5 reasons the Cavaliers are trash right now, ranked in order of urgency

With a 3-5 record and no answer in sight, the Cavaliers find themselves in an awkward position. We all wrote them into at least the Eastern Conference Finals and probably the NBA Finals before the season, but Cleveland has never looked this bad this early with LeBron James on the roster.

After winning their first two games, the Cavs lost five of their next six: Ls to the Magic, the Nets, the Knicks, the Pelicans, and the Indiana friggin’ Pacers.

Of those five losses, four of them have been by at least 17 points, with 21- and 22-point blowout losses to Orlando (at home!) and New Orleans. Any time you lose by 21 points, you’ve got to pass the sticks.

Those are not teams the defending conference champs should lose to, and we’re not gonna chalk it up to playing down to the competition.

The Cavs have a few tangible issues that can be fixed. Some start with their leader; others are more widespread.

Here’s what’s wrong with Cleveland so early into the year:

LeBron James is the point god. Let’s be clear about that.

But James has been at his best with a sidekick available to take the offensive pressure off him in spots. With Isaiah Thomas still nursing a hip injury and Derrick Rose finding his way in the latest chapter of his career, he has had no such luxury.

We knew Cleveland wasn’t going to be 100 percent until its All-Star point guard/Brinks truck slides-wearing scorer returns to action. But the Cavaliers haven’t even been close to good.

Rose needs to be better. Yes, he’s averaging 15 points on better than 50 percent shooting from the field, but he’s been inconsistent defensively and is averaging fewer than two assists per game.

Rose played excellent defense on Kyrie Irving in the final moments of the season opener:

But he hasn’t attacked every defensive possession the same way. That, and he’s only shooting 20 percent from downtown. When LeBron’s on the court, the worst thing you can be is a liability from three-point range.

Bottom line: Isaiah Thomas, please come back.

This is a lingering problem until IT4 returns. And even when he returns, he still has to be hidden on defense. It’s a byproduct of his stature, not his willingness to defend.

But what Thomas’ return will bring is All-Star-caliber firepower to the backcourt, something Cleveland traded away and hasn’t yet reclaimed.

Let’s give this a nine out of 10 on the urgency scale.

LeBron James is the leader of this team. Yes, Tyronn Lue is head coach, but this is LeBron’s team, and there’s no question about that.

And as the leader of this team, it’s LeBron’s duty to make sure his guys show up and compete with fervor every night.

Here are videos of a team not competing with fervor:

And here is video of LeBron not complaining about his team not competing with fervor:

Sure, it’s early in the regular season. And sure, the Cavaliers will be much, much better in the playoffs than they are right now.

But Cleveland had similar defensive woes last season: It was a bottom-20 defensive team as recently as March, and those struggles trickled right into the postseason. Even though the Cavaliers almost swept through the Eastern Conference playoff picture, they were still not a great defensive team. They just managed to score enough that it didn’t matter.

They couldn’t do that against the Warriors, though, and ended up getting run through in the NBA Finals. If the Cavaliers don’t want a repeat of last year, they need to nip some of these issues in the bud early on. And that starts at the top.

Absolutely not. It’s all fun and games until LeBron gets mad, and nothing will make LeBron more upset than a lax approach to the game he takes seriously. For now, the energy isn’t there. If that energy isn’t there in December, January, or early February, LeBron will take out his second hat: the general manager.

And not in a good way, either. Wade is 35 years old and turns 36 in January. He’s averaging 7.7 points per game on a career-low 41 percent shooting. And his arrival moved Smith to the bench, only for Wade to volunteer to lead the second unit when his stint as a starter didn’t pan out.

Wade still has moments in which he flashes his past brilliance:

But for the most part, he’s been a shell of the Hall of Fame player most know him to be:

Wade’s defense hasn’t been any better, and how could you expect it to be? He’s in his mid-30s chasing around guys in their mid-20s.

Wade’s another guy who will raise his game when it matters most. Playoff Wade has always outshined regular-season Wade. It’s the stuff the greats are made of.

But if regular-season Wade is giving you only 7.7 points on abominable field-goal percentages while getting ripped up by Frank Ntilikina and ole’ing on the other end, it’s fair to question just how good Playoff Wade will be when it matters.

Bottom line: The Cavs need him to be better. LeBron needs him to be better.

Probably. At the end of the day, Father Time is undefeated, and Wade isn’t exempt from his wrath. While he likely won’t average 7.7 points all season long, Wade isn’t the same player he was during his prime in Miami. And that’s OK.

He’ll still have his moments of brilliance, and hopefully some of those moments come in crunch time when it matters. Let’s give this a seven out of 10 on the urgency scale.

Having eight new players is nothing to sneeze at, especially on a championship team that essentially took a stick of dynamite, lit the fuse, stuck it into its core, and watched it explode in the form of a Kyrie Irving trade. And without Thomas to fill that gap, the Cavs are left with debris until his return.

These things take time, and with the shortened training camp and preseason, the Cavaliers are learning on the fly. Playing with LeBron doesn’t make life much easier. Running with The King is unlike any other offense these guys have played in.

It doesn’t help that Ty Lue messed with the starting lineup early in the season either.

He moved Tristan Thompson to the bench, Kevin Love to the center and Jae Crowder into the starting lineup with Rose filling in for an injured Isaiah Thomas. He began the season with Wade starting over J.R. Smith.

Then, the Wade experiment went south, so Lue put Smith back into the starting lineup. Then Rose got hurt, so James was moved to full-time point guard. Then Thompson was re-inserted into the starting lineup at center, and now he’s out for a month with a calf injury.

There have been way too many adjustments to the starting five for a team that has been to the finals in each of the past three seasons. Much of that has to do with Thomas’s injury and the lack of a legitimate starting point guard, but Smith, LeBron, Love, and Thompson were four of the five starters who got Cleveland to the finals year after year with regularity.

Bottom line: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Chemistry doesn’t form overnight. These things take time, especially when adding eight new players to the fold. But the Cavs’ chemistry will directly impact their success on the floor, and until they build it, they’ll have to talent their way to victories.

Without Thomas, though, Cleveland really has only LeBron and Love to rely on for the offensive output. And when teams load up defensively on LeBron, and the chemistry isn’t there, his shooters won’t be ready.

Chemistry will develop at some point; that’s a given. But if it doesn’t come sooner than later, the Cavaliers could have some issues down the road. Let’s give this an 8.5 on the urgency scale, knowing how much it matters but acknowledging sooner or later, it will come.

In Cleveland’s loss to Indiana, James coughed the ball up eight times. It was the second time this season he had that many turnovers. Through eight games, he’s averaging 4.5 giveaways a night.

LeBron admitted to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin he couldn’t continue to be as careless with the ball.

“Eight for myself, that’s way too many,” he said. “You know, [you accept] the three or four range, but you double that, it’s not good ingredients for your team to be successful. So, I’ll take [responsibility for] that for sure. I have the ball in my hands a lot, so I have to be very careful with my decision-making. So, I take full responsibility for all our turnovers tonight because it starts with me.”

LeBron admitted after the first game that he was out of shape due to an ankle injury in training camp. He’s played 37 minutes a game to work his way back into tip-top condition.

James is averaging near a triple-double on the season: 25.9 points, 8.9 assists, and seven rebounds per game to be exact. But he has to — and will — be even better if he wants to demand excellence from his teammates. It was easy to say it’s only October, but it’s November now. It’s time to tighten up.

Nah. James is in the conversation as one of the greatest of all time specifically because this does not keep up. He will turn it on, as he always does, and push his team to the promised land. On the urgency scale, this is about a negative-14 out of 10. That’s because LeBron knows what he wants, and that’s a championship. And the only way he’s getting one is if he sets the standard.

Cleveland has played only eight games. Yes, the Cavs have won only three of them, but the odds they finish 31-51 are slim-to-none.

History suggests Cleveland will be fine, especially once Thomas heals up and makes his return.

Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and LeBron James in the NBA Finals. The King has been to the league’s biggest stage in each of the past seven seasons. Nobody else is running away in the East while the Cavaliers are struggling.

But LeBron doesn’t want to just make it to the finals — he wants to win it all. And if he wants to win it all, he needs to tighten up his team — and that includes himself.