FUCK DAN GILBERT. (Warning: This post is long and angry as fuck. But it also gets at some of the issues with Gilbert, the Cavs, the balance of small-vs-large markets, and players' decision-making processes in FA that piss a lot of us off. Your choice whether to read it or not.)
Dan Gilbert was a whiny little baby about parity and large vs. small markets when the Chris Paul trade went down, and it was his bitching that specifically and directly caused this mess in which the Lakers are currently mired. Let me be precise: Dan Gilbert, individually, through this action alone, has realistically cost the Lakers franchise half a decade (at LEAST) of contention, hundreds of cumulative wins, and possibly one or more titles.
This would still be infuriating even if Gilbert was right in his position and if his complaints were justified. But he was fucking wrong. The NBA isn't dominated by big markets, it's dominated by competent front offices. The Lakers are, obviously, in a big market (the second largest metropolitan area in the country). But the Celtics, winners of a record 17 championships, are in the TENTH-biggest market. The teams in the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth markets have, respectively, 2, 6, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, and 1 championships, for a combined total of nineteen, BARELY outweighing the #10 market alone. Meanwhile San Antonio, the 25th-largest market, has 5 championships, more than anyone there except the Bulls. Size of market and number of championships are virtually unrelated.
Actually, let's get mathy in this bitch for a second. A few years back I did some statistical analysis of the size of teams' markets vs. their success as measured by championships and by wins (through late 2012). You can probably guess the result: there is *no correlation* between market size and team success, as measured by wins. There is a small correlation between market size and championships won and a slightly larger correlation between market size and championship appearances, but this is massively biased by the great success of our wonderful team, whose appearance in 25 finals in the past 53 years (!!!) singlehandedly unbalances the data. When you remove the Lakers and Celtics, the correlations with championships and appearances vs. market size massively shrinks and becomes negligible. To summarize: there's no such thing as big markets dominating small markets, Gilbert, you fuck.
Essentially, this is how the NBA works: the league is dominated by a few individual players (e.g. LeBron, Kobe, Duncan, Shaq, Jordan, Bird, Magic, et al.), who are WAY BETTER than everyone else in the league and consequently have immense value. There's a reason that virtually every championship team is led by one or more of the NBA's all-time greats. For every team that wins on great team ball and limited individual dominance, like the notorious '04 Pistons or even the '14 Spurs, there are roughly twenty teams that won because they hit on the obvious and exclusively successful NBA Winning Formula: Attract a superstar, one way or the other (more on this later); give him a few other very good players (and preferably another superstar); and give him a bunch of competent role players. This is how you win championships. This is the formula that works.
The problem is that the vast majority of NBA front offices are incredibly fucking dumb, and they somehow fuck up this formula, despite it having been exactly the fucking same since modern basketball started in 1980. They pay way too much money, superstar-level money, to guys who aren't superstars (or very good players or, sometimes, even competent role players); they disrespect their superstars; and when they get lucky and land a big fish, they fuck up and surround them with D-league level talent for half a decade until they walk. THIS is the problem, not the size of the market. If the '00s Cavs had had even remotely competent management and had given LeBron a decent team, he would have stayed and won a shitload of titles for them. He didn't leave because he hated Cleveland (OBVIOUSLY, given that he just came back), he left because he hated the dumbass management of Cleveland and wanted to win a little bit with a decent team put together by a good FO. What's more, the Lakers don't actually dominate because they live in LA, and everyone wants to come to LA (because if that's the case, why do the Knicks perpetually blow?); they dominate because they've ALWAYS had a competent front office (disregard '04-'07) and people want to play for them (this is the "Lakers effect").
Because here's the thing: Players know what FOs are good and which ones are garbage. They, naturally, avoid the shitty ones and flock to the good ones. That's why the Lakers and Celtics are always swimming in free agents. That's why basically every single free agent of the past 15 years not named Carmelo would MUCH rather go to the #25 market (SA) than the #1 market (NYK). And that's why people keep leaving Minnesota (FWIW Love is currently forcing his way from the #16 market to the #29 one. FUCK YOU GILBERT).
So what's the deal in Cleveland? Haven't we established that Cleveland has a terrible front office and even worse ownership (FUCK YOU GILBERT)? Well, yes, but LeBron is there. And he's basically the GM now. See, LeBron came back because he liked Cleveland and because Cleveland got REALLY LUCKY (read: probably benefited from Stern being the most corrupt commissioner in sports history) and drafted three #1 overall picks in four years and all the other reasons people say, but he also came back because he almost certainly met with Gilbert and said, "Dan, you're a fucking idiot owner with an incompetent front office. If I come back I am NOT laboring with a bunch of shitty-to-mediocre motherfuckers on my back, trying to drag them to the Finals for another seven years. That shit gave me back pain. No, if I come back, you're gonna do what I say. I'm gonna point at a guy and say 'LeBron want' and you're gonna go get him, because otherwise fuck you and I'm going to Chicago to win twenty titles."
Guys don't actually want to come to Cleveland (duh). But guys want to play with LeBron, and especially so when LeBron gets to build his own team (or at least put the finishing touches on it) and they know they'll actually get to play with some other talented basketball players. Players want to go where they're going to win, and in Cleveland they're going to win.
This is what pisses me off. Cleveland is gonna go get to win a bunch of titles because they HAPPEN to be the place that LeBron is from. If Kyrie and Ender and Varajao were in Shitsville AK, you think LeBron would have gone there? Hell no. But Cleveland gets the unfair hometown advantage, despite being the worst-run franchise in recent memory, of landing one of the five best players of all time in the prime of his career. Dan Douchebag Gilbert is going to get some hardware because LeBron happened to have been born in fucking Akron. The Cavs aren't getting ahead by being a big market (which we've established doesn't really happen), or by accumulating so much talent that even a shitty FO couldn't hold them down (OKC), or by having a really great front office that attracts players to come and play for them (SA, formerly LAL, even formerlier '90s Bulls). No, they're getting ahead by fucking GEOGRAPHICAL NEPOTISM. WHAT THE FUCK.
