NBA Handicapping: Cleveland Cavaliers' ATS Trends During LeBron's Absence

LeBron James is nearly set to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers after being away from the team for two weeks to rest his body and recover from multiple nagging injuries.

King James has missed eight games during that span, but for the Cavaliers, it has felt like a lifetime. The team has lost five straight games—a few of them in an embarrassing fashion—and it has looked completely lost even with other competent players still on the floor.

LeBron is a game-time decision for Tuesday night's matchup against the Phoenix Suns.

James is in his 12th year in the league and is in the middle of his fifth year carrying an enormous workload that includes close to an extra year in postseason games, a summer dedicated to the London Olympics and 38-plus minutes a game during that span.

The one thing that is almost certain for Cleveland is that James will miss more games and have his workload decreased over the second half of the season. Let's take a closer look at the Cavaliers without James and figure out if they are a viable betting option when the King is out.

SU and ATS Records

Cleveland is currently sitting on a disappointing .500 record (19-19), which is still good enough to earn the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference if the postseason began today.

The team, however, is 6.5 games behind the fourth-seeded Chicago Bulls and 10.5 games behind the top-seeded Atlanta Hawks. Cleveland has dropped five straight games by an average of 14 points per contest and has fallen from the top of the pack, where it had been sitting comfortably with a 19-14 record.

Against the spread, the team has been even worse. Overall, the squad owns the second-worst mark in the league—it only trails the New York Knicks with a 13-26-1 ATS record—and has failed to cover any of James' missed games.

The four-time MVP is scheduled to return sometime this week, but if things haven't changed inside the Cavaliers locker room, then the group will still face the same set of problems.

How Much Will James' Return Help?

James' return will certainly help Cleveland going forward, but will it be enough to right the ship heading into the All-Star break?

Most NBA pundits continue to believe that the Cavaliers will eventually figure things out, even though there is no evidence to believe that a turnaround is on the horizon.

For bettors, ignoring the media and proceeding to view the Cavaliers as an overrated team with overinflated lines is still the best option possible.

James, at the moment, is not playing his best basketball and is in the middle of one of the worst statistical seasons in his career. Maybe it's because of injury or fatigue, but James is currently producing the worst win shares and plus/minus stats since his rookie year, according to Basketball-Reference.com.

Those numbers are not suitable to blame James for Cleveland's struggles or suggest that he has declined as a player, but they are only an indicator that, for whatever reason, he is not impacting the team enough to expect a big change upon his return.

Bettors should expect Cleveland to struggle until the team gets its act together. Sure, the squad will probably make the playoffs and maybe even be a force when it gets there, but what the Cavaliers will not be is a good ATS bet for the remainder of the year.

Spread information courtesy of Covers.com.