With better health and lottery luck, postseason may not be so far away for Cavs

Health will be key as always, and lottery luck

Cleveland was way more competitive with Love on the floor and offensively were actually did a number of things really well and were fun to watch, due to more spacing.

Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor recently touched on Love’s impact in what is basically a set of Twitter mailbag set of responses.

"“With Love on the floor, the Cavs boasted an offensive rating of 113.4. For perspective, that number stretched over the course of the entire season would have ranked second behind the Golden State Warriors. With him off the floor, that number dropped to 107.2, which would have ranked 19th. His floor-spacing is invaluable and he’s clearly the most talented player on the roster. When healthy, Love proved to be one of the most impactful players in the Eastern Conference. Following his return from injury in February, the Cavs started to surge. That wasn’t a coincidence. In games he played more than 15 minutes, the Cavs went 7-9.”"

With Love on the floor, the Cavs offensively were actually good, and the key was he only played in 22 games (per Basketball Reference), and considering Cleveland won only 19 all season, maybe it’d be different if Love was healthier.

Nonetheless, as KJG has often noted before, the biggest priority is improving Cleveland’s historically bad defense, which had the worst defensive rating in NBA history since that metric has been recorded by Basketball Reference.

The NBA draft lottery is on May 14, and considering there is a franchise-altering player at the top, it will be a pivotal moment for the franchise.

If the Cleveland Cavaliers win the 2019 NBA Draft lottery, Zion Williamson is a franchise-altering guy who can realistically speed up the rebuild by a year or two.

A team with a healthy Love, an improved Sexton and an addition of Williamson is a team that can win, in my opinion, at least 30 games in what looks like what could be a brutal Eastern Conference.

Cleveland general manager Koby Altman has already done a solid job at finding good young talent when it comes to Sexton, and with a little lottery help, this team could be much closer to the postseason. I expect Altman to be more active in adding more future pieces to this team, too.

The Cavs still need to find the right coach that can get the best out of all their young players, however.

That being said, if you look at this rebuild compared to where the last one was at this time, this one is definitely further along and looks plenty more promising.

Hitting on the right coach that will help develop all their young players, such as Denver Nuggets Jordi Fernandez, who Cleveland recently was given permission to interview (according to a Vardon report), combined with a little lottery luck, and all of a sudden, the playoffs aren’t so far away at all for the Wine and Gold.