Photo by LUNZERLAND from Flickr
Cleveland Cavaliers are planning to honor Zydrunas Ilgauskas by retiring the player’s jersey. This came to light on Kyrie Irving’s, Cavs number one pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, trip in China, when the guard admitted that he wanted to choose number 11, but was told that the number was going to be retired.
via Cavs to retire Ilgauskas’ jersey – LithuaniaBasketball.com (hat tip to ProBasketballTalk)
O’Neal. Duncan. Garnett. Nowitzki. Ilgauskas.
What do the above names have in common? Not MVPs and championship rings. And no, not the elusive status of “top-20″ players of all-time. The bond these big man share — other than the fact they’re at least a foot taller than the average male — is that they’ll have their jerseys retired sometime in the near future.
O’Neal, Duncan, Garnett and Nowitzki are chronicled legends. They’ve amassed titles, MVPs and All-NBA awards. There’s no need to toot their horn. Ilgauskas, on the other hand, comes as a surprise. On paper, his career wasn’t that impressive. 13.0 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 1.6 BPG, .780 FT% and two All-Star appearances. Solid, but nothing spectacular. He’s never won a championship, made an All-NBA team or been considered one of the league’s best big men.
Very rarely are NBA players honored for the type of person they are. There are awards for charity and sportsmanship, but nothing memorable. There’s no recognition on the level of the other prestigious awards (no publicized press conference, interviews, etc.). And that’s fine; most players do good deeds because they want to change lives, not garner praise.
But what if a player dedicated his entire career to pleasing a particular franchise? So much so that one of the interwebs’ best young bloggers, John Krolik, wrote a poem comparing him to the infamous “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. Well, that player would be Zydraunas Ilgauskas. Throughout his 12-year career with Cleveland, Ilgauskas was an iron giant. Even with his numerous foot surgeries (that ended up robbing him of his athleticism and prime), he still managed to play at least 78 games six different times.
When healthy, he gave the Cavaliers one of the most unique skill-sets we had seen from a 7-foot-3 player. Big Z could post up, hit midrange and long-range jumpers with elite accuracy, pass from the high post — they often ran their offense through him, defend the rim with his mammoth-like size (he was an underrated shot-blocker), and grab offensive rebounds at an alarming rate. Yet he meant more than that to them. Ilgauskas gave the Cavs an identity. He was their heart and soul. Most importantly, he was loyal.
When LeBron James was drafted in 2003 and took over as the team’s alpha dog, Big Z was fine with giving James the spotlight. At the heart of the Cavs’ supremacy, in 2009 and 2010, Z was content with giving his minutes to Shaquille O’Neal, Antawn Jamison, J.J. Hickson and Anderson Varejao. After the Jamison trade, Ilgauskas was released by the Wizards, waited the allotted time period, and came back despite no longer having a role on the team. Yet through all the drama he stayed with the Cavs for 12 years, finally leaving this past offseason for greener pastures in Miami. But even then, he was did Cleveland a service, as they no longer needed him.
In a sport run by greed, money and fame, it’s nice to someone who has compassion and virtues. Even though Ilgauskas wasn’t the best player in Cavalier history, or even among the top-3, he may be the most important. He did everything they wanted their “King” to do. So for that, he deserves all the credit and acclaim he will get, including a retired jersey.
There’s always an exception to the rule.
