The Numbing Sameness of it All, Again--Dan Gilbert Edition

Dan Gilbert is clever, you have to give him that.  Early in his career as the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers he came across as the prototypical meddling owner who had made money in one line of business and figured that genius translated into the world of sports.  To fans, Gilbert was a huge red flag, a combination of Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones. 

At some point Gilbert became sensitive or at least aware of the impression that was developing. He toned down the act, seemingly turning his attention away from the Cavs and more toward becoming the Moe Green of the Midwest.  Turns out, that perception was the deceiving one. 

Behind the more stealth look that Gilbert crafted beats the heart of an owner whose goals are simply amorphous platitudes about winning and excellence that cannot be achieved because he lacks the temperament to reach them. 

In his 9 years as owner of the Cavs, Gilbert has had 3 general managers and four head coaches.  Let that roll around the inside of your head for a moment.  Three general managers and four head coaches in 9 years. 

That’s almost the exact trajectory of the Cleveland Browns, easily the worst run sports franchise in the last 20 years.  Gilbert’s lay low approach of the last few years belies an impetuousness and an incompetency that rivals that of Randy Lerner.  The reason it gets less attention is that the Cavs are and always will be third in the hearts and minds of Cleveland sports fans.  Most simply don’t care. 

When you’re running a private business with no outside shareholders, the public results are harder to discern.  For all anyone knows or cares, Gilbert chews through vice presidents at Quicken Loans at the same rate he chews through executives and coaches at the Cavs.  That doesn’t matter.  What does is that the Cavs’ business is in the public eye and at the nearly 10-year mark of Gilbert’s ownership, the picture isn’t pretty.   

Gilbert has shown no greater competence than the Gund brothers before him. The Cavs under Gilbert have been transcendent only when they had a transcendent player that fell into his lap.  When the planets realigned, the franchise became decidedly non-transcendent, again.  Gilbert isn’t just the figurehead on which to level the blame.  He’s the perpetrator and instigator of a highly dysfunctional and withering franchise that is still years away, at best, from being any sort of contender and then only if something dramatic happens at the top. 

Undoubtedly Gilbert would like the team to be a success.  It would certainly help bring in more people to his downtown casino during the winter months if the Cavs were contenders and Quicken Loans arena was sold out 41 times during the cold Cleveland winter.  But the Cavs aren’t successful under Gilbert, except around the fringes.  Gilbert, the only one in the franchise with actual power to wield, is the only consistent piece remaining in place these last nearly 10 years.  It’s easy to see where the buck stops and the blame lies.   

The NBA is, without question, the hardest league in which to construct a champion.  That may seem counterintuitive given the relatively small rosters when compared to baseball and football, but the numbers don’t lie.  When a team is down it stays down for years.  A shallow pool of new, NBA-ready talent each year and a salary cap riddled with exceptions are the primary reasons. 

As a result, the league at any given time has essentially 3 groups of teams.  The top group is the very small handful of teams with enough talent to actually threaten for a championship.  Teams in this group feature at least one super duper star and enough almost super duper stars to give them the depth to survive the grind that is the NBA playoffs.  The Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs are two obvious examples.

The middle group is the larger group of playoff teams looking to get into the top group.  The group has its own hierarchy.  There are the teams that just squeak into the playoffs, usually with losing records, which is the equivalent of NBA purgatory because it’s very difficult for those teams to improve without outside help.  The draft is a non-event for them so they improve, if at all, somewhat organically but mostly by prying free agents away from other teams. Then there are the teams on the higher end of this group that seem on the precipice of getting into the top group.  Think Oklahoma City, maybe Indiana.  Some make it, some regress.  Much depends on organic growth or the pick up of a missing piece here or there.   Either way it’s still a slog. 

The bottom group are, naturally, the bottom feeders.  When a team enters this group it is a minimum of 10 years before it can even get to the upper level of the middle group, let alone membership in the top group.  You can look at virtually every former playoff team in recent history that thereafter entered this group.  It is 10 years before they get back into the playoffs. 

The Cavs, for a brief period, were a top group team because they had the league’s best player.  But for a variety of reasons, some having to do with LeBron James’ psychological profile and some having to do with Gilbert’s, the Cavs couldn’t hold on to James.  In retrospect, they weren’t really even in the conversation.  Once James left the Cavs dropped to a bottom feeding team and there they remain.  While James is pushing the Heat to a third straight NBA title, the Cavs can’t even seem to work their way up to membership in the middle group.  Gilbert’s meddling is the primary reason. 

It’s actually quite fascinating that Gilbert can’t seem to learn from the bad examples in front of him all the evils that visit a franchise when it constantly reboots.  The Browns’ are a mere few miles away and dominate the local papers and talk radio stations.  Gilbert must be in some serious denial about his own track record to think he’s not that kind of owner even as he goes about his business every day proving that he is. 

Here’s the dangerous game in all of this.  You can make a case, perhaps even a compelling case, for each of the moves that Gilbert has made in his 9 years.  It might have been a mistake, as Gilbert said last year, to fire Mike Brown the first time, but it also was an obvious mistake to hire him the second time.  The two concepts can coexist.  But that is seeing the trees and ignoring the forest.  Gilbert’s track record, irrespective of how compiled, is that of a meddling owner who can’t be satisfied. Why would a gifted free agent, let alone James, ever want to get involved in this mess?  The same goes for a gifted coach. 

So much of what’s been happening is that Gilbert can’t land on a general manager he trusts long enough to let a direction, any direction, of the club take hold.  It is exactly why the Browns are the mess they are.  Gilbert, like Jimmy Haslam now and Lerner before that, falls in and out of love quickly with his management hires, but not quickly enough to avoid the damage done.  Gilbert wants to win but deep pockets and force of will aren’t enough.  It takes temperament and discipline and at least in this business venture Gilbert falls short. 

Anyone who watched the jumble that was the Cavs last season completely understands why the season ended as it did.  That jumble was the most visible manifestation of all the dysfunction, impatience and impetuousness of the ownership and management team.  A new, permanent general manager and a coach of his own choosing could help on the margins.  But real, permanent change for the better isn’t going to be achieved until everyone in this franchise can stop looking over their shoulders in fear at what Gilbert might do next.

The Numbing Sameness of it All, Again--Another Day, Another Firing Edition

Another month, another firing in Cleveland professional sports.  Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert today fired general manager Chris Grant amidst one of the most dismal seasons by a team not named “the Browns.”  Unlike his counterpart with the Browns, no one is much questioning Gilbert’s sanity.  If anything fans are wondering what took Gilbert so long to figure out that Grant was Isiah Thomas without the name recognition.

A firing like Grant’s is littered with mistakes large and small.  But the two that bubble to the top first in this cesspool of despair are the drafting of Anthony Bennett and the re-hiring of Mike Brown.  There’s still time for Bennett to develop into, perhaps, a serviceable piece or part.  It’s hard to imagine though that he’ll ever be seen as anything less than one of the biggest draft busts in recent history.

As for Brown, his act is far more developed.  It’s hard to imagine how he survives losing the guy that stuck his neck out to rehire him.  Brown may survive the season, he may not.  Either way Gilbert has to be near suicidal for having been talked into giving Brown a 5-year contract.

Brown was hired because the Cavs had no interest in playing defense last season.  It’s Brown’s calling card. What’s been lost in translation though is that the team assembled by Grant still has no interest in playing defense and seem to be rebelling against Brown as if to emphasize the point.  It’s as if the players deliberately used Grant’s goofy press conference criticizing the players’ effort as a stepping off point.
The season is near half over and the transition to Brown’s approach seems to be getting worse not better.  It’s a hard sell and Gilbert knows it will be hard to convince fans that it’s always darkest before dawn.  No one will ever buy that the Cavs are near the dawn of their existence.  They are on permanent midnight at the moment.

Here’s what happens in any organization when there is a major change: players/employees inevitably fall into one of three buckets.  At one end of the spectrum are those that immediately get on board with the change and are anxious to follow the new lead.  Those are your keepers.  At the other end are those that won’t get on board ever.  They hate change and can’t fathom on any level that they’re wrong about anything.  They should be dumped immediately.  In the middle are those who can understand why the change was made and understand the need to change themselves.  Nonetheless they struggle with change.  Their efforts are earnest but uneven.  Eventually that group will trend to one of the other two buckets over the weeks and months following the change.

Life being the bell curve that it is, the first and second buckets are small at the outset.  The larger bucket is the third, those that understand but earnestly struggle with the change.

You can do your own math but at best there are maybe two players on the current team that got on board immediately with the Brown hiring.  Similarly there are maybe two at the other end of the spectrum.  That would put about 8 players in the middle.  Given the nature of this team it really doesn’t matter which bucket any player but Kyrie Irving occupies.  Based on recent results, even if Irving was in the struggling middle at one time he clearly was trending in the wrong direction.  His almost complete lack of effort against the Lakers on Wednesday evening was the most telling sign, even to Brown who sat him the entire fourth quarter.

The reason Irving matters most is that he’s the putative leader, the most recognizable face of the franchise.  His reputation league wide has always exceeded his actual accomplishments but he’s been given a large benefit of the doubt due to the state of the Cavs organization.  His fellow players see it much the same way and so if they see him bucking the system they’ll follow suit because they’ll think he’s right.

If Brown has any hope of surviving it will hinge almost entirely on his ability to turn Irving around and get him to buy into what he’s selling.  It may be an impossible task.   Irving already is making Gilbert nervous by whispering strategically about a future that doesn’t include the Cavs.  Grant leaving but Brown staying doesn’t much change that.  Alienating him further with a coach he doesn’t like won’t help the situation. Besides, Gilbert has a track record when it comes to placating stars at the expense of coaches.

Had Gilbert simply retained Brown in the first place once LeBron James left it’s far more likely that the Cavs would be closer to his dream of making the playoffs this season.  But he didn’t do that and is now paying dearly by fielding a collection of players at the expense of a team.  His team is as far from the playoffs as it ever was.

Gilbert has always had a mixed reputation among the fans and the mess that his franchise is in at the moment isn’t going to help it much.  Gilbert has never been the fussy tinkering owner in the model of the Washington Redskins’ Dan Snyder, but he is neither a particularly patient one either.  So it doesn’t surprise that on a seemingly random day he dumped Grant without a specific replacement in mind.  He knew at the very least that something, anything had to be done.

I suppose some credit should be given to Gilbert for trying to right the ship by attacking first the failings of the front office before taking on the coach whose hiring he just approved.  Players matter more than anything else and Grant simply was awful at assembling players.

But it’s more than fair to note that Gilbert probably waited too long to make the move.  That’s what comes when one is distracted.  In that Gilbert is not unlike Browns owner Jimmy Haslam whose distractions have literally thrown the entire franchise off kilter.  Only Gilbert really knows how much time he’s been spending on his burgeoning gambling empire at the expense of the Cavs but put it this way, it’s far more than before he started his quixotic quest to become a gambling mogul.

What the Grant firing really suggests more than anything is that Gilbert finally woke up to the disaster his Cavs asset had become.  It also suggests that sadly Gilbert hadn’t been paying close enough attention for too long.  There are other moves to make and other moves that will get made.  Gilbert might think that his first task is to find a general manager but it’s not.  His first task is to take a long look in the mirror and re-assess his own commitment to this team.    Like Haslam is finding out the hard way and now too is Gilbert, it really does start at the top.

Lingering Items--They Aren't Who We Thought They Were, Either Edition

The controversy surrounding Pilot Flying J seems to change by the day.  What doesn’t is the impact any of it will have on Jimmy Haslam’s new toy, the Cleveland Browns.  It’s the great unknown.  Then again, it’s the Browns so what’s new?

The Browns have nearly cornered the market in unknowns so it’s not a huge surprise when it comes to the fortunes of the Browns that a corporate scandal involving the current owner of the Browns barely registers as a significant event anymore.  Maybe it should, assuming fans are still interested in seeing the Browns v2.0 actually succeed.

Here’s why this matters.  If you’re Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, who serves as an owner/CEO of Pilot Flying J, there’s a worst case scenario that ends up with him serving time for fraud.    Evidence could develop that implicates him in what essentially amounts to cooking the books to make the company look more profitable, putting him in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system.  If that happens he could join an ever growing prison population of corporate fraudsters.   He could also find himself in the crosshairs of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his fellow owners who don’t want someone of his ilk mixing among someone of their ilk. In either case, it would most certainly put the franchise in flux once again.  In other words, it will be like the entire run of the Randy Lerner regime.

But there is no way to know at the moment how likely it might be for the worst case scenario to come to pass for Haslam.  I do know that Haslam and his team are staying up late, reading affidavits, making phone calls, and basically being embarrassed as each day they do so they uncover a little more ugliness that has caused Haslam to go from the defiant defender in his first press conference to the humbled executive in his last.  Put it this way, a company doesn’t announce a 5-point plan that involves an independent investigation, the suspension of several employees, a mea culpa on a few of the rebates and the impending hire of a Chief Compliance Officer if something hasn’t gone terribly wrong somewhere.  The only question now is the scope of the problem, not the existence.

To the extent that Browns fans should be worried about what’s happening at Pilot Flying J it’s less about Haslam personally and more about it rocking the financial underpinnings of the fortune both Haslam and the fans were counting on to support the franchise.  Fans in Cleveland already know what it’s like to have owners who don’t have the cash to play at the high rollers table.  We lived with Art Modell for years as he borrowed from one bank to pay off another while blaming the city for all his troubles.  We’ve lived with the Dolans now for years as they continue to obfuscate their own financial issues by crying about being a small market team.

The reason Haslam’s breaking a sweat at his press conferences these days is that the damaging blow to the company’s reputation and credibility directly translates to potentially less business as the Standard and Poor’s rating agency warned.  Less business means less cash to meet its expenses, including an ever increasing debt load that must be serviced.  Pilot Flying J is privately owned, mostly by the Haslam family.  A private equity group owns a little more than a third of the company.  Twice in the last 18 or so months it has taken on relatively heavy debt in order to finance a dividend payment to the owners.  The financings have been used for a variety of purposes—to pay down other debt incurred from acquisitions, for general corporate purposes and to put money in the pockets of the owners.  Some of that money, perhaps a good deal of that money, was used by Haslam to fund his purchase of the Browns.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that nor is there anything the least suspicious about it.  Taking on debt to fund a dividend to the owners of a private company is pretty common.  But that debt comes at a relatively high cost to ongoing operations.  Pilot Flying J’s corporate debt is rated below investment grade and may get lower, which means that it will be perceived as an even greater credit risk  That’s not unusual, particularly in businesses that sell fluctuating commodities like gas.  But to the investors that are funding that debt, they are taking on a higher risk and thus charge a higher interest rate.  It’s like an individual with a spotty credit rating trying to get a mortgage.  The bank might be willing to take the risk but it will charge a higher interest rate than it would to someone who is a much better credit risk.

Why this matters is that the company took on this debt confident that its business was strong.  It’s the largest operator of travel centers in the country and until about a week ago had a stellar reputation.  For the time being, that reputation is taking a mighty hit and so too will its business.  People don’t want to do business with those who might be cheating them.  If Pilot Flying J loses too much business it will have trouble meeting its debt payments and that in turn will make the entire company and hence Haslam personally more vulnerable to collapse.  And if Haslam collapses he’ll have to sell the Browns and on and on and on.

It’s too soon to speculate on the fortunes of Haslam, Pilot Flying J and the Browns but they are intertwined.  The only thing Browns fans should be worried about at the moment is how the front office will screw up this year’s draft.  Instead they should actually be worried about who might be the next owner of the Browns.  Calling Dan Gilbert….

**
Speaking of Dan Gilbert, he did a major about face this week when he re-hired Mike Brown to coach the Cavaliers.  Judging from the reaction on Twitter, this isn’t one of Gilbert’s more popular moods.  Gilbert must know how ridiculous it looks to have divorced Brown, quickly remarry and then find himself longing for his original bride.

No one really knows whether it was a mistake to fire Brown in the first place and/or whether that mistake has been compounded by rehiring him.  But there are other issues about this that should be talked about, not the least of which is whether Gilbert isn’t really some closeted version of George Steinbrenner and Brown is his version of Billy Martin.

If Gilbert really made a mistake by firing Brown it was because Brown used the leverage of the 10-day window in his original Cavs’ contract to force Gilbert to make a decision.  When the Cavs bowed to the Celtics three years ago in one of the weirdest, most miserable playoff efforts LeBron James will ever have, thoughts turned immediately to what it would take to re-sign James.  No one really knew because James wouldn’t say.  The speculation though was that James didn’t like Brown.  Meanwhile Brown had a contract with an option year that had to be declined within 10-days of season’s end or else that last year became guaranteed.  Gilbert wanted more time and Brown wisely said no.  That caused Gilbert to make decisions he now says he regrets.

Well, duh.  Gilbert regrets it because he didn’t really know what might make James re-sign.  More to the point, how James felt about Brown shouldn’t have even entered into the mix.  That it did caused the cascading effect of Brown being fired and the truculent Byron Scott being hired.  Here’s a lesson for Gilbert:  if you really are going to let the inmates name their own warden then you better be sure how they really feel about the current one.  Here’s another lesson for Gilbert: never let the inmates choose their own warden.

Will Gilbert follow either of these lessons?  That’s getting increasingly hard to say.  There’s so much talk these days (and hopefully it’s just idiotic media speculation) that a factor in the rehiring of Brown was the completely illogical supposition that it would play well with James and give the Cavs an enhanced chance to re-sign him if he opts out of his Miami contract after next season.  Oy.

Disregarding the illogic of this new theory, the truth is that the chances of James coming back to Cleveland will not rest at all on who is coaching the team.  Erik Spoelstra is the head coach of Miami for God’s sake and that was almost irrelevant to James.  What James knows better than the people who cover the sport for a living is that the head coach is the least important factor in the equation in the NBA.  Talent is the difference maker and James went to Miami because he was able to have his buddies play with him in Miami because they wouldn’t play with him in Cleveland.  James saw them and not Spoelstra as his ticket to a NBA crown.  Hitler could have been the head coach and it wouldn’t have matter.  James was right.

James will return to Cleveland only if it suddenly becomes his best chance to continue to win championships.  There isn’t a sentimental bone in his body.  He’s driven solely by the need to win championships and he knows that it takes an abundance of talent not an abundance of coaching to make that happen.

Where a coach makes a big difference in the NBA is on a team like Cleveland that is struggling to put together the pieces.  More victories can be squeezed out through good coaching.  The Cavs for example would have had a handful more of wins if the team had simply played better defense.  Brown will help with that.  It doesn’t mean that the Cavs will suddenly become contenders.  They won’t until the talent improves significantly.

I guess it’s nice that Brown’s back but I say that only because I’m not sure what the other viable alternatives really were.  Gilbert had no interest in taking another flyer and that left only a handful of other candidates every one of whom had at least as many warts as Brown.

I think the Cavs will be better next year because of Brown but that doesn’t mean they’ll be good.  If you want to worry about something, forget about James and worry about how Brown’s defensive emphasis will play with the Cavs’ next free agent in waiting, the defense-adverse Kyrie Irving.  If Irving eventually bolts like James will Gilbert get rid of Brown again?  Put differently, how many times did Steinbrenner fire Martin?

**

Another new regime making draft day decisions for the Browns is the source of this week’s question to ponder:  What is the most graceful way for the Browns to end the Brandon Weeden experiment?

Lingering Items--Holiday Leftovers Edition

Because no one reads the morning newspaper anymore, it will probably get overlooked that the Plain Dealer on Tuesday had two items about the Cleveland Browns coming down on both sides of the debate over head coach Eric Mangini's status. One of those items in particular was probably the surest sign yet the Mangini will be back next season with the Browns and I'm not talking about Mary Kay Cabot's interviews with players who came out in support of their coach. We'll get to that in a moment.

No, the item of note was Bill Livingston's column advocating for Mangini's dismissal. It's not that Livingston added anything particularly novel or insightful to the conversation. He usually doesn't. It's just that his m.o. is to try and see which way the wind is blowing and then ride that tide, to mix my metaphors as Livingston might. The problem? He is generally wrong, a Cleveland sports writing version of George Kostanza.

But let's not get all caught up in the Livingston tea leaves. The truth is that no one knows what club president Mike Holmgren is going to do because Holmgren isn't going to talk about it for at least another week. So it's all just a guess anyway.

There are some things we do know and one is that Holmgren isn't enamored with the offensive scheme. How could he be? Another is he has an itch to coach again, mainly because that's what he's told us. Neither of those are good Mangini. We also know that Holmgren doesn't think so little of the job that Mangini has done this season to fire him before season's end. Finally we also know the bevy of statistics that show that while the Browns' record isn't better the team is improving. Both of those things are good for Mangini.

That's all just a mixed bag of items that Holmgren has rolling around inside his head at the moment. But to actually predict what Holmgren might do is a fool's game. Even weighing in on it at this point is getting pretty old. It's just finding new ways to say the same things to back up the opinion you formed long ago.

But if there really is a new item to add to the mix it was Cabot's item (along with a similar item in the Akron Beacon Journal) about the number of players coming out strongly supporting their coach. That would seem like a good thing.

To throw a little cold water on this show of support, just know that this kind of thing isn't unusual, in the abstract. In any locker room there are going to be players who like their coach, either because the coach brought those players in and gave them a chance others didn't or because they just generally like the guy. For those players it's easy to talk on the record.

On the other side of the locker room are going to be players who feel wronged by that coach for their own self-serving reasons. Maybe they feel like they weren't given a fair chance to prove themselves. Maybe they just don't like the cut of the coach's jib. Those players usually don't talk on the record.

All that said, it's still meaningful that players would speak up so dramatically in support of Mangini. It's meaningful because the reason Mangini's tenure in New York ended so quickly is that the feeling about Mangini inside the Jets locker room was nearly unanimous—they couldn't stand him. The inmates should never run the asylum but it's antiquated thinking that if the players hate the coach then the coach must be doing something right. In truth, he was doing something wrong and Jets ownership and management was convinced that it wasn't going to change.

It took Mangini an additional year to learn what Jets management understood. Mangini changed little in his first year with the Browns from his days with the Jets and it was nearly the reason he was fired before that season ended.

But Mangini seems to have learned and the fact that players like Sheldon Brown, Lawrence Vickers and Alex Mack, a pretty good cross section really of aging veterans from other teams, veterans on this team who have seen it all, and emerging younger players, are willing to come to their coach's defense speaks volumes, or at least it should.

It may all be for naught of course because if Holmgren wants to return to coaching and do it here in Cleveland then Mangini's fate is sealed and none of the positives will have any impact. And if that turns out to be the case, at least now Mangini should know that the changes he made will get him another shot somewhere, which is something that seemed ludicrous just 12 months ago.

**

While Mangini's fate is the hot topic around town, the coach whose status isn't getting enough attention but should is Byron Scott's with the Cavaliers. After 30 games this team is 8-22 and seems as directionless and as poorly coached as any team in Cleveland history.

The argument of course is that Scott doesn't have much to work with but is it less than what Mangini has with the Browns? That is a stretch. In large measure the Cavs are nearly the same team as last season except without two key components, LeBron James and former head coach Mike Brown. The loss of James makes the team worse, of course, but would this same team under Brown but with James nursing an injury for the season's first 30 games really be 8-22?

It seems quaint now the thought that dumping Brown would be a major positive for this franchise, not enough to offset the loss of James but enough of a positive to keep the franchise going in the right direction. Instead the loss of Brown seems to be making every bit as much of a difference as the loss of James.

It's hard to quantify, of course, but the one thing that could be said about Brown that can't be said of Scott is that Brown hardly ever seemed in over his head. Ok, maybe Brown was in over his head when it came to the playoffs, particularly deep in the playoffs. But that's a high class problem. Right now this team would be better off with a coach who didn't seem, well, so clueless about what it takes to put a team together and play winning basketball.

When you listen to Scott in interviews, he sounds smart enough. He stands stoically and folds his arms a lot, too. And yet when you sift through it all you start to realize that he's mostly hot air and lost, irretrievably lost. He changes strategy and lineups so often that its understandable why the players look so confused out there.

Contrast that for a moment with Mangini. Whether or not you are a Mangini fan or detractor we can all agree that he has a way of going about his business and he doesn't waver from it. His process may not lead the Browns to the Super Bowl someday but he does have a system. Scott isn't even that fully realized.

When this historically bad Cavaliers season comes to a close, owner Dan Gilbert is going to find himself with an incredibly shrinking season ticket holder base. It would have shrunk anyway without James and the promise his game always brought but it will shrink even more because of Scott. Indeed, if Mangini survives with the Browns, then there's an even greater likelihood that he'll be around longer than Scott. Gilbert isn't the hair-trigger owner that he's often portrayed as being but he is decisive. As Bob Dylan once wrote, “when something's not right, it's wrong.” And once Gilbert lands on that fact with Scott, which will likely be sooner than later, Scott will be gone and the Cavs will reboot. It may be Gilbert's only chance to save the franchise from another two decades of futility.

**

I'm pretty sure this is how Larry Bird rolled.

There was an item in Business Insider this past week that really put into perspective why James was never going to re-sign with Cleveland. The item is a PowerPoint presentation by SA Global Plus, a fledgling (to be incredibly generous) media company based in Miami that is putting on James' birthday celebration on December 30th at Coco de Ville, a hotel in Miami.

The presentation is an example of the kind of celebrity excess that is the world that James and his ilk live in, the kind of excess that James could never get in Cleveland.

The presentation is really a pitch to line up corporate sponsors for James' birthday party. (Here's a link to the presentation) For $10,000 the sponsors will get appropriate signage at the party and a chance to stuff their goods in celebrity goody bags, because what adult birthday party doesn't have goody bags? On its web site SAGP, as they like to call themselves, promises an “A” list roster of musicians, athletes and models. The presentation, which SAGP has since removed from its web site, also promises its major sponsors (defined as someone willing to pay $500,000), additional involvement in what they call the “LeBron James Dinner Party Tour.” The Tour started in New York two weeks ago and continues through February in several major cities (Cleveland is not included) and coincides obviously with the Miami Heat's schedule.

If all this sounds ridiculous it's because it is. But let's be fair to James. This isn't the first celebrity birthday party to be sponsored and it won't be the last. This kind of thing is actually pretty common these days among the slightly accomplished types like James, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton, to name a few that have likewise gone down this path.

How any of this ties into winning a NBA championship isn't exactly clear but maybe winning a championship really was never James' point. The birthday party and dinner tour that he has aligned himself with for whatever chump change it puts in his pocket is the antithesis to the dedication and commitment it takes to actually accomplishing something meaningful with your life. James lives and moves now in a world that values the cult of celebrity above all else. It is the antithesis of a family dynamic where instead of surrounding yourself with the kind of support system necessary to achieve your goals you instead put yourself in the middle of a vacuous world where your support system consists of celebrity friends who aren't friends at all but paid party goers designed to make you look more important than you'll really ever be.

Maybe James can eventually win a ring but that is never going to happen until he understands that the only real way to get to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice and not simply to buy your way in.

Stacking the Odds

When it comes to picking the new head coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers, owner Dan Gilbert and general manager Chris Grant know that it’s mostly a crap shoot unless they’re choosing among very known commodities. That means that if Phil Jackson and a precious few others aren’t available, and they aren’t, then whether or not they get the choice right will mostly be a matter of luck.

It’s not a reflection on either Gilbert or Grant but a sobering assessment of the needle-in-a-haystack mysticism that is the finding of not just a coach who can win but of finding one that can take a team to the NBA title.

For the last several days, the Cavs have held vigil waiting for their target, Tom Izzo, to gather information and sort through the Tarot cards. What it came down to though was actually rather simple. Essentially, he said, without a guarantee that James would be back, the Cavs position was to much of a job to otherwise take on.

It was never certain that Izzo would have successfully made the transition to the NBA but I think Izzo made the right choice in staying in college. He’s too much of a coward for the NBA game.

Reading and listening to Izzo explain why he didn’t take the Cavs job, you get the sense that Izzo would only come to the NBA with the deck stacked in his favor. Maybe it’s where he’s at in his career and maybe that’s as it should be. It’s how I’d want it, too. But without the cards stacked in his favor he was far more willing to survive on just $3 million a year instead of Gilbert’s $6 million per package.

I suspect he’s right when he says that he’s at Michigan State for a lifetime. Owners and general managers across the league now understand that Izzo isn’t up for the challenge of what the NBA brings. He’s only interested in glory being mostly guaranteed.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Izzo, though. He’s 55 years old, a terrific college coach with a great track record at Michigan State. The college game is a grind, like any other job sometimes, but the ability to be around college aged kids, even ones with huge entitlement attitudes, can be far more invigorating for the soul than trying to deal with players like Delonte West all the time.

Still I am disappointed that Izzo, a good guy by all accounts, only wanted the Cavs job if there was a guarantee James would remain. That’s a little disappointing. But Cavs fans should be happy to know that now before Izzo was 18 months into the job.

What the Cavs need, what the fans need, is a coach who is all in under any circumstances. Even when you have the game’s best player on your roster, it isn’t all peaches and beans as Archie Bunker used to say. If you look at this past season with 20/20 hindsight, you realize that in leading the Cavs to the league’s best record former head coach Mike Brown had all manner of hassle to contend with in order to get them there.

There were all the problems with West, of course. But that was the tip of the iceberg. This team had to contend with its share of injuries. It also had to juggle some all-world egos both on the court and in the front office. Then, of course, was the endless loop of speculation and distraction that James’ pending free agency became.

The Cavs weren’t a team in turmoil this past season but neither were they a team sailing along blissfully either. The meltdown in the playoffs looks positively inevitable in retrospect.

I’m still not exactly sure what Brown did to get himself fired and I’m still not exactly sure why Danny Ferry decided to call it a career, though it’s easy to speculate and likely get most of it right. But all this did was further add to the confusion and yes, the stress, that a new head coach would inherit.

At 55, Izzo just decided he wasn’t up to the task and, again, Cavs fans should be thankful.

The speculation now, of course, is that Izzo’s decision doesn’t bode well for James remaining in Cleveland, not because James wanted Izzo but more because James wasn’t willing to help Izzo with his decision. Does that mean that Izzo secretly has some further insight about James’ future than he’s willing to share? Perhaps. Gilbert might as well. Even if neither does it’s not hard to imagine that they are reading all of the obvious signals James is sending at the moment about his future and none of those are good for the locals.

I can understand why James doesn’t want to get involved in the head coach search. That’s not a place where any player really wants to be. What I understand far less, though, is why James would let this franchise dangle like this unless he really doesn’t see himself re-signing. Check that, given all this franchise has done for him, I don’t understand why James would let this franchise dangle like this under any circumstances.

You could go all conspiracy theorist on this and say that James wants this franchise to look a mess in order to have outsiders shake their heads in acknowledgement when he tries to justify why he left for [fill in the blank]. He wouldn’t say that directly, certainly, but he’d do so by implication when explaining what an inviting and stable situation [fill in the blank] presents for James and his family.

You could also chalk all of this up to James just being an immature kid who, for all his worldliness, still doesn’t quite appreciate the implication of his actions or, more accurately, his inactions.

Whatever it is, though, I’m rapidly coming around to the notion that James won’t be with the Cavs next season. His lack of willingness to commit to Cleveland at this juncture is speaking volumes.

In a fashion, James really is like Izzo and had Izzo come to Cleveland he and James would have been a near perfect pair. They both see themselves having about another 8-10 years in their current roles and they both see themselves as having paid their dues. At this juncture, it’s less about scaling the entire mountain and more about having a huge head start on the race to the top.

Izzo didn’t see himself as wanting to grow up with a team and make a run a few years down the road and neither does James. If moves get made it will only be for titles and plenty of them.

I don’t begrudge either James or Izzo and I doubt whether I’d act any differently if I were in either of their shoes. You don’t get very many opportunities to legally rig the game in your favor and when those opportunities do come along you better jump on them quickly.

Izzo wasn’t sure that opportunity existed in Cleveland and I’m starting to think that James isn’t sure either. Where they diverge is the outcome. For Izzo, when the options in front of him were too risky, he opted to do nothing. For James, it’s the do-nothing option that looks like it might be the riskiest.

The Biggest Gamble of All

Maybe once a gambler, always a gambler.

When Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert was pushing hard last fall to get casino gambling legalized in Ohio, opponents tried to sully his reputation by bringing up a decades old arrest he had for running an illegal bookmaking operation while in college at Michigan State in 1981. That Gilbert had a gambling streak in him was hardly a revelation given the arc of his career. That Gilbert has now doubled down on the future of his franchise, however, is.

Entering into a summer where stability and direction would seem to have been paramount, Gilbert instead has deliberately created enough turbulence that the future of his franchise now hangs in the balance. If he's successful, then this will serve as an object lesson in how sometimes the only way to win big is to gamble big. If he fails, the franchise and the city he's so heavily invested in are headed for some strong headwinds.

Either way, it's funny what a lousy game or two at the wrong moment can do to change the course of history.

Heading into this season's NBA playoffs, the Cavs were the prohibitive favorite to win it all. The trio of Gilbert, Danny Ferry and Mike Brown (with help from a boatload of able assistants) had seemingly put every piece in place and had them all pointed in the same championship direction.

But another playoff failure, the first one directly attributable to some rather puzzling and indifferent play from LeBron James, suddenly has the franchise looking as if the ghost of Ted Stepien is now in charge.

The first casualty of the shake-up was Mike Brown. Gilbert has owned up to making the decision himself after some healthy internal debate. Exactly why he made that decision hasn't ever been made completely clear but suffice it to say that Gilbert became convinced that if Brown couldn't get a team with James to the promised land he certainly couldn't accomplish that task without him, should that come to pass.

Fair enough.

Now comes the departure of general manager Danny Ferry, his resignation an almost certain by-product of the decision to dump Brown. That's a bit more puzzling.

There were times a few seasons ago when Ferry seemed unable to make a decision on how to improve this roster. There were also times when Ferry came out of that funk when his changes, particularly those made late in the season, were almost too bold to be absorbed quickly. But give Ferry his due. He worked hard to surround James with championship-caliber talent and nearly succeeded.

The Cavs didn't necessarily lack the talent to be NBA champs but they certainly lacked that je ne sais quoi to push them over the top. That's what appeared to eat away at Gilbert as he pondered the future of his investment over that agonizing two weeks following the Cavs' meltdown against the Boston Celtics.

As bold moves go in Cleveland sports, this is among the boldest. This isn't Randy Lerner bringing in yet another regime to try their luck with the Browns. And this certainly isn't the Dolans allowing Mark Shapiro to fire Eric Wedge so that he could eventually bring in Manny Acta to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

To put this in historical perspective this is far closer to Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, remaking his franchise by letting Jimmy Johnson go despite winning two Super Bowls. At the time Jones looked like a prototypical egotistical owner who felt he wasn't getting enough credit for what Johnson accomplished. Jones became convinced of his own greatness and thus decided to part ways with the architect of the Cowboys' resurgence.

It worked, but for only a few years. Barry Switzer did win a Super Bowl with most of Johnson's players but after that Switzer was soon gone and the Cowboys are still trying to get back to where they once were, It's been 15 years and they're still trying.

Gilbert isn't really another Jones but the fact that the two are now part of the same conversation isn't particularly flattering to Gilbert. At the moment he looks like just another meddlesome owner who lacks the patience necessary to truly be a champ.

The question that will always nag at all of this, particularly if James does leave, is whether Gilbert looked too deep for answers that already were floating to the top. It's possible, for example, that the Cavs failures had little if anything to do with Brown and Ferry and were actually the result of a distracted James succumbing to pressure like he never had before.

James purposely put himself on a path where this would be the summer of James no matter the outcome of the NBA Finals. James is the face of the league and every step he takes, every move he makes someone is watching him. Winning it all and then becoming the most important free agent of all time was the scenario he laid out for himself. Maybe it was just the enormity of this self-inflicted journey that got to James at exactly the wrong time and not Brown's puzzling playoff rotations.

From the sounds of James these days it doesn't seem like he's done much soul-searching for his playoff failures as he focuses instead on summits and sneakers and changing the face of the NBA by treating himself and his fellow free agents like chess pieces on one giant board. The soul-searching instead has been reserved for Gilbert and he's certainly gone all in on this one.

Taking gambles like this are always a matter of timing. It's one thing to dump a coach and a general manager but a wholly other thing to dump them just as you're trying to convince someone like James or even a free agent in the tier below that this is the place to play.

None of us have ever been in a position like James, Dwayne Wade or Chris Bosh and never will be so to truly understand what it takes to keep or get players like that within the tent is always going to be a guessing game. But anyone whose stated goal is merely to win multiple championships is going to recognize that a key to that is stability.

Maybe Gilbert looks like a hero to them, someone willing to make the boldest of moves in order to get where he needs to do and thus the team's instability at the moment is understandable. Maybe though Gilbert looks a little unstable himself and richest crop of free agents in NBA history will take notice of that instead and take their skills elsewhere.

Gambles are risk and in terms of sports, this is about as big as it gets for a franchise. If Gilbert is worried, he isn't showing it, which is a good quality to have if you're gambling at that level. That doesn't mean, though, that a whole bunch of other folks, from mere fans to businesses that depend heavily on a Cavs crowd 50 some nights a year in Cleveland, aren't. Gilbert is playing with their chips as well.

Gilbert said last fall that he really doesn't gamble in the traditional sense much anymore but when he does it's usually at craps. That seems appropriate. He certainly has the dice in his hands and is betting that he's about to roll a 7 or an 11. But in Cleveland, where the dice never seem to stay hot, we're used to that roll coming up snake eyes and it's those odds that Gilbert ultimately will have to overcome if the fans are to remain convinced that he's really the person who should be making these decisions in the first place.

An Element of Risk, Indeed

The first real casualty of the failed Cleveland Cavaliers season has finally been identified and it is as expected, head coach Mike Brown.

It’s not much of a surprise Brown was fired because we live in a society where everything bad that happens has to be someone’s fault. And when someone’s at fault, heads have to roll. It certainly makes us feel better, as if somehow our own souls are purged when someone else loses his job. We can be pretty cavalier with other people’s livelihoods, can’t we?

And yet why do I still have the nagging feeling that of all the Cleveland head coaches over the years that deserved to be fired, Brown doesn’t even make the top 10?

Brown’s record, 272-138 speaks for itself. Of course, so does his playoff record of 42-29, which isn’t awful but which included just one NBA Finals (where the Cavs were swept by the San Antonio Spurs) and two very bitter disappointments in the last two years. And as the saying goes, it’s always easier to fire the coach than the whole team.

What we’re never likely to know in all of this is the real story behind why Brown was fired. Was he a hard-headed coach who couldn’t learn from his mistakes? Did he lose the confidence of a team even after getting it to the NBA’s best record this past season (and the season before that)? Is this somehow intertwined with LeBron James’ apparent need to find more fame and more fortune elsewhere?

Before we bury Brown in the graveyard of Cleveland coaches and move on to the next victim in line, pause at least to admit that Brown accomplished far more with James than Flip Saunders was ever able to accomplish with Kevin Garnett in Minnesota and Saunders lasted essentially twice as long with the Timberwolves as Brown did with the Cavs.

Consider, for example, that with Saunders and Garnett the Timberwolves won 50 games or more only 4 times in 10 seasons. Their best record in that time was 58-24. With Brown and James, the Cavs won at least 50 games in four of five seasons and in two of those seasons they won more than 60 games. In the 2007-08 season, the Cavs went 45-37, which was better than 5 different seasons that Garnett was in Minnesota.

The point I think is that those who would simply dismiss Brown’s record as an anomaly brought about by the presence of James fail to appreciate that so much more goes into having a winning team than just having one of the top two or three players in the league. It takes a capable head coach, someone far more capable than Saunders, for example, to win a lot of games.

Whatever James feels about Brown at the moment, James has to realize that it was Brown that brought James to this point. It’s one of those interesting debates that never gets resolved but it’s not hard to imagine James still waiting for his first Most Valuable Player trophy if not for the ability of Brown to take James’ game to the next level.

In the last few seasons James has emerged as one of the best defenders in the league but it certainly wasn’t always that way. James was never a defensive disaster like Mo Williams can be, but he was far from a finished product. James has had the benefit of working under two defensive minded head coaches in Brown and Paul Silas, but it was Brown far more than Silas that convinced James that the path of greatness could only be navigated if one is a complete player.

James is now that and more. I suspect, though, that in the rush to applaud the firing of Brown the focus will be far too much on the team’s most recent failure and not on Brown’s overall body of work.

I’m not suggesting that the decision Dan Gilbert ultimately made to fire Brown was wrong. It’s just that it’s far more complicated of an analysis than most want to acknowledge. In the press release announcing the firing, Gilbert acknowledged that Browns’ firing carried an element of risk but he nonetheless concluded that it was a risk worth taking in order to get the team to a higher level.

The last time I heard that kind of rationale, Mark Shapiro was firing Mike Hargrove and bringing in Eric Wedge. I doubt that’s the kind of switch out that Gilbert contemplates but that’s just the kind of risk a decision like this carries.

It’s a funny thing about these amorphous higher levels. You can tell when an individual achieves them but for teams it’s much harder. Whether or not they really even exist is a matter of opinion but most of the time they end up being reached as much out of luck as anything else.

James’ status, of course, complicates the replacement scenario greatly unless the Cavs already have concluded that James is gone. While the rumor mill has been in overdrive for the last two weeks, it is best to remember that most of those fueling that beast are those with a vested interest—professional talkers, people associated with other teams, that sort of thing.

Still it would be easy to reach that conclusion that James is gone by parsing his own words carefully. The problem for the Cavs is that it would be public relations suicide to acknowledge as much and start actually positioning the organization now for life post-James. They have no effective choice but to wait until it’s too late.

Thus the Cavs are probably going to be stuck in some sort of organizational limbo until James makes it official which likely means that about this time next year Gilbert is going to have to explain how one giant leap backward really is part of the plan of moving two giant leaps forward.

Meanwhile, the firing of Brown probably also solidifies Danny Ferry’s role as general manager. Those who wanted Brown gone can’t then lay the blame at Ferry for the collapse. Either you think Brown deserved to be fired because he didn’t do enough with the talent Ferry obtained or you think Ferry didn’t do a good enough job getting the talent and thus Brown was hamstrung. But both principles can’t co-exist.

If forced to choose which is more true than the other, you have to side with Ferry. Look at it this way, you could put James on the New Jersey Nets right now and not change a thing and that team isn’t going to win 60 games even if Phil Jackson is the head coach.

Ferry has done marvelous work winding his way through the various loopholes and intricacies of the league’s byzantine-like salary cap and found enough talent to get this team to 270+ wins in five season. Kevin McHale, his counterpart in Minnesota for most of Garnett’s tenure, needed almost two more seasons, that’s 164 more games, to win as many.

In all likelihood, while both Brown and Ferry can’t be simultaneously responsible for an institutional collapse they both can be simultaneously responsible for making the Cavs one of the best teams in the league and that’s what really has occurred. Now the question is whether or not Ferry and someone else can move beyond the lofty perches already in place. If not, then in about 5 years or so (maybe less), the Cavs will be bumping Ferry into the role of team president, one of his underlings will be the new general manager and the Cavs will be hiring their version of Manny Acta. And as fans all we’ll be able to say, once again, is that we’ve seen this movie before.

Lingering Items-Fascination Edition

The fascinating thing about Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini’s approach to almost everything is how much it stands in stark contrast to that of his predecessor, Romeo Crennel. It’s fascinating because both coaches, presumably, have the same coaching lineage.

If the two were brothers, undoubtedly Crennel would be Fredo Corleone and Mangini would be Michael. Cold, calculating, standoffish and paranoid almost to a fault, Mangini is almost all business. Crennel, on the other hand, came across as a patsy put in charge while others more devious (can you say “Phil Savage?”) played the part of Moe Greene. If it was a good-time-let-the-inmates-run-the-asylum approach you coveted, Crennel was your man.

Right now, Mangini seems to be settling all family business once and for all. He quickly put both Shaun Rogers and Josh Cribbs in line. Phil Dawson will be next. He’s sent a message to all the veterans that their personal comfort is not a concern by making them practice in the rain during mini-camp. In ways large and small and in ways that Crennel never did, Mangini has established that he’s in charge.

But in thinking about the larger issue as to how someone like Bill Belichick could raise two such disparate sons, I can’t help but conclude that maybe that’s part of Belichick’s underlying genius. Not only do the two represent polar opposites in approach and demeanor but they also are markers for what can make an organization successful.

Any time like-minded group think becomes prevalent an organization puts itself into the wrong kind of red zone. The New England Patriots could never have succeeded if the only voice they ever heard was Belichick’s. Crennel’s demeanor acted as a bit of a balm to the red-ass that Belichick would deliver on a regular basis. And Belichick was smart enough to know that he couldn’t play both roles but that he needed both roles.

When Crennel took over the Browns and throughout his tenure, there was no one delivering the tough love. All the players saw was the father figure who occasionally wagged a disapproving finger. It was as though the players knew that dad would never stay mad at them for too long and they were right. Savage was the designated organizational prick but he was largely a loner and gone too often to be effective. There was no Yin to counter Crennel’s Yang.

With the Mangini regime just getting started, there’s no way yet to know if his staff will be all tough lovers like him or whether one or more of his key coaches will take on a Crennel-like persona as a counterbalance. That, as much as anything else, will determine whether Mangini can be successful and turn his most recent job into an actual career.

**

Speaking of fascinating, the “news” that the Cleveland Cavaliers front office was on the verge of firing head coach Mike Brown is either the textbook example of all that is bad about the internet or an actual trial balloon floated by the organization to gauge public reaction to something LeBron James might be contemplating.

If it’s the latter, the public seems to have spoken pretty loudly, pretty quickly. At the moment, while fans have their quibbles with Brown, there is absolutely no uprising to get him replaced. I understand the mentality that tends to devalue regular season accomplishments in light of playoff failures. But I’m more in the camp that thinks that getting there is the far harder part, even in a league where seemingly every team makes the playoffs.

Though the NBA puts more teams in the playoffs than either baseball or football, it doesn’t put any more teams in the playoffs with an actual chance at the title than does either of those other sports. The list of teams with an actual chance at the title this year was pretty short, with the Lakers and the Cavs at the top of those lists and the Celtics and Magic maybe one step behind. And guess what? It’s playing out that way.

The NBA playoffs, like those in other sports, expose a team’s weaknesses in a far shorter time frame than the regular season ever could. Certainly Brown made some suspect coaching decisions in the conference finals, but the reason the Cavs lost has more to do with talent than anything else. It’s not that the Cavs weren’t talented. It’s just that they weren’t talented enough. That’s on Danny Ferry more than anyone else.

The larger point, though, is the one made by Bud Shaw in Friday’s Plain Dealer. Brown is around for as long as LeBron James wants him around. It’s probably an exaggeration to say that James is functioning as the de facto general manager/president/head coach, but only slightly. With 2010 being James’ getaway year, the Cavs can’t afford to make any moves that James might not approve. He doesn’t get a vote, certainly, yet he wields the most potent veto imaginable.

James has never given a hint, at least publicly, that he is anything but simpatico with his head coach. Chances are that no matter who was the head coach the last four years, James’ game was going to improve. But under Brown, James has learned defense in ways he might never have and has become a complete player. James was always a better player than Carmelo Anthony, but there was a time when they were close. Anthony is doing fine, but James has lapped him and everyone else is now running neck and neck with the only other car still left in the field, Kobe Bryant. That’s on Brown as much as James.

In the end, the Brown rumors read far more like the sleazy side of the internet where the stock in trade is not just unsubstantiated rumor but outright fiction. The last thing the Cavs need at the moment is the kind of turmoil that comes with a head coaching change. Unless, of course, The Franchise thinks that’s the first thing it needs, in which case it will be time for Brown to find a realtor.

**

If your fascination runs more in the nature of baseball, you can’t get more fascinating than the American League Central. After taking two of three from the Kansas City Royals, the Indians found themselves 8 games under .500 and only 7 games out of first place. That kind of confluence is hard to find.

What’s even more fascinating is that despite a team that, in mid-June, already has more resemblance to the Columbus Clippers than the team that broke camp in Arizona, being 7 games behind doesn’t seem insurmountable. It’s not that I think they’ll surmount it. It’s just that this division is starting to resemble the AFC West last season. Now, if the Indians can actually play the part of the San Diego Chargers and Detroit crumbles like the Denver Broncos did, then there will be meaningful fall ball in this town.

What helps even more is that the Indians get to keep playing teams within their division. In just the last 10 games, the Indians have picked up two games on the White Sox and three on the Royals, both of whom are also well in the thick of things.

What all this demonstrates more than anything is that every team in the AL Central is deeply flawed. The Royals can pitch but not hit. The White Sox can pitch OK but they can’t score runs. The Twins and the Tigers are simply inconsistent. It’s in this context that it’s wondering what general manager Mark Shapiro plans to do about it.

The Indians have plenty of players in waiting on the disabled list. But it’s not as if they were doing all that much when those players were healthy. A return by Jake Westbrook would be a big bonus, but coming off of arm surgery he’ll at best be a spot contributor for the rest of the season.

Despite all that’s happened both inside and around this team, the keys to its success remain the same—the bullpen. It has settled as of late but that’s only as of late. Whether that’s the blip or what they did earlier in the year is their actual level will take several more weeks to figure out. In the meantime, it would be really nice if they can find starters that can go deeper into a game than 5 innings. Apparently David Huff got that message.

**

Apropos to nothing about Cleveland sports, but the big news in golf this week is the simultaneous returns of Phil Mickelson and John Daly. Good luck to Phil and his family. As for Daly, he’s one too many beers away from another suspension. In the meantime, he’s the subject of this week’s question to ponder, which is: Given his wardrobe choices of late, is it possible that he lost all his mirrors in his various divorces?

The Stench from Bengals' Camp

Here is why the Cincinnati Bengals will never be successful under current ownership and leadership: they lack any content to their character. Owner Mike Brown, after publicly parting ways with one of the NFL’s true miscreants, disgraced receiver Chris Henry, welcomed him back on Tuesday anyway with a new two-year contract. Head coach Marvin Lewis, who just as publicly said Henry was through as a Bengal, played the ever compliant head coach just trying to hang on to a job not worth hanging on to.

For both Brown and Lewis, there isn’t enough Lava soap in existence to wash away the stink of this decision.

Henry had been the poster child for all of the problems that had plagued the Bengals off the field. He’s been arrested five separate times, the most recent of which was just last March when he punched a college kid and then broke the kid’s car window with a beer bottle. The charges were dropped, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It was that incident that finally caused both Brown and Lewis to sever ties with Henry, though there was plenty of justification well before then.

But of course that was March and no football games are played in March. It was an easy decision to make. Training camp was still four months away. The college draft hadn’t yet taken place. There was still plenty of time to juggle the roster and find a way to replace a semi-talented receiver whose only real accomplishment to date has been the record pace at which he seems to find criminal trouble.

Then August beckoned. Chad Johnson, who ultimately reported to camp after threatening not to (he should have listened to his incredibly verbose inner monologue), injured his shoulder in a preseason game against Detroit. T.J. Houshmandzah, the Bengals’ other go-to receiver, has missed both of the Bengals’ preseason games with a sore hamstring. That’s left the Bengals a little thin at receiver, which is kind of a problem in an offense that is based predominately on the throwing arm of quarterback Carson Palmer.

Thus did Brown, after much soul-searching no doubt, place a call to Henry. It wasn’t as if Henry needed call waiting on his cell phone to make sure Brown could get through. Henry has been unemployed since March. Not a single NFL team was even interested. That may be due in part to the fact that Henry has been suspended for the first four regular season games this season. Naturally, Brown felt that with that kind of competition for Henry’s services a two-year deal made sense.

Though he went along with the Henry signing, it was also pretty clear that Lewis wasn’t particularly pleased with this latest turn of events. Perhaps it’s too romantic of a notion to think that Lewis would have taken a stand for doing the right thing instead of the convenient thing, but it’s not as if Lewis is sitting in the catbird seat of the NFL’s best head coaching gig either. If anything, Lewis resigning in protest would have done more for furthering his career than another wasted season in Cincinnati babysitting a roster full of whiners, loudmouths and troublemakers.

Lewis knows full well that what’s been plaguing the Bengals most the last few seasons is the collection of reprobates that Brown has allowed on the roster. With the number of off-the-field incidents permeating this team in the past, the focus has been everywhere but on the game. It gets a little irritating, not to mention distracting, for decent teammates to be constantly asked whether another teammate’s arrest is distracting. That’s why Lewis was so adamant in parting with Henry in the first place. It was Henry above anyone else that represented the Bengals of old. Lewis thought he was finally entering a season fresh.

But Brown, as poor of an example to a father’s legacy as one can imagine, felt he knew better. Fascinated with the past and completely unable to imagine a decent future, Brown, in one sublime move, emasculated his head coach, reintroduced a cancer into the locker room, and ensured another season of jokes directed at a franchise that’s known far more for its buffoonery than its accomplishments.

Perhaps recognizing that he had just been thrown under a bus driven by his owner, Lewis did try to put the best face on it he could, telling reporters on Tuesday that in conversations Henry claims to have been humbled by the time off and the lack of interest in his rather modest services. Henry, too, tried his best to sound contrite while oozing smarm and instead came off as a textbook thug being given the fifth chance he doesn’t deserve.

In one unintentionally telling comment, Henry said that this was “pretty much” his last chance to prove himself. In player-speak, what Henry really meant that as long as he can show that he hasn’t lost a step or two in his stride and/or the ability to hold onto a ball once thrown, there will always be guys like Brown waiting to shower him with the kind of money he’s hardly earned, even if he happens to run into another college kid who just won’t listen.

Leave it to an offensive lineman, though, in this case Bengal Willie Anderson, to actually find the proper perspective to this whole, sad mess. In a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Anderson said that Henry owes a number of people, such as the Bengals’ beleaguered public relations direction, a huge thank you for, basically, having to suffer the fallout from Henry’s antics. “Those people busted their tails beyond duty helping him out,” Anderson said. “He has found the end of the rainbow three or four times.” This won’t be Henry’s last rainbow.

For his part, Brown will likely spend today as he does any other day, in abject denial about the state of his franchise. When he decides to emerge from the rat hole in which he’s living these days instead of dodging the press, he’ll undoubtedly express empathy with the fans who are frustrated by this decision, all while defending his intent to simply bring a winner to the great city of Cincinnati. He’ll also claim to have really done his homework on Henry, perhaps even channeling a little George W. Bush in the process, by claiming to have looked into the soul of Henry to determine that there really is goodness wanting to be set free.

But when this spirals out of control again, which it will, perhaps Brown can petition the North Carolina Department of Corrections. If the Bengals can’t find a third receiver, maybe Brown can get Rae Carruth out of prison before his scheduled release in October, 2018.

The Audacity of Hope

When things are going well, you never expect it to last, especially in Cleveland. When things are going poorly, you never think it will end, especially in Cleveland.

Witnessing the remarkably similar trajectories of the Cavs and the Indians lately it seems like each team is stuck in an endless loop of missed layups and strike outs. The only reason to keep watching is because, like pounding your head against the wall, it feels so good when you stop. That’s what happens I guess when you have a supposedly playoff caliber baseball team playing sub .500 ball because it can’t hit and a playoff basketball team in danger of being swept because it likewise can’t hit.

To appreciate the depths of the Indians offensive struggles, just know that David Dellucci is now batting third. To appreciate the depths of the Cavaliers struggles, just know that the only person shooting worse against the Celtics than LeBron James is Anderson Varejao.

It would be nice to think that this is just a rough patch that will straighten itself out. To be sure, for every valley comes a peak. But if that’s the only lesson to be learned from this stretch, then the disappointment is bound to linger. The parallel struggles of these Cleveland teams are as revealing of their fundamental flaws as they are frustrating.

For the Cavs, James may have picked a vastly inappropriate moment to suddenly go cold, but he hasn’t suddenly turned into the basketball version of Travis Hafner. He’ll be fine. You know it, he knows it and the Celtics know it, too. The only real question is whether it’s in time to salvage the series. If not, then undoubtedly it will be in time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. But even as James will come out of it, that doesn’t mean that the Cavs will suddenly emerge as a serious NBA title threat. There still remains the matter of the relative merits of head coach Mike Brown.

You know that a theory has entered the mainstream when the guy in your office that still plays way too much Dungeons and Dragons is now talking about the Cavs’ offensive schemes under Brown. In the past week or so, people who couldn’t tell the difference between Delonte West and Jerry West are suddenly insisting that the extent of Brown’s knowledge about offense begins and ends with giving James the ball and telling him to make something happen.

Actually, that isn’t far off. Too often it looks like the only reason that anyone other than James scores is because James is an unselfish player with an amazing basketball I.Q. and an uncanny ability to find the open man he can’t even see. If James were like Gilbert Arenas, no one else on the team would average more than six points.

Brown unquestionably thinks defense first and that emphasis has actually paid off in much more tangible ways than many fans think. The Cavs in general and James in particular are far better defensively as a result of Brown and it is this ability that has helped carry the Cavs through what otherwise would be fairly lean times, particularly this season.

But the truth about the Cavs is that they are still a talented but flawed team with a decent but flawed coach. Whenever this season ends, and it looks like that might be sometime mid next week, Brown will undoubtedly have his state of the team press conference where in sum he’ll conclude that this team will be far better next year once it has a full preseason to work together.

He’ll be right, but if the introspection stops there, look for early playoff exits around this time each year Brown remains in charge. Whatever work remains to be done on the player acquisition front, and there is some, at least as much work remains on offense irrespective of the players. Brown’s simplistic offensive schemes are like that boat that’s been sitting on blocks in the neighbor’s driveway for the last six years. Both need to be junked. The statute of limitations has long since expired on an offense that begins and ends with James holding the ball at the top of the key playing one on one with the defender.

Playing good defense in basketball is every bit the table stake that having good pitching is in baseball. But it’s not the only variable in the equation. Without some semblance of an offense, you end up with, well, the Indians. Like the Cavs, the Indians good defense is in the form of its top-tier pitching. But offensively, only a division-wide funk is keeping them in the hunt. If any of the White Sox, the Tigers or the Twins gets hot, the Indians will be looking up at a double-digit deficit long before the All Star break comes around.

Just as the Cavs problems of late are causing many to question Brown’s ability, the Indians struggles likewise has many wondering about manager Eric Wedge. The difference, though, is that there really isn’t much Wedge can do other than what he has been doing to get the team going offensively. It’s not as if there are new plays to design. Unless general manager Mark Shapiro finds a different mix of players, Wedge has nothing much else to do but juggle the lineup, start runners to avoid the double play and give up outs trying to sacrifice runners over into scoring position.

The truth about the Indians is that they, too, are a talented but flawed team. Indians fans remember the bashers of the late 1990s and assume that this team is similarly configured. But go up and down the lineup and the only way you could reach that conclusion is by focusing more on potential than results.

Consider Grady Sizemore. He’s young and appears to have a huge upside, but you also can’t ignore that he’s still a lifetime .280 hitter who’s trending down not up. Last season, he walked more and hence improved his on-base percentage, but the only other offensive statistic that was better than the season before was RBI. He had two more in 2007 than 2006. Jhonny Peralta is in the same situation, except his descent is in its second season. The rest of the lineup, save for Victor Martinez and Hafner, falls into one of two categories: young and still establishing a baseline of performance or old and mediocre. Martinez is steady and seems like he’ll always hit and Hafner, well, enough keystrokes have already been made describing his plight.

Maybe it hasn’t yet been reached, but at some point potential has to actually translate into results or else Indians pitchers will continue to lead the league in tough-luck losses. It’s no longer a question of waiting for 40 or 50 games to get in the books, it’s a matter of actually looking at the last couple hundred games and facing reality.

That’s actually the real problem and the real truth. Cleveland fans are among the most cynical and bitter anywhere in the country, but it is a veneer that goes only a quarter inch deep. At their core, they remain ever hopeful and purposely naive. Maybe it’s the defense mechanism that’s kept them sane these many years but unfortunately it can’t change outcomes for the Cavs or the Indians. Like drug or alcohol addiction, the first step is for the fans and the teams to acknowledge the problem.

Elephants in the Room

As hard as it is to believe, the lack of any meaningful championships in a couple of generations has done nothing to keep Cleveland sports fans humble.

Listening to WKNR’s Greg Brinda and one of his callers dissect the Cleveland Cavaliers the other day reminded me that when it comes to fans, perspective is the first casualty. Apparently common sense is the second. Without trying to recall every painful detail of that inane call, the one point that stuck with me was the caller’s observation that the Cavs half-court offense is “terrible.”

Recognizing that reasonable people can reach different conclusions, it’s still hard to imagine how any aspect of the Cavs could be considered objectively terrible so long as the team has the services of LeBron James. Certain parts of his game may be better than others, but nothing about anything he does would ever be considered terrible. Thus, when he’s on the floor, which he is about 80% of the time, the Cavs will never be a terrible team.

The caller’s point, I suppose, was that Cavs head coach Mike Brown isn’t the most creative coach when it comes to offense and that this is what’s keeping the team from achieving at a higher level. Maybe. But whatever limitations Brown may have generally in coaching the offensive side of basketball hasn’t prevented James from either leading the league in scoring this season or from dominating games in the fourth quarter. In other words, it’s not as if Brown’s offensive schemes are choking off James’ creative instincts.

The larger issue is really one of perspective and common sense. Apparently that caller and a whole host of other fans believe that the Cavs should never lose a game and when they do, it must be Brown’s fault. Of course, those fans would never state it that bluntly though that’s clearly the standard. But the number one rule in analytics that most tend to forget: don’t ignore the obvious. And when it comes to the Cavs, there is a whole lot of obvious to get through long before one gets to the relative merits of Brown’s half-court offense. It’s that kind of analysis that makes me appreciate why there are gun laws on the books in the first place.

As great as James may be, he’s not a machine. Even though the Cavs tend to lose when he’s not in uniform, the opposite simply isn’t true. His talent, his focus, his sheer ability may be well above most any other player in the league, but he still plays a team game. There are roles to be played by the other four on the court with James and their skills and abilities do much to inform his success. And as we now know with Larry Hughes, for example, players don’t always willingly accept those roles. In any case, James may have great influence on the actions of his teammates, but he ultimately doesn’t control them. Every time one of them makes a knucklehead move, it has an impact, and that’s assuming that James himself never does anything wrong, which itself is far from a safe assumption.

Of course, there are also five other players on the floor at the same time, all with opposing jerseys and all with the goal of blunting whatever it is that James and the Cavs are trying to do at any point in time. Many times, in fact too many times for most fans, they are successful. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to the worthy opponent. The Cavs don’t always lose. Sometimes the other team does win.

But moving beyond the simple team dynamics at play, consider two other overriding considerations. First, the Cavs have had a fair share of injuries throughout the season. Second, Cavs GM Danny Ferry performed a mid-season extreme makeover of the roster that had no chance of gelling quickly under the best of circumstances.

There is no great need to recount all of the specifics of each injury the Cavs have had to endure this season, but it is important to note that James, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Sasha Pavlovic, Daniel Gibson, and Anderson Varejao all have missed substantial playing time this season. That’s pretty much the group that carried this team into the NBA Finals last season. Devalue that accomplishment all you want, but those injuries are going to have an impact.

As for the roster turnover, even the most cynical fan would admit that it’s been dramatic. Yet, since that time, the Cavs have had precious few opportunities to actually spend time on the practice court integrating the new pieces with the old parts. If you need proof, just watch another Delonte West pass go astray. It’s not as easy as it sounds to put all of that together on the fly, except to someone who’s knowledge of the game comes from the five or 10 minutes of the game he catches every now and then on cable.

Ferry knew that the biggest gamble he took at the trade deadline had to do with the ability of Brown to pull it all together in time for the playoffs given the Cavs schedule and the limited practice time available. That was under the best of circumstances. Combine that daunting task with the injuries and you begin to understand exactly why the Cavs have only played well in spots since the trades.

The thinking goes that as long as James is on the floor, the Cavs have a chance to win. That’s true, but the operative word in that sentence is “chance” and not “win.” There will always be things that even the best simply can’t overcome.

What fans really worry about I suspect is James’ tipping point. The focus on Brown is really a focus on James in the sense that the common perception is that the Cavs won’t be unable to retain an unhappy James when his contract comes due in a few years. But in fans zeal to define the standard they assume is in place, they again ignore the obvious.

James, like most players not named Larry Hughes, really do want to win a championship. There is always another dollar to earn somewhere, but what really motivates is winning. Players want to compete at the highest levels and they want to feel like the franchise they’re playing for shares that commitment. That goes well beyond the transient offensive schemes of the incumbent coach and something someone like James certainly understands. What James does see is that the Cavs compare favorably with anyone in the league. Owner Dan Gilbert has done his part to fund the enterprise in a way Indians fans dream about. He’s spent greatly on infrastructure and has given the Ferry the freedom to do likewise on personnel. He’s more than demonstrated to even the most discerning players a commitment to winning a championship.

If James’ future is going to be dictated by whether or not the Cavs are committed to getting a championship, and in part it will, then fans have little worry, despite what they might think about Brown’s half court offense. But having a commitment to winning and actually winning isn’t always the same thing. No one doubts Mark Cuban’s commitment in Dallas but his team keeps falling short for reasons outside of their control. That’s going to happen just like it happened to the Cavs in the Brad Daugherty/Larry Nance/Mark Price/Hot Rod Williams years. There are always other factors at play, like Michael Jordan, for example.

The Cavs are at an interesting juncture but hardly a crossroads. There is every chance that they’ll fall short of last year’s accomplishments yet still find themselves in a better position to compete down the road. But the only way to really know is once some of the more obvious issues get taken care of, like injuries and practice time. Those sorts of things take time and we do live in an age of instant gratification so for those fans looking for answers to the wrong questions, continue to drive yourselves crazy. Just make sure that in the process you don’t get stomped by the elephants in the room.

Welcome to Happy Land

Word that Browns general manager Phil Savage is in discussions with the agent of head coach Romeo Crennel for a contract extension is hardly a surprise. These discussions, coming on the heels of contract extensions given to Indians manager Eric Wedge last season and Cavs coach Mike Brown this season, seem to be the happy by-product of what happens in this town once its teams become a bit drunk with success.

But on closer examination, it appears rather doubtful that Savage, Indians general manager Mark Shapiro or Cavs general manager Danny Ferry are just giddy spendthrifts. Instead, there appears to be a deliberate intent, particularly when it comes to the Browns and the Indians, for the owners of the franchises to more directly intertwine the fates of the general managers and the coaches.

It doesn’t take just a cynic to note the timing of Wedge’s three-year extension last May relative to the five-year extension that Shapiro signed a few months earlier. It also didn’t go unnoticed that before the talks heated up between Savage and Crennel’s agent, Browns owner Randy Lerner was already talking publicly about giving Savage an extension.

Given what appears to be the impending extensions of both Savage and Crennel, the extensions signed by Shapiro and Wedge, and the extension recently signed by Brown, gosh the only one left out in this parade has been poor Danny Ferry, the Cavs general manager. But lest anyone think that Ferry’s situation is different, it’s really not. Instead, there is a third element linking both Ferry and Brown—LeBron James.

Ferry’s contract is set to expire in 2010, Brown’s in 2011. Not coincidentally, James is signed through 2011. It may be oversimplifying to say that if Ferry can’t sign James, either because James doesn’t like the direction of the franchise or because he no longer likes playing for Brown, both Ferry and Brown will find themselves on the outside looking in. But it’s not oversimplifying to say that Cavs owner Dan Gilbert doesn’t come across as someone who would tolerate the loss of the team’s key asset without exacting some penalty in return from the offending parties.

An interesting question arising out of all this is whether or not this forced symbiosis that each team is now practicing was by calculation or chance. Assuming it’s not by chance, it does confirm an unmistakable trend in professional sports generally: the days when the head coach was a team’s most important hire are nearly over. If anything, for most teams the emphasis is now clearly on the person acquiring the talent, not on the one managing it.

Consider, for example, the situation with the Oakland As. Billy Beane, the As’ general manager, is considered something of a guru. He showed a host of mid and small market teams how to be competitive against clubs with far bigger budgets. His statistics-heavy approach has been emulated if not outright copied by a host of other general managers, including Shapiro. But one thing Beane has never seemed to have done is tie his fate to any particular manager. Beane already is on his third manager in 10 years.

The same holds true for boy wonder Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager. He’s on his second manager. It may be that Epstein is far more pleased with manager Terry Francona than he ever was with Grady Little, but you get the sense that if Francona trips up, Epstein wouldn’t hesitate to cut the cord. Even the New York Yankees parted ways with Joe Torre, despite years of success, while keeping general manager Brian Cashman.

There are similar examples one can easily find in both football and basketball as well, enough so that there is little doubt which way the pendulum was swung. But there is one team bucking that trend and it appears to be the model that all three Cleveland teams are following—the New England Patriots. General manager Scott Pioli and head coach Bill Belichick arrived there together in 2000 and have worked nearly seamlessly ever since in building a franchise that is consistently competitive. Whichever side you come out on the argument as to who is more responsible for the Patriots success, it is at least clear that the Patriots are a two-headed monster.

One thing that is surprising is that despite the success of the Patriots, few other teams have followed their model. Whether it’s the movies, television or sports, nothing breeds repetition like someone else’s success. But giving the Dolans, Lerner and Gilbert the benefit of the doubt, it’s clear they have now put their franchises on the same relatively less traveled path in which the general manager and the coach either swim or sink together.

Whether or not this is a good idea is one thing. But even if it is, whether or not a team can pull it off is a whole other matter.

On the first point, a team where the general manager and head coach are working in concert is always preferable to a situation where the two parties can’t get along. It’s why A. J. Smith in San Diego fired Marty Schottenheimer after he went 14-2 last season. He was willing to take a step back to move forward. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two parties have to be tied at the hip, either. In fact, there are compelling reasons against it.

There’s something to be said, for example, for maintaining hierarchy if only to keep the subordinate in line. You get the idea in New England that Belichick hardly considers Pioli his boss, which can be dangerous, but when push came to shove in New York, Torre was out of a job, which may be unfortunate for him but it will certainly keep new manager Joe Girardi in line. Whether one situation ultimately is better than the other is highly dependent on not just the talent of the people involved, including the owners, but their egos.

In the final analysis, whatever strategy is employed is still a matter of execution. If the general managers and the coaches are going to be linked as they are in New England, then it is absolutely imperative that the principles make it work in the same way. Given the relationships involved in Cleveland that seems to be the real driving force behind the extensions that have taken place. Even if you dispute the underlying premise, it is undeniable at this point that Savage and Crennel, Shapiro and Wedge, and Ferry and Brown have found a way to work together successfully with little or no friction.

Savage, for example, seems comfortable with Crennel out front. Savage may give the occasional press conference, but it’s generally at rather typical junctures—pre-season; mid-year, post-season. Shapiro, on the other hand, is clearly the face of the Indians. In many ways, he’s far more visible and certainly more quotable than Wedge and that doesn’t seem to bother Wedge in the least. With the Cavs, both Ferry and Brown understand that it is all LeBron all the time.

Whether this will translate to ultimate success for any of these teams is far from clear, particularly when there are serious questions about the competency of some of principles. But to this point, at least, each team has had enough success that it it’s hard to find too much fault with the respective owners for letting it play out just as it is for a few more years.