The Cleveland Cavaliers will have to lean on LeBron James to get through the beginning of the season.
The Cleveland Cavaliers will need LeBron James more than ever next season.
The Cavs will have played 22 games by the time that December started. They play another 14 games in December.
With newly acquired point guard Isaiah Thomas expected to be out until December, at least, that means the Cavs will play at least a quarter of the season without a player that averaged 28.9 points per game last season in Thomas. The same Thomas that’s expected to make up the 25.2 points per game the Cavs lost when they decided to trade Kyrie Irving.
Irving, who averaged 19.7 shot attempts per game, finished last season having taken the most shot attempts of any player James has been with and was just the second player to average at least 25.0 points per game playing beside James.
Thomas took a career-high 19.4 shot attempts per game himself last season. That’s a number that would have been the third-highest amount of shot attempts per game a player has taken when on a team with James. The 28.9 points per game would have been the highest.
Without Irving or Thomas playing, that’s what the Cavs will be missing.
Without them, James and Derrick Rose will be who the Cavs rely on for isolation scoring. In fact, James may be relied upon so much, he’ll be able to average a triple-double for the beginning of the season while increasing his scoring average as well.
How? Just follow along.
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Kevin Love, who averaged 19.0 points per game on 14.5 field goal attempts per game, will likely get more shot opportunities as well. However, when Irving was out at the beginning of the 2015-2016 season, Love never averaged more than 15.3 field goal attempts per game in any given month.
This is likely because Love, a player who does the bulk of his damage spotted-up on the outside, doesn’t bring the same dynamic play to the court as Irving or Thomas could. He’ll put the ball on the floor for straight-line drives but he’s not expected to make dizzying forays to the basket time and time again, using his ball-handling to create shots for both himself and his fellow Cavs. He’s not expected to make off-kilter shots, his hesi pull-up jimbos, with a feathery touch.
However, Rose, a point guard who has never averaged fewer than 15.3 field goal attempts per game, will be looked to.
Averaging 18.0 points per game while shooting 47.1 percent from the field, Rose is able to mimic Irving’s deadly scoring skills inside the arc with 52.8 percent of his shots coming from 3-24 feet away from the rim last season. Furthermore, 41.1 percent of his shot attempts came within three feet of the rim last season, which should lead to Rose being able to fulfill head coach Tyronn Lue’s objective of playing fast while also making up for Irving’s in-between game.
Nonetheless, Rose is freshly recovered from a torn meniscus. That’s yet another injury to his knees that, in addition to playing for his second team in two seasons and third team in his career, may lead to hesitancy when he first starts off with the club. While Rose, who signed a one-year deal, will be motivated to play his absolute best this season that doesn’t mean he’ll look comfortable immediately.
Rose averaged 15.3 field goal attempts per game while playing 32.5 minutes per game with the New York Knicks. Assume that, for health-related reasons, Rose won’t play more than 30.0 minutes per game. On a new team, fresh off a new injury and with a reduction in minutes, Rose may average around 10-12 field goal attempts per game, not 15.
As a result, with James being the player best suited to drive to the rim without hesitation, there’s a reasonable chance that his shot attempts per game will increase while Rose (a player whose offense is largely based on driving to the rim) acclimates himself to the team.
James averaged 18.2 shot attempts per game last season, his lowest since returning to the Cavs. If James averages even two more shot attempts per game, history shows us that James will come close to averaging 30.0 points per game.
In the three times James has averaged at least 20.0 shots per game, he’s averaged at least 30.0 points per game twice. In the one time he failed to reach the thirty-point plateau, he averaged 29.7 points per game.
Even if James does increase his shot attempts per game to make up for the shot attempts Rose may not take, there are at least 4.4 shot attempts per game that Rose never accounted for. Shot attempts that will really need to come from behind-the-line and with Rose shooting 29.8 percent from three-point range for his career, those aren’t shot attempts that should be his.
Those are three-point attempts that Love, J.R. Smith and Jae Crowder will compensate for. Yet, with those players largely relying on assists that lead to their three-point attempts, there’s a player that will have to get the ball to them. James, the best passing forward of this generation and all-time. The best point-forward the game has ever seen, so often blurring the lines between the two positions fans don’t know whether to compare him to Magic Johnson, who many consider to be the best point guard of all-time or Michael Jordan, who most consider to be the best wing of all-time.
As a result of James’ court vision, basketball IQ, passing prowess and familiarity with his teammates, James’ assists per game are likely to increase as well. Last season, James averaged a career-high 8.7 assists per game.
Lastly, James played 35.0 percent of his minutes at power forward last season and while this season may see him in a lot of semi-positionless lineups, he’ll certainly be placed in lineups with more shooters and less Tristan Thompson while Thomas is out.
Without a point guard to create space outside of third-string point guard Jose Calderon (remember Rose’s career three-point percentage), James will have to rely on wings, forwards and Love to create space for him. Calderon, whose ability to shake and bake his way to the rim and defend his own position have been severely hampered by age, though he should do well in short spurts. The game, however, isn’t a short spurt (though it is, in fact, a game of runs). As a result, though Calderon may do well playing ten minutes per game, there are 38 other minutes of the game where James will be playing without a point guard capable of being a threat from three-point range.
The space will have to come from elsewhere and with Thompson the only player in the Cavs’ rotation without any semblance of a consistent jumper, he’ll likely be the player that sacrifices the most in terms of playing time.
With less Double-T on the court, there are certainly more rebounds to grab, especially on the offensive end. James will be the most athletic player on the court and those rebounds are his for the taking, if he wants to finish off plays with emphatic putbacks off of his or his own misses. Considering how James likes to score from the low block, he’s also the Cav that will closest to the rim a lot of the time.
As a result of this, James’ rebounds per game are likely to increase from last season, when he averaged a career-high 8.6 rebounds per game.
Now, if James were to increase his scoring, assists and rebounding from last season, he’d certainly be well on his way to averaging a triple-double prior to the All-Star Break. Depending on how long Thomas is out, James could average a triple-double for the better part of the season and possibly the season in its entirety.
With those type of gaudy numbers, if James was to lead the Cavs into the playoffs and back to the NBA Finals while missing his All-Star point guard for the first half of the season, it would be an MVP-worthy effort. It would, in fact, be his best regular season yet when considering the annual expectations he and others have for the his and the Cavs’ success.
Could the Chosen One defy the odds again? History tells us to never doubt James. History also tells us James is only getting better.
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*All stats gathered from www.basketball-reference.com