League’s elite teams a lesson in contrasts
TORONTO — Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob has fostered an organizational environment built on empowered employees, open dialogue and nimble management. Now, eight years after Lacob and his group of investors bought a floundering franchise for $450 million, Golden State is a worldwide brand valued at more than $2.6 billion.
“I personally think it all goes back to the steadiness of ownership, the front office and the coaching staff,” associate head coach Mike Brown said. “These
guys have all been here. Everything’s consistent. Everybody’s on the same page. Everybody has the same vision.”
Therein lies the biggest difference between the Warriors and the team they’ve faced in each of the past three NBA Finals: Golden State is a case study in stability. Cleveland is the league’s most compelling soap opera. Seldom does a week pass without a made-for-TV story line emerging from the Cavaliers’ locker room.
Less than a month after Cleveland entered its Christmas Day matchup with the Warriors having won 19 of 21 games, it is set to host Golden State on Monday mired in a 2-7 skid. LeBron James’ team dropped back-to-back games last week by at least 25 points for the first time in his career. The Cavaliers built a 22-point lead Friday against Indiana, only to grapple with a 97-95 loss.
Cleveland head coach Tyronn Lue recently blamed his team’s issues on individual “agendas.” After Friday’s collapse to the Pacers, James seemed defeated, bemoaning that the Cavaliers are “so fragile” and, “I don’t know where it kind of went wrong.”
It doesn’t take a basketball savant to pinpoint Cleveland’s flaws. Unlike the Warriors, who pair a potent attack with stingy defense, the Cavaliers appear intent on preserving as much energy as possible for offense. The only team in the league with a worse defensive rating than Cleveland is a Sacramento club deep into a youth movement.
A supporting cast the Cavaliers assembled hastily last summer is stocked with players well past their prime. Early returns on point guard Isaiah Thomas, the centerpiece of Boston’s August deal for Kyrie Irving, suggest that he is an odd fit in Cleveland’s starting lineup.
Since returning two weeks ago from a hip injury that sidelined him three months, Thomas has excelled as a go-to option when playing with the Cavaliers’ reserves. But in the 40 minutes he has logged alongside James and Kevin Love, Cleveland has been outscored by 28 points per 100 possessions. Thomas, who has missed 21 of his past 26 shots, has three months until the playoffs to get comfortable as a secondary scorer.
“I haven’t played against that team with (Thomas), so we’ll see how different it is,” Warriors forward Draymond Green said. “I’m not really sure what they’re running or different things like that.”
As the Cavaliers labor through growing pains, the Warriors are well-positioned for another title push. A group that returned 12 players from the 2016-17 champion leads the league in scoring, assists per game, blocks per game, shooting percentage, three-point percentage and free-throw percentage. Golden State’s 12game road winning streak is the second-longest such streak in franchise history. In their nine games following a loss this season, the Warriors are undefeated. It all represents a sort of basketball utopia, one in which All-Stars coexist in peace, injuries to core players are met with more victories and the biggest problem is a tendency to get complacent. Those within the organization often attribute such harmony to the egalitarian leadership styles of Lacob, general manager Bob Myers and head coach Steve Kerr. Players, coaches and frontoffice staffers are free to voice their opinions without fear of being replaced.
That isn’t necessarily the case in Cleveland, where owner Dan Gilbert is mercurial.
In July 2010, when James announced his decision on national TV to leave the Cavaliers and sign with the Heat, Gilbert posted an open letter to the team website lambasting the former face of his franchise. General managers Danny Ferry, Chris Grant and David Griffin have shuffled through Cleveland headquarters without Gilbert extending a second contract. At times during free agency, Gilbert reportedly has bypassed the GM to negotiate directly with agents.
Looming over the Cavaliers’ season is the fear that the next big defection could be out of Gilbert’s control: Will James bolt in free agency this summer? The good news for Cleveland is that, for at least six more months, it boasts a player who has tuned out the drama and willed his teams to the NBA Finals each of the previous seven seasons.
“You can never count that guy out,” Brown, who has twice been fired by Gilbert, said of James. “He’s an unbelievable person, unbelievable talent and everywhere he’s been, he’s won at a high level. So, that’s always going to be an X-factor right there.”
“You can never count that guy out . ... Everywhere he’s been, he’s won at a high level.” Mike Brown, Warriors assistant, on LeBron James