NBA Cleveland Cavaliers

Leadership Nowhere to be Seen From Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James

Fresh Videos

By @cdrottar19

David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

“I’m going into a situation with a young team and a new coach. I will be the old head. But I get a thrill out of bringing a group together and helping them reach a place they didn’t know they could go. I see myself as a mentor now and I’m excited to lead some of these talented young guys.”

These are the words of LeBron James, who penned them in his now-famous letter announcing his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers this past July. At the time, said words were a cause for celebration. Cavaliers fans, who’ve watched their team flounder haplessly in the four years after James’ departure to the Miami Heat, were getting their hometown hero back. A championship no longer seemed like it was miles and miles away. Yes, exciting times were going to unfold as soon as the NBA season tipped off.

As we near the end of the first month of said season, there are a lot of words you could use to describe the Cavaliers start so far, but “exciting” clearly isn’t one of them. Cleveland, after opening up with a decent 5-3 record, has now lost four straight games, three at home. Their last two losses, to the Washington Wizards and Toronto Raptors, were absolute blowouts. The defense is so miserable it might actually cause harm to anyone who forces themselves to watch it.

It’s still November, so there’s really no reason to slam the panic button so many fans and media alike have been screaming for. That said, I do have a major problem with one aspect of this Cavaliers team, and it’s the display we’ve seen from their best player. Quite frankly, James has been claiming for months about how he needs to be the leader of this team, and we haven’t seen much evidence of this at all.

Too many times, James has moped around on the court. Way too often, he’s slow to get back to the defensive end, or, even worse, just dogging it. Last Friday against the Wizards, James lost a fight for an offensive rebound, but instead of running down the court to help on defense, he just grumpily stayed where he was, leaving his teammates in a 4-on-5 situation.

Is this month an incredibly frustrating way to get a much-hyped season started? Of course. However, here’s the problem: bad stretches of basketball are all the majority of the young players on this team know. James claimed he was coming in to change all of this. Instead, he’s currently just doing a great impression of the sad-sack Cavaliers we’ve seen the past four years. He’s not showing them what it takes to win, he’s just sticking to the status quo.

James claims the team is very fragile at the moment, that they shell up whenever the going gets tough. Again, though, this is the only thing 75% of the players on the roster know when it comes to the NBA. The Cavaliers of old would see a big offensive run by their opponent and respond by packing it in, on to the next game. They need someone to show them this isn’t how you react to a tough stretch, someone who keeps his head up and keeps trying to cut back into the lead.

James claimed he was supposed to be that guy. Right now, he’s not owning up to this at all.

You can talk in the huddles and try to be a player/coach for the younger guys. You can make statements about being the leader this team has desperately needed all you want. But when you dog it on the court, when you mope around in front of a team that’s done the same thing for years now, that’s not leadership. It’s unacceptable.

James returned to Cleveland with all the lessons he learned from his championship days in Miami. The goal was to implement them into a team which has struggled through miserable seasons the past few years. Everyone, including James himself knew it was going to take some time. Their struggles to gel and improve on-court chemistry are no surprise. However, this isn’t any excuse to just pout mid-game.

Mistakes are going to happen in the early months of this Cavaliers season, and they’re going to happen a lot. The collective playoff experience on this roster outside of James is paper-thin. Anyone who expected this Cleveland team to win 70+ games is now learning this lesson the hard way. In order to get through this rough patch though, leadership is incredibly necessary, especially from the guy who’s labeled himself as the captain.

I have no problem with James essentially appointing himself as the team’s leader. He’s been to four straight finals, and is one of, if not the best basketball player on the planet. The team he joined hasn’t seen anything you could even remotely label as success, so it’s obvious they needed someone of James’ caliber to show them the ropes.

At the same time, right now the only things he’s showing this group of talented-but-impressionable players is how to sulk when things aren’t going your way. It’s a lesson most of them are already pretty well-versed in.

There’s still plenty of time to get everything under control and going in the right direction, but the team is in a rough spot right now. They need someone like James to rally them, to keep them from getting too negative and to ensure they play to the expectations which come from a team so talented. Or, in other words, someone to do the very same thing James himself claimed he “gets a thrill out of” way back in July.

The media tour is over. The offseason full of talk about just how amazing this team is going to be has come to an abrupt end as well. James has constantly claimed he’s back to teach this team what it takes to win it all. Feel free to start showing them any day now.

Casey Drottar is a Featured Columnist for www.Rantsports.com. Follow him on Twitter @CDrottar19 or “Like” him on Facebook.

Share Tweet
Trending Now on