Cavs hit the lottery

Random preface: Something that's always drove me nuts....why does my blog name appear as "Believeland." on any blog roll? There's no period after it in the heading. There's no period after it anywhere. I don't like being OVERLY grammatically correct.


Moving on....


The NBA Draft Lottery was held last night, and the Cleveland Cavaliers entered it having two lottery picks. If the draft fell based off of records, they would've had the 2nd and 8th picks. (That 8th pick came with Baron Davis from the Clippers for Mo Williams and Jamario Moon. You might've read about it here.) Anyways, lady luck had other plans for the Cavs. Or maybe it was karma. Or maybe it was rigged. I don't know, and quite frankly, I don't care.

That Clippers pick didn't end up being 8th. It ended up winning the lottery and becoming the #1 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. Our original pick ended up 4th, so instead of the projected 2nd/8th picks, we ended up with 1st/4th. Tough to complain about that, even if it is a weak draft class.

Surely two top-5 picks will help move the rebuilding process along much faster than just one pick would have. On the other hand, the Clippers essentially traded Baron Davis and the #1 pick (Kyrie Irving?) for Mo Williams and Jamario Moon.

We'll see what the Cavs do with those two top-4 picks in next months draft.....assuming the world doesn't end this Saturday like the Mayans claim.

BUT, if it does, at least we'll all go out with the Indians still in first place!

Random nonsense

Some (probably nonsensical) thoughts about Cleveland teams currently...

Cavaliers:

Well, the first season post-LeBron has come and gone, and honestly, I'd call it a success (in my eyes at least). I know a lot of Cavs fans wanted to see the Cavs do everything they could to make a run at the playoffs this year, and hope to build the team through deadline deals similar to the way they've worked over the past couple years, but I was 100% against that. At the beginning of the season, I said this season would be considered a 'success' (I use the term loosely) if the Cavs managed to do three things: 1.) Manage to trade away some of the older veterans for either draft picks or young players, 2.) Lose as many games as possible to get the most ping pong balls for when the Draft Lottery comes around in the summer, and 3.) Find a way to beat LeBron and the Heat just once.

All three things were accomplished for the most part. They got rid of Mo Williams and Jamario Moon for a top-10 pick from the Clippers and Baron Davis. Davis wasn't that big of a deal, but the top-10 pick is. I said on this blog when the season started that I was hoping for a 16-66 record. The Cavs finished at 19-63, good for 2nd worst in the league. That should land us a top-3 pick in the draft. And lastly, they not only found a way to beat the Heat, but they went wire to wire on them, leading for ALL 48 minutes of the game.

Going into the off-season they now have two top-10 picks in the draft, and have found some young players that could be contributors in the future for this team. Varejao and Hickson are both big time players in their own right, so that's a nice cornerstone to build off of. Add in two top-10 picks, and the continuing progress of guys like Ramon Sessions and Christian Eyenga, and you might just have a young nucleus that can contend in a few years.

Thankfully for all of us Dan Gilbert realized he needed to go all-in with the rebuilding process, and so far, it looks like this might take less time than everyone thought--and in Cleveland, there's nothing better than hearing that.

Browns:
Even though there's a chance the 2010 season doesn't happen (which would be awful), the draft is coming up in a little over a week. As usual, the Browns have a top-6 pick, and I'm kind of torn between what I want to see the Browns do. On one hand, the thought of adding Patrick Peterson into a secondary with Joe Haden, TJ Ward and Sheldon Brown sounds amazing. That would instantly become one of the toughest secondaries in the NFL to throw on. On another hand, we need a dominant pass rusher that can get to the QB on a consistent basis and cause havoc. On a nonexistent third hand, adding a playmaking WR would really help Colt McCoy, Peyton Hillis, and the rest of the offense.

Sadly, we don't have three top-6 picks, so we can't fill all of those holes, but on the bright side, we should be able to address one of those three, regardless of who gets drafted before we pick. I'm leaning towards wanting a nice WR the most, but as long as the Browns address one of the three mentioned above, I won't be able to complain. Also, if they do go defense in the 1st round, I'd love to see a nice WR like Jonathan Baldwin (from Pitt) fall to them in the 2nd round, and then hope that a guy like Casey Matthews (Oregon) is available in the 3rd. It would be awesome to see one of Clay's sons rocking the Brown & Orange just like daddy did.

Indians:
Somehow, this team has managed to start the season off 10-4, and currently sit tied for the lead in the AL Central. Now there's about a 99% chance that the Indians can't keep this up for the whole season, but that's fine. No one expected the Tribe to win more than 70 games anyways. What I do like, however, is the fact that this team is 10-4 without their top two hitters doing anything so far. Carlos Santana and Shin-Soo Choo have both been virtually nonexistent this entire season, and yet the team is still winning. Also, the lineup should only get better once we can add a (relatively) healthy Grady Sizemore to the lineup, as he's clearly a huge upgrade over the current platoon of Austin Kearns/Travis Buck.

But as I've mentioned before on this blog, once we get some of our top of the line prospects in Cleveland, there's no reason to think we can't make a run at a World Series. If Lonnie Chisenhall and Jason Kipnis are as good as they've been in the minors, they make the offense 10x more powerful. If Alex White and Drew Pomeranz are those front-end-of-the-rotation guys everyone expects, the pitching staff looks 100x better. If these four guys all pan out the way they're expected, I'm 100% convinced that the projected 2012 (2013?) Indians team as a whole is much better than the 2007 Indians that were one win away from making the World Series.


There might not be much hope in Cleveland right now for any of the teams, but if we can get two good drafts this spring/summer out of the Browns & Cavs, all three teams will certainly be looking much better than they all did the year before. And you can't ask for much more out of Cleveland teams than forward progress, opposed to the backwards progress we've been so accustomed to over the past decade or so.

LeBron returns to Cleveland, leaves a loser!

Damn, does that feel good.

LeBron returned to Cleveland for the 2nd time since stabbing the city in the back on national television, and he walked off the court with his head hanging. He ducked player intros like a complete coward, and was dealt a nice batch of karma by losing to the worst team in the NBA.

In a season that has been extremely frustrating and disappointing, the Cavaliers have at least given fans something to be excited about by beating the one team they wanted to beat more than any other team in the NBA.

Add in the opening night win against Boston (who had beaten Miami the night before), two victories in the span of a week over Amare and Melo's Knicks, and the mid-season victory over the defending champion Lakers, the Cavs have proven they CAN beat elite NBA teams, but they have to play near perfect basketball. The team isn't anywhere near playoff contenders, but winning the lottery in a few months would certainly help the cause.

Nonetheless, in an absolutely miserable season, the Cavs do have 5 marquee wins. And if I have to watch a team go 16-66 (or whatever they end up), at least we can say we beat LeBron's Heat, the Celtics, the Lakers, and the Knicks a few times.

It can't get any worse than this season, but beating LeBron at home, and (hopefully) winning the #1 pick in the draft in a few months would certainly be a decent consolation prize going into the future.

Let 'The Process' Begin!

The Cavs took a big step towards a complete rebuild tonight by trading away Mo Williams and Jamario Moon for Baron Davis and the Clippers 1st round pick in 2011.

The Clippers pick should be a top-10 pick, and that's the key component of this deal. Mo Williams/Baron Davis is a wash. Both have around the same talent level, and neither are 'future' pieces for this team. The Cavs took on Davis' contract that expires at the end of the 2013 season and hopefully that's around when the Cavs are turning the corner, and we can move him and his (then) expiring contract for someone that can help the team at that time.

The bottom line is the Cavs will now have two top-10 picks in next years draft. That's how you rebuild, folks. Hopefully the Cavs aren't done and can find someone to take Jamison off our hands, and if so, we can jump all-in and get this rebuild rolling as fast as possible.

I love the move. Top-tier picks is the fastest way to rebuild a team, and adding two top-10 picks around JJ Hickson, Anderson Varejao, Ramon Sessions (maybe--not sold on him yet) and Christian Eyenga is a good nucleus of guys to start to build around.

It's gonna take a few years, but hell....we're Cleveland fans. We're used to waiting anyways. At least it looks like the Cavs are serious about blowing it up and completely rebuilding, which is what they need to do if they wanna be championship contenders ever again.

Step one of The Process is complete. Let's keep it rolling!

Wait, what?

Remember this?

That was about a month ago. Virtually the exact same team took the floor tonight in the much anticipated (ha) rematch between the Lakers and Cavs, and the Cavs won by 9. The only real difference in the Cavs lineup between the two games was that Mo Williams was back in the rotation...yet he only played 3 minutes and scored 0 points.

Yea, I really don't know how the hell the Cavs won either.

Nonetheless, at least the Cavs have two jewels in their crown from this 'season from hell' in beating both the Celtics and Lakers so far. We'll just disregard the fact that they set an NBA record with 26 straight losses during one point between those two wins.

So the obvious question: Is there actually a tiny bit of hope for the Cavs? Who knows. Considering they're still from Cleveland, highly unlikely. But J.J. Hickson has played great, Ramon Sessions has played pretty solid, and Christian Eyenga has shown ridiculous athleticism and a good chunk of potential. Add a healthy Varejao next year along with (hopefully) a #1 draft pick, and maybe you do have a few pieces to build around.

It's gonna be a long time before the Cavs are contenders again, but a win over the Lakers proves that there are at least a few decent pieces already on the roster. Now it's up to the front office to do a good job and slowly start to build up a respectable roster.