Andrew Wiggins’ Letter to the Cleveland Cavaliers

To owner Dan Gilbert, GM David Griffin, and all the Cleveland Cavaliers’ staff and fans,

I would like to start off by saying thank you for making me the first overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. Walking on that stage on Draft Day and shaking the commissioner’s hand was the culmination of a lifelong dream.

This is a great time for the city of Cleveland as well. Your prodigal son, LeBron James has returned home and the Cavaliers’ front office has moved quickly to assemble a championship caliber team around him.

Even I must admit I was excited upon hearing of his return. I mean, who wouldn’t want a chance to learn and play alongside arguably the best player in the world?

I realize that I am new to the NBA game but having the opportunity to play alongside an All-Star point guard like Kyrie Irving and a two-time champion and four-time MVP like James would greatly shorten my learning curve.

Unfortunately for me though, James and the Cavaliers’ front office don’t share my level of enthusiasm.

The city of Cleveland wants a championship in the worst way and the Cavaliers’ front office feels that trading me for Minnesota Timberwolves’ power forward Kevin Love is the better way to go.

Sure Love would give the team another elite scorer as well as one of the best rebounders in the game but there are plenty of shortcomings that Love brings with him not including his enormous contract.

Love is not a great defender which wouldn’t be so bad if Irving wasn’t such a poor defender also. Love doesn’t block shots, he’s not much of a one-on-one defender and he’s slow on his defensive rotations.

As a matter of fact, Love purposely refuses to challenge shots or commit fouls in order to secure boxout positioning for rebounds.

Stats-wise this is smart on Love’s behalf because if the shots never go up, then there wouldn’t be any opportunities to rebound them. It hurts his teams defensively though since he fails to contest so many high-percentage shots.

It also doesn’t help that taking on Love’s contract when you already have James and Irving taking up so much cap space means that the Cavaliers will be left with a pretty thin bench.

Cleveland’s front office has already traded away a few players in order to open up cap room for Love but they are also trading former first overall Anthony Bennett, a future first rounder and me of course, in order to acquire Love. They’re banking Cleveland’s future on a player who has never reached the playoffs…..

Not to knock Love but if Love was so great, how come he was never able to get the Timberwolves into the postseason?

Kevin Garnett did it many times while he was there and I guarantee I will have them there in a couple of years.

I won’t make the same stupid promise Dan Gilbert made by saying that I will win a championship before James and the Cavs do but I doubt they will win more than one championship over the next five years.

They have a five-year window to finally bring a championship to Cleveland which has a high likelihood of

happening but despite James’ and management’s thinking, adding Love to this team will not position them to win multiple championships.

In the meanwhile, me and Bennett get to join Ricky Rubio, Zach LaVine, Glenn Robinson III, Nikola Pekovic, Shabazz Muhammad, Chase Budinger, Luc Mbah a Moute and Mo Williams to form a very talented team that will be competitive for the next decade in the much tougher Western Conference.

I hope I don’t sound angry because I’m not. I am a little disappointed that the Cavs’ organization failed to see the true value I could bring to the team but don’t worry, I will take pleasure in showing you every time I play against you.

Sincerely,

Andrew Wiggins

 Roosevelt Hall is an NFL Blogger for The Sport Mentalist and an NBA Blogger for The Sport Mentalist 2. He can be contacted at sportmentalist@yahoo.com and be sure to follow him on Twitter @sportmentalist.