a success, and whether Acta falls closer to Wedge or Hargrove in the pantheon of Cleveland managers.

Cleveland's Cubs

2009-10-20T21:57:00.007-04:00

There were six of us at dinner on Sunday night, at a Toledo-area restaurant. My fiancee Jane and I had returned to the city of her more formative years to finally nail down a reception site and a wedding date for late next summer.

Joining us at the dinner table were her parents -- Detroit fans who had moved the family to the outskirts of Toledo about 20 years ago -- and my parents, who had made a daylong trip from Cleveland to assist the four of us in the reception site selection process. My parents, like me, are Cleveland natives saddled with a lifelong attachment to Cleveland sports.

Inevitably, the conversation among the men at the table turned to football and the common thread of losing shared by the Lions and Browns. This past Sunday came and went like so many other Sundays before. While the Browns were busy enduring a 12th straight loss to the Steelers, the Lions were in the process of getting rolled by the Packers 26-0. It was Detroit's 19th straight loss to the Packers in Wisconsin.

The football talk ran out of steam, and the conversation turned into a comparison of how Detroit and Cleveland sports are bottomless pits of misery -- subjectively speaking based on where you live, of course. We have LeBron and Shaq, but no championships in 45 years. They can actually remember the last time a Detroit team won a title, but they've mostly been Stanley Cups by the Red Wings, which doesn't really have any bearing on NHL-devoid Cleveland. As far as the Lions, Tigers and Pistons are concerned, the less said, the better.

Just then, my mom interjected in that way that so many moms do when it comes to sports -- vaguely on topic, but kind of not really.

"You know, your grandma remembers being downtown and watching the parade the last time the Indians won the World Series."

A brief background was provided for Jane's folks: That would be 1948.

Jane's dad didn't miss a beat in asserting that ever-so-slight advantage of Detroit over Cleveland. The Tigers last won a World Series in 1984.

"Wow, that's 61 years ago," he said, drawing out "sixty-one" for full effect.

My dad and I didn't bother counting the several near misses for the edification of Jane's dad. The 1995 team with the lineup for the ages but not enough pitching to match the Atlanta Braves, and more specifically, Tom Glavine. The 1997 team that got hot at the right time, scored improbable upsets over the Yankees and Orioles in the AL playoffs, fended off a 3-2 series deficit against the Marlins in the World Series, held a 2-0 lead going into the middle innings of Game 7, and ... well ...

More recently, there was the 2007 team that had a 3-1 series lead against the Red Sox in the ALCS, but fell victim to the playoff-inexperienced knock-knees of C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona, who crumbled right when their team needed them the most.

I know it has been 61 years for the Indians, but when someone from outside the Cleveland sports cocoon says it with an air of disbelief, it's kind of jolting. I dwelled on those near-miss Tribe teams for a few minutes while the conversation shifted to other topics. I thought about the thoroughly scary case of the Chicago Cubs, who are now working on 101 years without a World Series title.

It can get that bad. And I wonder if it might get that bad for the Indians, who are already six-tenths of the way to a century without a championship.

The conditions that created the gold rush of the 1990s might never come together again, unless the Indians manage to once again construct a lineup of borderline Hall of Famers just as they're moving into a new ballpark, with a title-hungry fan base eager to drop millions in disposable income on tickets and merchandise.

Six division titles in seven years? Those days are long gone, never to return without unforeseen positive developments. The Indians aren't designed to win that way.

The Indians are now designed to win the way baseball wants its small-market teams to win: once in a while.

For the longest time, I thought baseball wanted a salary cap. I thought Bud Selig, for all his warts as commissioner of Major League Baseball, was trying to fight the good fight and put teams like the Indians, Twins and Rockies on even ground with the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox.

Now, the salary cap talk has gotten strangely quiet since the last collective bargaining agreement. The Yankees and Red Sox are more popular than ever. The Yankees, Dodgers, Angels and Phillies -- all from the five largest U.S. markets -- comprised baseball's final four this year.

Baseball's leaders want it that way. They've wanted it that way since the days of Babe Ruth, but as the rich get richer and the less rich get less richer by comparison, the chasm only widens. And as the tectonic rift between baseball's made men and indentured servants continue to grow, teams like the Indians are going to find themselves just plain out of luck. Baseball's competitive system will be inherently weighted in favor of big market teams from now until the Rapture.

Unlike the NBA, and to a lesser extent the NFL, baseball is a sport that markets teams over players. MLB's lot is cast with the highest-profile teams that have the most name recognition among Joe Fan types from coast to coast. Certainly, the NBA wants to see pillar teams like the Lakers and Celtics in the playoffs, but baseball places far more weight on their money-maker teams to generate interest and draw viewers.

In short, baseball wants to see a steady diet of the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, Angels, Phillies and Mets in the playoffs. It's OK if the Indians, Twins or Rays rise up and go on a Cinderella run every so often. Fans like a good underdog story. But this isn't March Madness. Cinderella can't visit the ball every year, or one of baseball's wagon-pulling Clydesdales consistently misses the party.

A world in which the Indians can make the playoffs 15 times in 16 years is not a world that baseball wants to create. With that in mind, you can probably start engraving the headstone for baseball's would-be salary cap. The cause died sometime after the 1994 strike, and no one looks like they're going to bother reviving it anytime soon.

The Indians of the now-closing decade are the Indians of forthcoming reality. Out of contention 50 percent of time, on the outskirts of contention 40 to 45 percent of the time, and maybe a legitimate contender once or twice every 10 years.

Part of the problem is certainly how the Indians do business. The Dolans don't have the deep pockets to make risky investments on high-priced veteran players. Mark Shapiro and his staff have made errors in conducting drafts, free agent signings and trades. But at their best, all the Indians can probably every hope to become is the Minnesota Twins, racking up a few extra division titles, but seldom playing deep into October. Mostly because of where Johan Santana and C.C. Sabathia now pitch -- New York. The only market big enough to cater to their contract demands.

If nothing changes in the baseball landscape, you'll probably only need one hand, plus maybe a finger or two if we're lucky, to count the number of times the Indians will be able to mount a serious World Series run in the next 39 years. If opportunity only knocks once or twice a decade, you better be doggone sure you can answer the door. Unfortunately, it would be all too easy for the hand of fate, and better teams, to thwart a mere handful of playoff runs in the coming decades.

Jane's dad might have been shocked and awed by the title-bankrupt state of the Indians over the past six decades. But the real shock and awe is what might not happen over the next four decades.

If' I'm still around, I'll turn 69 in 2048. Our family dinner conversation in 2009 will probably have been long forgotten by then, but the Indians might still be plugging away with 1948 as their last entry in the World Series championship log. In fact, it's a highly probable outcome.

Even worse than that, the Indians might become trendsetters among small market and midmarket teams. Future generations might see further entries in the Century Club. The clock is already ticking on the Giants (2054), Expos/Nationals (2069), Brewers (2070), Pirates (2079), Orioles (2083) and Royals (2085), just to name a few.

Teardown mode

2009-10-15T22:16:00.006-04:00

This Browns season is a death march to an inevitable conclusion that ends with a very high draft pick, no present and only a future to look forward to. Maybe. But we've been down this road a few times before, so it's kind of easy to assume.

If you think the Browns's uninspiring win over Buffalo last weekend is a possible turning point, great for you. I'll take a win over a loss any day of the week, too. But as far progress? It wasn't exactly the Industrial Revolution.

A 6-3 win isn't going to get me through this Browns season. It really isn't going to offer any shelter in the storm. The only thing that makes me hopeful involves a sense of grim resignation about the team's current state.

New coaching regime. Bad team. Botched draft picks from the previous regime. Players who want out. The equation kind of solves itself.

The Browns aren't rebuilding. They haven't reached that point yet. Right now, Eric Mangini is in teardown mode. And that's the prism through which I'm viewing this season -- if only as a means of keeping my sanity.

The Browns are going to be a worse team at the end of the season than they were at the start of the season. They might be a worse team than they are right now, with the NFL's trade deadline approaching next Tuesday.

Teams in teardown mode get rid of players who don't fit the new coach's philosophies. Teams in teardown mode part ways with locker-room cancers and other dissenters within the ranks. That's especially true of the Mangini, who is making it crystal clear that it's his video game, and he has his hand on the joystick at all times.

So out the door went talented players with a tendency to provide their own sideshows, either with their mouths or actions. Kellen Winslow, playing on borrowed time with a reconstructed knee, was shown the door rather quickly by Mangini. It took an alleged fight outside a nightclub to get Braylon Edwards on the next train out of town, but in the aftermath of the incident, Mangini got on his tin-can-and-string to the Jets' front office and had Edwards traded in less than 48 hours.

Brady Quinn had 10 quarters to show his skills as the starting quarterback. When the Baltimore game got out of hand in Week 3, Quinn was ushered to the bench, and might not see action in a Browns uniform again. He is attempting to sell his house in Avon Lake, per reports this week. Quinn's stated excuse is that he doesn't want to commute 30 minutes one way from Avon Lake to Berea. He told reporters that he's "downsizing."

The slumping economy has his just about everyone with varying degrees of force, but Quinn shouldn't be surprised if fans and media find it a little suspicious that a guy making NFL first-round draft pick money is selling his house simply to decrease his commute time and save some green. Quinn also shouldn't be surprised if he's wearing another team's uniform (possibly green) by the weekend after next. Something tells me he really won't be.

So far, each move, each threatened move, I've approached with a deep breath and a sigh. Losing Winslow and Edwards means that they didn't work out here. It means that decreasing the talent level on the roster is better than moving forward with guys who are game-changers with flapping gums and maturity issues. OK, I can see the logic. When the plant you're trying to grow hasn't sprouted yet, it's best to remove all potential poisons from the soil. Winslow and Edwards possessed definite poison potential.

If Mangini trades Quinn, I won't be happy because I will still stand by my belief that Quinn didn't get a fair shake. He's been jerked around worse than Tim Couch in some ways. But two starting quarterbacks is one too many. More poison potential, so it's better to proceed with one QB for the immediate future. If Mangini believes that guy is Derek Anderson, fine. It's a decision. And this season really isn't about wins and losses anyway.

But the Browns have a way of taking your shoulder shrugs and turning them into wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is a team that has a knack for hitting its followers right where it hurts. Sometimes, it's not even the fault of the team. At least, not directly.

Thursday's report that Josh Cribbs wants a contract extension, and would possibly welcome a trade if the Browns don't give him what he wants, was another inventive way for something Browns-related to raise my blood pressure.

According to The Plain Dealer, the Browns probably won't trade Cribbs prior to Tuesday's deadline, unless Mangini is absolutely bowled over by an offer. Chances are, it's little more than posturing. In the NFL, where the players have very little bargaining power compared to their counterparts in Major League Baseball and the NBA, holdouts, threats of holdouts and trade demands are an often-used bargaining chip in contract negotiations.

But suppose negotiations get really contentious. Suppose Mangini won't budge. Suppose Mangini, who apparently isn't below playing God with his team, decides to call Cribbs' bluff and smite him with a trade, either before next week's deadline or during the coming offseason.

Call it the Butch Davis Rule. Davis believed that players were little more than movable pieces, and it didn't matter how talented or electrifying a player was, he was replaceable by someone younger, cheaper and more grateful just to have a spot on an NFL roster.

If Davis could have farmed special teams work out to a call center in India, he would have. I'd be lying if I said I didn't see a Davis streak in Mangini.

The problem with that line of thinking is, Josh Cribbs is really the only player the Browns have who is talented enough to be a star. Yes, Shaun Rogers is pretty darn good, as is Joe Thomas, but "star nose tackle" and "star offensive tackle" are both something of an oxymoron. They're supporting cast positions by nature.

Cribbs is the only player dangerous enough to force other teams to adjust their attack. He's the only player exciting enough to make fans stop raking the leaves on an Autumn Sunday and watch an opponent's punt. Sure, Cribbs' star has pretty much been limited to special teams, but he is one of the rare players who can actually change the complexion of a game by touching the ball only a handful of times.

If the relationship between Cribbs and Mangini becomes pocked and scarred by the battle over contract money, and Mangini feels like he can replace Cribbs with any Syndric Steptoe who comes down the pipe, I'm going to have a hard time believing any rationalization Mangini might have for trading Cribbs.

Draft picks were enough for Winslow and Edwards because they weren't part of Mangini's long-term plans, and they both wore out their welcome anyway. Draft picks would be enough for Quinn. In all three cases, the trades are and would be about subtraction as much as addition.

But Cribbs is different. Cribbs has been one of the few players, perhaps the only player, we could count on to consistently pique our interest in this dreary era of Browns football. He's a solid citizen, and by all indications, loves playing for the Browns, in spite of the losing. Unlike Winslow and Edwards, he's worth paying. He's worth building around, even if his specialty is, and probably always will be, returning kicks.

Despite the throwaway mentality that Mangini -- and most other NFL coaches -- have toward players, guys like Cribbs don't come in 24-packs at Costco.

I can rationalize Mangini's teardown mode mentality almost all the way. But if it comes to trading Cribbs, I just can't do it. In the backwards way of the Browns, he's a franchise kick returner. He's just about the only thing we have right now.

Mangini had better recognize that fact, and recognize the damage he'd do to the franchise's reputation -- and possibly ticket sales -- by trading Cribbs. Then, he'd better open up Randy Lerner's wallet and give one of the few Browns players who is worth a damn the raise he's seeking.

If Cribbs isn't worth paying, who on this roster is?

Braylon burnout

2009-10-07T09:56:00.006-04:00

It shouldn't have come to this. It really didn't need to come to this. Braylon Edwards shouldn't have failed in Cleveland.

Other high draft picks had their reasons for failure. Tim Couch came from a pass-happy system that inflated his college numbers at Kentucky, and was physically abused playing behind a Swiss cheese offensive line for the better part of five years with the Browns.

Courtney Brown's knees started to deteriorate the instant he suited up for the Browns. Gerard Warren was drafted to be the next Warren Sapp, but never possessed the skills or motor to dominate inside. Kellen Winslow came with warning tags when he was acquired by Butch Davis on draft day 2004, and promptly flipped himself over the handlebars of a high-performance motorcycle, severely injuring his knee and forever altering his career.

Edwards had his issues, but nothing that would make you think his road to NFL stardom would be curtailed. He was a certified top-shelf playmaker at Michigan. He was arrogant, but in the way that all star NFL receivers seem to embody arrogance. Unlike Winslow, he wasn't self-destructive.

He was very good and had the drive to become better. In short, he looked like the kind of star-in-the-making the Browns sorely lacked when Phil Savage made his first draft selection as Browns GM with the third overall pick in 2005.

But what began with such promise four and a half years ago has now ended in true Browns fashion: with the team failing the player and the player failing the team.

Most of us can recite verbatim the ways in which Edwards failed the Browns: every time he dropped a pass. He was never able to overcome his war with the dropsies. He could make twisting, diving catches in traffic, when he had time to simply react. When he had time to think about a ball headed straight for his jersey numbers, that's when it clanged off his body and fell to the turf.

Whether he didn't concentrate enough or concentrated too much, it was maddening to watch.

Edwards didn't do the Browns many public relations favors away from the field, either. When things went badly for the team, things went worse for Edwards. When he gets frustrated, he has a nasty habit of not keeping his mouth shut. He stated a belief that Cleveland fans were rooting against him because he played for Michigan. He once wondered aloud if LeBron James even wanted to play in Cleveland. When Coye Francies reportedly threw a bucket of ice at Brandon McDonald a few weeks ago as retaliation for a prank, Edwards was overheard saying "Welcome to the Browns locker room."

Edwards was even a footnote to Donte' Stallworth's vehicular manslaughter conviction. Edwards had reportedly been drinking with Stallworth prior to last spring's accident, in which a legally-drunk Stallworth hit and killed a pedestrian in Miami.

All of the above are forgivable sins when taken individually. Even the dropped passes, if they're not eliminated outright, can be reduced through coaching and sports psychology.

But the Browns, through their own organizational instability, failed Edwards as well. For his entire time in Cleveland, Edwards was surrounded by poor coaching, a carousel of quarterbacks, front office plans gone awry and repeated doses of infighting, in the locker room and higher up the ladder.

Edwards has his attributes. Maturity and leadership are not among them, at least right now. It's OK to have a Braylon Edwards on your team, but he'd better not represent a part of your cultural backbone. If the team backbone is already comprised of stable veterans who set the standards of conduct and police the locker room, someone like Edwards can thrive within that. Put Edwards in an unstable environment, and you'll bring out the worst in him. That is what the Browns have been way too good at for the past decade: highlighting the worst aspects of their players.

It became a snowball effect. Edwards arrived in Cleveland with a boatload of talent but in need of a stable team environment that would promote his maturation. The Browns didn't give him that, so the game-day brain cramps and questionable behavior started building on itself. Essentially, Edwards never progressed past his college years in terms of maturity.

He had a pro Bowl season in 2007, mostly because he finally had a quarterback in Derek Anderson who could get him the ball, and another receiver who could command double teams in Winslow. But in the Browns' system (or lack thereof), it was never anything that Edwards, or the Browns' offense, was going to sustain.

the '07 season was a blip on the radar. The other three-plus years were Edwards' Cleveland reality. Which brings us to the last straw. The chain of events that began with Edwards allegedly punching a friend of LeBron outside of a nightclub in the wee hours of Monday morning and ending with his trade to the Jets on Wednesday morning.

Edwards will probably go on to play at a much higher level in New York, where he'll grow in a much more stable organization. If that is the case, it will certainly look like the Jets hosed the Browns in giving up receiver Chansi Stuckey, special teamer Jason Trusnik and two conditional draft picks for Edwards.

But the real tragedy isn't that the Browns bought high and sold low on Edwards. It's not that Eric Mangini couldn't or didn't unload Edwards for a better haul during the season. The real tragedy is that this relationship was probably doomed from the start, like so many other Browns draft picks.

The real tragedy is that Edwards and the Browns could have been good for each other. They should have been good for each other. But they were terrible for each other. Wednesday's parting of ways was a long time in coming.

Want an even more sickening thought? This probably won't be the last time this happens to the Browns.

What never was

2009-09-30T20:20:00.010-04:00

The pinnacle of Eric Wedge's tenure as Indians manager came and went like so many other moments that marked his seven years at the helm.

It was on the precipice of something greater that would never be realized. It preceded a downfall. It was the beginning of the end.

If there was one moment in time to freeze from Wedge's now-ending tenure as Tribe manager, it was October 16, 2007. Game 4 of the American League Championship Series versus the Red Sox.

Already clutching a 2-1 series lead, the Indians battled Boston to a scoreless draw for four innings before exploding for seven runs in the fifth off Boston starter Tim Wakefield, highlighted by Casey Blake and Johnny Peralta homers. Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez answered with three straight solo home runs in the top of the sixth, but mustered no further damage. Jensen Lewis and Rafael Betancourt mopped up for starter Paul Byrd, and the Indians won 7-3, taking a 3-1 series lead.

One win away from the World Series. One win away from homefield advantage in the World Series and a Rockies team that was their competitive equal, if not inferior.

That is the snapshot of the Wedge era that we wish we could have and hold. The stands filled with Wahoo-clad, delirious fans, flooding the noisy streets around downtown after the game, honking car horns, reliving the late '90s, when this was all commonplace.

But it was fleeting. It was a prelude to heartbreak. It was the all-too-Cleveland career of Eric Wedge.

Looking back, October 16, 2007 was Wedge's watershed. Before that game, the Indians were building toward something. They were climbing the ladder of success. They had bottomed out in 2003, losing 94 games with a stripped-down, young team in Wedge's rookie managerial campaign.

They climbed to 80 wins in '04, including an August surge that made us believe that this team was on the verge of prime-time ready, even though a late-season swoon put a damper on things. Unfortunately, swoons and collapses haunted Wedge's club on more than one occasion.

The 2005 season was the breakout. Ninety-three wins and their hand on the destiny throttle heading into the season's last week. But a last-week collapse versus Tampa Bay and Chicago killed off a would-be wild card berth. The year after was marred by bad pitching, and the Indians fell to 78 wins.

But then came that magical '07 season. A snowy opening weekend wiped out an entire four-game series with Seattle. The Indians moved their next series, against the Angels, to Miller Park in Milwaukee. The hardship out of the gate seemed to galvanize the team, and the Indians had their only really successful April under Wedge.

The season ended with 96 wins, a division title and a first-round dispatch of the Yankees in four games. As the Indians carried their 3-1 series lead into Game 5 against Boston, it looked like the plan that Wedge and Mark Shapiro had hatched four years previous was about to reach fruition -- perhaps doing what Dick Jacobs, John Hart and Mike Hargrove couldn't: win a World Series.

But Josh Beckett outpitched C.C. Sabathia in Game 5. The Red Sox won, 7-1. And the meltdown was on. Games 6 and 7 at Fenway Park weren't close. Boston rallied to win the pennant, four games to three.

The Indians were never the same. As a manager, neither was Wedge. He won Manager of the Year honors, but the rockslide was already in progress.

What followed was a quick descent. Two years of slow starts quickly rendering the remainder of the season irrelevant, except for grooming young players for bigger roles down the road. Two years of purging the roster of veterans. Two years of sliding toward the inevitable conclusion that was reached on Wednesday, when Wedge's job was terminated, effective at the end of the season.

As so it was that Wedge fell, in the span of 24 months, from the cusp of the World Series to a Peralta groundout that ended the second game of Wednesday's doubleheader against the White Sox. In front of a sparse crowd on a chilly last night of September, Wedge managed and lost the last home game of his Tribe career, so very far away from recent history.

Wedge managed the Indians for seven years, longer than most managers get. He'll go into the record books as the fifth-winningest and third-losingest manager in Tribe history. His lofty standing among Cleveland managers speaks more to endurance than accomplishment. Only Lou Boudreau, Mike Hargrove and Tris Speaker will have managed more Indians games than Wedge when all is said and done this year.

For a low-key guy who preached stability and frowned upon sideshows and distractions in his clubhouse, Wedge will be continually linked to controversy in Cleveland sports circles. The media and fans took frequent issue with his game management skills, his bizarre fascination with players who can play multiple positions, his lack of extensive big-league playing experience on his coaching staff, and his use of the phrase "grind it out," which became part of the Cleveland sports lexicon, but not in a good way.

Most of all, he'll be remembered for walking in lockstep with Shapiro. Wedge will be remembered by the Cleveland baseball-watching masses as Shapiro's puppet, a front office lackey that Shapiro had, in the past, referred to as his "partner."

It's not entirely deserved. Shapiro and Wedge might have been involved in a game of circular back-scratching early on in their partnership, but as the past couple of seasons progressed, the groupthink started to disintegrate.

Some fans might argue that terminating Wedge was a move made to placate the ticket-buying public, who have been staying away from Progressive Field in droves. That's not true. Nobody in baseball thinks offering a manager up as a sacrificial lamb is going to directly solve the problem of lagging gate receipts on any level. If any baseball executive thinks that, he shouldn't be a baseball executive.

Bottom line, if Shapiro and Wedge were still seeing eye-to-eye, Wedge doesn't lose his job.

There will be time to debate the ups and downs of Wedge all winter, as the Indians commence the search for a new manager. Right now, what we have is a manager that was, Octobers that never were and the shaky prospect of what this team might be in several years.

It's a shame it had to end this way. Wedge wasn't the greatest manager in Tribe history, but he wasn't the inept buffoon some believe.

The past seven years could have been better. Maybe they should have been better. But the current reality is that the Indians are right back where they were when Wedge took over in 2003: at rock bottom and trying to claw their way back up through the American League.

Fortunately for Wedge, that's not his problem anymore.

Good guy, bad results

2009-09-28T21:27:00.011-04:00

The Browns have an owner, rumor has it. Rumor has it he also cares about the welfare of his team.

Rumor has it he's a lot more involved than the public realizes, that he comes to the Browns training complex in Berea a couple of times a week, has in-depth conversations with his coach and really, truly wants to know what is going on with his beaten, battered team.

Rumor has it that he wants nothing more than to restore the Browns to the glory of the black and white television era. Rumor has it that he has a heart of gold, uncompromising standards of excellence and a lifelong passion for the franchise his father bequeathed to him.

This is what we want to believe about Randy Lerner. We want to believe that he's dying inside as much as we are, watching this team founder, resurface and founder again, week after week. We want to believe that he's going to get the winning formula right. Every new coach, every new GM, every smack of the reset button gives Lerner another shot at redemption. At the very least, he's bound to stumble onto some good hires, right? That's what the law of averages says, anyway.

Lerner is a guy worth rooting for. He exhibits none of the activity normally associated with bad ownership. He's not a penny-pinching miser -- quite the opposite, in fact. He's not meddlesome. He doesn't fancy himself a would-be GM. He doesn't fire coaches or front office personnel at the drop of a hat. He doesn't order trades.

Lerner is not a disengaged owner. He does maintain a presence in Berea, and has taken steps to reconnect the team to its history -- the only thing that really gives the Browns name any meaning anymore. He has strengthened the club's connection to team alumni and developed constructive personal relationships with the likes of Jim Brown, who is now a regular presence at games and the team's headquarters. These are the kinds of things that didn't really happen when Lerner's father let Carmen Policy run the show.

In short, Lerner is involved in promoting the Browns name, stays out of the football operations end of things whenever possible, has deep pockets and is willing to spend money. By any basic measurement, that would be the definition of a good owner in the NFL -- in any sport, for that matter.

But with Lerner, it doesn't add up. He's a good man with good intentions whose team produces bad on-field results. It's difficult to pinpoint a single root cause.

The closest anyone can come to a definite diagnosis is poor hiring of team leaders. It's true, but Lerner's philosophy on building a better football team hasn't been anchored in quicksand.

Much ado has been made by fans and media about Lerner's failure to hire a dynamic team president to serve as the organizational overlord -- a role from which Lerner has shied. Lerner did try to go that route in 2004, hiring NFL executive John Collins to run the show from a 30,000-foot level. It backfired when Collins became entangled in a power struggle with Phil Savage. Faced with an either-or proposition, Lerner parted ways with Collins in 2005.

Lerner's football-specific hires haven't come without credentials. They've come from successful NFL organizations. Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini both learned at the feet of Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick. Savage was widely regarded as a draft guru, particularly when it came to amassing defensive talent, as he did with the Ravens. Mangini's GM, George Kokinis, also comes from Ozzie Newsome's gold-standard staff in Baltimore.

This isn't a clueless owner hiring small-college coaches recommended by equally clueless college buddies. Lerner has put time, effort and research into all his hires.

Yet, they've all been busts. Flaming busts, actually. Crennel and Savage were both exposed as woefully lacking in leadership skills. Mangini appears headed for the same rocky shore, but about four times as fast as Crennel or Savage.

The team is cracking under the weight of the instability. Players have not reacted well in going from Crennel's laid-back coaching style to Mangini's heavy-handed discipline. Rumblings of players quitting on Mangini have already started to surface. If you've watched any of the Browns' first three losses, it's hard to dismiss the possibility of a brewing passive-aggressive player revolt.

Yet, that's exactly why Lerner pursued Mangini. To instill discipline on a team that lacked discipline. Or at least that was the plan.

It's easy to paint Lerner as a fool who is blindly enamored with recreating his version of the Patriots in Cleveland by hiring Belichick's coaching offspring. Of course, if you're going to emulate a team, a three-time Super Bowl winner is a good place to start. It has worked fairly well for the Cavs, whose front office philosophies and playbook are heavily influenced by the San Antonio Spurs.

Yet, every decision Lerner has made has ultimately been the wrong decision, building to the net result of a new rebuild every four years or so. If Mangini loses control of this team, the current rebuild might last all of one year.

It's a riddle with no easy answer. Maybe Lerner, between his Long Island home and his controlling interest in English soccer club Aston Villa, isn't attentive enough to the Browns. Maybe he's looking too hard for that one football guru who can singlehandedly turn the Browns around. Maybe he's taking the lazy man's way out of building the Browns.

Maybe his motivation for hanging onto the Browns comes less from a burning desire to turn the team around and more from a sense of duty to the family name. If Lerner sells the Browns after a decade of seldom-interrupted losing, the Lerner name -- and everything his dad worked for all his life -- will be forever tied to the failed ownership of the Browns.

Maybe Lerner just has bad instincts when it comes to making the right hires. He had a chance to put the Browns in a position to hire former Patriots executive Scott Pioli, but Pioli essentially told Lerner that if he were to take the Browns job, he'd scrap the roster and start over. Mangini came along and told Lerner that he could win with most of the current roster intact. Tell the owner what he wants to hear, and ye shall receive. Mangini got the Browns gig, and Pioli is now in charge of football operations for the Chiefs.

The truth probably contains some element of everything. But what we do know for sure is that this ongoing spin cycle is making all parties involved increasingly dizzy and nauseous. And there is no end in sight.

In the cutthroat world of professional sports, good intentions only get you so far. The Browns are owned by a good man who, for a number of reasons, continually enables failure on the field.

Wins and losses are the bottom line, and to that end, Lerner's ownership has damaged the Browns and their reputation. Sooner or later, Lerner will need to acknowledge that. And he'll need to realize that, in all likelihood, the best thing he can possibly do for the city and the franchise is to sell the team.

Lost seasons

2009-09-24T22:16:00.007-04:00

Right now, the temptation is to lump the Indians and Browns together in one heaping pile of Cleveland sports suck.

They sure look like two rudderless franchises that offer little in the way of hope for winning in the foreseeable future. The Browns just opened Eric Mangini's first season at the helm with a couple of putrid losses. The Indians might win another game this season. Or they might not. If they don't, they'll break 100 losses for the first time in 18 years.

Both teams seem psychologically beaten. The Browns' competitive resolve breaks around halftime every week. The Indians' competitive resolve broke around Sept. 1, give or take a few months.

The Browns and Indians, for now, both seem resigned to the fact that they are league doormats. That's the truth, but when your teams lose their will to fight, it's pure agony to watch. Which is why televisions across northeast Ohio have been steadily migrating away from Tribe game telecasts to anything else. The Browns, who usually rule the Cleveland airwaves on Autumn Sundays, are a few more disastrous losses from following suit.

The Browns and Indians have a lot of bad, non-competitive, unwatchable traits in common. But there is a difference between Cleveland's downtrodden football team and Cleveland's downtrodden baseball team, at least from where I sit and type.

The Browns are this bad. The Indians, even after purging the roster of almost all competent veterans, aren't.

The Browns simply do not have the talent to compete at a high level. In a league where draft success separates the swans from the ugly ducklings, where trades seldom happen, let alone trades yielding franchise building blocks, the Browns have whiffed time and time again. Their roster shows it, and even the coaching job of a lifetime by Eric Mangini probably wouldn't put these Browns on the fast track to playing meaningful games in December and January.

The Indians certainly have had their own problems with drafting, coupled with Mark Shapiro's well-documented trade and free agency misadventures. But unlike the Browns, the Indians have done enough right to have the talent to stay competitive, to even contend in a less-than-powerful American League Central.

That's why the Indians don't get off the hook so easily in my book. When the Indians underachieve for five months, followed by a September meltdown, I'm not as willing to sit back and let things play out. I want someone to get under the hood and start tuning up the engine.

Unlike the Browns and their systemic issues, which seem to start at the beginning of the free agent signing period and end after Game 16 of another cruddy season, the Indians' problems have less to do with stockpiling talent and more to do with how that talent is cultivated and coached.

It's unfair to lay all the blame for the 2009 collapse at the feet of Eric Wedge, but it's removed just about every shred of remaining ambiguity over whether it's time for a new manager and coaching staff. It's definitely time for a change. Not because Wedge is a horrible manager, as some fans contend, but because it's time to see what a new boss -- preferably one from outside the organization -- can do with the lump of wet-but-moldable clay that is now the Tribe's roster.

Looking at talents like Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley, Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera and the forthcoming Carlos Santana, it's easy to sit back and daydream about what the Indians could become if the right group of leaders can put the puzzle pieces together. Even the embattled pitching staff has undeniable -- if unpolished -- young talent in Justin Masterson, Tony Sipp, Chris Perez, Hector Rondon, David Huff and Fausto Carmona, who desperately needs a stronger guiding hand in his struggle to prove that his 2007 campaign wasn't a fluke.

The Indians stopped stumbling a while ago. They've stopped staggering and even crawling. They'll sort of ooze across the finish line on October 4. But once this nightmare of a season ends, it's time for Mark Shapiro to pick up his steamrolled team and re-shape them, starting with a new manager and coaching staff.

Success is not guaranteed, of course, but it's a logical starting point for a team that should feel as though it's good enough to play meaningful games next September. Maybe they'll need a couple of seasons of maturation before playoff contention is actually realized, but it's a worthy goal that the Tribe's young roster should feel empowered to shoot for.

If several seasons under a new coaching staff yields no playoff contention, it might be time to make changes higher up the Tribe's organizational ladder. But for now, it's time to start small and think big. That's in contrast to the Browns, who always seem to make big moves with small results.

As the Indians euthanize their season a week from Sunday in Boston, the Browns will take the field at home against the Bengals, in all likelihood searching for their first win. They'll also be searching for a lot more: leadership, a team identity and talent at key positions. The same problems they haven't been able to address in a decade's time.

There is a difference between underachieving and being a low achiever. It's the difference between the Indians and Browns. And it's why, despite the built-in parity advantages in the NFL, I fully expect to see the Tribe back in the playoffs before the Browns.

Life with Delonte

2009-09-21T22:59:00.006-04:00

It's easy to love Delonte West. Maybe that's by design.

Taken at face value, West is the guy everyone thinks they want to hang out with. His knack for comedy is well-documented on sites like YouTube. Whether he's freestyle rapping about waiting for his KFC order, playfully chastising J.J. Hickson for failing to purchase doughnuts, or offering an opinion on the tools of his trade, he's bound to get laughs.

The surface image of West is of an easygoing, happy-go-lucky guy who loves life, enjoys his career and doesn't have a care in the world beyond basketball. Cavs fans would be fine if the story ended there. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Last week's arrest on weapons charges proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Underneath the joke-cracking, easygoing exterior is a young man of many faces, some more troubled than others.

A year ago, West had to leave Cavs training camp to deal with depression issues stemming from a blow-up he had at a referee during a pickup game. He left the team for a week, reportedly received counseling, came back and played a key role on the best regular season Cavs team in franchise history. West was frank and public about his battle with depression, winning him even more support from a Cleveland fan base that was already growing fond of him.

On the court, he continued to play hard-nosed defense and opportunistic offense, battling back from a broken non-shooting wrist in time for the stretch run. Off the court, he kept the soundbites coming. His self-constructed public persona continued to gain stature, and as the wins piled up, West became the second most popular player on the team behind LeBron James.

But when the cameras weren't rolling, a different Delonte emerged. A Delonte who has, in some cases, been a challenge to handle for his teammates and Cavs management.

Brian Windhorst penned an eye-opening article for Sunday's edition of The Plain Dealer, summarizing the ups and downs of West last season. West was charged with marijuana possession in Maryland last August, when he was a restricted free agent. The charge was eventually dropped, but it caused the Cavs to think long and hard before offering West the three-year deal he signed.

After West's training camp depression incident, things quieted, but some odd behavior still bubbled up, Windhorst writes. West could become quiet and sullen as easily as he could become outgoing and jovial. He could spend up to an hour after games silent and staring into his locker, still in full uniform. He frequently showed up late for games last year. He didn't show up for a home playoff game until an hour before tipoff. During a game in Los Angeles, West wasn't on the bench for the starting lineup introductions, and no one knew where he was for at least several minutes.

They're the type of infractions for which players with reputations for being selfish -- like Allen Iverson -- often get fined. But because the Cavs were winning and West was so integral to the team's success on the court and chemistry off the court, the Cavs' big thinkers gave West a wide berth and did their best to look the other way. As long as he kept playing at a high level, no harm, no foul.

Winning cures a lot of ills, and for West, it put his bout with depression and mood disorders on the back burner. Unfortunately, that's probably the worst place to keep them. The sufferer and everyone around the person can convince themselves that everything is stable and the problem is a thing of the past.

No one on the outside looking in knows if West continued to seek counseling or any type of professional help over the summer. What we do know is that last week, he reached a new summit in disturbing behavior.

Last Thursday, he was pulled over by police in Prince George's County, Md. for speeding and cutting off the police car that pulled him over. West, riding a three-wheeled motorcycle, was reportedly found to be in possession of two handguns on his person and a shotgun in a case slung over his back. All guns were loaded.

West was charged with two misdemeanor counts of possessing a concealed handgun. He has a court date set for Nov. 20 in Maryland. He likely faces a suspension of some kind from the NBA, but that punishment might not be handed out until the legal proceedings have run their course.

It's easy to draw a line from West's emotional issues to the weapons charges, but right now, that can't be assumed. It would seem that West's actions are not those of an individual in a clear frame of mind. However, the Washington Post reached West's father, who indicated that West might have feared for his safety.

"All I can say is Delonte was looking behind his back and protecting himself," Dmitri West told the Washington Post. "Bottom line is there's a lot of not-too-nice people out there."

That, of course, opens up a whole new line of questions. Is West simply a rich, famous professional athlete in world of potential stalkers? Did he get mixed up with a bad crowd? And if he's that worried about his safety, why was he buzzing around the area on an incredibly-expensive three-wheeled motorcycle that would stick out like a sore thumb on any stretch of road?

Was West walking a hyper-paranoid knife edge, was he in a delusional state, or was he trying to stock firepower as a show of strength to any would-be attacker? None of it adds up right now, and the picture probably won't become much clearer until the Cavs begin training camp next week.

West was reportedly in Cleveland as of Monday, meeting with Cavs officials about the incident and arrest. Dan Gilbert, Danny Ferry and Mike Brown are in a difficult position. West is still an integral part of the Cavs roster. He is still the team's best perimeter defender and a versatile guard who can start at either backcourt position. His teammates still like him and he's viewed as a glue guy in the locker room. In a nutshell, West still brings a ton of value to the team.

The Cavs would probably look to part ways with a lesser player after such a startling incident, especially given that Ferry and Brown highly value character in their players. But West brings so many positives to the table, it makes the team's decision-makers far more willing to deal with his complexities.

This latest, most severe incident probably won't ruin the Cavs' relationship with West. But it will strain it, perhaps like never before. Once the legal system and the NBA perform their rounds of disciplinary action, the Cavs will likely find themselves under pressure to perform their own corrective steps.

If it could be swept under the rug beforehand, it certainly can't now: Delonte West is a high-maintenance person. Employing him means dealing with his problems and idiosyncrasies, and unfortunately, it appears it also means dealing with his wrongdoings.

Shocking as West's arrest might be, it's hard to envision it causing the Cavs to reach their breaking point with him. But if the sideshows and run-ins with the law keep occurring, it's entirely possible that Cavs management will reach that breaking point someday.

It would be a shame if the skeletons in West's closet destroy what has been, overall, a very positive and mutually beneficial relationship for player and team.

Believing they're bad

2009-09-14T19:48:00.007-04:00

What drives fan optimism at the outset of every season? What makes the fans of a perennially awful team like the Browns believe that this is finally the season where, if championship contention isn't achieved outright, then at least the team will start to show some definite signs of moving in that direction?

The Browns made no landmark player acquisitions this spring. Eric Mangini signed a number of retreads from his former team, the Jets, and traded down three times in the first round, ultimately drafting center Alex Mack.

This is, with a few minor alterations, the team Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel left on the doorstep on their way out of town.

So why do we want so badly to believe that this is the year that the Browns start looking like an NFL footbal team? Why, despite years and years of a losing precedent set beforehand, are we disappointed when the Browns come out and falter against quality competition, as they did in Sunday's 34-20 opening week loss to the Vikings?

The answer isn't complicated. We don't want to believe that the Browns are actually this bad. We want to believe that the talent is there to field at least a competitive football team. It's just a matter of harnessing the right coaching and leadership to turn this rag-tag band of misfits into a ship-shape battalion, ready for action.

If you want to believe that, the good news is you're right -- to a point. The Browns can be the team that toted a 13-10 lead into the locker room at halftime, held Adrian Peterson in check for the entire first half, and looked like a tougher-than-expected test for Minnesota, a team with Super Bowl aspirations.

The bad news is, they can also be the team that wilted in mind-numbing fashion in the second half, ultimately letting Peterson run over them for 180 yards and three touchdowns, including an embarrassing 64-yard, fourth quarter touchdown scamper in which essentially the entire Browns defense had a chance to tackle him, but failed to do so.

The really bad news is the same really bad news that has been hanging around for most of the past 10 years: when the Browns encounter adversity, they believe they are the second-half team. And that is the biggest challenge that will face Mangini and his staff. Because until the Browns conquer their own mind games, they're always going to be a league doormat.

What we saw in the second half was a telltale sign of a team mired in a losing culture. At halftime, the Vikings apparently figured they weren't hitting the Browns hard enough with their running game. Minnesota came out of the tunnel determined to use Peterson to pummel Cleveland's defense with body blows. When the Vikings started to succeed with their running attack, the Browns' delicate confidence started to crack.

A small lead became a small deficit became a larger deficit, and whether the Browns' players will admit to it or even realized it, they had packed up their mental suitcase and began counting down the minutes until they could go home.

Everything about the Browns performance in the fourth quarter seemed to say "Here we go again. Can this game be over with already?"

The mistakes, the penalties, the miscommunication on both sides of the ball, Peterson's final-nail touchdown scamper, all of it was the result of a team that was resigned to losing. A team that slowly and skeptically believes in its successes, but whip-crack quick to believe in its shortcomings.

This is what Mangini needs to eradicate. This is the fungal infection left over from Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark in the post-expansion years, an infection that Butch Davis, Phil Savage and Romeo Crennel failed to cure.

Certainly, the root cause of the Browns' struggles isn't all mental. Botched draft picks and free agent signings have created a very real talent deficit. Bad coaching over the years has added more tangles to the knot.

But if you're wondering why teams like the Steelers and Patriots can seem to turn small-college players and pro castoffs into champions, while the Browns botch high draft pick after high draft pick, you have to consider the type of environment that each team provides.

Is it that the Browns consistently overdraft players that lack the talent and skills to succeed in the NFL, while the Steelers and the league's other elite teams continually find diamonds in the rough? At times, yes. But the league's best teams tend to bring out the best in each player. Teams like the Browns tend to bury what talent they do have by bringing players into an environment where losing is so entrenched, the veterans are pretty much numb to it.

If they're not numb, games like Sunday's, repeated week after week, will shortly make them numb. And if the veterans build up thick callouses to losing, what chance do the younger players -- the players who are supposedly going to be around when the Browns finally starting winning again -- have of being any different?

After the game, Mangini had at least one blatantly-obvious, yet spot-on comment. In so many words, he said his team has a decision to make: They can either be the first-half team, or the second-half team.

The first-half team might have to get by on pluck and guile against teams like the Vikings. They might not ultimately win, but they're going to grow a backbone, play smart, minimize penalties, take care of the football and do whatever they can to try and score the W.

The second-half team believes they're bad. The second half team mails in the loss when faced with adversity. Over the span of weeks, the second-half team stops caring, starts playing for individual goals and contracts, and eventually just wants the season to end.

This is where Mangini has to succeed where his predecessors have failed. He needs to get that first-half team to show up and play for 60 minutes every week. It's going to be a tough task, especially during games in which the Browns' best effort might not be enough to secure a win. But it's a mindset shift that needs to occur, or Mangini's best-laid plans will never bear fruit.

The first-half Browns are as undertalented and miles away from contention as the second-half Browns. But it's that team, and their constructive play, that provides the basis for any future hope for a turnaround. The team that showed up in the second half is Mangini's pink slip in waiting, and our express ticket to Regime No. 5 since 1999.

The coming weeks will offer us our first real picture of this team's direction, and on Mangini's ability to be a culture-changer. From the standpoint of Browns fans, it's a far more important task than anything involving X's and O's.

The sounds of silence

2009-09-07T14:16:00.007-04:00

In the court of media opinion, it seems like Eric Mangini is a man with two strikes against him before the first pitch is even thrown.

(Yeah, I'm crossing my sports metaphors. Stick with me.)

Most of Mangini's moves, or non-moves, have been met with widespread skepticism, no matter who you read or watch, local or national. All offseason, the chorus line on Mangini has been the same: he works his players too hard, his practices are too physical and he forced his draft picks -- bullied, some have said -- into taking a 10-hour bus ride to Connecticut to work at his football camp.

When he's not being a taskmaster, he's waffling, unable to decide between quarterbacks throughout the preseason, and butchering his first Browns draft by trading down thrice in the first round -- including his decision to trade the fifth overall pick to the Jets, willingly giving USC quarterback Mark Sanchez to his former employer in the process.

Snaking through all of it is the common thread that seems to unite all media members in their contempt for the Browns new coach: his zealous protection of all information surrounding his team. In defense of the people who cover the team, Mangini's CIA-level protection of team information is excessive at times. In some cases, such as naming his starting quarterback, there is solid, competitive reasoning for secrecy, as Mangini wants to keep the Vikings guessing in advance of the Sept. 13 opener. But sometimes, it seems he just stays mum for the sake of staying mum.

All preseason, we've been left to wonder exactly why Shaun Rogers failed to appear in a game. It really offers no competitive advantage for Mangini to keep quiet on why Rogers is sitting out of exhibition games, but Mangini remained tight-lipped.

When the Browns traded defensive lineman Louis Leonard to the Panthers at the start of the month, it was reportedly the Panthers front office, not the Browns, confirming that Leonard had been traded for an undisclosed draft pick.

It's not a new phenomenon. Mangini's attitude toward the media, and his tendency to not disclose even the most mundane information, was fashioned by Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, two of the all-time greatest coaches who have treated football intelligence like war games. Mangini received his first shot as a head coach in the country's biggest media market, meaning that he quickly developed an extreme vigilance in protecting team information against the packhounds in the New York and national media.

It's an overreactive approach that probably needs some fine-tuning now that he's gone from the Walmart of big-box media markets to a comparative mom-and-pop operation in Cleveland. Mangini will have to start disclosing injuries once the season starts, per the NFL's policy. But the damage has already been done. Mangini brought a stable of national media critics with him to Cleveland, a piece of fallout from his Jets days. Once he arrived in Cleveland, he was faced with a local media throng used to the laid-back stylings of Romeo Crennel, now forced to deal with a far more controlling presence in the head coach's chair.

The net result is that Mangini and the media are often at odds, and we as fans are left to pick through the media coverage of this team to try and discern the truth from the coverage that has been slanted by the media's overall negative opinion of Mangini. It can be difficult at times.

In Sports Illustrated's 2009 season preview, Peter King infamously predicts the Browns will finish an NFL-worst 2-14 despite having one of the league's easiest schedules. Keep in mind that despite an ongoing quarterback controversy and the frequent game mismanagement of Crennel and his staff, injuries were the main reason the Browns finished 4-12 last season. Once Ken Dorsey and Bruce Gradkowski had to play out the string as the starting QBs, an 0-6 finish was signed, sealed and delivered. Put either Derek Anderson or Brady Quinn under center for those final six games, and I firmly believe the Browns do not go 4-12.

King's prediction, which I believe is a two-numbered way of saying "I hate Eric Mangini and hope he fails miserably with the Browns" is offset by a team preview capsule in which author Ben Reiter paints a picture of Mangini as a hard-working coach who is trying to instill discipline in his players while attempting to relate to them in a more positive fashion than he did in New York.

Plain Dealer beat reporter Tony Grossi has been arguably the pre-eminent authority on the Browns for more than 20 years. He has earned his standing as the go-to guy for print Browns coverage, but even he has let his irritation with Mangini seep into his writing, referring to Mangini's practice of not disclosing injuries as "mind games," and flippantly commenting that "The Browns will not confirm their final record until some time in March" in his '09 season predictions. (Grossi pegs the Browns at 6-10.)

It would have been a weak grab for a laugh if it had come from the keyboards of opinion columnists like Bill Livingston or Bud Shaw. Coming from the guy who is supposed to provide the public with an unvarnished view of Mangini and his team, it makes you wonder how much of what we read and hear is straight shooting, and how much is slanted to cast Mangini and his practices in an unfavorable light.

It's a shame that it has come to this. There isn't a single culprit. Mangini could back off the screws on some of his disclosure policies, throw the media a few bones and his team wouldn't be any worse for the wear. But the folks who write the stories and record the soundbites that we read, see and hear each day need to accept that they've been given a difficult assignment. No one is asking them to be happy about it, but they need to refrain from letting their personal feelings about how Mangini affects their jobs seep into their coverage of the team.

If something needs to be said on the matter, opinion columns -- like this one -- are the proper forum. If your job is to report the news, then report the news, no more and no less.

The reporters who are sparring with Mangini through their medium of practice might think they're taking the Browns coach down a notch or two on the self-importance scale. But in actuality, they're just making it more difficult for the fans -- the consumers of their work -- to gain an accurate picture of their favorite team.

If the fans have to guess as to what is truth versus what is slanted by Mangini-hate, then the disservice the media is doing to their readers and viewers is worse than any disservice Mangini is doing to the media. The media's job is to accurately inform. Mangini's job is to win.