Please Reset Your Expectations for Cleveland Cavs After LeBron James' Injury
Initial standards—however aggressive—are no match for reality. And for the freshly forged, still-unpolished Cleveland Cavaliers, in the aftermath of LeBron James' injury, the reality is they won't be running away with much of anything this season.
Those ambitious expectations must be adjusted accordingly.
A two-game absence has mushroomed into an extended stay on the sidelines for James. The Cavaliers announced that he's "projected" to miss the next two weeks with "left knee and low back strains."
On one of the few bright sides, James' status is more of a preventive measure than anything else, according to ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst:
Precautionary and brief though this may be, there's no point pretending James' leave isn't problematic for the already-tottering Cavaliers.
They were supposed to wreak havoc in the poorly manufactured Eastern Conference, rattling off victories by the bunch, traipsing their way to a top-two seed and conference finals appearance. Plenty of bookmakers even made them the odds-on favorites to win a title, per Pro Basketball Talk's Kurt Helin.
But the Cavaliers haven't played the part of jutting juggernaut early on. They're four games over .500, owners of the East's fifth-best record, a mere 1.5 games ahead of the...Milwaukee Bucks.
This, then, isn't a whole team that James temporarily leaves behind. This year's Cavaliers are not the Miami Heat of the last two seasons. That team mustered a 7-4 record without James over that span. These new-to-each-other Cavaliers are already 0-3 without their veteran mastermind.
The Cavaliers are also being outscored by 8.8 points per 100 possessions in the 453 minutes they've played without James, compared to the plus-4.7 they post with him on the floor.
Basically, without him, their net rating goes from that of the Chicago Bulls (plus-4.7) to that of the New York Knicks (minus-8.3), who have the Association's most losses.
| With LeBron | 108.5 | 4 | 103.8 | 9 | 4.7 | 7 |
| Without LeBron | 101.2 | 20 | 109.9 | 29 | -8.7 | 27 |
Rays of light aren't found in the health of James' teammates either. Anderson Varejao is already done for the season, and Kevin Love—who is shooting just 40 percent when James is on the bench, per NBA.com (subscription required)—is battling back spasms.
He was pulled from the Cavaliers' Dec. 30 loss to the Atlanta Hawks and didn't play in their loss to the Milwaukee Bucks the following night.
Navigating these absences will be difficult for a shallow Cavaliers contingent.
Kyrie Irving led them to the league's second-worst winning percentage (33.9) during his first three seasons as the alpha dog, and the team's bench ranks 28th in offensive efficiency and dead last in defensive efficiency, according to HoopsStats.com.
Combine that with a harrowing schedule, and the Cavaliers aren't in good shape.
Sitting exactly two weeks would mean James misses the next seven games, five of which come against Western Conference teams.
Though the Cavaliers are 4-6 against the West this season, only one of those victories has come against an above-.500 squad (Memphis Grizzlies). They're only 7-7 against above.-500 teams overall (0-2 without James).
Four of the next seven games will pit the Cavaliers against winning teams—Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets, Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns.
Their road tilt against the Sacramento Kings won't be smooth sailing either. The Cavaliers are a .500 team away from home (0-2 without James), and Sacramento's net rating with DeMarcus Cousins (plus-9.2) is higher than Cleveland's with James.
As Bleacher Report's Ethan Skolnick underscores, this puts the Cavaliers in a tricky situation, both now and later:
"All of this means that Cleveland, already 4.5 games back of the East's fourth seed, could need binoculars to see the backs of Toronto, Washington, Atlanta and Chicago jerseys by the time James returns.
But while the No. 5 seed wouldn't be ideal, not with the prospect of starting three series on the road just to get to the Finals, at least it's unlikely to get worse than that. Even if the Cavaliers lose, say, six of their next nine, they may not fall behind Milwaukee or Brooklyn or Miami, the three teams currently holding spots six through eight.
"
That the Cavaliers may welcome James back without plummeting down the Eastern Conference ladder is something of a double-edged sword.
Fending off the Brooklyn Nets, Heat and Bucks would indeed be an accomplishment. But this, again, is a Cavaliers squad that should be doing more than clinging to the fifth-best record in a conference begging for a clear favorite.
Already six games back of the first-place Toronto Raptors, the Cavaliers run the risk of falling 10 behind—no matter where they lie—before James' return. Nothing from this team suggests it'll do anything other than submit to circumstance without him.
What is there left to do but adjust the soaring standards of a stalled giant at that point?
It's not like the Cavaliers were instilling confidence before now, hence the reason James' absence is more than a bump in the road. Their offense, while sixth in efficiency, is an uneven production that hasn't exhibited the ball movement or chemistry rookie head coach David Blatt is recognized for.
Defensively, they've been nothing short of disastrous. They rank 23rd in points allowed per 100 possessions and 30th in rim protection. James himself hasn't been an individual stalwart, but they're a top-10 defensive unit with him in the game.
"We're just not a good team right now," James said prior to his injury, per NBA.com's Shaun Powell. "It falls on everyone's shoulders, to get better and show what we're capable of doing."
Nearly everyone involved—most notably James himself—preached patience and process entering the season, making the message clear from the beginning: These Cavaliers wouldn't be the Heat. Their success wouldn't be instantaneous or assumed. It would be earned, then enjoyed—not the other way around.
And that would take more than a year.
But the paramountcy of patience and process only means so much for a team that so obviously values the present over the future.
True patience wouldn't consist of dealing a No. 1 pick in Andrew Wiggins for a superstar flight risk in Love. It doesn't matter what he says about his future in Cleveland, nor does it matter what James said before. This team, these Cavaliers, are built to win very soon, if not now.
Unending states of waiting, then, have been the biggest red flags—bigger than James' injury.
That four-game win streak was the Cavaliers turning a corner. Their eight-game run of perfection portended a playoff-seeding pole vault.
Every positive performance has been manipulated and extrapolated, interpreted as the evidence of excellence the NBA has been waiting on.
Maybe that's just not this team, though. Maybe James' shooting percentages will remain the lowest they've been in seven years. Maybe Love looks awkward and uncomfortable as third fiddle all season. Maybe the Cavaliers fail to address their interior issues via the trade market and are fated to battle against a doldrums-dwelling defense through the offseason.
Maybe, just maybe, this team—despite what its actions prove and core demands—needs more time:
None of which implies this a disaster or lost season. There is still time for the Cavaliers to do some damage. The Eastern Conference is forgiving, and a No. 5 playoff seed only means they would start off against one of the Washington Wizards, Hawks, Bulls or Raptors, whom the Cavaliers are a combined 5-4 against.
More than anything, the Cavaliers' onset struggles with James merely suggest they'll struggle even more without him before being forced to combat the same old problems once he returns.
"We just need time to come together as a team and just play better as a group," Love recently said, per Powell.
Time was once considered a fleeting formality. Now, with James gone and the gap between Cleveland and the East's "elite" widening still, it's the early expectations of grandeur that are waning.
The Cavaliers are not the title favorites they were thought to be. They're aren't even Eastern Conference favorites. They're something different, something less, and should be recognized as such—a dangerously built, still-developing superteam at the behest of a process that isn't even close to over.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless otherwise cited and are accurate as of games played Jan. 1, 2014.
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