Has Any Team In The History of Sports Collapse Over One Player As Bad As The Cavs?

• mallymal614

  No I am not bashing or poking fun. It is a serious question. The Cavs heading into the year pretty much had the exact same team minus Lebron. Yeah Z and Shaq left too, but were they really an impact? I will say West was somewhat of a loss but not like he was 'Pippen' or a 'Robin' to Lebron. So with that being said what team in history has 'collapse' (and I don't mean the Celtics like a guy said who use to post on here lol) over one player? From 61 wins to possibly only 15? Maybe this shows Lebron was the MVP after all with the supporting cast he had in Cleveland. Even the Bulls won 55 games when Jordan retired in 1993.
• mallymal614

  Wrong Forum. Mods can you transfer this to the Pro Sports forum?
• karen lotz

  

  15 wins seems unrealistic at this point. They need something positive to happen. Hard to turn things around when team leaders (Mo and Jamison) are saying things about being too embarrassed to show their faces in Cleveland and not being able to take much more of it. Pretty much all news regarding the team has been negative since LeBron and the Heat were in Cleveland for the first time this year.
• O-Trap

  

  But don't worry. Cleveland will win a championship before LeBron.
• mallymal614

  karen lotz;659301 wrote:15 wins seems unrealistic at this point. They need something positive to happen. Hard to turn things around when team leaders (Mo and Jamison) are saying things about being too embarrassed to show their faces in Cleveland and not being able to take much more of it. Pretty much all news regarding the team has been negative since LeBron and the Heat were in Cleveland for the first time this year.

  
  I was trying to be positive with the 15 wins lol.
• mallymal614

  O-Trap;659304 wrote:But don't worry. Cleveland will win a championship before LeBron.

  
  lol and that is a persona guaranteed.
• O-Trap

  

  mallymal614;659315 wrote:lol and that is a persona guaranteed.

  
  People are so pissed at LeBron "for how he left." They should be pissed at Dan for making the Cavs look even more like a joke.
• ytownfootball

  

  No, just how he left, everything that came after is reactionary.
• mallymal614

  O-Trap;659320 wrote:People are so pissed at LeBron "for how he left." They should be pissed at Dan for making the Cavs look even more like a joke.

  
  Dan sure didn't help attract future free agents with that letter, that's for sure.
• karen lotz

  

  mallymal614;659311 wrote:I was trying to be positive with the 15 wins lol.

  
  
  Yeah I know. I just don't think anyone really thought they would be this bad to this point of the season. I thought they'd be in the 25-30 win range AT WORST, but that seems near impossible.
• dazedconfused

  

  O-Trap;659320 wrote:People are so pissed at LeBron "for how he left." They should be pissed at Dan for making the Cavs look even more like a joke.

  
  to fully rebuild, you have to completely bottom out. the cavs have accomplished that this season and will need to accomplish the same thing for the next couple seasons (along with great drafting) to get a solid core in here
• Automatik

  

  mallymal614;659327 wrote:Dan sure didn't help attract future free agents with that letter, that's for sure.

  Exactly. He couldn't have handled the situation any worse.
• dazedconfused

  

  mallymal614;659327 wrote:Dan sure didn't help attract future free agents with that letter, that's for sure.

  
  it's not like any were coming even with lebron here. the letter, while stupid, didn't do anything to hurt our chances at future free agents. we'll always have to overpay for free agents and that would be the case with or without the letter
• mallymal614

  Thanks mods for moving it to the right forum.
• ytownfootball

  

  dazedconfused;659369 wrote:it's not like any were coming even with lebron here. the letter, while stupid, didn't do anything to hurt our chances at future free agents. we'll always have to overpay for free agents and that would be the case with or without the letter

  
  No shit. It's not like there was ever a line forming down Euclid.
  
  Simply a reaction to losing the franchise player and saying what all the fans were thinking. If you really think any serious damage was done then you're just not being realistic. It didn't do anything.
• Skyhook79

  

  One man left???
  
  West,Shaq,Z, Mike Brown and Danny Ferry all left along with Lebron. Thats a lot of changes.
  But when you really think about it the team has just quit ever since the first Heat game, kinda like how Lebron quit playing his last series with the Cavs.
• september63

  

  This thread reeks of Nonsense!! We (Cavs fans) know they suck and we have beat this dead horse for months!!
• mallymal614

  I never understood how some fans believed Lebron quit against the Celtics. There may be a case for game 5 when they got down big, but in game 6 he had a remarkable 27 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, and single handling kept them in the game.
• ytownfootball

  

  mallymal614;659464 wrote:I never understood how some fans believed Lebron quit against the Celtics. There may be a case for game 5 when they got down big, but in game 6 he had a remarkable 27 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, and single handling kept them in the game.

  
  Doesn't hindsight give you any perspective?
• Y-Town Steelhound

  

  mallymal614;659464 wrote:I never understood how some fans believed Lebron quit against the Celtics. There may be a case for game 5 when they got down big, but in game 6 he had a remarkable 27 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, and single handling kept them in the game.

  
  He also had 9 turnovers
• Heretic

  

  Skyhook79;659448 wrote:One man left???
  
  West,Shaq,Z, Mike Brown and Danny Ferry all left along with Lebron. Thats a lot of changes.
  But when you really think about it the team has just quit ever since the first Heat game, kinda like how Lebron quit playing his last series with the Cavs.

  Yeah. It's really a bizarre collapse, as they started out .500ish for most of the first month of the season. They were 7-9 at one point, then lost to Boston to fall to 7-10...then lost to Miami and then completely fell apart. In the early stages of the year, they looked like a 35-38 win team that had the toughness to gut out wins against other teams in the mediocre-to-bad class. Now they look like a team that might struggle just to win more than 10 games. Losing Anderson hurt, but they were in complete free-fall mode before his injury. Teams starting out mediocre and turning bad during the year aren't rare. Teams starting out mediocre and all of a sudden transforming into utterly inept doesn't happen often without something (such as the major league baseball trade deadline...as a Pirates fan, I've seen poor teams become utterly atrocious after they dump salary for prospects in late July) pushing them that way.
  
  To just go from "okay" to "putrid" overnight is what surprises me. If they were 8-39 and flat-out stunk from the beginning of the year until now, I'd understand that. But being in the playoff hunt for nearly a quarter of the year (even if we're talking "low seed in East", which is usually far from good) and then going on a 1-30 nosedive is insane.
• Heretic

  

  Y-Town Steelhound;659467 wrote:He also had 9 turnovers

  
  Yeah. The nine turnovers was what SQ REFUSED to acknowledge after that game. Especially since it just seemed like so many of them came on these "hold the ball for most of the shot clock, drive the paint...and seemingly have no clue as to what to do, so either lose the ball or throw it away" plays.
• Y-Town Steelhound

  

  The Cavs are doing exactly the right thing right now to get back into contention. Would it have been nice to see a heroic 8th seed run to say f u to everyone? sure...but in the long term this is better for the franchise. The Cavs will end up with a top 5 pick this year, hopefully improve a bit next year and end up with another top 10 pick, and so on and so forth much like the Thunder.
  
  For those saying this is the same team minus LeBron, you are crazy. The Cavs weren't starting Manny Harris, Christian Eyenga, and Alonzo Gee last season. Samardo Samuels wasn't seeing big time. Not to mention the fact Varejao has been out for weeks (and for the season) and the Cavs have seen injuries to Mo, Boobie, and others as well. A combination of all of these things along with adjusting to Scott's new system both offensively and defensively has led to what the Cavs are now. What did you expect? LeBron's decision left no time to go to an alternative plan and because he the Cavs to be so good so fast they weren't able to draft any talent around him that would still be around now.
  
  Gilbert's letter was to play on the reactions of Cavs fans and to give them hope after the decision. The letter was not meant to please anyone else than the people who pay money to go to the Q. Dan Gilbert and his billions of dollars could care less what the national media or other fans thought about it. The letter served its purpose. Also, anyone who thinks the letter will have any effect on the Cavs getting players to come in free agency is just plain retarded. First of all, the reason almost any fa would come to Cleveland is because of money, and the letter doesn't change whether or not Cleveland can offer a lot of money to a player nor does it change whether that player wants that money. Secondly, anyone would half a brain knows that the LeBron situation was a unique situation. To think he writes letters like that for every player that has ever played on the Cavs is dumb beyond belief. I guess haters will find any way to hate though.
  
  The Cavs will be fine assuming they can hit on their draft picks, as Cavs fans themselves know....it only takes 1 draft to turn around a franchise.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  I only follow the team a bit in the papers and on-line, but they lost way more than the LeJerk. Along with all the folks mentioned above, weren't they also hit with some untimely injuries when they could least afford it?
  
  As for the owner's letter: His comment about the title was a foolish overreaction, but the IDEA of the letter (better phrased of course) was sound.
  
  The first editor I worked for (when discussing writing editorials) always said: don't froth at the mouth when writing an opinion piece. Dan needed to write a draft of that letter, put it down, and come back to it hours later. Then make revisions and repeat the process.
  
  I had the "pleasure" of going to see the Cavs during their expansion season (actually saw them win) and it boggles my mind that this team may end up with a longer losing streak.
  
  If any franchise in sports has been snake bit, it's the Cavs. Look at their history (especially Stepien) and now all this. I doubt you can find a franchise anywhere in pro sports that has had to go through crap like that. It's amazing any fans stayed with the franchise after Stepien trashed it.