National Basketball Association

Phil Jackson is the architect of a Finals contender

Published Jun. 3, 2015 11:52 a.m. ET

foxsports

By Darrell Horwitz

When pundits view Phil Jackson’s first year since taking over the New York Knicks they see failure, but they’re not looking in the right direction. If not for Jackson, the Cleveland Cavaliers would likely be sitting at home right now hoping the second year of the latest LeBron James era worked out better than the first. You could say Jackson is directly responsible for the Cavaliers being on the brink of a possible title. In an effort to remake his downtrodden Knicks, Jackson stripped his club of assets to acquire expiring contracts. In so doing, his trade of Iman Shumpert and J.R. Smith to Cleveland, along with the first-round pick that came courtesy of Oklahoma City to take Dion Waiters off their hands, completely changed the dynamic of the Cavs. Cleveland was treading water when the trade went down, wallowing just over the .500 mark. Once the final piece, Timofey Mozgov, came over from Denver utilizing the first-round pick they received, Cleveland went 33–12 the rest of the way.

Jackson was dumping salary to open cap space without concern for a return. He waived the three players he received immediately after the trade. By doing that, he unwittingly helped a desperate Cavaliers team right the ship. Waiters was a me-first player and a defensive liability. Even more important, he wasn’t liked by LeBron, and allegedly didn’t get along with Kyrie Irving.

When LeBron came back to Cleveland, the hope was that the Cavaliers would be competitive this year, and that next year, with some tweaking, they’d be ready to compete for a title. They tried to quicken the process by trading for Kevin Love at LeBron’s behest, but the thought was they were still a year away. Love gave them a third star to go along with Irving and LeBron, but Love wasn’t known for his defense, and once Anderson Verejao was lost for the season, it looked like the season was lost for Cleveland.

What the trade accomplished aside from ridding themselves of a budding cancer in Waiters was a three-for-one haul in return. Shumpert is an athletic, shutdown perimeter defender with three-point capability, and Smith is a no-conscience gunner and an underrated defender, at least when motivated. That was the caveat. Jackson was likely reluctant to include Shumpert in the trade, but he had to for Cleveland to take on Smith’s contract, which included a $6.4 million player option for next season.

Smith could be looked at as an older version of Waiters, but that would be short-sided. Smith is a much better three-point shooter, and as recently as 2013 he was NBA Sixth Man of the Year. He brought baggage, but with LeBron there to keep him in check, he turned into a vital asset that has Cleveland thinking championship thoughts. It’s a similar situation from when the Chicago Bulls brought in Dennis Rodman to the team. He was a wild card, but the thinking was that Michael Jordan would be able to control him, and he did to the tune of three consecutive titles. Smith still had his transgressions, as evidenced by his two-game suspension for his punch to the head of Jae Crowder in Game 4 of the Cavs playoff series with the Boston Celtics, but you can’t deny how important he has been to Cleveland since the trade.

With Shumpert and Smith added to the lineup, it improved Cleveland’s spacing, which allowed LeBron to operate in the paint as he saw fit. Defenders were reluctant to leave them to double-down on LeBron, giving him free range to the basket. When they were left open, Smith and Shumpert made them pay.

Meanwhile, Mozgov aptly replaced the injured Verejao. The thought was even before he suffered his season-ending injury that Cleveland was lacking in size to realistically compete for a championship this year. The Cavs had been after Mozgov for a while, knowing that was a weakness, and he became a necessity after the injury to Verejao. They had struck out before in their trade attempts for him, but with the first-round pick they acquired in the trade, they had enough to pry him away from Denver adding in another first-rounder.

Now the team was finally in place. Players like LeBron and Shumpert could gamble on the outside knowing Mozgov was waiting in the lane to protect the rim. He also offered some inside scoring, including an ability to roll to the rim, though his main asset is his intimidation near the basket.

Both Shumpert and Smith had key stretches in the playoffs to help the team, especially against the Chicago Bulls, the only opponent they have played so far that posed a serious threat.

In Game 1, Shumpert poured in 22 points in a losing effort, going 4-for-10 from the three-point line. Shumpert scored 15 in the second game rout, including 10 in the first quarter as the Cavs smoked the Bulls 38–18. He left the game with a groin strain the third quarter, but he wasn’t done for the series. Smith came back from his suspension for Game 3 and immediately made his presence felt. He scored 14 points, including a game-tying three-pointer with 10.8 seconds remaining that was his third game-tying three-pointer of the quarter before Derrick Rose’s heroics at the buzzer to win the game. In Game 4, Smith scored 13 points, with 11 of them coming in the fourth quarter, including three from behind the arc. Without his hot shooting, James’ flair for the dramatic with a buzzer-beater to end the game would have been for naught.

Both Smith and Shumpert contributed to the Cavs taking a 3–2 lead in the series with Shumpert scoring 13 and Smith adding 12. In Game 6, Cleveland put out Chicago’s fire with Shumpert being a key component after getting clothes-lined by Nikola Mitotic in the second quarter. He scored nine of his 13 points in the game during that stretch as Cleveland went on a 20–2 run to take control of the game. Smith added 12 points, including three more threes. For the game, Shumpert’s plus-minus was +26 and Smith’s was +24, the two highest on the team in the deciding game.

Smith drained eight threes in Game 1 of the next round against the Atlanta Hawks just to let them know that series wouldn’t last very long.

Love has been out since getting injured in the final game of the series against Boston, while Irving has been hobbled in the playoffs, so the contributions of Smith, Shumpert, and Mozgov take on added importance.

The Finals await, but would Cleveland be attempting to win the city’s first championship since 1964 if Phil Jackson didn’t pull the trigger on a trade that changed the team’s destiny? You can question all you want the job he has done so far in New York, but for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Phil Jackson should be Executive of the Year.

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