calm down, no one said they were as good of a franchise before his arrival. im not discrediting him in any way, and never was. but they were a better run franchise than most, especially cleveland, which was the comparison to begin with. if you honestly think pre-timmy they were remotely as poorly ran as cleveland was when lebron arrived, then idk what to say to you, other than this conversation would be over
while some of the teams lebron faced in the east for a few of those years werent exactly great, they were better than some people give them credit for being, and have comparable talent levels to mid-upper tier teams from 98-03 (the Raptors and Pacers had very solid, balanced squads). and then we are forgetting he still had to face off against the top west team each year. again, big-4 spurs, big-3 thunder, warriors all were incomparably superior to any team during those years, except maybe shaq/kobe lakers, which if we really took a closer look at that team, i think people might rethink how good they actually were, or if they too were the product of weak compe ion... everyone talks about how lousy the supporting cast was for Bron/AD, but if you really compare the two, its arguable the shaq/kobe teams actually had a weaker supporting cast, and i think its reasonably questionable as to whether they would ring against the depth of modern teams, or the great 80s teams.
are you kidding???
what rock do you live under? plenty of people bring up those facts. and who sits around throwing it in timmys face? i almost never hear that except for when people are trolling overly sensitive spurfans like you.
regardless in the end, it really doesnt matter. the vast majority of all-time greats were drafted or signed into great situations. about the only one who didnt, was lebron. mikes didn't start well but got really good pretty quickly, krause catches a lot of flack for being weird, but he built a really well balanced team that fit perfectly around mike. he literally could not have had a team more perfectly built for him.
however, i do wonder how differently things might have turned out if boozer didnt leave. i do think that messed things up quite a bit. he either could have been a nice supporting piece, or a good trade piece.