The Cleveland Cavaliers have not always had the best reputation.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are on the uptick these days. Sure, the Donovan Mitchell trade isn’t great, but the team as a whole has been a lot better to watch over the last two seasons than any other time, without LeBron James, since the late 90s. Things are going well. But they haven’t always been.
In fact, there was a time when the Cavs were one of the biggest dumpster fires in the league. There were actually a few times when the Cavaliers weren’t their best selves. In fact, with the NBA Finals having just ended, it made us remember the time J.R. Smith dribbled out the clock in a tied Game 1 of the 2018 finals.
That was certainly embarrassing and worthy of making the list, but we’re not going to do the obvious. Well, we’re not going to do the most obvious, I should say. So while Smith’s move was boneheaded, and the faces he and LeBron James made at each other as James stomped his feet like a child will forever be meme-worthy, we’re not touching that.
We’re also not touching The Decision, which technically is more of a LeBron James moment than it was the Cleveland Cavaliers, but we’re going to count it as it led to a lot of nonsense. Fans burning jerseys, which is just needless pollution, the team being awful, Kyrie Irving, and course the Dan Gilbert promise to win a title before James.
So what three moments did we pick?
Ricky Davis’ triple-double debacle
I got into sports in the mid-to-late 90s, and the Shawn Kemp Era was really when I first started to get into the Cleveland Cavaliers on a regular basis. Sure, I’ve watched the Cavs prior, but it was around this time I went from casual viewer to fan. So you know I’ve suffered. And man, as bad as the last few years of the Kemp Era were, and the proceeding years after LeBron James left the first time, no time period was as bad from that time period from about 1999 to 2003.
Sure, we had Andre Miller and Zydrunas Ilguaskas, but we also had to suffer through Ricky Davis. Davis, who was drafted 21st overall by the Charlotte Hornets, and was traded not long after to the Miami Heat, in a deal where the Heat got Davis, Eddie Jones, Dale Ellis, and Anthony Mason, while the Hornets got Jamal Mashburn, P.J. Brown, Rodney Buford, Tim James, and Otis Thorpe.
Davis wore out his time in Miami and was later traded to the Cavs in a three-team deal, also involving the Toronto Raptors. The Cavs got Davis and Brian Skinner from the Raptors, while the Heat got Chris Gatling, and the Raptors landed Don MacLean (not that Don MacLean).
The Cavs did not improve after the trade and went from a 30-win season to a 29-win season with Davis as the team’s fourth-highest scorer. With Miller and Ilguaskas on the team, many thought it’d be possible to see a leap in improvement for the team, but that didn’t happen, and instead, Miller was traded for Darius Miles the following season so that the team could tank for LeBron James.
Weeks before the end of the 2002-2003 season, Davis would go on to rightfully earn his nickname of Wrong Rim Ricky. In the waning moments of a March 2003 game against the Utah Jazz, Davis would take a shot on his own hoop to try and get a triple-double, a stat that was very rare at the time. Deshaun Stevenson, then with the Jazz, didn’t take too kindly to Davis’ stunt and shoved him with a second-plus left on the game clock, stopping the action. The fans in Cleveland booed a bit but the backlash against Davis was profound.
Davis made a joke out of the accomplishment and the NBA world let him know. Davis was a 20-point-per-game scorer that season, on subpar efficiency, but he wasn’t viewed as a joke prior to that moment in time.
He was, however, after it. He had some solid scoring seasons after, but his reputation has never recovered. The Cavs only won 17 games that season (that was victory No. 12 on the season), and yet the Davis triple-double attempt is still the most embarrassing thing out of that season.
LeBron James goes full Men in Black and tries to delete a dunk from reality
Let’s say you saw something you weren’t supposed. You start telling people it happened, hyping up the story, and then, out of nowhere, people approach you. No, they aren’t the Men in Black, not this time, but it’s LeBron James and some Nike reps. Come back in time with me to 2009, when LeBron James was taking part in a pick-up game of basketball at one of his mini-camps at the time.
Jordan Crawford (no relation to Jamal Crawford but is related to Joe Crawford, all NBA players), was a sophomore at Xavier University at the time. The two men were hooping as you do and with a sizeable audience in attendance, saw Crawford, a non-prospect at the time of the pickup game, dunk on the league’s then-uncrowned king.
James was so irate about the incident that he demanded Nike go and confiscate all of the footage of the dunk, as it made him look bad. But not as bad as he made himself look by going out of his way by attempting to erase the moment from history. Word got out that Nike was working at the behest of James to illegally procure all of the footage just to protect James’ image, and that subsequently backfired.
The footage still leaked, and because it was 2009, it’s barely viewable. Had James just downplayed the situation and never addressed it, it would’ve gone away with skeptics debating the validity of the tape.
Instead, he came off as a spoiled brat and made the Cavs look bad that the star of their franchise was strong-arming randoms because he got one-upped by a college kid. Imagine the insecurities you must have to be to think getting dunked on is the worst thing ever. Talk about a fragile personality.
The NBA creates the Stepien Rule because of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ mismanagement
Have you ever been watching ESPN or NBA TV or whatever, and see a trade go through? Some NBA teams traded x-number of picks and players to get the -number of players back. Yet, the draft picks that are given up are always every other year? Have you ever wondered why NBA teams can’t trade picks back to back and have to keep a certain number for their team to use?
Well, that’s because of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Let’s go back to 1980 when Ted Stepien owned the Cavs. Stepien was not a good owner and would trade away countless first-round picks during his ownership in a quest to build a champion. Some believe that Stepien just didn’t want to pay rookies, either way, Stepien ruined the Cavs for years.
After the 1981 season, the Cavs sent their first-round picks in ’83, ’84, ’85, and ’86 to the Dallas Mavericks for Mike Bratz, Geoff Huston, Richard Washington, and Jerome Whitehead. Those four picks would turn into Derek Harper, Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, and Roy Tarpley
Those four men would combine for three All-Star appearances, two All-NBA appearances, two All-Defensive appearances, an All-Rookie team selection, and two Sixth Man of the Year Awards. The players the Cavs traded for didn’t do much of anything and were quickly gone from the team. The league would literally freeze the Cavs’ ability to trade anymore because they believed Stepien couldn’t be trusted.
In fact, the league was so mad at what Stepien had done, they thought they would be disbanded at some point, so the league gave the team some picks. In 1985, the league-appointed pick to the Cavs netted the team Charles Oakley. In 1986, the league-appointed pick of the Cavs got turned into Ron Harper.
No one owner has done more to damage an era of basketball, while also changing the way the league operates like Stepien.