The Cleveland Cavaliers are now 1-3 after losing to the Jazz in Salt Lake City. Some corners of the sports world, as you'd expect, have turned toward panicking about the league's new super team. LeBron James has been deferential to his co-stars, Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters have been shot-happy and the team defense is pretty bad. All of that has piled into close losses against teams a title contender should beat.
Don’t panic about the Cavaliers
Cleveland is 1-3, with losses to the Knicks and Jazz. There’s no need to worry ... except for one kinda important thing.
Gene Sweeney Jr.
Of course, any real panic at this stage is hilariously undercooked. Here are some reasons why.
1. Everything about this is new. The Cavaliers aren't simply trying to integrate LeBron into their system and rotation. They are bringing together LeBron, a point guard who hasn't played with good teammates since college, a power forward who hasn't really played with another All-Star (let alone two), a coach with no NBA experience and a bunch of young role players who have to navigate a rather tricky landscape. The 2010-11 Heat needed a month to adjust. Cleveland is in even more tumult due to Kyrie Irving's youth and David Blatt's NBA learning curve. That things aren't perfect one week in is hardly a surprise.
2. The Cavaliers are in the East. It's one thing to be nervous about whether the Thunder can make the playoffs with two critical early injuries. In the West, you need 49 wins to get into the postseason. In the East, not only is there no pressure to meld quickly to ensure a playoff berth, there's no issue with capturing a high seed. The Raptors were 6-14 before trading Rudy Gay in December last season and still ran up to the No. 3 seed. The Cavaliers could pretty easily have a .500 November and still land the No. 1 seed. In the East, the calendar brings much less pressure.
3. Kyrie Irving has never been anything like a pure point guard, so of course he's not one now. There's a large amount of Kyrie Panic, especially since Irving scored 34 points, but had zero assists on Wednesday. That's an extreme example of a typical Kyrie game: he's never been someone to rack up assists. Last season, he created roughly the same number of assist opportunities per game as James Harden and Jordan Crawford (and fewer than LeBron, notably).
He's not even a Derrick Rose or Russell Westbrook style scoring guard: he's a two-guard with great ball skills and point guard size. (A smaller, quicker Harden is my preferred comp.) And that can totally work for Cleveland because LeBron and Kevin Love are the best ball-movers in the league at their respective positions. For the Cavaliers' offense to sing, Kyrie doesn't need 10 assists a game. Hell, he doesn't need seven. Imagine more of a Tony Parker-type season where Kyrie can pop off for 30 if need be or can run the offense and let his co-stars shine without racking up direct assists.
Regardless, it's not actually a problem that Kyrie isn't a Rondoian point guard. It's not like LeBron and Love need extra help getting up shots. Remember that Miami's offense was brilliant with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and Kyrie and Love are better passers than those two.
Everyone’s complaining about Kyrie after a game in which he put up 34 and had an effective field goal percentage of .565 while the rest of the team shot .408. Yes, point guards usually set up teammates more, but let’s not act like the loss in Utah was Kyrie’s fault. He played a heckuva lot better than any other Cavalier not named LeBron.
4. Dion Waiters has been relatively sane. I was looking forward to Dion being the unglued role player this season, like an iffy saxophonist in a jazz quartet who won’t stop soloing up in the second octave. Alas, Waiters has chopped down his shot frequency to a sane level. He’s not hitting many shots, but at least he’s not registering 15 of those misses per game. That bodes well long-term.
5. Blatt still has no idea what to do with his rotation. That will change. Blatt played only eight guys on Wednesday, which is loony for the second game of a back-to-back against a quick team like Utah. Matthew Dellavedova is out, and Blatt experimented with Shawn Marion in the starting lineup, which went horribly. Otherwise, he rode Kyrie, LeBron and Love.
Eventually Blatt will figure out which players he can trust and which units are most consistent. (I think Waiters needs to be out there with at least one of LeBron or Kyrie at all times, but I’m heretofore not sold on Love at center in small lineups. But it’s ridiculously early.) Give the coach two dozen games to sort it out. If he’s still struggling to find a solid rotation after Christmas, then we should worry.
6. LeBron hasn’t remotely played up to his standard. James hasn’t had a very LeBronian week in the box score or on the court. His defense has looked suspect (which is a bit worrying given his regression on that end last year) and his shooting is off. Unless you think LeBron lost his superpowers in the move north at age 30, he’ll be back and he’ll carry the Cavaliers upward.
And now, one reason Clevelanders should be worried.
1. The team defense is absolute trash. The Cavaliers are No. 27 in points allowed per possession. It’s early, but I’m not sure there’d been a single minute of Cleveland basketball that has allayed fears about this team’s defensive upside.(Including in Gordon Hayward’s game-winner on Wednesday).
My money is on Blatt and LeBron figuring it out enough to get the Cavaliers into the top 12 in team defense by spring. But the early signs have been far from encouraging and there’s not much defensive talent on the roster.
