The Truth About the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers

Image courtesy of Reddit/Imgur

"These guys were a bunch of scrubs!" "One of the greatest carry jobs in NBA history!" We hear or read these statements all the time in social media or in barbershop discussions. We as fans tend to justify LeBron forming superteams because the Cavs that drafted him quote unquote "did not provide any help". While this statement isn't actually 100% false, it isn't 100% true either. Let's revisit the 2007 Cavs that made the NBA Finals if it was really the "worst" team to make the Finals, ever.

Before we dive down into specifics you might want to ask - why are we talking about 2007 in 2021? This all due to Russell Westbrook signing with the LA Lakers in his last ditch effort to win a championship forming the third superteam in LeBron James' career. Is LeBron's illustrious career having full of superteams justified?

Contrary to how people know me, I was a fan of LeBron James. I was a fan of that 1st round draft pick from St. Vincent-St. Mary Highschool. The former was drafted straight out of highschool as the best basketball player from that class and an all-around physical marvel. However as time went on, that feeling eventually waned and fizzled out. With that being said, let's get to the meat and potatoes of this article.

Team Stats

The Cavs team won 50 games that year, with a defensive rating of 100.6 and 92.9 in points allowed which are good for 4th and 5th in the entire NBA. Those numbers improved come playoff time, only just allowing 86.7 points per game which is the league's best and a 99.3 defensive rating which was the 2nd best. They were also a great rebounding team, ranked 4th in offensive rebounds and 6th in defensive rebounds and overall ranked 2nd in the league by averaging 43.5 rebounds per game that season. Offensively though it's almost the complete opposite as they ranked 18th overall in offensive rating at 104.4 (The Suns who ranked first had 112.9) and 19th in points per game at 96.8 ppg. Come playoff time the numbers declined to 101.1 offrtg and 88.8 ppg respectively.

The team was an overall elite defensive team and a suspect offensive team who outside of LeBron James were just subpar at best. LeBron runs the offense as their primary playmaker while also serving as the primary scorer of the team. On defense however was another story as Larry Hughes and Eric Snow were a great defensive backcourts while LeBron James and Anderson Varejao were also very good defenders that year (the latter leading the NBA in charges taken per 48 minutes) and Ilgauskas was basically a brick wall down low. We will explore to those in the later sections.

Together they were coached by Mike Brown who was the assistant coach to Gregg Popovich from 2000 to 2003, won one title with the latter in 2003 and later the former won 2 more titles with the Warriors as the assistant coach.

Overall, we can compare this run to the 2011 Chicago Bulls who also had the best defense in the league but outside of Derrick Rose was not a great offensive team (ranked 10th overall in off rtg) and while if you look at the scoring of the Bulls roster vs the Cavs roster, it is a bit deceiving because Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah played only 59 and 48 games respectively leaving Rose doing the most work in scoring and assisting. So if we look deeper, there have been many carry jobs in history - we can look into the 2016-2017 Oklahoma City Thunder only having Russell Westbrook who ironically is currently LeBron's teammate in the next season moving forward. The latter was leading a more defensive oriented roster while shouldering most of the offense against a stacked Western Conference. The most simlar to LeBron with the Cavs though in terms of records and statistics was Michael Jordan with the Bulls in 1988. That team also finished 50-32, had one of the best defensive rating in the entire NBA while having only a subpar offense.

Very similar right?

So you might ask, why am I comparing LeBron's run to others who didn't make the Finals that year? Because those other players I've mentioned carried the offense while playing with a primarily defensive roster. They just didn't find similar success due to the competition, which we will cover in the next section.

Competition

Before we proceed let us acknowledge this: LeBron has faced some of the best Finals competition in NBA history. So with that being said, the former was also part of probably some of the worst Eastern Conference ever, most especially in 2007. That year only 2 teams won 50 games - the Cavs and the Pistons, as opposed to the West who had 5 including 2 teams who won 60 games. In the West, teams had to duke it out every single playoff round, something that can not be said the same for the East during that year. Compare that to Derrick Rose in 2011 who had 4 teams that won 50 games and was stacked with so much competition - the Big 3 Celtics, the Big 3 Heat and a Prime Dwight Howard with the Magic who just made the Finals the previous season. The Eastern conference in 1988 also had 4 teams with 50 wins, very much stacked including the dynasty Celtics and the Bad Boys Pistons. The Thunder in 2017 had 5 teams winning 50 games with the Golden State Warriors dynasty at its strongest during the time. About the last point, let me clarify that I don't believe Westbrook is a better player than LeBron but during that point in time - both have similar roles, weaknesses and playing style.

Going back to the topic, here were the teams that the Cavs faced throughout that Finals run:

1st Round: 41-41 Washington Wizards
2nd Round: 41-41 New Jersey Nets
ECF: 53-29 Detroit Pistons
Finals: 58-24 San Antonio Spurs

Playoffs 1st Round

The Wizards were without Gilbert Arenas during that series but Antawn Jamison played out of his mind during that series averaging 32 ppg, 9.8 rpg, 1.3 apg, 0.5 spg and 1.0 bpg but despite his best efforts, it was him and not LeBron who didn't had enough help during that series. Let's compare the box score of these teams.

By looking at the numbers you can easily well that Antawn Jamison was the one playing with scrubs outside of Antonio Daniels compared to LeBron James. Credit to the stifling defense of the Cavs which again dispels the notion that these same guys were just a bunch of scrubs. They also outrebounded and outscored most of the Wizard's best 4 players. Even if Gilbert Arenas was present though I don't think the Wizards had the chance to begin with.

Playoffs 2nd Round

Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd looked good on paper but Cavs defense limited Vince to just 35% from the field. To their credit, the Nets were the best team in the playoffs when it comes to defensive rating with the Cavs coming in second place. Indeed the Nets played great defense against LeBron limiting him to only 24.7 ppg in 42% shooting. The problem was rebounding. When the Nets only have Jason Kidd as their best rebounder spells doom as the Nets bigs Nenad Krstić and Mikki Moore were bullied in the glass against Ilgauskas, Gooden and James who averaged 9.0, 9.5 and 7.3 respectively. In the end, the Cavs had the superior offense that led them to win the series who saw 5 of their players averaged double digits. Scrubs? Not really. LeBron James had much needed offensive help during that series when he was scoring below his season average during that series.

Eastern Conference Finals

The Detroit Pistons were a perennial playoff contenders since 2001 and won a title in 2004. Led by Chauncey Billups. Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince from the 2004 title yet they sorely missed the defensive presence of Ben Wallace - their defensive anchor and best rebounder. During that series, no one outside of Rasheed Wallace averaged 7 rpg that series while LeBron James and Zydrunas Ilgauskas dominated the glass. Ilgauskas also took on the scoring load by dropping 22 in Game 1 while LeBron scored just 10 points in that game. The next game saw Sasha Pavlović shooting 7-10 from the field enroute to 14 points next to LeBron's 19. In Game 4, Drew Gooden finished with 19 points on 57% shooting providing James with a much needed scoring help and finally in Game 6, Daniel Gibson finished with 31 points on 7 of 9 from the field, 5 of 5 from the 3 point line and 12-15 from the charity stripe playing off the bench in 29 minutes while LeBron finished with 20 points in 3 of 11 from the field. Finally, It is worth noting however that in Game 5 of that series LeBron scored 48 points including last 25 points for the Cavs in one of the best performances in his young career during that time. Still this begs the question - were those other guys really scrubs during that series?

The Finals

Probably the only competition LeBron ever had in the playoffs outside of the Pistons, this Spurs team beaten the very best the West had to offer and this was where it got ugly from LeBron and the Cavs. LeBron averaged 22 ppg, 7 rpg, 6 apg, 1.0 spg, 0.5 bpg while averaging a ludacris 5.8 turnovers per game and shooting just 35.6% from the field. The Spurs dared LeBron to shoot all series long, clogging the paint to limit his drives and made him commit too many mistakes by forcing him to turn the ball over many times. Larry Hughes struggled to guard Tony Parker due to a nagging foot injury since the Detroit series. The series saw more playing time for Donyel Marshall and Damon Jones as they started to surround LeBron with shooters to keep the games close despite it being a sweep. At least 2 games LeBron was forced to sit out due to foul trouble and Hughes had to sit down for the rest of the series after Game 2. The Cavs defense were still great during that series, fast forward to Game 3 - Big Z both played a vital role in stopping Tim Duncan, limiting that latter to just 14 points on 6-17 from the field while outrebounding him (Big Z had 18 rebounds including 10 offensive rebounds to Duncan's total of 9), Drew Gooden also rebounded well that game had 12 including 4 offensive rebounds. Both Drew and Big Z had double-doubles that night. LeBron scored 25 points and Eric Snow's great defensive night against Tony Parker limiting him to 7 of 17 from the field but despite their best efforts, were still not enough against the Spurs because of the late blunder by Anderson Varejao forcing a tough post move that didn't go in and a ref no call on Bowen's supposed foul on LeBron James' 3 pointer that would have gave the latter 3 free throws. Game 4 was tighly contested all night long due to great defense from the Cavs and LeBron James finding his rhythm from the mid range including a clutch 3 pointer with less than 2 minutes left, the game ended with both teams fouling each other to close it out. Tim Duncan was again stymied by the Cavs bigs as he had 6 turnovers and shot 4 of 15 from the field.

Conclusion

All the section has lead us to conclude that the 2007 Cavs team were underrated. Again the main theme of this article was their elite defense, they were able to give guys like Tim Duncan, Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson, Many Ginobili, Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton really bad off shooting nights. You believe a bunch of scrubs could do that to great players? I don't think so. Infact, LeBron should equally to be blamed especially in the Finals because he did not make the defense pay for leaving him with so many open jumpers and had too many costly turnovers. While LeBron also had limited help offensively in the Finals, with Larry Hughes down due to an injury shows how big of the loss the latter actually was and other guys stepped up defensively to make that series most of the games close despite it being a sweep (3 games on that series had a margin of 9 points, 3 points and 1 point respectively). One can make an argument that if we remove LeBron from the roster they would be a very bad team, the same can be said for if we remove MJ from the Bulls 1988 or Derrick Rose from the Bulls in 2011 or Westbrook in the Thunder in 2016 those teams would also have no chance of ever being competitive during that time. Finally, before you go to comparing 2010-2011 Cavs and 1994-1995 Bulls I will shed light on this soon why this is an invalid comparison. For now let's hopefully agree that the 2007 Cavs ain't scrubs and the media has lied to all of us. Thank you so much Shannon Sharpe, Nick Wright, Colin Cowherd, Kendrick Perkins and Ryan Hollins!

References:
https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/traditional/?sort=PTS&dir=1&Season=2006-07&SeasonType=Regular%20Season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgAnqakIymQ&t=963s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwLY9Cxspnc&t=253s
https://www.reddit.com/r/clevelandcavs/comments/67pixr/reminder_that_lebron_james_took_this_roster_to/
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2007.html