Father Time is undefeated. As NBA players age they lose athleticism, agility and the ability to bounce back from injuries. It happens to every player, and while All-Stars have a talent level high enough to still make an impact as they age, eventually even they pass out of being a useful NBA player.
Finding the right time to add an aging player is a difficult proposition. Do you sign a former All-Star based on their past performance, or avoid them because of their age? That threading of the needle sometimes goes well, and sometimes it does not.
The Cleveland Cavaliers have made the attempt multiple times, and it hasn’t always worked out in their favor. Here are seven times the Cavs signed a former All-Star and found out the effects of Father Time were too much to overcome.
No. 7 – Derrick Rose, 2017
The 2017-18 Cleveland Cavaliers built an entirely new team around the core of LeBron James, Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson and J.R. Smith. With Kyrie Irving forcing his way off the team and LeBron only one year away from free agency, the pressure was on to find on-ball creation and help at point guard.
That led the Cavs to sign Derrick Rose in free agency. The former MVP was only 29 years old when the season began, but multiple devastating leg injuries had left Rose as something much less than he was before. While Rose has reinvented himself as a sharpshooting combo guard in recent years, at that point his game hadn’t adjusted.
The high-flying point guard act didn’t work for Rose’s body and he was a disaster with the Cavs, who dumped him at the Trade Deadline. He ended up playing only 16 games, shooting 43.5 percent from the field and 25 percent from deep with more turnovers (28) than assists (26).
No. 6 – Andrew Bogut, 2017
Near the end of the 2016-17 NBA season, the Cleveland Cavaliers were gearing up for another postseason run. They were the defending champions and looked even better than they had the season before, and seemed on a collision course with the Golden State Warriors once again.
Those Warriors had upgraded themselves, signing Kevin Durant in a move that required trading Andrew Bogut. Bogut was the starting center on the 2015 Warriors team that beat the Cavaliers in the Finals, and it was his absence due to injury that left an opening for the 2016 Cavs to burst through.
The veteran center agreed to a buyout and was available in March for the Cavs to sign. He was clearly past his prime or the 32-year-old wouldn’t have been waived, but he still looked like the kind of player who could play spot minutes as a rim protector and be a solid veteran presence on the bench.
Bogut made his debut for the Cavaliers on March 6th, and 56 seconds later he broke his leg, missing the rest of the season. The Cavs accordingly waived him a couple of weeks later, and he would only play a handful of games the next two seasons before officially retiring from the NBA.
* Technically, Andrew Bogut was never an All-Star, but he did make an All-NBA team in 2009-10
No. 5 – Shawn Marion, 2014
Some stars are on-ball first options on a team, handling the ball and scoring in bunches. Others are elite role players, able to elevate their play alongside other stars. You need at least one player in that first category to win a championship, but if you don’t have the second category you’re toast, too.
Shawn Marion is one of the best examples of that second category from the last two decades. He could certainly score the basketball when called upon, but Marion was best deployed as a supporting player, and he was elite. He could defend four positions, rebounded extremely well for his size and was a part of a number of elite offenses around players such as Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. Marion’s contributions earned him four All-Star selections and he made two All-NBA teams.
He was clearly on the decline when the Cavaliers signed him in 2014 as a veteran role player to fit around LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love; they weren’t prepared for just how drastic that decline was, however. A 36-year-old Marion was unable to make much of an impact, especially on offense, averaging just 4.8 points per game and turning the ball over as often as he assisted.
By the playoffs Marion was out of the rotation, playing only 25 minutes in their run to the NBA Finals. That would be his final season in the league, a successful one by team standards and a clear individual indicator that his career was over.
No. 4 – Andrew Bynum, 2013
The only player on this list that wasn’t signed to a contending team, the Cleveland Cavaliers bought low on Andrew Bynum in 2013 as they were still a lottery team trying to build a new identity in the wake of LeBron James’ departure. With Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters starting to show promise as scoring threats, the Cavs wanted to build out a frontcourt to support them.
Bynum was an All-Star center with the Los Angeles Lakers, starting on two title teams in 2009 and 2010 and establishing himself as a walking double-double. Then the injuries which had plagued him his entire career made their biggest move, and he missed the entire 2012-13 season.
That’s when the Cavaliers swooped in and signed him, hoping to have a starting center when he was fully healthy. The problem is that he never truly was healthy, and he was heavy and slow when he did make it onto the court. Bynum’s prime appeared to have ended with his latest injuries, and the player Cleveland got was a shell of his former self.
Bynum averaged 8.4 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, but he didn’t have lift to finish or mobility on defense. For the first time since his rookie season he was a negative on defense, and even a rebuilding Cavaliers team knew not to keep him around, sending him out a few months into the season; Bynum wouldn’t play again past that season.
No. 3 – Deron Williams, 2017
For a long time the NBA was torn on which point guard from the 2005 NBA Draft was better. Chris Paul had an excellent start to his career, but many put their money on Deron Williams, the former Illinois guard who was one of the league’s best passers with the Utah Jazz right from the jump.
Williams made three All-Star teams and two All-NBA teams in the prime of his career, but his career dropped off as he joined the New Jersey / Brooklyn Nets, and he was a part of the Nets’ “superteam” that failed to achieve liftoff. By his age-32 season he was clearly on the downswing of his career, but even so he averaged 13.1 points and 6.9 assists per game for the Dallas Mavericks before he agreed to a buyout.
That buyout allowed him to sign wth the contending Cleveland Cavaliers, joining LeBron James and company to provide steady play at backup point guard. The problem? His steady play on offense was nothing spectacular, and he was downright terrible on defense, unable to guard his man on the perimeter or dig down into passing lanes for steals. He posted career-worst marks in defensive metrics and in steal rate.
The Cavs didn’t feel they had a better option, playing him in all 18 of their playoff games that season, and to his credit his play picked up a bit in the postseason. Even so, that year would be his last in the NBA.
No. 2 – Mo Williams, 2015
In August of 2008, the Cleveland Cavaliers traded Damon Jones and Joe Smith in a three-team deal that brought back a point guard named Mo Williams. His place on this list has nothing to do with that acquisition. Williams may have been overrated during that run with the Cavaliers, but he was firmly in his prime at 26 years old, making the All-Star team that first season.
Williams made his way to the LA Clippers after LeBron left a few seasons later, then bounced around the league until 2015. At that point, a Cavaliers team gearing up for a rematch with the Golden State Warriors was reloading. One of the veteran players they signed? Mo Williams.
The return did not go as well as the original, with Williams playing only 41 games and averaging 8.2 points per game. He turned the ball over at a high rate, his 3-pointer went in just 35 percent of the time, and he was not much help on defense.
By the playoffs, Williams was on the very fringes of the rotation, playing only a handful of minutes as Matthew Dellavedova was again the primary backup to Kyrie Irving. He did win a ring, though, before retiring after that season.
No. 1 – Dwyane Wade, 2017
One of the most infamous free agent signings in Cleveland history, the Cavaliers signed perennial All-Star guard Dwyane Wade just prior to the 2017-18 season to join their veteran-laden run at the NBA Finals in LeBron James’ fourth year of the “return.”
Anyone who was following the Cavs that year knows how much of a disaster the start of that year was. The Cavaliers had added a number of players as part of the Kyrie Irving deal or to replace departed veterans, and as a group, those players all fell flat on their face.
Wade was the most well-known of the players and so his wobbly play was the most pronounced, although in reality, the inability of Isaiah Thomas to provide much of anything due to his hip injury was the more damaging. Wade shot only 43.8 percent from the field, was careless with the basketball and wasn’t able to find a balance between being the on-ball star he had always been and providing off-ball value.
The Cavaliers got out of the situation in the best way possible, trading the 36-year-old guard back to the Miami Heat where he finished out his career in a sort of reconciliation with his longtime team. The combination of Wade and LeBron was lethal in Miami; it was toothless in Cleveland. The 13-time All-Star had none of that juice left with the Cavaliers, which places him at the top of this list.