NBA Finals: Comparing These Cavs to the ’07 Version

May 26, 2015; Cleveland, OH, USA; The Cleveland Cavaliers celebrate beating the Atlanta Hawks in game four of the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Quicken Loans Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

The Cleveland Cavaliers are back in the NBA Finals and the natural comparison is to their previous attempt at an NBA Title with LeBron James. LeBron took the Cavs to the title game back in 2007 but was sadly swept out of the Finals by the San Antonio Spurs. A lot has changed since then, even though the same Spurs team took LeBron out last year.

So lets take a look at both teams and who played what role for each before we get into the comparison:

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What an interesting look back. One thing that really jumps out is the Cavs lack of a backup big in the role of Anderson Varejao. He is not returning from his Achilles injury but the Cavs have gone small more often to make up for that. Marion plays very limited minutes in that role as well while Kendrick Perkins has seen very little time since coming over.

Lets now evaluate the most important positions, and the bench, against their counterparts from 8 years ago. (Wow! In some ways it doesn’t seem that long ago in others it seems like longer than that since the Cavs have been back.

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