The New Orleans Pelicans Can’t Make the Same Mistakes as Cleveland

What Cleveland Did Wrong

When the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted hometown hero LeBron James in 2003, it seemed as though their long-suffering fans were finally catching a break.

LeBron came into the league as a talent like no other. He had been hyped since he was in grade school, his high school games were on ESPN and he came into the league ready to play.

LeBron becoming a superstar and the league’s best player was as sure a thing as you ever get in the NBA.

Surely even the Cavaliers couldn’t screw this up, right? Wrong.

The second the Cavs drafted LeBron it was like someone set a timer for when he was going to leave.

The question in Cleveland was never “How do we build a title contender around Lebron,” it was “How do we keep LeBron from leaving?”

The Cavaliers were like an insecure partner in a marriage to a better looking, more talented person. They couldn’t believe their luck, but knew it probably wouldn’t last.

All of Cleveland’s moves were in desperation, a way to try and appease LeBron, and they went about it in all the wrong ways.

Instead of building around the draft and adding players that were LeBron’s age to the team, Cleveland constantly traded picks, grabbed overpriced, aging veterans to try to win now and never built any kind of chemistry with LeBron.

Imagine being 19-years-old and having to play with the likes of Donyell Marshall and Alan Henderson. Nothing against those guys, but they were on the backend of their careers and hardly the kind of guys a young LeBron wants to go to a club with after the game. (Does Cleveland have clubs?)

Young LeBron was stuck carrying old teams on his back for the first seven years of his career and it finally took its toll.

Just take a look at some of those rosters. Can you blame Lebron for leaving?

LeBron was ridiculed for “The Decision” (which raised millions for the Boys’ Club by the way, but hey, you do you, Skip Bayless)  but it should have been Cleveland who was on blast.

Instead of building a team organically through the draft, allowing LeBron to play and grow with people his own age, the Cavs wasted year after year with bad trades and free agent pick-ups.

People blamed LeBron for demanding Cleveland do better, but the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the Cavs.

Here are some of Cleveland’s most egregious errors, the exact kind that the New Orleans Pelicans have to avoid with Zion.