BAD TEAM
The Pistons are a record setting bad team right now, but what does it mean for the coaches and ownership?
The 2010-2011 Cleveland Cavaliers were an unlucky story of grave loss, despair, and embarrassment, but they, especially the notoriously realistic Cleveland fanbase, knew they’d be bad. The summer prior, the Cavaliers lost their phenom, hometown hero, and their entire downtown economy when LeBron James famously took his talents to South Beach. LeBron, who was already the best player in the entire league, left a team whose second best player was Mo Williams. It wasn’t pretty the next year; The Cavaliers whimpered to a 19-63 record, but not before starting the season 8-19 and then losing 26 straight games. In just six weeks, the Cavaliers flopped to 8-45; at that point, before they snapped the losing streak, the starting five was like an answer to a trivia question. The names are hardly set in stone: Ramon Sessions, an over the hill Antwan Jamison, J.J. Hickson, Anthony Parker, and Christian Eyenga. The head coach was Byron Scott, who was starting to be the ornery old head that lost his job after Kobe Bryant retired, and the Lakers understood that it was time to actually have a coach there. To see the Cavaliers that year was to see a team that felt destined to lose. In exchange for their losses, Cleveland was rewarded the first overall pick, which became Kyrie Irving. Sunnier times were ahead; eventually, the hometown hero came back to join Irving a few years later. You know how that story ends.