Lebron James and the Cavs

One of the worst choke jobs in NBA history.

 

How was it a choke? Orlando was a miracle shot away from the sweep, they were clearly the better team.

Nice of LeBron to shake everyone's hands and answer all the questions at the post-game presser. Dude is all class.

 

not a choke job, just a horrible team to match up against. the cavs were not built to handle the orlando magic.

really, tho, the cavs didn't play very well against the top teams of the league. they destroyed the bad teams and generally did okay on their home court, but i don't think they had many road wins against the nba elite.

personally, i think the coaching staff shot themselves in the foot trying funky matchups to hide their lack of size. mike brown had delonte west (6'3") guarding hedo turkoglu (6'10"). meanwhile, lebron james was on rafer alston. no clue what the thought was there. 6 games of turkoglu picking apart the cavs d and he could't figure out that west couldn't guard him...

 

The Cavs were the best team in the NBA in the regular season. They won the first two series 4-0 and set a record for win margin. They should have beaten Orlando because they were better than Orlando. But they didn't. So, they choked.

They gave up double digit leads in every game except the last game of the series. Some of those leads were over 20 points. That is choking.

This is a retarded statement. They lost 2 games at home all year and only one of those was at full strength.

The Magic were too big at every position, and Lebron was the only person that had the strength to match up with Howard or the size to match up with Turk. West did okay guarding Turk, but they could run that pick and pop because no one in the paint could handle guarding Dwight Howard. Big Z was getting abused all series, he made Dwight Howard look like Shaq in his prime. Varejo looked like a midget next to him.

All of that plus the fact that the Magic were hitting threes at will (contested and uncontested) meant that the cavs were going to have to play at the top of their game. And they didn't. They didn't even show up for the last game. It was embarassing for fans of basketball. They looked more like the Lakers than the Cavs of the regular season. The difference is the Lakers are more talented all around.

 

If they were better than Orlando they would have beaten them. They weren't.

They lost 2 out of 3 against the Magic in the regular season too.


edit: Let's don't forget that the Magic were without their All-Star PG for the series too. It was a horrible matchup for Cleveland and they lost to the better team. Regular season record is pretty meaningless when you consider the length of the season and the unbalanced schedule. So too is Cleveland's 8-0 record in the playoffs up till this point. There were only 3 good teams in the East all year, and Cleveland got handled by both. Orlando beat both (although the Celts likely would have won with Garnett.)

 

Yep. You want to guarantee that it's Cleveland vs LA? go to college football style postseason.

 

Cleveland was the best team in the regular season because they are in the east. They played a lot of games against a lot of pretty bad teams. I did not think they could beat whomever won the west but I thought they would beat Orlando. Lebron is great but 1 man can't win it all. I think that it's most unfair to term what happened to the Cavs as a choke. They just lost to a team that is deeper, and overall more talented.

 

No. A better team would have won the seven game series. Orlando was clearly the better team, head to head, which is what that means.

Let's give the Magic some credit. They've won 12 playoff games.

In other words, the Magic were the better team. Geez. Quit arguing with yourself.

 

This.