The heart wants what the heart wants, and Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving had his heart set on Harrison Barnes.
Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski penned a scathing piece dedicated to the inbred dysfunction and disorder the Cavaliers franchise has come to represent, in which he held nothing back. And I mean nothing. When he wasn’t destroying now-departed general manager Chris Grant, he was dropping Woj bombs like he always does.
One such bomb approached nuclear-like levels of mind-blowing. Woj says that in 2012, Irving wanted the Cavs to select Barnes out of North Carolina with the fourth overall pick instead of Syracuse’s Dion Waiters:
From there, Cleveland compounded mistake upon mistake. Grant passed on Connecticut center Andre Drummond in the 2012 draft, because he didn’t want to pair two such unpolished offensive players as Thompson and Drummond together, sources said. Grant had always warned player agents that the Cavaliers would never a select a player who didn’t come and work out for the franchise. Only Grant did just that when he took Syracuse guard Dion Waiters with the fourth overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft. If the Cavaliers weren’t going to select Drummond, Irving badly wanted them to consider his close friend, Harrison Barnes. Cleveland passed, and Irving and Waiters have struggled to co-exist together. Before his firing, Grant had started to shop Waiters to teams around the league.
Waiters and Irving have hardly been the perfect pairing, and it stands to reason that Barnes, a more athletic and willing wing defender with better shot selection and additional range, would have been the better fit. Like Irving, Waiters needs the ball in his hands to be effective. In some ways, their partnership was doomed from the start, and it’s going to stay that way until Cleveland realizes Waiters is nothing more than a cross between J.R. Smith and Jamal Crawford.
I’m not even saying the Cavs should have taken Barnes. Likewise, I won’t eviscerate them for passing on Drummond. They clearly could have used a big, but passing on Jonas Valanciunas in 2011 is the biggest mistake in my mind. Drummond has a higher ceiling, but there were so many teams that glossed over him. He was supposed to be a project. The Detroit Pistons got lucky and struck gold.
Anyone other than Waiters would have been a better fit for Cleveland’s team. I don’t even care that the Cavs have won four straight. Barnes would have been the better pull, especially if Irving wanted him in Cleveland.
Klay Thompson would have been the even better pull, but Woj tells us Grant was too arrogant to select him:
There had been discussion on drafting Washington State’s Klay Thompson with the fourth overall pick, but Grant believed he could get a deal done later in the lottery and snare him. The Cavaliers missed, Golden State selected Thompson with the 11th pick and he’s become one of the best two-way shooting guards in the NBA.
Here’s where my circuits start to go berserk.
Grant wanted to select both Thompson and Waiters? In the same draft? When they would play the same position?
Thompson has the size necessary—he stands at 6’7″—to play small forward, but he’s a shooting guard at heart. And Grant wanted to pair him with Irving and Waiters? Riiiiiiight. Because that would have worked out so well.
Cruel and unforgiving as Woj is, he provides great insight into the Cleveland psyche. Grant clearly needed to go. His draft track record alone was cause enough for dismissal. Now it’s time for the Cavs to move on. Harping on this won’t get them or I or you anywhere.
Forgetting this entirely, though, is not an option. During this winning streak, during this nightmarish rebuild, the Cavs must remember where it all went wrong and the mistakes they made as a collective, lest they happen all over again.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
