The Whiteboard: The post-LeBron Cavaliers need to pick an identity

With a LeBron James-sized hole in their roster, the Cleveland Cavaliers need to choose and cultivate a new identity.

Losing a franchise player is even harder than it might seem for an NBA team. In addition to compensating for the pure statistical output of LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers need to form a new identity in his absence. Life goes on, after all.

In their first game on Wednesday night, the Cavaliers seemed to fluctuate between a pair of different identities. With their young players like Cedi Osman and Collin Sexton on the floor, the Cavs flew up and down the floor. They made plenty of mistakes and took a lot of bad shots, but that version of the Cavaliers made a vastly superior team, the Toronto Raptors, actually work for their first win. (The Raptors won 116-104, and Cleveland was within eight of the Raps with less than three minutes left in the game.)

Conversely, Cleveland opened the game by running a lot of their offense through Kevin Love, who would either shoot or pass to somebody ready to shoot. That strategy did not work, as Love had a dreadful start to the game and the offense looked to be stalled out. Working in transition is much easier than attacking a set defense, but the Cavs need to find ways to get their young legs running even in halfcourt sets.

Starting by feeding Love is a logical move, as he’s pretty clearly the best player in Cleveland now that LeBron has left. Letting him work in isolation or in the post isn’t the way to do that, though, especially with how capable Osman looked all game long.

Letting Osman and Sexton work with Love in the pick-and-roll should make life easier for everybody. Unfortunately, Cleveland’s preferred pairing of Tristan Thompson with Love in the backcourt doesn’t produce enough space for the ball handler to build up steam in roll situations.

It’s just one game, but it’s not surprising that the Cavs’ pace instantly surged whenever Thompson was off of the floor. When he’s next to another big like Love, there just isn’t a ton of space to go around, especially if Love is anywhere within the arc. Turns out there was a method to the madness of having Love sit in the corner for so long while LeBron was in town.

The one silver lining to the King not being in Cleveland is the Cavaliers basically get a blank slate to work with. These challenges have to get solved, but Ty Lue will have more options for figuring them out than he did before. Playing one of TT or Love versus playing both of them is not a new problem in Cleveland, but the context of those decisions is different with this new-look Cavs team.

Lue’s schemes on both ends are going to be interesting to watch this season–without LeBron dominating on both ends, what exactly does Lue want to accomplish with his team, and how does he plan on doing it? Game 1 didn’t see a set identity on either end of the floor. Let’s see if some more time, and maybe more minutes for the young guys and less for George Hill and company, can produce more of a finished product in Cleveland.

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