What to Make of This Season’s Cavs: While We’re Waiting

(Editor’s Note: I want to quickly apologize for a lack of Winners and Losers this week. I was at the game on Thursday and was in no shape to do anything on Friday. This week has since provided me with a severe lack of opportunities to follow up. It’ll be back this Monday, I promise.)

The vibe was different. Not bad; just different. Compared to Media Days of the past, there were fewer media members in attendance, fewer live-streaming networks, less jockying for position at the stage area, and a much more relaxed feeling permeating throughout the gym. Outside of the same, inexplicable parking issues, this year’s Cavaliers Media Day had a cathartic yet mysterious feeling that could be felt throughout.

Kevin Love, with the ink just drying on his new contract extension, fielded more questions about his summer campaign surrounding mental health awareness than he did about this coming season.

Kyle Korver spoke about his choice to return—not just to the Cavaliers, but to basketball in general, saying that there’s a life cost to missing things back home in exchange for playing in the NBA at an advanced age.

Tristan Thompson discussed last season, and the struggles of what he dealt with while having the first injury-plagued campaign of his career. Cedi Osman discussed getting to train with LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Kawhi Leonard this summer. And JR Smith spent a sizable chunk of time on Instagram Live, interrupting others while they went through their media gauntlet, providing some levity to an otherwise very structured day.

Swish interrupting Kevin’s photo shoot with Instagram Live. JR is a bit behind on his media gauntlet and is clearly taking this very seriously. #CavsMediaDay pic.twitter.com/cZqlIBTwZz

— Scott @ WFNY (@WFNYScott) September 24, 2018

All in all, the afternoon was, for a lack of a better term, fun. Basketball, perpetually living in the cross section of sports and pop culture, is back. The personalities—the Channings and Kevins and JRs of the world—were alive and well, and all without the overarching pressure of expectation.

No one is saying the Cavs will be better without LeBron James, but you won’t find a single player in the locker room who is concerned about what’s to come.

“We’re going to evolve,” said Korver. “We’re going to play a different style of basketball, and if we don’t, we probably won’t be that good. It’s a great opportunity for all of us, from the top to the bottom of this organization to create a new path and find a new style.

“Any time when I was growing up and we would move, I would find something I didn’t like about myself before and say ‘You know what? I’m going to change this thing about me now.’ This is kind of like that. We didn’t move, but we kind of did. If there was something we didn’t like about who we were, we have the opportunity to reset that.”

When James left Cleveland in 2010, the cast of players who were to provide the next chapter said they were going to compete, but with hindsight crystal clear, it was never going to happen. This time around, however, it’s different. During the 2009-10 season, the Cavaliers made a trade for Antawn Jamison, a complimentary player well into his 30s, pushing the chips into the center of the table as a means to make a run at the NBA Finals. This past season, the Cavs front office not only held on to it’s lottery pick, it dealt aging veterans like Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade to make room for players still on the ascent like Larry Nance Jr. and Rodney Hood.

“[It’s] not a rebuild at all,” Tyronn Lue said during his address. “We want to compete for the playoffs.”

Scott Sargent/WFNY

While this mantra was alive and well when Byron Scott took over, this time, it feels attainable. A five-man unit of George Hill, Rodney Hood, Osman, Nance, and Love should be able to produce some competitive offensive numbers when things are clicking. Adding in Collin Sexton, Thompson, Smith, and Jordan Clarkson off the bench, and it’s easy to see how Lue feels he has the horses to play some decent two-way basketball in a conference where decent just may get it done.

Now, it’s important to mention that this isn’t to say “competing for the playoffs” is the best plan for the future. For every minute the team gives Hill, Sexton isn’t developing. For every shot taken by Smith, that’s one less afforded to Osman. It’s also important to mention that “when things are clicking” is a massive qualifier that may prove to be more rare than frequent. This is where Ty Lue comes in.

It’s not unfair to say that Lue will get to coach. He’ll get to install a system, he’ll get to balance growth and execution, and he’ll get to tweak as needed. This is not to say that Ty has not coached since his arrival — lineup decisions (like re-installing Tristan Thompson against Boston) saved the Cavaliers season from a premature exit; after timeout plays (or ATOs) like James’ game-winning buzzer beater against Indiana were designed sets and movements that happened to include the best player in the world.

The good news is, if things do not go according to the initial plan, reverting course isn’t impossible. Securing a bottom-10 finish means securing a first-round draft pick and adding another Sexton-like player to a roster that will also have the ability to add a maximum salary slot following buyouts of Smith and Hill.

In a bizarre way, how we enjoy this Cavaliers season is entirely up to us. If we want to bestow playoff aspirations, we can. If we want to complain about not blowing it up and tearing it down, we can certainly do that as well. Or, if we just want to watch, see how it all plays out while taking the downs with the ups, this doesn’t sound so bad either.

Gone are the nights of pretending that every game is must-win. Gone are the nights of extrapolating some sort of bigger meaning to every third quarter collapse or fourth quarter comeback. In a way, none of it matters—at least for now—and that’s OK. It’s not bad; it’s just different.