Cavs Will Go Only as Far This Season as LeBron James Is Willing to Take Them

LOS ANGELES — It was a stock question about becoming the youngest player ever to reach 24,000 points, so LeBron James was working on a stock answer about staying healthy and thanking his past teammates.

"Great teammates," he said, "who have allowed me to lead them."

It was a revealing glimpse of how he sees his teammates—and his responsibility.

James' burden is most assuredly about that intangible necessity of making teammates better. He is inherently a connector who knows he's more satisfied being on the best team in the NBA rather than being the league's best individual. 

James was feeling good late Friday night at Staples Center, proud of the steps his Cleveland Cavaliers have taken since he returned from his career-long two-week layoff. Just when this grand experiment of coming home and joining forces with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love seemed to be hitting its biggest bump yet, with James pushing his coach aside and Love being benched in the fourth quarter of a loss in Phoenix, the Cavaliers closed their road trip with back-to-back victories over the Los Angeles Lakers and L.A. Clippers.

More physically overwhelming again after his recuperative break, feeling no back or knee pain anymore upon landing from his jumps, James stood out in this back-to-back with 36 points against the Lakers and 32 against the Clippers. His dominance leading to winning again is one way to evaluate it.

But the story of the season is never going to be about James being great. He is and he will be great—and all anyone will ever say is that's merely as it should be.

The risk—and the reward—lies in whether this Cavaliers team can become great. On that point, James is completely aware how much needs to be done.

He referenced how many strong teams he sees around the league now and described them as "a lot of teams that have chemistry over us."

That challenge is why James was hugging guys' heads so wholeheartedly after his crew held off the Clippers in what could be termed Cleveland's best victory yet in this 21-20 season.

There was James hugging Irving's head, then Matthew Dellavedova, then Tristan Thompson, then Irving yet again after James finished his on-court postgame TV interview and waited for Irving to finish his radio spot so they could walk off together.

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Dellavedova, who has played as many NBA Summer League seasons as NBA regular seasons (two apiece), and especially Thompson, were key in closing out the game. Thompson is known more for switching shooting hands after reaching the NBA and now feeling comfortable enough sharing an agent with James to reportedly turn down $13 million per year from the Cavaliers in their generous extension offer, according to Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski.

Although plenty of people around the league have noticed James' glares at Love for poor defense, the latter sat out Friday night with back spasms. Thompson filled in and heard James' howls of frustration over a few mistakes. But he had heard plenty before the Lakers game, when James challenged him to offer better energy: "Play hard and the ball will find you."

So James couldn't help but be satisfied with Thompson following up his game-high 11 rebounds against the Lakers with a season-high 24 points, 12 rebounds and two blocks against the Clippers.

It was even more fun that Thompson scored the and-1 dagger layup with 46.4 seconds left off James' inbounds pass. After Thompson sank the free throw, James went up and slapped his hand so hard it echoed all over the arena.

Cavaliers coach David Blatt had called the play for Dellavedova to inbound with the designed action for Irving at the top of the key, but James revealed postgame that he chose to inbound the ball himself. Then he found Thompson inside with a laser pass when the defense had shifted up top.

Asked to describe the play he designed, Blatt started to answer, stopped to change directions and then settled on this reply: "The play was good. The pass was much better."

Blatt did a lot of damage control while in Los Angeles, calling stories about him "just nonsense" and saying things like: "We went through a tough spell for a lot of objective reasons."

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He is looking for a fair trial here in America after loading his resume with European league championships over the past 20 years. But no jury is going to be impartial about Blatt having LeBron fall in his lap; instant results were and are expected.

"It takes time," Blatt said. "That's the reality. It's not an excuse. That's the reality."

Even in these victories, being out-assisted as a team by Kobe Bryant individually (17-14) and piling up 20 turnovers against the Clippers—with plenty more bad defense in both games—showed that only so much has been accomplished with Cleveland playing team ball.

Yet even if it was James coaching them more than Blatt, the Cavs made progress in Los Angeles. They will look for more as they play Game No. 42 on Monday with an even bigger barometer game against the visiting Chicago Bulls.

The Cavaliers are halfway to wherever they are going to go.

And we're halfway to getting past all the preseason hype and finding out whether James has those "great teammates"—or just great players—with him this time.

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.