Welcome to Above the Break – the SPOX opinion on the NBA season! Twice a month, SPOX editor Ole Frerks scrutinizes a league issue closely. This time: The staggering Cleveland Cavaliers – and the questions of the users.
The NBA’s Silly Season officially kicked off on Tuesday night – Blake Griffin’s trade shook the league and came out of nowhere. Having read about a “probably quiet” trade deadline everywhere before, the move also proved once again that you can never say this with complete certainty. That’s why it’s called Silly Season.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are also a team that wants to participate in this season. According to ESPN man Brian Windhorst, a trade for George Hill is almost fixed, but that’s not the last move. Actually, the Cavaliers are said to be interested in every player who could be available, qualification irrelevant. It’s no wonder, as they appeared ridiculously bad (measured by their demands) in January – and now Kevin Love has also been injured.
But the point is: Trades is not enough. Midseason trades in particular rarely change the culture of a team, even if they can be a final piece of the puzzle, a Rasheed Wallace to the pistons in 2004. A player brought back in the middle of the season is rarely one who then precedes, but mostly someone who tries to fit in somehow.
This is the Cavaliers’ dilemma – before they can achieve anything, they would have to clean up their own pigsty. It has often been worrying in recent years what happened during the Cleveland season, but conditions like this have never been the case before. The Cavaliers have long since begun their own version of the Silly Season.
One can easily lose track of what has happened lately, so the quick run: Last week, the Cavs held a team meeting where everyone somehow accused everyone – but somehow (according to reports) the most attacked Isaiah Thomas Kevin Love.
Love had called in sick and therefore left the hall, so he was not there when the Cavaliers got 148 points from the Thunder. That should have relieved him – as I said: 148 points! He could do nothing for this embarrassment. But in Cleveland it’s love that is made a scapegoat for most things that go wrong.
Be that as it may, the meeting seems to have been fruitful only to a limited extent, even though the Cavs have won games once again. In the game against Indiana, Love reacted with an insult when he handed the ball to Thomas, who is known to be quite small, after a rebound, as if he were a small child just before he went to school. In the same game he also used Jeff Green’s head as a towel holder after a break.
Love was annoyed and somehow you can hardly blame him. Since his trade to Cleveland in the summer of 2014, he’s been constantly appearing in rumours and is identified as the main reason for the Cavs’ defensive weakness, even though at least that’s been somewhat less so since he became his husband at the most important defensive possesion of the franchise story against Stephen Curry in 2016.
In Cleveland, Love was always at most the third option, which was also accepted by him in view of the presence of LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Irving is no longer there and Love has played a good season until now, mostly as a second option. Thomas, on the other hand, is (understandably) miles away from his form of last season, is badly hit and was even booed by Cavs fans recently for his cast selection – it’s obvious that he’s not the person who should be counting others at the moment.
Nevertheless, his anger is understandable. The 1.75-meter man has to prove himself time and again throughout his career, as a former No. 60-pick in Sacramento, as Sixth Man in Phoenix and later Boston, then as an all-star in Boston. Last season it seemed as if he had finally made the breakthrough, but then he was shipped and had to start all over again. Also hurts, both emotionally and physically.
Only Love isn’t the one he should be angry with. With regard to his season so far, one could rather blame the Cavs and Thomas himself. IT wanted to come back as soon as possible, but at the moment it seems as if his comeback had taken place too soon – or rather on the wrong stage.
One could have let him find his timing in the G-League for the first time without the whole world watching him and asking him and all his fellow players for his progress. One could have taken him off the bench for more than one game, instead of letting him play for 30 minutes all the time, even though he is miles away from his best form.
Would have been, would be, could – actually insignificant. What has been done wrong cannot be changed now. Much more important, however, is the question of whether the Cavaliers can still be “repaired” this season. Now they lack the second-best player with Love, the only real constant of the team after LeBron, for six to eight weeks, as ESPN reports.
The goal will not be to attack the First Seed – the Cavs are neither capable of that nor do they really need it. But they have to change their culture. As I said before, one or two trades would not be enough.
There is not the one homerun move that solves all the problems of the game, and you won’t save the mood in the team just by giving up Thomas, for example (which nobody would take at the moment anyway in view of his expiring deal). A love trade is no longer an option after its violation anyway and would not have been a good idea before.
One or two deals could of course help, but the most important part can only be done from the inside – the cavs must finally pull together again if they want to make something out of this season, at the latest now. This is the most powerful voice in the Locker Room. And no, we are not talking about Tyronn Lue.
LeBron James behaved very calmly in the whole Thomas/Love”feud” – apart from a few phrases there was not much in public, which is all right, but according to all reports he didn’t really take a position internally either. That is rather problematic then. James is the leader – when he puts his foot down, a situation like the legendary team meeting doesn’t get out of control. But he didn’t do that.
One can only speculate why. Windhorst said last week that James is angry with the Cavs because he thinks they could have gotten Paul George and Eric Bledsoe in the summer – unlike an injured Thomas, Ante Zizic and a Jae Crowder playing the worst basketball since his Mavs-times. And a draft pick in 2018, which he may not have much of.
It is unclear whether these moves were actually possible, and also whether James is behaving passively because of it. It’s also actually irrelevant. If James hasn’t finished with this season and his second stint in Ohio, he must be the one to reunite this Locker Room.
No one else has the necessary influence – not Lue, not Thomas, not Dwyane Wade and certainly not Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, who, according to the Bleacher report, has made almost all decisions since the demission of ex-GM David Griffin, although he is qualified for a political office similar to Donald Trump. And similarly popular with LeBron, which doesn’t make the whole situation any easier.
No, it’s only LeBron himself who can make the change. This will be a Herculean task for this team, but nobody knows this better than the King. He’s already led a weaker squad to the finals than those Cavaliers. But at some point, every era ends.
Page 1: Can the Cavaliers still be saved?
Page 2: User questions: Celtics, Griffin-Trade, Roberson, Miami and Co.