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Will the Cavs be dethroned?

Will the Cavs be dethroned?

Until tonight, all the phones of every GM in the NBA are on full alert. This to make sure they get as much reinforcements to compete in June for the championship or get rid of bad contracts, so they can set up for next year, for salary cap space and also getting higher or more draft picks for the upcoming drafts.
For Cleveland, it’s a now or never time to compete again for a championship and also do as much possible to keep Lebron to resign in Cleveland after this season.

The last week 2 crucial things happened (in my onion). Let me go further on this.
We all know that Cleveland has mightily struggled the last month. Lebron seems so run out of gas and players that should ease his burden are nowhere to be found. Isaiah Thomas isn’t the same player as he was in Boston. J.R. Smith, Jae Crowder, Kyle Korver and Tristan Thompson are invisible and giving none to this team. Dwayne Wade is doing whatever he can, but he isn’t the threat on the wing that the Cavs need. The only player that has delivered is Kevin Love.  Before I get back to Kevin Love, I would like to say the following. In Lebron’s contract year, if I was Dan Gilbert, I had done everything Lebron asked for. Before the season started he messed up on potential trades for Paul George, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony. That after he made the biggest mistake to trade the best point in the NBA in Kyrie Irving with 2 years on his contract to their division rival.

Trade rumor began to start again surrounding Kevin Love. It was no secret that Lebron wanted Anthony Davis or Demarcus Cousins to join the Cavs, to make a run to the finals again. Also trading for DeAndre Jordan was a very clear option. If you look at the stats Lebron plays his best game with a rim protector (fact: the years he played with Timofey Mozgov and Ben Wallace, he thrived the most). Cleveland has the unprotected Brooklyn Nets pick in this year’s draft and that is a huge trade asset, with Brooklyn again playing awful. Behind the scenes the Pelicans and Cavs were talking about a trade for either Cousins or Davis for Kevin Love, the draft pick and assumedly J.R. and Tristan Thompson. The Pelicans structure with Cousins and Davis hasn’t worked out the way they expected and the desperately need more versatile players, surrounding their bigs. So they were very serious considering one of their twin towers.
When Lebron selected his all-star roster for me it was no coincidence that he picked both Cousins and Davis on his team. For me that was a signal to Cleveland’s front office that he wanted to trade for either of them.

Then Cousins raptured his achilles tendon leaving the Pelicans and Cavaliers both empty handed. The Pelicans swung for a trade for Mirotic of the Bulls to try to fill the void Cousins has left with his injury.
Because of this injury there is no way, the Pelicans are trading Davis also not knowing if Cousins will ever be his old self after this injury. So that deleted one of Lebron’s options.

As expected the trade rumor came up again that they were willing to trade for DeAndre Jordan from L.A. for Kevin Love, the draft pick and Iman Shumpert or J.R. Smith. Then things got even worse for Cleveland. Kevin Love is now out for at least 6 weeks with a broken hand leaving them with no trade material to bring in help for a star big men, what they so desperately need.

So if I was Lebron, would I just think bad luck or will I think the front office has done nothing to get me help before it was too late? Am I willing to resign with Cleveland after all what has happened this season? With every team getting stronger and Toronto and Boston clearly are far better than the Cavs. The East no longer belongs to the Cavs. And help isn’t coming this year.

I think all of this will lead to Lebron leaving Cleveland for sure, because they have zero chance of improving this or next season through trades (because none of the other Cleveland players are valuable to other teams, the way they are playing now) and the only valuable thing they have is the unprotected draft pick. The last 3 times when traded for un unprotected pick, they got lucky and against all odds wound up with the first pick. But with LeBron eager to establish his legacy would you put your future on luck, when you also can join for example Houston?

Time will tell, but I am very sure that there will be a new eastern conference champion this year.
And with that being said, I think Dan Gilbert will regret every decision he has made this season what will lead to Lebron packing his bags once again and leaving Cleveland behind as a lottery team again for the upcoming seasons.

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