After Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert wrote a letter to fans blasting LeBron James for leaving, it's becoming fashionable among the national sports media to blame Gilbert for LeBron leaving. Gilbert failed to put a good team around LeBron so Gilbert has no one but himself to blame for losing LeBron. Leaving aside the fact the Cavaliers went 127-37 the past two seasons, Gilbert did the best he could, which you can learn more about in my Defending Danny Ferry post. If you want to blame someone for sabotaging LeBron's chances of winning a title in Cleveland, blame Jim Paxson.
Who's Jim Paxson? He was the GM of the Cavaliers from 1999-2005. The Cavaliers missed the playoffs all six seasons he was GM, which tells you all you need to know about how good a GM he was. Outside of drafting LeBron, which I couldn't even trust him to do, his reign as GM was a disaster.
Terrible Drafting
Paxson did the most damage to the organization through his horrendous drafting. Here are the names of some first round picks made by Jim Paxson:
1999: Trajan Langdon (11th pick)
2000: Chris Mihm (8th pick*)
2001: DeSagana Diop (8th pick)
2002: Dajuan Wagner (6th pick)
2004: Luke Jackson (10th pick)
* Technically, the Bulls drafted Mihm 7th and traded him to the Cavaliers for Jamal Crawford, who was picked 8th, and cash. But since the Bulls could have just drafted Crawford with their pick, I'm calling Mihm the 8th pick.
Five terrible lottery picks. While the Cavaliers may not have been in a position to draft LeBron if Paxson had drafted well, his atrocious drafting left little talent around to help LeBron.
Bad Trades
Paxson made two disastrous trades as GM: one prior to LeBron's arrival and one after. Prior to LeBron's arrival, Andre Miller was the best player on the Cavaliers. In the summer of 2002, the Cavaliers traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers offered their two lottery picks in 2002 for Miller, but Paxson turned them down. He traded Miller for Darius Miles. Why Miles? Because Miles appeared in the movies Van Wilder and The Perfect Score. According to Paxson, only star players get to be in movies so Miles was a star in the making. Miles is currently trying to get back in the NBA at age 28.
After LeBron arrived, Paxson started trading away draft picks that could have been used to assemble young talent around LeBron. The worst of these trades was trading a first round pick in the 2007 draft to the Celtics for Jiri Welsch midway through the 2005 season. In the late 1990s, the Cavaliers traded a lottery-protected first round pick to the Phoenix Suns for Wesley Person. The Cavaliers playoff drought meant that pick hadn't been conveyed to Phoenix yet. To get the Welsch trade through, the Cavaliers had to give up their first round pick in the 2005 draft to finalize the Person trade.
The Cavaliers missed the playoffs and would have picked 13th in the 2005 draft. They could have had Danny Granger, who went 17th that year. But instead they had Jiri Welsch. Thanks, Jim.
Other Bad Moves
Jim Paxson's worst move as GM was letting Carlos Boozer out of the last year of his contract. Instead of signing a new contract with the Cavaliers, Boozer signed a huge offer sheet from the Utah Jazz. The Cavaliers could have matched the offer, but they didn't have the cap space to do so. They ended up losing Boozer for nothing.
Another horrible move by Paxson was leaving Jason Kapono unprotected in the 2004 expansion draft for the Charlotte Bobcats. Instead of protecting Kapono, Paxson protected Kedrick Brown, who ended up playing eight more games in the NBA. He has been out of the league for five years.
Conclusion
Jim Paxson did an awful job as GM of the Cavaliers. He caused so much damage that Danny Ferry and Dan Gilbert couldn't undo it all in five years. If you want to blame anyone in the Cavaliers organization for not putting the right pieces around LeBron, blame Paxson. He left the organization with few draft picks and few tradable assets.
