2014-15 NBA Season Preview: Cleveland Cavaliers

Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, and Kevin Love
(Lisa DeJong/The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

It’s still weeks before the start of the regular season and the very concept of the Cleveland Cavaliers as a super team with serious championship aspirations is still a little strange. The franchise has had its moments of futility throughout its 44-year history, but also NBA and Conference Finals appearances over the last ten years. LeBron James may be the constant to their periods of contention, but the composition, and potential upside, of the team around him is vastly different than those veteran-laden teams of the mid-to-late ‘aughts.

The Cavaliers roster pre-LeBron was a mix of missed draft picks and young players who played like veterans. For every DeSagana Diop or DaJuan Wagner selected in the lottery there was an Andre Miller or Zydrunas Ilgauskas, coupled with a sneaky-great selection of Carlos Boozer in the second round of the 2002 Draft. Ilgauskas’s game was hampered by foot injuries even at a young age, but Miller would lead the league in assists in 2001-02 (10.9 per game) before being traded for Darius Miles in the offseason.

The Cavs would bottom out at 17 wins in 2002-03, with Miles, a rookie Wagner, and Ricky Davis getting buckets in blowouts for the 28th-ranked offense (by offensive rating). Only Ilgauskas (17.2 PPG, 7.5 boards, 1.6 assists, 1.9 blocks on 44% from the field in 30 minutes per game) and Boozer (10/7.5/1.3 on 53.6% and 25.3 minutes) were maybe long-term pieces on the roster before winning the lottery in the offseason and drafting LeBron James with the first pick in the 2003 Draft.

Adding James (and Jason Kapono!) doubled the Cavs win total the next season, as they finished with 35 wins under new head coach Paul Silas. Ricky Davis and Zydrunas Ilgauskas both increased their field goal percentages playing with LeBron (from 41% to 43% for Davis in 22 games, 44% to 48% for "Big Z"), and the LeBron/Boozer pick-and-pops improved the offense to 22nd in the league. Davis would be traded to Boston for veterans Tony Battie and Eric Williams in December, sacrificing offense and hilarity for defense and team chemistry.

In the offseason, while attempting to lock up a piece of that potential core long-term, the Cavs declined a team option on Carlos Boozer’s rookie contract (at $700K) and reportedly had a hand-shake agreement on a six-year, $41 million deal, before the Utah Jazz stepped in and offered $68 million over the same six years. Instead of pulling a Chandler Parsons and giving the original team an opportunity to match, Booze signed with Utah and angered the Cavaliers, who felt that he lied to their blind owner, Gordon Gund, and reneged on the original agreement.

The team was able to replace Boozer’s production by trading Battie and a couple of second round picks for 3rd-year power forward Drew Gooden and the draft rights to Anderson Varejao during the 2004 Draft. A 42-win season followed, costing Paul Silas and interim head coach Brendan Malone their jobs, and general manager Jim Paxson followed once the season ended. Mike Brown was hired as head coach and Danny Ferry as GM in the summer of 2005, and making the playoffs became a priority.

Ferry immediately went to work in signing free agent guards Larry Hughes to a five-year, $70 million contract, Damon Jones to a four-year, $16 million deal, and forward Donyell Marshall for four years and $22 million. Along with an extension for Zydrunas Ilgauskas, the summer spending put the Cavs over the salary cap for the first time in the LeBron era and limited the team’s options going forward, locking the team into a core of LeBron, Hughes, and Big Z. The team won 50 games, finishing 9th in offense and 14th on D, and achieved their offseason goal of a playoff appearance with a four-seed in the East and a home series against the Washington Wizards. They won the series in six games, including the last two in overtime, and would take the weathered Detroit Pistons to seven games.

The 2006-07 team relied on internal development from their young players, adding only Sasha Pavlovic and rookies Daniel Gibson and Shannon Brown to the rotation, finishing 18th on offense and 4th in defense as they made the NBA Finals and were swept by the San Antonio Spurs. A roster of LeBron James, Hughes, Ilgauskas, Gooden, Varejao, Eric Snow, Pavlovic, Damon Jones, Marshall, Gibson, David Wesley, Brown, and Ira Newble made the NBA Finals. It’s still amazing.

That playoffs, in the Eastern Conference Finals particularly, featured LeBron James’s national breakout, with the “48 Special” against the familiar Detroit Pistons. The Cavs were able to match Detroit defensively, and LeBron supplied enough offense to beat them in six games.
LeBron actually took a step backwards in almost every statistical category in 2006-07, before hitting his prime and leading the league in PER for the next six seasons. His points per game and PER dropped over three points from the previous season, and his field goal attempts, percentages, and passing, rebounding, and usage rates all also fell compared to 2005-06. As was true of the team in general in its second season under Mike Brown, LeBron’s defensive numbers, particularly defensive win shares and defensive rating, improved in spite of the step-back offensively.

The next three seasons in Cleveland would see LeBron average 29.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 7.7 assists, and 10 free throw attempts per game, with his field goal, assist, and advanced shooting percentages increasing each year. His usage rate led the league in 2007-08 at 35.3 possessions, and he finished twice (to Dwyane Wade) in his next two seasons in Cleveland, as the team was 20th, 4th, and 6th in offensive rating.

Defensively, the team was elite, ranking 11th, 3rd, and 7th over the 2007-10 seasons and giving Mike Brown a resume builder that’s helped him land two other head coaching jobs since. Equally impressive, however, was crafting a dominant team on both sides of the ball, particularly given the players with which Danny Ferry supplied him.

Larry Hughes was the largest free agent investment of the LeBron era, and supplied most of his value on the defensive end over his 2 ½ seasons in Cleveland. An injury wiped out most of his first season with the team, and he would average 14.2 PPG, 4 RPG, 3.2 APG, and 1.4 steals on 39.5% from the field and 34.7% from 3 in his Cleveland career. Those numbers translated to a 12.5 PER over the 2005-8 seasons, with an average of -0.1 offensive and 7.6 defensive win shares per season. He was a great fit in Mike Brown’s defensive system, as a ball hawk who pressured on-ball and played passing lanes, but he was fairly limited as a combo guard who couldn’t really catch-and-shoot while LeBron created. As the big outside expenditure in LeBron’s formative years, Hughes wasn’t able to play well enough to avoid being moved in February of the 2008 season, along with fellow-young starter Drew Gooden and summer of ’05 signing Donyell Marshall, in a three-team trade for Ben Wallace, Joe Smith, Wally Szczerbiak, and Delonte West.

Danny Ferry had limited moves in the way he built the Cavaliers roster around LeBron James, especially in the crucial years before James was paid the max. Ever since the Carlos Boozer departure, the team was looking for a young sidekick to grow up in Cleveland with LeBron, and Ferry paid Larry Hughes to take that secondary salary slot as he entered his age-27 season. He never developed into enough of a threat offensively to take the requisite pressure off of LeBron, and that lack of a secondary offensive weapon would ultimately stifle the team in the playoffs against the tough defenses of Boston and Orlando. LeBron simply had to do too much on the offensive end in his time with Cleveland and it’s impacted his decisions in free agency, as he’s left situations to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami and now Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in Cleveland.

The parallels between LeBron’s 2010 playoffs as a Cav and 2014 with Miami were pretty on point, as both tenures ended with LeBron dominating the ball and his teammates standing around and watching. Stylistically, Miami pushed the boundaries after their 2011 Finals loss to Dallas and integrated small-ball concepts with LeBron at power forward and initiating from the post. Chris Bosh was a natural stretch center and spot-up shooter, and Wade was able to take over for possessions and also impact off-the-ball with creative back-cuts and drawing free throws (at least for their first few seasons together).

Ferry was the first GM to surround LeBron with shooters as he navigated high screens, often sacrificing ball swings and counter-movement for straight penetration-and-kicks to shooters. Mo Williams, Damon Jones, and Daniel Gibson were LeBron’s first shoot-first point guard teammates, before Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole with the Heat, but Pat Riley was able to add more shooting options in Ray Allen, Shane Battier, Rashard Lewis, and Mike Miller. The big men role players on either teams weren’t exactly ideal, whether Ben Wallace, J.J. Hickson, or old Shaquille O’Neal in Cleveland or Udonis Haslem, Chris Andersen, and (sigh) Greg Oden in Miami.
When LeBron left the Cavaliers decimated in his wake, Danny Ferry and Mike Brown weren’t able to survive the fallout. Chris Grant and Byron Scott filled their respective positions in a 19-win campaign in 2010-11, as Antawn Jamison led the team in scoring at 18 PPG in 56 games but Hickson received as much playing time and shot attempts as he could handle in his contract year. A savvy trade in acquiring a first round pick as recompense for taking on Baron Davis’s contract from the Los Angeles Clippers (for Mo Williams) would change the fortunes of the franchise, as it resulted in the first overall pick in the 2011 Draft to pair with their own fourth pick in the draft lottery.
Kyrie Irving played 51 games and averaged 18.5 points, 3.7 boards, and 5.4 assists on 30.5 minutes per game as a rookie (shooting 47% from the field and 40% from 3), taking the Rookie of the Year Award and improving the Cavs win total to… 21 wins. Tristan Thompson chipped in with 8.2 points and 6.5 boards in 60 games and 24 minutes per game, and veterans like Jamison, Anthony Parker, and Anderson Varejao helped keep the locker room quiet amid the rebuild.

The 2011-12 season yielded the 4th pick in back-to-back drafts (foreshadow!) and Chris Grant selected Dion Waiters, a talented offensive guard who never started while at Syracuse, and traded up to draft center Tyler Zeller at #17. Waiters would play in 61 games as a rookie and, in 28.8 minutes per game, average 14.7 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 3 assists on 41.2% on FG’s and 31% from 3. Kyrie increased his scoring to 22 per game but shot worse from the field and didn’t visibly improve in his second season, albeit one that was shortened by the lockout. The team finished with 24 wins and somehow snatched the first overall pick in the 2013 Draft away from the 7-win Charlotte Bobcats.
Unfortunately, the 2013 Draft will go down as one of the worst in NBA history, and the consensus at the time was that Cleveland had reached for forward Anthony Bennett from UNLV at number one. Bennett’s season was immediately stifled by offseason medical issues, from asthma to sleep apnea to a shoulder surgery, which affected his conditioning and playing time early in the season. His numbers were awful for a first round pick, never mind the usual production expected from a #1 overall pick, at 4.2 points and 3 boards on 35.6% and 24.5% from 3, in 12.8 minutes per game over 52 games. He was out-produced by second round pick Matthew Dellavedova, who also had pedestrian averages but started 4 games at shooting guard and played 72 games and 17.7 minutes a game.

The talk entering the 2013-14 season was playoffs, after six top-20 draft picks in three drafts and Year Four post-LeBron. GM Chris Grant and owner Dan Gilbert publicly spoke about the playoffs and the expected development of the young core of Irving, Waiters, and Thompson, led by new/old head coach Mike Brown. Grant clearly felt the impetus to win now, signing Andrew Bynum to a partially-guaranteed contract during the offseason with intentions to start him at center when healthy and, when that inevitably failed, trading him for Luol Deng and draft picks for Spencer Hawes mid-season.

In a weakened Eastern Conference, where a .500 record could return a top-six seed in the playoffs, things completely fell apart for the Cavaliers. Bynum was never healthy and was suspended by the team for being a general douche and undermining Mike Brown in practices. Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters never got along, on or off the court, and neither player improved from the year prior. Kyrie, in particular, regressed, dropping to 20.8 points in 35.2 minutes and 71 games, and saw his shooting percentages drop again, to 43% and 35.8% from 3. Not even Luol Deng’s #veteranpresents helped right the team, as they topped out at 33 wins and lost head coach Mike Brown and GM Chris Grant after failing to meet the increased expectations. The lost season was ultimately worth it, however, as a miracle happened that set the LeBron Homecoming Train (patent pending) in motion.
Against all statistical probability, the Cleveland Cavaliers again won the draft lottery (with the ninth-worst record in the league) and the first-overall pick in back-to-back seasons and for the third time in four years. Center Joel Embiid’s injury resulted in Andrew Wiggins as a consolation prize at number one, giving Cleveland another young asset to play or trade, and putting the Cleveland Cavaliers back in the NBA’s rumor mill. The rumors would ramp up in the weeks leading into the free agency period, where LeBron James’s representation began spreading word that the Cavs were a realistic possibility. How realistic they were would depend on your perspective, until July 11th, when LeBron released his next decision, to return to his home in upstate Ohio.

(all shot charts courtesy of nyloncalculus.com)

So, after a year rife with in-fighting over shots between Kyrie and Dion and the ensuing trade rumors, LeBron’s signing has seemingly squashed whatever beef was still lurking and should revitalize the development paths of every young player remaining on the roster. Kyrie Irving might have been over-exposed as the franchise guy for the rebuilding Cavs teams, but playing off of LeBron James’s attention (and a $90 million extension) should improve his attitude, help his declining shooting percentages, and give him the first pressure situations of his NBA career. He’s had a solid summer as a starting guard on Team USA in the FIBA World Cup tournament, especially in the first quarter of the championship game when he exploded for 15 early points on seven shots and propelled the team to a 20-point lead against Serbia that it wouldn’t relinquish. On the biggest stage of the summer, Kyrie Irving stepped up. I’d be surprised if LeBron didn’t notice, as well.

Dion Waiters’s issues with coaching and Kyrie erupted after losing his starting shooting guard spot to Dellavedova last season, and he’s already spoken out this summer that he wants to start on the LeBron-led Cavs. He’s also mentioned speaking to LeBron James before the Decision 2.0, about playing together and how he should prepare for the upcoming season. Tape studies of Dwyane Wade’s game may be on the summer reading/watching list, which should excite Cavaliers fans to no end. A season ago, Waiters wondered if he was the best player on the team. This season, he might still think that’s true, but he’s locked in at no more than the fourth-best scorer on this current roster, and his adjustment to that mentality could be one of the wrinkles to work out early in the season.

Depending on the source, the Kevin Love trade was either a pre-arranged transaction to LeBron’s signing or an unintended opportunity that arose from Cleveland’s carnival of riches. Regardless, Andrew Wiggins’s Cavalier career was so short that his jersey wasn’t even eligible to be sold on NBA.com (not suspicious at all at the time…). Wiggins developing and playing defense alongside LeBron James and Kyrie Irving could have been an intriguing, if young, core. LeBron’s numbers and effort on the defensive end waned considerably last year with Miami, and his defensive responsibilities should be monitored as he ages. Wiggins profiles as a lock-down defender at the 2-guard position already but his offensive upside and catch-and-shoot game might be years away.

Instead, Wiggins and Bennett were traded for Kevin Love. Perhaps the greatest combination of shooting and rebounding from a big man in the history of the NBA, Love has put up gaudy stat lines for a bad franchise in his six-year career. His flaws have been discussed by the owner of said-bad franchise, but they are relatively minor and not uncommon for other star players who weren’t ready to lead a bad team in a small market.

Love still finished 8th in 3-pointers made and 3rd in total rebounds and PER in 2013-14, on a team with Kevin Martin as its second-leading scorer. Ricky Rubio was able to find Love on his flares to the 3-point line and get him the ball off the pick-and-pop or on the left block, but wasn’t able to draw nearly the attention away from Love as his new teammates will be able to, due to Rubio’s lack of aggressiveness as a scorer. Playing as a secondary scorer off of LeBron or Kyrie’s penetration could be an adjustment for Kevin Love, but he’s too smart of a player to not adapt to the situation and could certainly sacrifice raw numbers for efficiency.

Joining Kevin Love as new additions to the Cleveland Cavaliers are forwards Shawn Marion, Mike Miller, and James Jones, with Ray Allen a possibility as the season looms. Marion and Miller were both excellent on a per-minute basis last season and have transitioned into effective role players who can rebound and guard opposing wings or knock down 3’s by finding soft spots in opposing defenses. New head coach David Blatt, hired in late-June, is fresh off of a Euroleague championship with Maccabi Tel Aviv and has found success coaching in Israel, Russia, and Italy by relating to players and adapting his playbooks to fit his talent. His adjustment to the intricacies and speed of the NBA should be fascinating, especially in their offensive sets and given the weapons he has to use.
If Blatt is able to add some of the Miami Heat’s elements to his playbook, this team should be a lock to finish first in offensive rating in 2013-14. A starting lineup of Kyrie, Waiters, LeBron, Love, and Andy V gives the team multiple options at any given time in the shot clock, with only Varejao as a shaky shooter (though he’s improved his free throw line jumper) but a valuable screener and rebounder who can dive hard off the pick-and-roll. Love can also set the high screen but prefers to float to the 3-point line, as he’s eliminated the mid-range jumper from his arsenal, and can play some minutes at center in smaller lineups because of his dominant rebounding numbers, with possibly LeBron at power forward in the same frontcourt.

Handling the ball will be a shared experience among LeBron, Kyrie, and Dion, as all can play in the pick-and-roll but only LeBron is a natural passer and lacks the inherent jumpers of the guards. Kyrie can get one-dimensional at times as a point guard and rely too much on long jumpers off the bounce, rather than probing into the middle of the defense and getting guys easy looks (5.8:3 career assist to turnover ratio). Some of that is lack of talent around him but he’s such a good jump shooter than it’s his natural tendency.

Dion Waiters is in the same situation, with loads of untapped talent that has yet to be refined in the NBA, but without the consistent 3-point stroke of Kyrie. He’ll get plenty of open catch-and-shoot looks that he’ll pass up in order to put the ball on the floor, but LeBron James and David Blatt will save his career, considering where he was a year ago. There’s a chance that Dion Waiters becomes the best fourth-option in the league and should finish plenty of games for the Cavaliers, but coming off the bench could enable him to get more shots and be a clear “Sixth Man of the Year Award” contender.

On defense is where this team will have immediate problems, as the only maybe plus-defenders on the roster are Anderson Varejao (he will miss games at some point this season), LeBron James (slipped noticeably last year with Miami and entering his age-30 season), and Shawn Marion (35 years old), with Brendan Haywood and Tristan Thompson (a better defender in 2012-13 that seemed to take steps backwards last season) as bigs off the bench. Kyrie Irving is one of the worst on-ball defenders in the league, and Waiters and Love both have effort issues on that side of the ball also. Opposing point guards should be able to get into the lane at will against these Cleveland guards, and seeing how Blatt positions his big man on the pick-and-roll will be interesting; if he’s a blitzer with these mobile bigs or prefers to play below the pick and cede the pull-up jumper from mid-range.

After the trade of Wiggins there’s not many options at wing defender either, outside of LeBron James and Marion. The lack of a shot blocker won’t be able to cover up for any funneling on drives, but LeBron served as the de facto shot blocker on some decent Miami defenses (at least until "Birdman" Andersen signed) and mobility and a weakened Eastern Conference could cover up their deficiencies. Tristan Thompson has shown moments of defensive competence but can't seem to shake consistency and foul issues. Kevin Love has great footwork in the post and uses his body well to box out, and could transfer those attributes into being an effective team defender, much like Chris Bosh evolved into in Miami. At the least he, and the rest of the Cleveland bigs besides Haywood, should be able to get out to challenge shooters and can move well enough to send doubles against dominant post players or wing scorers.
The team’s defense will be a work in progress early in the season, and a wing defender could be an emphasis on the trade/veteran buy-out markets. The offense will be so dominant, though, that even an average output on the other end could be enough to get Cleveland into the conversation of title favorites and a #1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. There are so many weapons who can score in bunches that shot selection could present a problem, much as it did last year, and LeBron will walk back into the Cavaliers locker room now as the grizzled old vet and locker room leader, along with still being the best player on the planet. He has more weapons to pass to and play off of than he ever has before, but the pressure is on LeBron to transition the team from the disappointing speed bump in their four-year rebuild to a legitimate championship contender. Then again, when isn’t the pressure on LeBron James?

Pressure comes with the territory when you’re the best player in the NBA, where every season without a title is a disappointment in our post-Jordan culture. To see a player voluntarily leave a team fresh off of four consecutive NBA Finals appearances is monumental, but makes sense given his career trajectory and personal experiences. Growing into his role as the big man on campus (or hardwood?) in his early Cleveland days was a solitary experience, as his teammates were either older (Larry Hughes, Ilgauskas) or not good enough to play the sidekick role (Larry Hughes, Gooden).
The Cavs teams built around his talents were heavy in veterans and role players, and I wonder if he would have ever left Cleveland originally had Boozer stuck around and developed into the #2 option or if Danny Ferry (or the previous regime) had drafted a Russell Westbrook or Tony Parker-type of young, secondary star to grow alongside. But, alas, he left The Cleve for his “college years” in Miami and did what we all did as young adults, and craft a separate sense of self in new environments with a new group of friends and learn about life, relationships, and ourselves.

LeBron James has returned to Cleveland an older, wiser, and more mature man than when he left, and he’s returned to his home of Northeast Ohio complete with his own young family and the opportunity for his children to grow up in the same community that helped raise him decades earlier. With his return is the return of legitimacy to the Cavaliers franchise that tried so hard to rebuild itself in his absence, which stockpiled the necessary young talent and caught the necessary breaks required to trade for Kevin Love and attract the greatest player in franchise history to come home again.