The past couple weeks of Cavaliers-related news have been a whirlwind to say the least. Some of it on the court. Mostly off the court.
There were LeBron’s Da Vinci Code tweets.
Stephen A. Smith dropping rumor bombs left and right.
Bleacher Report came out with an article that Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love could be out of Cleveland this summer.
If the Cavs were not on a three-game win-streak maybe the significance of some of these reports would be greater, but winning cures everything.
It would be naïve to say that there is absolutely no chance one thing or another happens.
Could the Cavs trade Love in the Summer? I wouldn’t rule it out. None of us know how the playoffs are going to unfold. It would be just as foolish to say there’s a 100 percent chance of Love leaving as there is that he stays.
But last Summer, many speculated that Love would not re-sign and would go to the Los Angeles Lakers. We see how that turned out.
Could the Cavs trade Irving in the Summer? It’s probably less likely of a scenario, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
A lot can change in two or three months.
The one scenario that seems least plausible, but is still possible is the prospect of LeBron James leaving Cleveland.
I would venture to guess that the same people who are saying today that there is absolutely zero percent chance of LeBron leaving are the very same people who burned his jersey after they said there was no way he would leave in 2010.
It would damage LeBron’s reputation within the city of course. People from cities all over the country and around the world would bash him. But there is a huge segment of the population of basketball fans that root for LeBron more than the Cavs.
There were Clevelanders who became Heat fans when he left. There are people who will follow him wherever he goes and cheer him on.
And the fact of the matter is the Cavaliers franchise needs LeBron more than he needs them.
A man with hundreds of millions of dollars earned in his lifetime may not be worried as much about what the diehard Cavs fan who watches every game is thinking.
But let’s focus on the present. It’s March. There’s a month left in the NBA regular season. There are still four potential best-of-seven playoff series rounds to get through before anyone can do anything about leaving Cleveland.
Maybe this is why these rumors come up this time of the season. 82 games is a long time and it can get rather monotonous to casual sports fans who don’t watch every game.
Part of a writer’s job is to find stories to captivate their audience. The regular season narrative can become boring.
This is not to say that well-respected writers pull stuff out of thin air because if they did that their reputations would be damaged and they wouldn’t have a job much longer.
But can they exaggerate the validity of a rumor? Of course.
What the Cavs know they need to be solely focused on is the road to winning a championship. If that happens, I would say there’s a 99.9 percent chance that none of the rumors of the Big Three leaving are even a factor anymore.
There’s 21 games left in the regular season. Then the Cavs would have to win 16 playoff games out of a potential 28 to win a championship.
Can we focus on that between now and June and let the chips fall where they may?
If I’m looking at it as unbiased and objective as possible, the odds don’t appear to be in the favor of Cleveland.
Winning a championship in 2016 looks pretty unlikely.
But I’m not saying cancel the Finals and hand the trophy to the Warriors in March.
Let’s play the games anyway.
The Trade Deadline is passed, and despite rumors surrounding Love, he’s still here. To quote the power forward, “You guys are stuck with me.”
The rumors surrounding the team might have some validity, so they aren’t entirely nonsense. But it is nonsense to spend so much time talking about “Irving could be traded.” “Love could be traded.” “LeBron might leave.”
When none of that could even physically happen until Summer.
Are the Cavs going to be celebrating the Eastern Conference Championship and Stephen A. Smith will cut into the broadcast and say, “Yeah, but Love or Kyrie will be gone.”?
Let’s enjoy this playoff run. It was only four years ago the Cavs lost 26 straight games and went on to have back-to-back number one draft picks. The city of Cleveland forgot it had a professional basketball franchise for four years.
Let’s not overlook the fact that one team in Cleveland is elite. This doesn’t happen all too often in our city’s history.
Of the Cavs’ remaining 21 regular season games, there is only one opponent that could be considered close to the talent level of Cleveland.
The Los Angeles Clippers.
The Cavs’ schedule was somewhat front-loaded. They already got the three toughest opponents out of the way. Golden State, San Antonio and Oklahoma City.
Looking at the teams on Cleveland’s schedule, they face Memphis, Sacramento, LA Lakers, Clippers, Utah, Dallas, Orlando, Miami, Denver, Milwaukee (twice), Brooklyn (twice), New York, Houston, Atlanta (twice), Charlotte, Indiana, Chicago, and Detroit.
Do any of those teams strike fear into the hearts of opponents? Especially a juggernaut like the Cavs?
12 of those games are on the road, including six of the next eight, but if you stack up the rosters of the opponents next to that of the Cavs, there is only one team that they theoretically could be on par with; the Clippers.
Since that game is in LA, let’s give the Clippers a very slim edge.
The rest of the teams, on paper, the Cavs should have no trouble beating.
Let’s take into account the possibility that Head Coach Tyronn Lue will rest players on some games that are part of back-to-backs.
There are five different two-day periods remaining where the Cavs play back-to-back games. Let’s say four of those games, the Cavs are without at least one member of the Big Three.
Then take into account the Cavs have a three-game lead over Toronto in the East. So to be conservative we’ll say the Cavs get at least two games where they already have clinched the Eastern Conference number one seed.
By those estimates (which really are just complete guesses based on some evidence at hand,) the Cavs should have their healthy Big Three on the court 15 of the 21 games. 14 of those games are against teams who clearly are underdogs. The Clippers are the only team that’s close.
So is it unreasonable to expect the Cavs to go 14-7? If it was just a matter of talent, the Cavs could go 20-1 or even 21-0 in this stretch.
But as we’ve seen throughout the season, the Cavs have off nights where they either don’t bring the energy, play down to the level of competition, underestimate the opponent or what have you.
As someone who believes this team has not played up to its potential, I’d like to see the Cavs at the very least go 15-6 to close the season.
Tell me they can win at least one game when LeBron isn’t on the floor. Or at least two games without either Love or Irving.
The last time I laid out a schedule like this in an article, I was hoping the Cavs could go at least 5-2 against seven teams that had given them trouble.
They went 4-3. That was the stretch where they lost to Detroit, Toronto, and Washington.
Since then, they beat Indiana, Washington, and Boston.
I don’t believe it’s crazy to say if the Cavs played up to their potential, they could extend that win-streak to 24 games.
But realistically, the way the NBA schedule breaks down and the reality of teams having off nights, makes that all but impossible.
I’ve been waiting for the Cavs to play up to their potential all season. We’ve heard excuse after excuse. Just wait. Just wait.
The playoffs are around the corner and I am looking for this team to have some positive momentum heading into Mid-April.
Something tells me the Cavs can’t just “flip a switch” if they have to face Golden State in the Finals.
I’ve been critical of the Cavs throughout the season because we all know they are capable of better results than they achieved up to this point.
But the rumors off the court are not something I really like to write about or think “oh, this is a juicy story.”
Let’s just see some great basketball. This team can do it. And if they continue to play great basketball, the rest of the stuff will disappear.
We’ll have plenty of time to fire up the ESPN Trade Machine in June if the Cavs don’t reach their ultimate goal.
Friday night was “Miracle of Richfield Night” at the Q. That 1975-1976 team was one of the few times in franchise history the Cavs had a realistic opportunity at winning a championship.
The Cavaliers franchise was founded in 1970 and has zero championships.
So 46 years later, after only two Finals appearances, and only a handful of teams that even had a shot at the Larry O’Brien Trophy, let’s not take for granted what we are witnessing.
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