Written by Demetri Inembolidis

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The current NBA season (that was not supposed to even happen) is over one fourth completed for the Cleveland Cavaliers.  The team currently sits with a record of 7 wins and 11 losses.  The overall record is not incredibly impressive, but it is considering that the preseason power ranking on ESPN had them as the 2nd worst team in the league.  If the season were to end today (Saturday), the Cavs would have the 9th seed in the east, which is quite possibly the worst place a rebuilding team can find itself.  Using a series of advanced metrics, John Holliner of ESPN predicts that the Cavs will end the season as the 11th seed in the east with only a 4.4% chance of winning the lottery.  I should note that winning the lottery should not be the main goal.  Even the worst team in the league only has a 25% chance of obtaining the top pick.  However, that team is guaranteed to have no worse than the 5th pick in the draft.

In other words, all signs indicate that the Cavs are going to be in the worst place a rebuilding team can find themselves: Too good to have a shot at the lottery, but not good enough to even think about winning a playoff series.  There are two camps about what is the best direction for the team.  The first is that the Cavs need to win as many games as possible and not worry about the lottery.  The second is that the Cavs need to worry about rebuilding the proper way and not worry about wins and losses until they actually matter.  

 

Nobody wants the Cavs to go the way of the Washington Wizards.  That team is a mess and are a threat to John Wall’s development.  Yes, the team is losing a lot of games and primed to get another high lottery pick.  But they are going about it in the worst way possible.  A losing culture is something that is very difficult to exorcise from a team.  Those of us who “want the Cavs to lose games” do not want the Cavs to be in the situation that the Wizards are in.  Their current situation is a result of instability and a lack of foresight by their general manager, Ernie Grunfeld.  He made the mistake of bringing players on board who are team cancers, which is the kiss of death when you win the lottery and have an elite young player.  

The Cavs need to toe the line.  They do not want to be the Milwaukee Bucks or the Washington Wizards.  The “Oklahoma City Thunder” model is what they need to strive for.  It is not a given that it will work.  For example, the Portland Trailblazers did the same exact thing and would have built a contender were it not for health issues that Greg Oden and Brandon Roy have had throughout their careers.  There is not a single system that is proven to work, but one that Oklahoma City and Portland used is a lot more likely to work long-term than that of the Milwaukee Bucks or Houston Rockets.  Getting swept out of the playoffs in the 1st round or getting the 12th pick in the draft every year is guaranteed to not be effective team building. 

The problem with not thinking about the draft and lottery is that the current Cavaliers team is not built for long-term success.  This team is not a finished product that needs to grow into itself.  The starting lineup features two players who are an average age of 35.5 years.  Anthony Parker and Antawn Jamison are not long-term pieces.  The Cavs have Tristan Thompson to replace Jamison, but I am not willing to accept that Thompson and Anderson Varejao are complimentary pieces.  Going back to Anthony Parker, there is little in the way of depth to replace him after he inevitably retires soon.  

The Cavaliers depth chart does not offer a pretty picture of a team that is ready to contend:

Because Ramon Sessions has a player option for next season, the Cavs need to think about having a backup point guard.  Their starting shooting guard is going to retire and the backup is not good enough to become a starter.  Omri Casspi is not playing like an NBA starter and Alonzo Gee, who has been a pleasant surprise, is not a long-term piece.  The big man rotation features a guy who will probably be bought out or leave after the season and his backup does not fit well with the only competent big on the team (Anderson Varejao).

As I had written in my first post with The Cleveland Fan, the Cavs were destined to lose because LeBron James made the team too good too fast.  The bad front office decisions by the former general manager Jim Paxson made that inevitability a reality.  The Cavs lucked out by winning the lottery and drafting Kyrie Irving, but he is going to need good teammates if the Cavs want to retain his services and be a contender.  

One of my Twitter followers put it best when she said “As a real fan you don't want the Cavs to be in this situation, but see they are and have a different idea of how they get out.”  Nobody actively roots for their favorite team to lose.  It is a matter of pragmatism.  There is a very real problem of the Cavs not being good enough to contend now or in the future and we simply want to change that.  As the Herm Edwards crowd would like to make you believe, it doesn’t make us any less of fans.  We all want the same thing, but it is a matter of having different philosophies of how to get there.  I am willing to wait a few years like Thunder fans did to get a team that is favored to win their conference instead of having the cheap thrill of simply making it to the playoffs.  

Before LeBorn James, the last Cavs team to make a playoff appearance was the 1997-1998 team coached by Mike Fratello.  They missed the playoffs the prior season after making it in 8 out of the 9 previous seasons.  In other words, Cavs fans were accustomed to making noise in the postseason.  That team had a bright and young core featuring Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Derek Anderson, Cedric Henderson, Brevin Knight and Vitaly Poapenko.  They made a big trade and landed Shawn Kemp.  The future appeared to be bright, but  that team lost to the Indiana Pacers in 4 games.  That would prove to be the highlight of that specific Cavs team.  I don’t seem to remember many people reminiscing about that great late 90’s Cavs team that took 1 game from the Pacers and screwed up a young team with promise.  General Manager Chris Grant needs to learn from Jim Paxson’s mistakes and think about the team long-term, despite what the fan base and season ticket holders think they want.  

Nobody is asking the front office or coaching staff to actively try and lose games.  That would be transparent and going against the nature of competitive spirit.  The current NBA system penalizes teams that are kind of good and rewards great teams (by contending for a championship) and very bad teams (by having better lottery odds).  It would be silly for the Cavs to stubbornly make personnel decisions that do not put the team in the best position to win.  The Cavs need to avoid making any trades that will bring an established player that will help them win.  They should probably sell high on veterans at the expense of winning games.  They need to give the rookies larger roles and extended minutes.  They need to consider buying out Antawn Jamison if they cannot trade him at the deadline.  If the front office does these things, they will be putting the Cavs in a worse position this year, but it will give the team a brighter future moving forward.  The Cavs and fans should not look at the weak eastern conference and ascertain that the playoffs are a legitimate possibility.  Making the playoffs this year is fool’s gold and will stunt the team’s growth and potential.  

The question is what matters more, winning some games now or winning playoff series in the future.