Cleveland Cavaliers: A first look at the new lineup (and rotation)
With less than a week to go before the season opener, the Cleveland Cavaliers finally showed us what their starting lineup will look like. And it wasn’t the best. Oh, and we caught a glimpse of the rotation. What does it all mean?
In case you missed it, the bottom-feeding Chicago Bulls blew out the Cleveland Cavaliers and their fancy new lineup. You read that correctly. 108-94. LeBron James had 8 turnovers. Dwayne Wade and Kevin Love combined to go 2-19. JR Smith went 0-6. The only bright spot was the team collectively went 14-27 from 3pt range, which bodes well for the coming season. So what happened? And what about that rotation?
Growing pains
The Cleveland Cavaliers will start three new players this season. That’s 60% of the starters. Throw in 10% for Kevin Love playing a new position, and you could easily argue the Cavs are hitting the refresh button.
As expected, a Wade/Rose backcourt paired with a Love/Crowder frontcourt looked as awkward as one would imagine. Wade and Rose aren’t exactly long-range shooters and Love and Crowder don’t instill fear around the rim. That left Justin Holiday to score 28 points. This is not a big deal, of course.
LeBron James will not average eight turnovers per outing. Kevin Love, Dwayne Wade, and JR Smith will shoot around 40-45%, not 8% from the field. Derrick Rose played well, the only Cavs’ starter with a positive plus/minus. Not a huge deal, but it definitely woke up us writers.
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The rotation
Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson did not play. Ty Lue recently told Channing Frye that he’s not going to play, so that’s expected. And RJ is almost 50-years old, so the Roadtrippin’ podcast is alive and well.
But what about the minutes? Jeff Green, Tristan Thompson, Kyle Korver, and JR Smith pulled the most minutes off the bench. Iman Shumpert and Jose Calderon played a few as well. I don’t think Zizic, Osman, Felder, and Holland (definitely not Holland) are in the rotation, so that leaves a possible 10-man rotation if one of Shumpert/Calderon gets decent minutes. And that’s without Thomas.
Is that really going to happen? Doubtful. It’s a nine-man rotation, and it always has been. Green and Thompson in the frontcourt and Korver and Smith as wings in the backcourt. Wade and James can run the point when Rose sits. An all-shooting lineup of James, Korver, Smith, Love, and Crowder intrigues me as its combination of size, shooting, and versatility could lead to a lot of really exciting two-way basketball.
Final thoughts
I’d like to see Jeff Green get serious start consideration. While Jae Crowder is arguably the better player, Green slots in a little more nicely in
to that four spot next to James, and Crowder is a perfect pairing with Thompson off the bench to spell James. Crowder is more naturally James’s back-up than his frontcourt partner.
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The combinations of lineups and matchups are amazing as the Cavs can go big, go small, go shooting, or go driving without missing a beat. This is absolutely the deepest Cavs lineup EVER, and it will be fun to watch them blowout the Celtics next week.