Cases for and Against Cleveland Cavaliers Winning an NBA Title This Season
From the outside, a 39-25 record hardly seems championship-worthy.
A fourth-place seeding in the weak Eastern Conference? Even less impressive.
Make no mistake, however: The Cleveland Cavaliers are title contenders. Cleveland is 20-5 over the past seven weeks, registering the most wins and highest winning percentage in the NBA over that time. It's worth noting that LeBron James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving missed a combined five games during that stretch as well.
OK, so we know the Cavs are good, but are they championship-good already?
They appear to have the talent, but few superteams win it all right away. We've seen some (2010-11 Miami Heat) catch fire in the regular season before collapsing against more experienced, veteran teams in the playoffs.
Here's why the Cavaliers can win it all this year…or what may ultimately hold them back.
Offense Is Championship-Worthy…
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We knew coming into the season that the Cavaliers shouldn't have any problems scoring the ball.
After all, they brought in the league's third-highest (James, 27.1) and fourth-highest (Love, 26.1) scorers to play alongside Irving, who averaged 20.8 points per game.
This is by no means a three-man party, however.
In all, five guys are averaging double figures in scoring this year for the Cavs, including three at 17.0 or more.
J.R. Smith (12.5 points, team-high 2.5 three-pointers per game) has been the spot-up shooter Cleveland needed beside James. Timofey Mozgov (10.3 points, team-best 58.9 percent shooting) has done an excellent job of playing off the team's stars while providing ultra-efficient scoring in the post.
Both have helped propel Cleveland's offense to the next level, with Tristan Thompson (8.9 points) and Iman Shumpert (6.4) leading the bench group.
Take a look at where the Cavs rank in key offensive categories since Jan. 14:
| Cavs Offense | PTS | ORtg | FG% | 3P% | TS% |
| Stats | 107.8 | 111.8 | 47.0 | 36.6 | 57.1 |
| NBA Rank | 2nd | 1st | 1st | 5th | 1st |
It's hard to argue that Cleveland doesn't possess the league's best scoring attack heading into the season's final stretch.
...but the Defense Isn't Quite There Yet
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Before adding Mozgov to man the post and Smith and Shumpert to ball-hawk the perimeter, the Cavaliers were downright dreadful on defense.
Rotations were sloppy, effort was questionable, and opponents got whatever they wanted in the paint.
As good as a team's offense may be, the age-old mantra of "defense wins championships" still holds true. Putting up 100-plus points per game is great, but ultimately, it does no good if you can't stop the other guys from doing the same.
To be fair, the Cavaliers defense has been pretty good lately. Cleveland is allowing 96.5 points over the last 24 games, holding opponents to just 42.3 percent shooting from the field, via NBA.com.
Mozgov (1.6 blocks, 47.9 opponent shooting percentage within 10 feet) has been excellent for Cleveland, which was giving up 56.1 percent shooting in the paint prior to his arrival.
Still, the Cavs aren't at the elite defensive level most title teams reach. They're 10th in points allowed, 17th in assists allowed (22.3) and ninth in defensive rating (100.5).
In their last game, the Cavaliers allowed 69 second-half point to the Toronto Raptors, including 38 in the fourth quarter alone.
Cleveland's defense has improved, but it still has a long way to go.
Cleveland Has the Talent...
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With the Cavs getting hot at the right time, oddsmakers and opposing coaches are definitely taking notice.
“The highest we had the Cavs was 5-1, right now they are at 11-5,” Kevin Bradley, sportsbook manager at Bovada, told Neil Greenberg of The Washington Post. “The Eastern Conference is just so weak compared to the West that even when they had their bad spell beginning of year, even when LeBron took time off, we didn’t play into that. Now they are showing they are the clear front-runners in the East even though they aren’t at the top of the standings.”
Looking up and down the roster, only one real weakness (a veteran backup point guard) exists. Cleveland has its scorers (James, Irving, Love), rebounders (Love, Thompson, Mozgov), defenders (James, Shumpert, Mozgov) and outside shooters (Smith, Mike Miller, James Jones).
"They are a good team," Toronto Raptors head coach Dwane Casey noted after a 120-112 March 4 loss to Cleveland, via Cavs.com. "They’re one of the best teams we have played against this year. We have to give them credit. That team right there is probably one of the best in the league right now, and No. 23 (LeBron James) makes everything go."
No one should question whether the Cavaliers possess the talent needed to win a title. Unfortunately for the Cavs, however, they're not alone.
....but so Do Other Teams
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The Cavaliers should thank their lucky stars that they reside in the Eastern Conference.
Cleveland's winning percentage of 60.9 is good enough to put it just a half game behind the Chicago Bulls for second place in the East. This would almost guarantee a first-round matchup with a team sporting a losing record, like the seventh-seeded Miami Heat (27-33) currently possess.
If the Cavs were in the Western Conference, things would be much trickier. Given its winning percentage, Cleveland would be holding down the seventh seed there. That would mean a first-round meeting with the 43-17 Memphis Grizzlies instead.
The point? There are a lot of darn good teams in the Association, including 10 with legitimate title hopes. That's a lot of talent being spread around outside of Northeast Ohio.
As it stands, the Cavaliers won't catch the 49-12 Atlanta Hawks, who've been dominant since Thanksgiving. If they're lucky to make it through the East and past the powerful Hawks, a daunting task faces the Cavs in the Finals.
Whichever team emerges from the West is going to be downright scary. All eight teams currently scheduled to make the playoffs in the power conference could realistically win it all. Every single one. (Although Wes Matthews' season-ending Achilles injury casts doubt on the Portland Trail Blazers now.)
Cleveland is just 3-7 against the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder this season. Meeting any of these teams, or another top seed in the West, could prove to be too much for the Cavs.
Chemistry Is There...
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After a week spent playing the Cavaliers and Hawks, Houston Rockets veteran guard Jason Terry shared his thoughts on the two opponents without mentioning them by name.
"I'm taking chemistry over talent all day. That's how we won a championship in 2011 (with the Dallas Mavericks, who beat James' first-year Miami Heat)," Terry told Ray Glier of USA Today.
He has a point, after all. On paper, the Heat, with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, should have beaten the older group of Terry, Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd. But that is where team chemistry comes into play.
It was something the Cavs were searching for earlier in the season when James often questioned the team's synergy and trust among one another.
Fast forward a few months, and everyone appears to be clicking. As the newest Cavalier, Kendrick Perkins, told Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal:
"I wasn’t expecting it to be this close knit. They really jell outside the court. You could tell on the plane ride coming back from Detroit there was a whole group conversation on the plane, just talking about basketball, talking about life. When you’ve got guys who deal with each other outside the court and connect like that, it carries over onto the court. You could tell it was genuine.
"
Irving has called this the closest team he's ever been on in his career. With so many quality veterans like Jones, Miller, Shawn Marion and Brendan Haywood around, it's easy to see why.
Love shared how impressed he was with the team in an article with The Players' Tribune:
"Once we got in the air, I expected guys to throw on the Beats and pull out iPads. That’s what I was used to. This was a 12-hour flight, and I was counting on at least seven hours of shuteye. That never happened. Drinks were poured. Guys took turns telling stories. After a whirlwind summer, it was the first real chance to let our guard down without being judged in the public eye. And the really special thing, the thing that can be rare in the NBA, was that everybody was included. Where you came from, where you went to school, what kind of neighborhood you were from — none of that mattered on this flight.
"
This team may only have three healthy, returning members from a season ago, but the chemistry already appears to be at an all-time high.
...but Experience Is Not
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Going back to the 2010-2011 Heat squad, there are a few more comparisons to make here. That team only had one star (Wade) who had won a title before. James and Bosh had led their former squads to the postseason but ultimately came up short every time.
It took one long playoff run for them to collectively grasp the intensity of the NBA Finals before they would go on to win the next two titles.
Could the Cavs follow a similar path?
Cleveland did a nice job of stockpiling veterans who had won rings before. Marion and Haywood were on the 2010-11 Mavericks that beat Miami. Miller and Jones each won two rings with the Heat the following years. Perkins was the starting center on the 2007-08 Boston Celtics superteam that won it all.
While that experience is great, there is a limit to how much it can carry over to the other players
Smith, Shumpert and Mozgov all came from losing situations. Irving, Love and Thompson have never even made the playoffs. Postseason basketball is an entirely different animal, and some guys tend to freeze up when the spotlight gets a little brighter. James is the only regular rotation player who has won a championship before.
Could their immense amount of talent overcome their lack of experience, or will the Cavaliers need one long postseason run before they can seriously start talking title?
Greg Swartz has covered the Cleveland Cavaliers for Bleacher Report since 2010.
All stats provided by Basketball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.
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