What if the Cavaliers are just not great?

Listen, two things are true. One, we habitually and always underestimate how long it takes teams to learn to play together. Heck, sometimes I think people do it on purpose in order to have something to talk about. The Cleveland Cavaliers lost their second best player and second best play-maker in Kyrie Irving, and don’t even have the major piece of that trade, Isaiah Thomas, on the court yet. Since matchups don’t really matter in the East, which is, for the most part, a talent wasteland, all that matters is that the Cavaliers start getting into their final form near the time the playoffs roll around. That’s still the most likely outcome.

The other thing that’s true, however, is that there are really two ways to take advantage of being a championship contender that people want to play for. One is to sign guys in their prime like Kevin Durant – okay, scratch that, that’s not really a strategy, per se – one is to sign useful guys like Nick Young and Omri Casspi, and one is to sign veterans at a discount. A lot of people are ring-chasing, in today’s NBA, but no one more so than guys who were pretty good in their day, even stars, and would like a ring before they retire. Getting, say, a name like David West at a huge discount – to stick with the Warriors – feels good but it doesn’t change the fact that 56-year old David West is a replacement level player at best.

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The Cavs, to put it mildly, have bought into this second school a little too deep. Kevin Love is still a very useful player who’s making a pretty reasonable amount of money for someone of his age and talent. But, Tristan Thompson isn’t, and neither is J.R. Smith. And even though Channing Frye, Kyle Korver, and Jose Calderon probably are, that doesn’t change the fact that their best days are well behind them. Not to mention the fabulously cheap, fabulously well-known Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose. This not a team for fourth and fifth Plumlee brothers. It’s a team of guys you’ve heard of. Even the ultimate “guy you’ve heard of,” Jeff Green.

So the question of whether the Cavs are actually not so great this year has a little bit of spice you wouldn’t expect. The spectre looming over the team, sadly, as is often the way of spectres, is the 2012-13 Los Angeles Lakers that boasted the services of Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, and Dwight Howard. After dropping from 57 wins to 41 in 2011-12, everything seemed poised for a return to glory but it was false. Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard never meshed, Dwight got in the way of Pau Gasol, and even though they combined for a, for them pretty impressive, 204 games of work put in, the Lakers only managed 45 wins and after the death of Kobe’s Achilles, were drummed out of the playoffs in four games. Since then, the franchise has yet to break 30 wins.

The dirty little secret for GMs is that reputation is a trap. Somehow, the Warriors knew that when we were all ferociously mocking them for refusing to trade Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. Reputation is a coin you build over time so that by the time your account is pretty full, it’s not usually a good idea for someone else to pay the price. Matchups are important, scheme is important, chemistry is important, and defined roles are important. Talent matters very, very much. But that’s the second dirty little secret: what older greats are more talented at than younger goods is smarts. That can be a great help if they have somebody else to carry the load – see, for example, the 2011 Mavs. But it’s empty calories if you’re relying on them to be what they used to be.

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So yes, it’s still most likely the Cavs are good. It may be more likely than people think that the Celtics, with and without Gordon Hayward, are as good, but we also won’t know what this Cavs team is really like until we see Isaiah Thomas on the court and see how he fits in with it all. But it is indeed quite possible that in growing a year older, and exchanging some young talent for old warhorses, the team finds itself, outside of LeBron, too old to guard anybody or score reliably, and too overpriced to do much about it. Time will tell.