Bored with the Playoffs? Try...Cavs vs. Cavs

Former Cavaliers center Brad Daugherty, now a NASCAR analyst on ESPN, stirred the pot this week when he suggested that his Cavs team of the late 1980s and early ’90s could beat the current version.

Did I say stirred the pot? Seems like he was smokin’ it, actually.

Daugherty’s teams were exceptional. There was a sense, in 1989, that they were about to be championship caliber. Daugherty. Price. Nance. Williams. Harper. It was an exciting young team. Magic Johnson called them “the team of the ’90s.” Few disagreed.

But a guy named Michael Jordan had other plans, and the rest is history.

Daugherty joked in an article on ESPN’s “Water Cooler” website that his team would win by “20 or 30” – before admitting that it would be much closer than that. But he still claimed his group would win.

Key reasons:

1. While he admitted there’s no denying LeBron James’ greatness, he suggested that former Cavs Larry Nance and Hot Rod Williams could alter some of LeBron’s shots and thereby affect his game. (My take: Could be. But from what I’ve seen, you can alter one of LeBron’s shots one moment, then be watching as he dashes away from you on an unobstructed path to the basket for a monster dunk the next. In other words, the guy simply keeps coming at you until you break.)

2. Daugherty believes the pick-and-roll play he ran with point guard Mark Price would have given Zydrunas Ilgauskas fits. “If you don’t guard Mark coming off the screen, he shoots a 3-pointer instead of just pulling up and shooting a two or passing the basketball, so that would put a lot of pressure on them,” he said. (My take: Okay, but who would guard Ilgauskas at the other end? Let’s not overlook Z’s ability to step out and hit 15-to-20-footers with ease. I think Ilgauskas would give as good as he got.)

3. Ron Harper. “Ron was a very, very difficult opponent for anyone,” he said. “You can ask Michael Jordan. When we traded Ron, Michael said that’s the best thing we could have ever done for the Bulls. Ron was very good at moving and defending the basketball, he was a good rebounder, and he could score at different angles, outside or inside.” (My take: He’s right about this. I was always a Harper fan, and think things would have been different had he stayed with the team.)

To be fair, Daugherty acknowledged that it’s easy to sit where he does now and claim his team would win. He’s obviously having fun with it. And you can’t blame him for taking pride in that team and believing they could win.

Had Jordan not hit “The Shot,” there’s no telling how history might have treated that Cavaliers team.

But he DID hit the shot, and that’s an important part of this debate. Sometimes, one player makes a difference.

I wrote last time about why LeBron James matters. It’s because he’s a bonafide superstar. He has the same larger-than-life persona that Jordan did.

And that’s what would make the difference if the current Cavs played the team of Daugherty’s era.

I have to admit, I wonder to this day what might have been had Wayne Embry not traded Harper away in 1990. Harper made the All-Rookie team in 1987 and was a 20-points-per-game scorer. Some even called him “Baby Jordan,” because his game so resembled MJ’s.

But he wasn’t LeBron. Nobody on that team was.

LeBron James would give those guys fits the same way he does every team today. His breathtaking combination of speed, strength and court vision more than makes up for any deficiencies in his game. Yes, he has off nights. But he imposes his will on each and every game in which he plays.

And to suggest the overall cast in the ’90s was better, as Daugherty and ESPN’s Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy recently did, is to overlook the quality of the current Cavs team.

Think about it. Daugherty’s Cavs were outplayed in the 1990s by Bulls teams that sported Bill Cartwright and Luc Longley at center. I used to scratch my head over that one. How could the Bulls win championship after championship with guys like that in the post?

Michael Jordan, that’s how.

Likewise, the current Cavs have LeBron James. And that’s why they would beat the Cavs of old.

It's All Gone Too Favre

Brett Favre doesn't care what I think, but here's what I think.

I don't care if Brett Favre ever plays in the NFL again. I enjoyed watching him and was impressed by his accomplishments. But I really don't care if he plays.

I don't care if he retires. I don't care if he unretires. I don't care if he gets his unconditional release from the Packers, as requested. I don't care if he then defects to the Bears or the Vikings or the Lions, or to the Arena Football League. I just don't care.

All the attention heaped on his every move by ESPN is as ridiculous as it is irritating. Chris Mortensen, what do you think Favre will do? John Clayton, what do you think the Packers will do? Mark Schlereth, can you gush about Brett for a while, too?

The whole thing is a bizarre circus. To me, Favre has tarnished his image a bit with all this pins-and-needles nonsense. Make up your mind, already. It's like one of those annoying reality shows on Bravo or E! or one of those other celebrity-obsessed networks. Retire, don't retire, but please make up your mind. It's Sugar Ray Leonard all over again. Sorry, Marvin Hagler, I'm retired. No, wait, I'm unretired. No, this is it, I'm gone. Wait, I think I'll fight again after all.

Yawn. Just make up your mind, already.

Think This Year Is Bad? Check Out These Tribe 'Stars' of '67...

The Indians lost 6-1 to Kansas City on Sunday. They dropped two of three to the Royals and tumbled to 25-31 on the season. ESPN's Jayson Stark recently wrote that since the introduction of the wild-card playoff system, only 13 of 104 teams that had losing records at the end of May went on to make the playoffs. Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer boldly opined today that if the Indians return home on June 10 more than six games out of first (they're five out as of this writing), they should look to the future and trade unsigned veterans like C.C. Sabathia and Paul Byrd. Not sure how popular that would be among the Tribe faithful, but I'm inclined to agree.

With such dire news coming out of the Tribe camp these days, I couldn't resist pulling out a few more items from yesteryear -- when dire news was the order of the day. These photos are from the 1967 Indians yearbook, which was actually a pocket folder with individual color photos of, presumably, the team's top players going into the season. On the backs of the photos were printed the career stats and a brief bio of the players. While there were some solid performers in the bunch, the collection that season was pretty much made up of nobodies and never-would-bes.

Of the nobodies, the name I remember best is that of Gus Gil. When I pitted the Tribe against opponents with my trusty baseball card game during '67, Gil was often penciled in at second base (that is, when I was giving the equally illustrious Vern Fuller a night off). He only lasted one season in Cleveland, thanks to a .115 batting average. He managed to hit .222 with the Seattle Pilots the next season before finishing up with two forgettable seasons with the franchise after they moved to Milwaukee. I love this from his bio: "One of the brightest infielders the Indians have ever acquired is this young second baseman who bears a strong resemblance to all-time Indian great, Bobby Avila." That's the best selling point they could come up with -- that he looked like somebody? Also mentioned: the fact that Gil was a draftsman during the off-season. Players up to and during that era typically held down off-season jobs to make ends meet.

Next up was another light-hitting infielder, Pedro Gonzalez. I guess he wasn't always a light hitter; Gonzalez did bat .277 in part-time duty for the 1964 New York Yankees, who won the A.L. pennant before losing the World Series to St. Louis. He was also a .300 hitter three times in the minors, peaking at .371 with Modesto in 1959. Gonzalez was traded to the Indians early in the '65 season and was out of baseball after the '67 campaign, bowing out with a .244 career average. The bio on the back of Gonzalez' photo described him as "a smiling, polite resident of the Dominican Republic." I wasn't aware that the country was otherwise populated by frowning, rude people, but I guess the Tribe's PR staff felt it was important to point that out. He is also referred to in the bio as "Speedy" Gonzalez. Nothing like trotting out a few stereotypes. This obviously wasn't the era of political correctness.

I have little recollection of Bob Allen, really. A check on Baseball-Reference.com reveals that he was a lefthanded reliever who had experienced modest success as a starter during seven minor league seasons, compiling a 57-46 record during that time. His major league totals in parts of five seasons were 7 wins, 12 losses and a 4.11 ERA. Like Gonzalez, Allen would be out of baseball after this 1967 season, when he was 0-5 despite a 2.98 ERA in 54 innings. In this day and age, a 2.98 ERA would earn a pitcher a lucrative contract, but this was 1967, after all. Of course, in those days players didn't necessarily leave the game because they couldn't cut it anymore. Many left for purely economic reasons, to start other careers while they were still young. That's hard to fathom today, when utility infielders like Jamey Carroll make a million bucks a year, but such was the case in that day and age. Six-figure salaries were rare, and the free agency boom was still several years away.

Equally undistinguished was the career of Steve Bailey, who pitched in 32 games for the Tribe in 1967 -- and one more in a lateseason stint in '68 -- never to see the majors again. He, too, had experienced modest success in the minors, winning 43 games over six seasons. "This high-kicking relief pitcher is a resident of Lorain, Ohio," says his bio, which goes on to document that he pitched his Lorain High School baseball team to the state title his senior year, during which he threw successive no-hitters at one point. Bailey won 2 games and lost 6, with a 3.88 ERA, during his brief time with the Tribe. Of course, this was the era of the pitcher -- Bob Gibson and Luis Tiant posted unthinkable ERAs of 1.12 and 1.68, respectively, in 1968. So ERAs around 4.00, like Bailey's and Bob Allen's, weren't considered to be as impressive as they would be in today's offense-oriented game.

Regardless of the less-than-illustrious stats of Tribe players of this era, they were still our heroes, from "Our Tribe," as Pluto dubbed the team in his 1999 book by that name. And they wore what I think are some of the coolest uniforms in team history. Don't ask me why, but I loved the vests, the abundance of red, and the Chief Wahoo emblem sewn on the front. It's probably the connection to my childhood that causes me to recollect them with such fondness, but the uniforms alone made the dog days of the 1960s bearable. After all, the '67 Indians finished in eighth place in the then 10-team, pre-division American League, 17 games behind the pennant-winning Boston Red Sox.