Ah, the end of the calendar year. It always brings many thoughts to one’s mind, whether it be new resolutions to bring into the fresh 12-month run or even some regrets over situations that unfolded. That’s what we’ll talk about in detail: the regrets the Cleveland Cavaliers may be feeling from the year 2018.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad 2018 for the Cleveland Cavaliers. They were able to enjoy one more season with LeBron James at the forefront, netted a first-round pick from the Brooklyn Nets despite having to move Kyrie Irving in the process, and went back to the NBA Finals for the fourth-straight year. Good things did happen for the organization even though the bad will be highlighted more by the national media.
But, there were some downfalls throughout the year that has quickly led to the end of the most successful era of Cleveland basketball and slowed down the rebuilding process. With that, we shall begin.
1. The 2018 NBA Draft process
When the Cavaliers traded Kyrie Irving to the Boston Celtics and received the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 first-round pick as the centerpiece of the deal, fans in Northeast Ohio were elated. Brooklyn had been a cellar-dweller for nearly their entire tenure since moving from New Jersey. It wasn’t too crazy a thought to imagine Cleveland making the NBA Finals in June and then focusing on drafting inside the top-three.
The Nets went 28-54 during the 2017-18 season, however. That left the Cavaliers with the eighth overall pick and a sour taste in their mouth. This isn’t like the NFL Draft, where top-notch talent is available for the first fifteen-to-twenty picks.
Once you exit the top-five of a draft class in the NBA, discovering a diamond in the rough gets really tricky.
This isn’t to throw shade at Collin Sexton, whom the Cavaliers eventually selected. It’s just unfortunate that the deal really turned into a waxing of Cleveland by way of the Celtics.
Boston ended up with Irving while the Cavaliers had already moved on from Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder, the other two main pieces in the trade.
But the second part of the 2018 NBA Draft fiasco is knowing that the Cavaliers had an opportunity to move into the top-three via a trade with the Atlanta Hawks and select Luka Doncic in doing so.
According to Cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon, the Cavaliers were discussing a deal with the Hawks in which Atlanta presented a swap of the third and fifth picks in the draft along with sending versatile wing Kent Bazemore over to Cleveland. The Cavaliers never took the offer, the Dallas Mavericks worked out a deal with the Hawks, and the rest is history.
Could Sexton be better than Doncic? Right now, the answer is probably not. And with every Doncic highlight that pops up nightly, the Cavaliers certainly have to be regretting not taking up the Hawks on that trade offer.