James cautious about new teammates
C L EVELAND» LeBron James moved on quickly.
A day after the Cavaliers overhauled their roster with a tornado of trades that ripped through the NBA, James didn’t dwell on what’s lost, who’s no longer around or how much time Cleveland has left to salvage its season.
“It is what it is, so let’s get it going,” he said Friday following the team’s shootaround in Atlanta. “The front office made changes that they felt best fit this franchise. It’s time to go to work.”
In the hours before Thursday’s trading deadline, the Cavs unloaded six players, including Isaiah Thomas and Dwyane Wade, James’ best friend, in three separate deals designed to make the team younger, more athletic and as general manager Koby Altman put it, to revitalize a team he felt was “marching a slow death.”
Cleveland added guards George Hill and Jordan Clarkson as well as forwards Larry Nance Jr. and Rodney Hood, and all will have to take a crash course in Cavaliers 101. The team sent some of medical staff to Atlanta in hopes of completing physicals before Friday’s game, but it’s unlikely any of the new additions will play until Sunday in Boston.
On paper, the Cavs look better. James is cautious.
“We have to see how it meshes, obviously,” he said. “But I like the pieces coming in.”
The makeover was also aimed at placating James, who can become a free agent and leave Cleveland this summer.
Teams already are lining up for an audience with The King should he turn down $36.5 million and opt out of his contract. So the Cavs turned their roster that we have upside down in hopes of convincing James he doesn’t have to go anywhere.
“He’s the guy that is going to take us back to the promised land,” Altman said, “so you want to put the right pieces around him.”
The Cavaliers have been in a freefall, going 7-13 since Christmas Day and getting blown out on national TV several times. More troubling to Altman was the sense that the Cavs were miserable, disconnected and on a self-destructive path.
So the 35-year-old GM’s first move in the overhaul was bold, requiring him to swallow his pride and scuttle the blockbuster trade that brought Thomas and Jae Crowder to Cleveland last July in the deal for Kyrie Irving. Crowder was also traded Thursday to Utah.
James took the high road when asked about his time with Thomas.
“The small little doses that I was able to play with Jae and IT, I wish it could have been better than it was,” James said. “I want Isaiah to get his bounce back, get his spring back, get healthy. Being out seven months is difficult for anybody.”