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LeBron James reportedly wanted nothing to do with joining the Cavaliers in 2003
On the eve of LeBron James’ final high school contest in March of 2003, the Cleveland Cavaliers lost by 24 points to the Orlando Magic. The defeat dropped the Cavs to 12-56 on the season, as the Cavs were no match for Tracy McGrady’s 39 points in the Orlando win. Five Cavaliers scored in double-figures that night, but those five happened to include Ricky Davis, Jumaine Jones, Chris Mihm, and leading scorer Milt Palacio. Zydrunas Ilgauskas, doing yeoman’s work for a franchise that had all but abandoned him on the court, contributed 13 points, seven rebounds and two blocks in 29 minutes.
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A night later, James scored 25 points against Kettering High, with 11 rebounds. Some of the highlights of that performance, his final as an amateur, can be found here:
With Milt Palacio working the backcourt for his hometown club, it’s understandable that James would be looking elsewhere as the NBA’s draft lottery approached that May. In a feature for ESPN (via Pro Basketball Talk), Brian Windhorst describes the rather dim view LBJ had of his hometown team in the years before he became a Cleveland Cavalier for the first time:
When James was a teenager, he started attending games at the arena, and he couldn’t believe how bad the Cavs were, how empty the arena often was, with its bright blue seats seeming like a neon sign of disinterest. During his senior year of high school, he went to several games, was given courtside seats and visited the locker room. His thought was pretty clear after he watched that 17-win team with the lowest attendance in the league: They were awful, and he didn’t want to be a part of it.
Nobody wanted any part of these Cavs.
The “dim view” aspect was literal, as the team’s arena boasted some of the worst and darkest sightlines in the NBA. In 2002-03 the squad was years removed from its last playoff sniff in 1997-98, a squad featuring four standout rookies (Big Z, Cedric Henderson, Derek Anderson, Brevin Knight) that reminded of the winsome group of youngsters that helped lead the Mark Price/Brad Daugherty/John Williams/Ron Harper-Cavaliers to late 1980s and early 1990s prominence.
That Shawn Kemp-“led” outfit fell apart, due to injuries and stagnation, as the Cavs became a miserable watch helmed by Andre Miller and little else. By 2002, the team hired coach John Lucas, it dealt Miller to the Los Angeles Clippers for disappointing former prep star Darius Miles; and it had used its draft lottery selection on undersized high school shooting guard Dajuan Wagner in the months prior to LeBron James’ senior season at St. Vincent-St. Mary.
It was a tank job of the highest order. And it worked.
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The Cavs won just 17 games in 2002-03, as Lucas’ shtick failed to motivate a terrible team into acting as anything more than it should have been, and partially as a result Lucas was fired midway through the season in favor of interim coach Keith Smart.
Ricky Davis led the team in points and assists, while Miles failed to crack double-digit points per game. Wagner played in just 47 contests due to injury and illness woes. Developing 2001 lottery pick DaSagana Diop worked just 943 minutes despite playing 80 games, and shot 35 percent despite standing 7-feet tall. Tyrone Hill was still around.
The team was last in the league in attendance, a credit to the discerning taste of budget-minded Northern Ohioans, stuck watching the ledger during a recession. Out West, Denver was also in on the tank, starting Vincent Yarborough and Junior Harrington for a combined 90 games while watching Juwan Howard as he led the team in scoring. The Cavs and Nuggets owned the best odds in the lottery with James as the clear prize, but squads from Miami, Chicago, Toronto, Memphis and even Los Angeles (the Clippers, but still …) were in with a chance.
For a guy that grew up front-running, a true child of a cable television era that (understandably) placed no shame on picking and choosing teams from far-flung lands to support in spite of available squads working closer to your postal code, it’s justifiable that LeBron James felt little connection to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Even if he did spend his youth appreciating Terrell Brandon’s guard-around screen work, it’s also just as reasonable that in 2003 LeBron would want no part in working for a team with no coach, a nervous ownership group, an empty and dank arena, no second star, and the iffy tenure of general manager Jim Paxson as its leading light.
When the Cavaliers came out ahead as one of the rare cellar-dwelling teams to earn the rights to the top pick in the draft, James had no choice but to make the narrative work. It took quite a bit, though: Paxson spent his 2004 lottery pick on Luke Jackson, Carlos Boozer left after one season playing alongside James for quicker riches in Utah, and despite LeBron’s sterling play his Cavaliers missed the playoffs in his first two seasons.
That’s how salted the soil was. Even working in a miserable Eastern Conference, which featured two sub-.500 postseason squads in 2004 and a Philadelphia playoff team in 2005 boasting Marc Jackson as a double-digit scorer in the pivot, the Cavs fell short.
Michael Jordan was a playoff participant in his first two seasons, as was Kobe Bryant. Magic Johnson was a champion in his first season, while Larry Bird and Tim Duncan were champions in their second go-rounds. Of course, those last three players had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and David Robinson to battle alongside.
The 2003-04 Cleveland Cavaliers started Eric Williams 39 times, and the 2004-05 Cavs were nice enough to start Jeff McInnis for 69 contests. Teenaged LeBron, watching the Cavs battle it out from courtside, had the right idea.
Enough has changed for LeBron and the Cavaliers, now defending the team’s first NBA championship, to treat this era as if it were the ancient past. There were no pointed odes penned to explain the need to bring a title to Northern Ohio all the way back in 2003, though. LeBron James needed to be convinced, and for good reason.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
