Lloyd: What I got right, and wrong, about the Cavaliers’ rebuild
CLEVELAND, OHIO - FEBRUARY 06: Cedi Osman #16 and Kevin Love #0 of the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrate after scoring during the second half against the Indiana Pacers at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on February 06, 2022 in Cleveland, Ohio.
By Jason Lloyd 44m ago 7
They’re better than I ever imagined they could be this season. The Cavs have reached a level I didn’t think they could get to by next year. And probably the year after that as well.
Rebuilds are excruciatingly miserable. An executive once told me rebuilding a roster is a lot like remodeling your house: There’s no running water and the toilet is sitting in the shower. It’s aggravating, it’s exhausting and the reality in the NBA is rebuilding through the draft rarely works.
Ask the Kings and Magic and Pistons and Hornets how it’s going. They’ve been rebuilding for a decade(s).
The Cavs had no other choice, however, and managed to do it faster than anyone thought possible. Certainly me.
Now seems like an appropriate time to address some of the things I wrote about Koby Altman and the Cavaliers over the past few years. If we want to hold teams, players, coaches and executives accountable, it’s only fair we hold ourselves accountable, too.
Most of my pointed criticisms surrounded two main areas: the way the LeBron James era ended and the handling of Collin Sexton. There’s no need to relitigate all of it now. I thought the Cavs prematurely closed their contention window and could’ve won another championship in 2018 if they made moves geared toward winning rather than starting a rebuild. I also thought they forced Sexton into a role for which he wasn’t capable because he was the last remaining piece from the Kyrie Irving deal.
I still believe all of that to be true and stand by everything I wrote, but none of that matters anymore. Nobody had a better summer than Altman, and that has carried into the season.
Evan Mobley is a perfect fit on this roster. Darius Garland has flourished into an All-Star and Jarrett Allen should be one, too. I still believe at least one Eastern Conference All-Star will pull a hamstring or look at the weather for next weekend and head for Cancun instead. There’s still time for Allen to be added. He’s been the second-best center in the Eastern Conference this season and is deserving to be included.
Altman’s hot streak continued this week. Caris LeVert isn’t perfect. He hasn’t been as good of a 3-point shooter in the pros as he was in college and he’ll dominate the ball too much at times. But he was the best combination of age, contract, position and skill set to meet the Cavs’ needs for another scorer and playmaker on the wing. Of all the available options at this trade deadline, he was the best fit possible.
They don’t make this trade if Ricky Rubio doesn’t get hurt, but the Cavs have been adapting to injuries all season. The deal over the summer to get Rubio for Taurean Prince was a home run. Sexton’s season-ending knee injury afforded Rubio a larger role, and he played like he was 25 again. Rubio’s injury now has led to LeVert because the Cavs are buyers at the trade deadline, a position nobody thought possible in October.
Back this up and follow the path that got us here. The Cavs traded George Hill to the Bucks in exchange for Matthew Dellavedova’s bad money and a first-round pick from Milwaukee. The Cavs traded the pick to the Nets to get Allen as part of the James Harden deal. LeVert also was shipped out of Brooklyn as part of that deal.
Now the Cavs have acquired LeVert for their first-round pick this year (which will likely be in the 20s) and Houston’s second, which will be close to a first. That means Altman acquired both Allen and LeVert for two firsts and a high second. There were other picks involved, but those are the most important pieces.
Allen alone is worth two firsts with the way he’s playing (the Cavs, remember, once traded two firsts for Timofey Mozgov). The trades have been a coup.
Here’s what I got wrong: I underestimated Altman’s ability to grow into the role as quickly as he has. Altman sprung from the third chair to general manager when David Griffin and Trent Redden were not renewed in 2018. I (and others in the organization) thought Altman was thrust into a seat for which he wasn’t prepared. Altman would probably admit that, too. Mistakes were made along the way, but he learned quickly and adapted.
He felt James’ wrath during LeBron’s final season here. Altman endured storms surrounding J.R. Smith, Andre Drummond, John Beilein and Kevin Porter Jr. in the years since.
He had J.B. Bickerstaff on deck for when Beilein imploded. He held his ground when Kevin Love’s contract extension went off the rails. He refused to attach an asset just to move off Love’s money and kept insisting Love could help the Cavs if he was right mentally and physically.
Now Love’s rejuvenation is one of the best stories in the league this season.
For all of the harsh things I wrote, I never wrote that Altman should be fired. It was easy for me to write that about Hue Jackson when I started following the Browns and I wrote after eight games it was obvious Freddie Kitchens was going to have to be fired, too. But I never wrote it about Altman.
One of the maddening parts of the Cavs over the last decade has been the constant turnover, much of it unnecessary. They’ve rivaled the Browns for the number of head coaches they’ve employed since 2010. All of that turnover on the bench and in the front office leads to instability and a lot of frustration.
Maybe, just maybe, all of that is ending. I texted Altman and Bickerstaff to congratulate both of them when their extensions were announced. The Cavs have an opportunity to enjoy stability at the two most important positions they haven’t experienced since Wayne Embry and Lenny Wilkens were in Richfield.
I’ve written before that the Cavs will never replicate what they had with James, Love and Irving. That’s why it was so frustrating with the way it all ended. Those were the most talented teams, and the best seasons, in the franchise’s history. I didn’t see any way possible it would ever be that good again.
Fifty-five games and 34 wins this season doesn’t surpass those four trips to the NBA Finals, but what the Cavs have demonstrated this season is that they’re set up for sustainable success and they did it organically. There will be more mistakes in the future. They could even slip next season as the Hawks have done in 2021-22. It happens with young teams.
The part I got wrong, the part I didn’t think was possible, was how quickly they turned this over.
History indicates it takes teams a decade or more to recover from losing a superstar. The Bulls needed seven years just to make the playoffs after Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. They won one playoff series in 12 years following Jordan’s retirement.
The Magic didn’t win a playoff series for 12 years after Shaquille O’Neal left for Los Angeles. The Celtics needed a decade to win a playoff series following Larry Bird’s retirement.
The Cavs are poised to make the playoffs just four years after losing James. Following Wednesday’s 105-92 win over the Spurs, they’re tied for the third-best record (34-21) in the East and just a game out of the top seed. Winning a postseason series this season is certainly possible.
The Cavs aren’t just proving people wrong, they’re doing something that has rarely been accomplished in the game’s modern era. They’ve rebuilt a team, through the draft, in a city that isn’t a free agent destination, and they’ve done it without so much as trading for an established star. (Allen was good, but he wasn’t a star when the Cavs acquired him. He’s turning into one now.)
The only other small market, cold-weather city to do this so quickly was the Utah Jazz. Four years after the departures of Karl Malone and John Stockton, the Jazz were back in the Western Conference finals.
It’s been four years since James left for Los Angeles. He’s won a championship there, but the Lakers are broken now. The Cavs don’t have any other championships yet, but they’re headed back to the playoffs much faster than anyone thought possible — especially me.
