Cleveland Cavaliers: Power Ranking the roster for post-All-Star break

The Cleveland Cavaliers just wrapped up their 2018-19 season, and it was a rough year overall, yes, but post-All-Star break gave reason for optimism. Here’s what stood out from that closing stretch from each individual player.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, as we’ve basically mentioned countless times, didn’t have the season they came in hoping for in 2018-19. The team had a record of just 19-63, the worst net rating in the Association, and had the worst defensive rating (116.7) of any team in NBA history since that metric has been recorded, according to Basketball Reference.

So no, on the surface, this season was well, abysmal. During the closing stretch of the year, though, as the squad got closer to full-health, there were more positives and that likely created some momentum for the Cavaliers heading into the offseason.

Post-All-Star break, Cleveland had a record of 7-17 (which included 10 straight losses to end the year), which no, isn’t fantastic, but when Kevin Love was playing considerable minutes, the team looked much more respectable than at other points in the year.

In those 24 games in what is considered the de facto “second half of the NBA season,” Cleveland ranked 16th in the Association in offensive rating and 14th in true shooting percentage (per NBA.com).

That was a heck of a lot better than their marks in those categories for the year as a whole, of which only four NBA teams had a lower offensive rating and only the New York Knicks (the league’s worst team by record) had a worse true shooting percentage (again, per NBA.com).

That’s at least a positive for the last quarter-plus of the season for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were able to have more consistent scoring balance game-to-game in that span.

So, with taking this bit into consideration, let’s start the post-All-Star break power rankings.