A few weeks ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers looked like they had wrapped up an NBA finals appearance before the all-star game roster had even been set. For the third straight year, they looked like the only true championship-caliber team in the Eastern Conference, and had just traded for former Atlanta Hawks guard Kyle Korver to bolster their three-point shooting.
Then came January, the worst month the Cavaliers have had since LeBron James announced his return to Ohio. On Monday, they dropped their sixth game of the month, a 124-122 road loss to a New Orleans Pelicans team that was playing without Anthony Davis.
So, what’s going wrong? James himself offered his analysis, while sending a none-too-subtle message to nominal GM David Griffin: “We’re not better than last year, from a personnel standpoint. We’re a top-heavy team. We top-heavy as shit. I just hope that we’re not satisfied as an organization.”
James went on to note the absence of established role players on the team. Cleveland has been playing without JR Smith, who is out with an injured thumb for the next few months. They also lost Matthew Dellavedova to the Milwaukee Bucks, Timofey Mozgov to the Los Angeles Lakers and Mo Williams to retirement. Instead, the Cavaliers are playing mostly untested and unheralded rookies.
Perhaps realizing that his words were inevitably going to cause a certain amount of commotion, he clarified his comments on Twitter:
I not mad or upset at management cause Griff and staff have done a great job, I just feel we still need to improve in order to repeat...
— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 24, 2017
if that's what we wanna do.
— LeBron James (@KingJames) January 24, 2017
Whatever you think about James publicly airing out his frustrations, he’s certainly not wrong in his diagnosis. This isn’t a team that can afford to lean too heavily on young, inexperienced players. This is a win-now team. Other than James and Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers don’t really have any other players who can consistently create shots for others. This means that they have to rely on their star players to do more than they should – and that’s rarely conductive to winning basketball. During Monday’s fiasco, Irving scored 49 points and James notched a triple double. It still wasn’t enough.
Cleveland’s top-heavy construction also forces the team to keep James, Irving and Kevin Love on the court for longer stretches of time. James played 44 minutes on Monday after playing 45 minutes on Saturday. That’s not sustainable. Riding one’s top players too hard during the winter months can backfire by the time the playoffs finally start.
So, James is probably right that Cleveland needs some outside help if it wants to play on the highest possibly level, but this particular problem doesn’t have a workable solution. The type of player that James wants to bring in isn’t really out there, and even if they were Cleveland doesn’t have many trade assets and are already over the salary cap.
While James’s comments were aimed at Griffin, he has to realize that he’s not entirely blameless here. It was for his behalf that the Cavaliers pieced together the Big Three 2.0, an ambitious gambit that has already paid off in the form of a comeback win over the Golden State Warriors and the first championship in franchise history.
That championship run came with a price, and now we’re seeing the potential downside of putting a super-team together. Cleveland has so much money tied up with its star players and also Tristan Thompson – they have the highest payroll in the NBA – that they simply don’t have much wiggle room to add an impact player, assuming one is even available.
Let’s not pity the Cavaliers too much here, though. They still have the best record in the Eastern Conference, they’re still a near-lock for a third straight finals appearance and, oh yeah, they have the best player on the planet. Despite their awful month, Cleveland has a more than respectable 30-13 record.
Barring injuries, the absolute worst-case scenario for his Cavaliers team would be that they fall to the No2 or No3 seed. Even if they do end up having to play a series without the benefit of home-court advantage, their opponent would have to do absolutely everything right and they would have to do everything wrong to pull off an upset.
However, even if their Eastern Conference opponents aren’t able to beat the Cavaliers, they could harm their chances of repeating just by forcing them to play longer series. Cleveland should look at last season’s Warriors as a cautionary tale of how fatigue and increased injury risk can sink even the best of teams. After going all out in their successful attempt at surpassing the Bulls’ 71-win series, they looked like a different team by the time the postseason began: still great, but noticeably fighting exhaustion, and that was before Steph Curry injured his knee.
By the time the Warriors faced the Cavaliers in the finals, they were still recovering from an epic seven-game battle with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference championships. In the end, the less tested Cavaliers, who swept through their first two playoff series, were able to take advantage of Golden State’s somewhat diminished state. Following their shocking loss, the Warriors came to a similar conclusion that James reached yesterday: they needed another playmaker. Enter Kevin Durant.
Not to state the ridiculously obvious, but there’s not another Durant out there for the Cavaliers to acquire. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a realistic scenario where they significantly upgrade their roster. It’s quite possible that James, Irving and Love will have no option other than to carry the bulk of the burden for the remainder of the season, no matter how much they try to publicly pressure the GM.
