Cavaliers dealing with lots of ‘L’s’ without LeBron
The standings show the Cavaliers at 5-18, bunched tightly with Phoenix, Atlanta and Chicago among the league’s worst teams. Head coach Tyronn Lue, who presided over the Cavaliers’ championship party at Oracle Arena in 2016, was fired six games into the season. Assistant Larry Drew initially balked at taking Lue’s place, accepting only after certain demands were met. Shortly after Kevin Love signed a four-year, $120 million extension, he underwent foot surgery that will sideline him well into next month. J.R. Smith suggested the Cavs were tanking, hoping to finish last and earn the No. 1 draft pick, and was told to stay away from the team until a trade could be arranged. Tickets for home games have sold for as little as $2 on the internet.
And for those visiting the Cavaliers’ team store inside the arena, there isn’t a LeBron jersey in sight.
It was evident upon James’ first visit to Cleveland this season that fans had the proper perspective. Introduced in the Lakers’ starting lineup Nov. 21, he received a standing ovation lasting some 30 seconds. As it should be. Without LeBron and his 2015-16 team, that city has a major-sports championship drought dating to the 1964 Browns.
It will be interesting to see how Golden State is received, though. The Warriors won their first title of the Steve Kerr era on the Cavaliers’ floor in 2015, and as much as Cleveland fans wanted to forget that night, there was an encore last season, when Stephen Curry’s 37 points punctuated a fourgame sweep.
So here they come again, with much the same cast, perhaps hitting their stride after a 17-point win in Atlanta. The Cavaliers, who went to five Finals over James’ two Cleveland stints, now wonder if tanking might be best alternative. (If you’ve seen Duke freshman Zion Williamson, very LeBron-like as a physical phenomenon, you know why several teams covet that No. 1 pick.)
Drew, highly respected as both an NBA player and assistant coach, won’t hear of such things as he navigates the headcoaching job. “Coaching to lose? I don’t know how to do that,” he told reporters. And the situation indeed becomes complicated when Love returns. A legitimate All-Star when healthy, he was given that extension to help keep the team relevant in the Eastern Conference. He won’t be wild about a throw-in-the-towel attitude when he returns, and if the Cavaliers are indeed headed for the cellar at that point, he might be offered in trade.
It’s really quite a mess. “As the days pass,” tweeted ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, an Ohio native who began covering LeBron as a high school player, “the Cavs’ 2016 championship reveals itself more and more as being a mirage.”
Examining the Cavaliers’ roster, there’s a sense that too many players — Rodney Hood, George Hill, Jordan Clarkson, Cedi Osman, Larry Nance Jr. — are just passing through. Tristan Thompson is having one of his best seasons, but he doesn’t draw fans or bring the Cavs any closer to relevance. Newcomer Alec Burks, acquired in the Kyle Korver trade with Utah, provided an unexpected spark with a game-winning dunk in Brooklyn on Monday night. But the team’s most intriguing player is rookie point guard Collin Sexton, drafted with the No. 8 pick from Alabama.
Sexton takes the court with eyes ablaze, intent on making his presence undeniably known. He flustered Oklahoma’s Trae Young with a maniacal brand of defense when they met in college last season. But he’s just 19, with an awful lot to learn, and there were some disparaging off-the-record quotes from teammates about Sexton last month. He definitely has a future in the league (14.5 points per game, shooting 44 percent from the floor), but he’s getting schooled — most recently by ex-Cleveland guard Kyrie Irving, who scored 29 points and left Sexton “discouraged,” as Drew noted, in the Celtics’ 33-point victory last week.
With James gone, the Eastern Conference is all about Toronto, Boston and Philadelphia. Milwaukee could be a playoff factor, and that’s the Warriors’ next stop (Friday night). The Bucks, you’ll remember, ripped the Warriors 134-111 at Oracle on Nov. 8. For the moment, it’s Cleveland, Golden State’s home away from home, looking more inviting than ever.