Hoops Analyst has yet another great post up (seriously, you should check them out) about the Cavaliers' futility. The first section deals with essentially the same stuff you've probably already read or seen elsewhere, but it's the second part that really caught my eye. "Bill James once observed that one of the problems with bad teams is that they tend to blame their best players for futility when, in fact, the ire should be focused on the bad players," the section begins, and then the author goes through the worst teams of the past 22 seasons and relays the fate of each of those teams' best player. It is interesting that really the only "best player" to stick it out is Big Z after the Ricky Davis/Darius Miles year, but what really got me thinking is if the Cavs have the worst best player of that time period (Ramon Sessions, with an 18.1 PER)?
Probably not, considering the 2004-05 Atlanta Hawks were led by Tyronn Lue's 16.2 PER (which I guess is why they passed on Chris Paul and Deron Williams in the 2005 draft). The only competition Lue has is Johnny Newman's 14.9 PER for the 1997-98 Denver Nuggets, who at 11-71 are one of the most criminally forgotten terrible teams ever. I was always convinced Newman would become a head coach since I figured he must have some kind of insane intangibles or basketball acumen to consistently get work in the NBA for 16 seasons despite never posting a PER above 15.5, but instead, Johnny got himself a sweet website.
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