Since LeBron James came back to Cleveland and fulfilled his promise of delivering a championship to his city, it felt like a weight was lifted off the franchise’s shoulders, a historic event that should have theoretically dampened all the dramatic tension surrounding the Cavaliers.
Instead, going into the 2017-18 season, the team has never been on shakier ground since James’ return. Kyrie Irving demanded a trade and was shipped out, James himself might be bound for the Lakers and Irving’s replacement, the incandescent Isaiah Thomas, might be out at least until All-Star break.
It’s worth acknowledging before we go any further that the LeBron James effect means the Cavaliers will be prohibitive favorites to win the Eastern Conference until proven otherwise. However, every season, it feels that we stretch the limits of that theory more and more, and every year, we’re left wondering: When will the Cavaliers break? When will James’ brilliance no longer be enough? And this season poses as good a candidate as any in recent memory.
It’s easy to look at the big names on the Cavaliers roster (Dwyane Wade! Derrick Rose! LeBron James! Kevin Love!) and be fooled into thinking that Cleveland has built a deep, formidable squad capable of going toe to toe with their Bay Area rivals. The reality is that Cleveland has assembled an early-2010s juggernaut to try and compete in 2017, a roster stacked with contributors who are on the wrong side of the aging curve.
Of the (subjectively determined) top 10 players on the current Cavaliers roster, only three have a Box Plus-Minus trend line that has been improving over the last few seasons — Tristan Thompson, Jae Crowder and Isaiah Thomas. However, Thomas will be coming off a hip injury that will force him to be glued to the bench for at least half the season, and fortune doesn’t favor diminutive guards coming off major injury on the flip side of 30. Crowder, though he should add a valuable dimension that Cleveland previously lacked, also experienced a dip in overall effectiveness last year.
If you summed up all 10 players’ BPM from the 2011-2012 season, it would have equaled 29.2 (if the player wasn’t yet in the league, his rookie season BPM was used). If you repeated that calculation for last season, it would equal 14.7, a precipitous drop magnified even more when you consider that James and Thomas added up to 13.9 by themselves.
Thompson is a useful player who is extremely effective in a limited scope, although it is a limited scope. The departure of Irving may lead to an increase in Kevin Love’s productivity, perhaps even approaching his Minnesota days, which would be invaluable for the Cavaliers. Love had a DRE* of 8.0 last season when sharing the floor with Irving, as opposed to 14.8 when Irving was off the court, according to NBAWowy. It’s also possible that Wade’s play could pick up now that he’s back next to his Banana Boat buddy after essentially just mailing it in last season.
However, with all the “if’s” aside, this is still a team full of diminished and largely one-dimensional players. There are, to be fair, many ways that this season could go well for Cleveland, but it’s just as easy to envision a season that ends in frustration, leaving them no closer to catching the Warriors, and quite possibly farther from it than they were previously.
Next: Five big questions for the NBA's rookie class
If there’s one trope in all of sports that has consistently endured, it’s that Father Time is undefeated. But even Father Time has never had a challenge quite like James. And they both may be in for their fiercest duel yet.
*DRE is defined on NBAWowy as PTS – 0.88*FGA – 0.35*FTA – 1.4*TOV + 0.25*TRB + 1.89*STL + 0.74*BLK + 0.51*AST – 0.16*PF
*Box Plus-Minus courtesy of Basketball-Reference