LeBron James leaving your team is bad news aside from the obvious “crap we don’t LeBron James on our team anymore” realization. Historically, his departure has taken championship contenders not only out of the running, but out of the playoffs. Simply put: The King’s exes miss him dearly.
The 2018-19 season is setting up just like the other two in a post-LeBron move year, especially following the firing of head coach Ty Lue after just six games. His ousting comes just four months after his team made the Finals. He had a 128-83 overall record.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, for the second time, are off to an abysmal start since reconciling with their lack-of-the-best-player-in-the-league dilemma. With the league’s eighth-worst offense and absolute worst defense, the Cavs are a mess. They’re outscored by an NBA-worst 13 points per 100 possessions despite locking Kevin Love up on a maximum deal and maintaining most of the same roster that went to the Finals last year. We’re approaching November and they’re winless.
It looks like once again LeBron was masking a lot of roster flaws.
First, the 2010-11 Cavs stunk without LeBron
James left a 61-win Cleveland team that made the Eastern Conference Finals in the infamous “Decision” to star for the Miami Heat. He’d dragged a roster whose next-best players were Antawn Jamison and Mo Williams for far too long.
When he left, he relinquished his scoring, passing, rebounding and defensive abilities to be spread across those two, J.J. Hickson, Anderson Varejao and, well, you get the point. It didn’t work.
The team performed 42 games worse without LeBron than with, good for second-worst in the league and worst in the Eastern Conference. They also had the second-worst offense and defense in the league, which combined for the absolute worst net rating. The Cavs were really awful, but at the least, this bad season landed them the pick that became Kyrie Irving.
Next, the Heat went from Finals losers to mediocre in 2014-15
Miami didn’t have as steep of a drop as Cleveland since it retained Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and added Goran Dragic, but still, a team that won 54 games and went to the Finals the previous year didn’t qualify for the postseason once James left.
At 37-45, Miami had a 21st-ranked offense and defense that was outscored by three points per 100 possessions. With LeBron it had the second-best offense, 12th-best defense, and outscored opponents by five points per 100 possessions. He’s pretty important it seems!
The Heat would recover a year later with Hassan Whiteside’s emergence, but even four years after he left, the team hasn’t sniffed what it once was.
The Cavs are up next. Again.
Few thought the Cavs will fall this far after James’ decision to sign with the Lakers, but sheesh — they are bad. At a time when a majority of the league is adapting to basketball analytics, the Cavs are taking several steps backwards — probably because they lack a go-to scorer or passer.
The winless team is one of eight in the league that’s taking more mid-range shot attempts (the least efficient shot in the game), taking 7.5 more per game than last year. They’re also firing 9.4 shots less from three-point range (fewest in the league), which perfectly encapsulates why their offense stinks. The bigger problem is their lack of athleticism and multi-dimensional defenders to stop opposing teams score on the other end, too.
Sure Larry Nance, Kevin Love and J.R. Smith all haven’t been 100 percent healthy, but they won’t make that much of a difference. These are the deficiencies LeBron nearly made up for on his own last year.
Losing LeBron James to free agency absolutely stinks. The flaws in every roster are not just exposed, but there’s rarely an attainable fix on such short notice. Cleveland is re-living that nightmare all over again, and unless they can reinvent themselves, they’re primed for a tough season. (And if their pick falls outside the top-10, it goes to the Hawks, and all the losing will have been for nothing.)