McGraw: Bulls, Cavs should be a good rivalry this season
The first thing Bulls fans should do before the real competition begins tonight is ask themselves how they feel about the change in rivals.
It was easy to dislike Miami, with all its beaches, warm weather and irrational baseball success.
LeBron James moving back to Cleveland was billed as the feel-good story of the summer. The game's biggest star abandoned the palm trees of South Florida to try to bring some happiness to economically-depressed Northeast Ohio, which hasn't won a pro sports championship since Jim Brown and the Browns in 1964.
Is everyone comfortable with Cleveland as the new enemy?
OK, that's a trick question. We all know Chicago fans love a good rivalry. The location is pretty much irrelevant.
The animosity inside the United Center tonight may not reach Miami Heat levels, but give it some time. When Team USA played in Chicago this summer, Kyrie Irving was already getting booed during introductions.
“Yeah, I mean it's really exciting. A lot of excitement right now,” Joakim Noah said Thursday at the Advocate Center. “I just like our mindset. We're focused. We're in a good place. We're playing against a very good team, so we're excited. I've said excited like five times already.”
With rivalry issues out of the way, the next step is trying to assess how the Bulls and Cavaliers match up on the court.
On one hand, it's easy to say James lacks the supporting cast he had in Miami, especially considering Irving and Kevin Love have never appereared in a playoff game.
But keep in mind, James is joining a roster of young stars in Cleveland. In 2010, Miami essentially cleared the entire roster to create enough cap space to form the Power Trio and then the one holdover, Udonis Haslem, missed most of the regular season with an injury.
The Miami team that beat the Bulls in the 2011 Eastern Conference finals featured a bunch of aging retreads — like Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Mike Bibby, Juwan Howard and Carlos Arroyo. Most of those guys didn't do much.
The Cavaliers have been picking high in the draft since James left, so they have former top-five picks like Irving, Dion Waiters and power forward Tristan Thompson. Then they were able to send the No. 1 picks in the last two drafts to Minnesota for Love.
There are some veterans in Cleveland, such as Anderson Varejao and Shawn Marion, along with former Heat shooters Mike Miller and James Jones. In some ways, this is a more complete team than James had in Miami.
The lack of playoff experience by the supporting cast is often mentioned as a reason to favor the Bulls in the East. TNT analyst Kenny Smith is one who supports that theory.
“I don't think you can have all of the different things come together and have a perfect storm,” Smith said during the opening night broadcast. “LeBron James will make Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love change their game. These two guys haven't established their game as superstars yet and now they'll be asked to sacrifice.
“(The Bulls) have everything they need, so there aren't any more excuses other than injury. If they're healthy, there's no reason why they shouldn't be at The Finals. They have all the elements: experience, depth and a great coach.”
Coaching might be the biggest wild card in this matchup. While Tom Thibodeau has been toiling in NBA film rooms for 25 years, Cleveland's David Blatt is working in the NBA for the first time ever.
Blatt, 55, is a Boston native who played in college at Princeton for coach Pete Carril. After that, he spent 10 years playing professionally in Israel, then went right into coaching.
Between 1993 and 2014, Blatt coached in five different European countries and led the Russian national team to a bronze medal at the London Olympics in 2012. Last spring, he coached Macabbi Tel Aviv to the EuroLeague championship, beating Real Madrid and Nikola Mirotic in the championship game.
While everyone expects the Bulls and Cavaliers to be a great rivalry, there is some mystery heading into Friday's contest.
“Who knows what they're going to give us?,” Noah said. “We have our strengths as well. We'll see what that leads to.”