Testing the Ewing James Theory.

Testing the Ewing James Theory.

Tracking the media’s predictions of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ record this off-season has been a grueling challenge to say the least. The majority of the estimates have placed the Cavs as a bottom five team in the league, often giving them no more than 25 wins on the season. This negative persistence has taken its toll on the players too, as Mo Williams recently sounded off. “When you say we’re (only) winning 15 games this year, damn right we get pissed” Williams recently told reporters. He added that both the players and the organization are gearing up and getting ready for what they know is a huge season for the franchise.

So how will the team actually perform with this huge season on the horizon? Well, as I already mentioned, many experts in the national media have them picked to only win 20 or so games. Brian Windhorst recently added his two cents, claiming that he expects the Cavaliers as is to win between 38-42 games. The Numbers Don’t predictions ranged from 25-38 wins thanks to four different opinions and Smooth’s data analysis projects 35 wins based on WP (wins produced) with this current roster. Needless to say, as is usually the case, local fans and media are noticeably more optimistic than those outside of Cleveland regarding the Cavaliers’ upcoming challenges.

But what if it’s because they know something the national media does not? What if, instead of blind homerism, Brian Windhorst and other local writers understand how poorly constructed (albeit often efficient) the team’s offense was by giving the ball to James and having four stand-arounds waiting for a hot potato three-pointer with only a few ticks remaining on the shot clock? Many local writers have insisted that this season will showcase some of Cleveland’s best team-oriented basketball in quite some time.

However, just because many have stressed a better brand of team-ball for the Cavaliers this year, they are by no means suggesting anything close to better basketball. It’s impossible to deny the talents that fled to South Beach this off-season and the huge hole at the small forward position as a result. As Mo Williams put it, “we lost a big piece.”

By admitting that the Cavs lost a big piece that drew attention from every single team in the league, the team may in fact be signing themselves up as the latest experiment in “The Ewing Theory.” The Ewing Theory was championed by ESPN’s Bill Simmons and one of his friends as a way to explain the phenomenon of a team performing better, or at least wildly surpassing expectations, without their best player.

Simmons provides several examples of his theory in action, such as Tennessee football winning the national championship right after Peyton Manning’s departure and the ’98 Kentucky Wildcats winning a title sans Pitino, Anderson, and Mercer. Additionally, Simmons explains that there must be two satisfied elements in order for a team to qualify for “Ewing status:”

1. A star athlete receives an inordinate amount of media attention and fan interest, and yet his teams never win anything substantial with him (other than maybe some early-round playoff series).
2. That same athlete leaves his team (either by injury, trade, graduation, free agency or retirement) — and both the media and fans immediately write off the team for the following season.

While criteria #1 isn’t one-hundred percent applied, seeing as though the Cavaliers made their first ever NBA Finals appearance in 2007 thanks to James, the fact that the team held the league’s best record the last two seasons and James was back-to-back MVP yet they missed the Finals altogether, I believe that qualifies as nothing “substantial”

On the other hand, the second criteria is not questioned at all as the national media writing off the Cavaliers was the subject at the beginning of this post. Some fans still have high hopes for the team this season, but expectations have been severely lowered (and rightfully so).

However, what if the Cavaliers were to follow the likes of the 1984 Virginia Cavaliers, reaching the Final Four without Ralph Sampson, or make it past the first round of the playoffs like the 2000 and 2001 Seattle Mariners after parting ways with Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and ultimately Alex Rodriguez? I know for a fact that a surprisingly large portion of Cleveland fans are starting to buy into The Ewing Theory idea, even if they aren’t using that term. Many fans have talked or written about the 1993-94 Chicago Bulls, who won 55 games after Michael Jordan’s first departure from the game.

Even though many of these fans and writers do not expect the Cavaliers to reach 50 wins, except for Numbers Don’t friend and supporter Sam Amico who is leaning towards 50 wins, they realize that even the league’s best players have a team behind them. And despite the fact that the national media went out of their way to tell fans that it was James and four stiffs on the court every season, fans know that the Cavs have some solid talent that will finally get to prove themselves without playing off of the ball for 48 minutes.

In the end, this season could be just as lackluster and uneventful as many in the mainstream media predict it to be. However, as proven in the past thanks to The Ewing Theory, there is an outside chance that the Cleveland Cavaliers could rally around their current core and overcome the departure of their former team leader and superstar. Ultimately, while something like an NBA Finals appearance from this team is completely out of the question, wouldn’t it be nice if they proved that these last couple seasons were the product of a whole lot more than the work of one man? After all, that’s not just the basis of The Ewing Theory, but sports and teamwork in general.

Testing the Ewing James Theory.

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