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Lebron James visits Boston
The third LeBron James project lands in the Garden tonight, and there are some early bugs in the chemistry.
The Cavaliers forward has been his selfless self. But Cleveland is waiting for Kyrie Irving to stop obsessing about his shot and become what the league expects — the best point guard to ever play next to James. And then there are those recent reports that Kevin Love may opt out if the project doesn’t pay a quick dividend this season.
Like it or not, the Cavaliers are operating under a withering modern standard that was set when the Celtics won the 2008 NBA title. No team since, assembled for short-term greatness, has run the table in its first season.
Though Miami reached the NBA Finals in James’ first season with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh (2010-11), the team didn’t win it all until 2012. Though the 2011-12 pairing of Chris Paul and Blake Griffin doesn’t fulfill the Big Three model, the Clippers have been on a Finals alert ever since. Dwight Howard and James Harden have needed at least one get-acquainted year in Houston.
“There’s high expectations for everyone in the NBA, and those expectations are often wrong or inflated,” C’s president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said this week. “That just seems to be part of it.
“Miami had high expectations with LeBron and things didn’t work out that first year. But that was still a great team. Only one team can win it all, and it takes more than on-paper talent.”
The 2007-08 Celtics had something more than on-paper talent, for instance. As Ainge has often said, the confluence of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen benefited from perfect timing.
All three had played for lottery teams the year before in Minnesota, Boston and Seattle. All three were veterans with a long simmering hunger. This latter factor helped spike the quick rise of chemistry, which was, in turn, aided by the rise of a young point guard named Rajon Rondo.
“I did see the stages they were in in their careers,” said Ainge. “I got the sense that they were all very hungry.”
Young stars aren’t always ready to sacrifice — a problem that appears to be evident in Irving’s approach this season.
Allen, on the other hand, was ready to become a secondary option in the fall of 2007. Pierce was thus allowed to continue his reign as the Celtics’ top option. Garnett, as always, was probably a little too unselfish.
Some would say that Garnett’s influence made Pierce a better leader, and set a tone that his two fellow stars were able to follow. Ainge disagrees.
“That diminishes the influence that Ray, Paul and Doc (Rivers) had,” said Ainge. “It’s not just about who KG is, but the emotions of all three players for each other. It was about the enthusiasm in all of them.
“All three were Hall of Fame-type guys coming off of lottery seasons,” he said. “It gave all of them a great deal of hope and enthusiasm. I could see it before they ever got on the court. There was just such life in all of them when they got together.”
The irony, according to Ainge, lies in what followed.
The team lost Garnett to a knee injury prior to the 2009 playoffs, and was eliminated by Orlando in the conference semifinals. The Celtics returned to the Finals in 2010, went into Game 6 in Los Angeles with a 3-2 series edge, and lost Kendrick Perkins for good in the first quarter to a torn MCL and PCL.
Rivers became fond of saying that the Lakers didn’t beat his regular lineup that year. But if health eventually undermined this team, it did set a quick-change standard that has hung over the heads of teams like Cleveland ever since.
“I actually thought our 2009 and 2010 teams were better than the one that won the title,” said Ainge. “That 2009 team got off to an incredible start — 27-2. But we were healthy in 2008, and that was good fortune.”
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