Former Cavs GM highlights how LeBron out of East swung open door for Raps

In a recent conversation, former Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Wayne Embry highlighted how LeBron James’ departure opened the door for the Toronto Raptors.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had an amazing run with LeBron James in his second tenure with the team, in which they went to the NBA Finals four years in a row.

James was the main reason that Cleveland won the NBA championship in 2016 over the Golden State Warriors, and clearly, with him gone, they weren’t going to be a contender soon after. I was wrong in believing they would be a decent team in 2018-19, as it appeared they had some nice pieces and a star inside-out presence in Kevin Love.

Injuries derailed Cleveland’s hopes of being at all relevant, though, and the Cavaliers stumbled to a 19-63 record (per NBA.com).

Shifting gears, it’s been interesting to see what’s gone on in the postseason in the Eastern Conference without James feasting on opponents with his brute strength, still remarkable athleticism and passing wizardry (along with a chasedown block or two).

The Toronto Raptors, who had their struggles in the postseason trying to figure out James in the previous three years before this season, took a big risk shortly after James left the East via free agency to the Los Angeles Lakers, and traded for disgruntled San Antonio Spurs superstar Kawhi Leonard. The key piece they traded away was Toronto basically-lifer DeMar DeRozan, and that’s paid off for the Raps.

Toronto is now up 3-1 (oh God hopefully that didn’t jinx Toronto fans) in the NBA Finals over the Warriors, and even though Golden State has been shorthanded, as evidenced by Kevin Durant not playing yet due to a reported calf injury and Klay Thompson being banged up and several others, Toronto’s play has been mostly excellent.

Once again, though, not having James in the Eastern Conference this postseason had to help the Raptors, in particular, and Wayne Embry, who is a former general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers (from 1986-1999, per Basketball Reference), and is now a consultant with Toronto (and has reportedly been for the last 15 years), noted that in a recent conversation with Terry Pluto of the Plain Dealer.

Embry in the interview discussed with Pluto how the Chicago Bulls, and really, Michael Jordan, was what stood in the way all too often of the Cavaliers going deeper in the postseason back in the Cavs’ great era of team basketball with head coach Lenny Wilkens and the Mark Price, Brad Daugherty and others’ bunch.

So taking that sort of thing into consideration, Embry would then draw a natural parallel to a star standing in front of his other team in Toronto, for a number of times, in James, who as Pluto noted, knocked the Raptors out of the postseason in 2016, 2017 and 2018 (and the last two were sweeps).

Here’s a bit on that from Embry, per Pluto.

"“It was the same thing…greatness,” he said. “You can have a better team 1-through-12. I thought we did in Cleveland some of those years. But we couldn’t cope with Michael.”"

With James now gone to the West last offseason, though, Embry (per Pluto) said how Raptors general manager Masai Ujuri discussed how Toronto needed to find a big-time player to seemingly really take full advantage of James’ exit likely further opening their door.

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As Pluto touched on, it was a huge risk by Toronto to go for Leonard (the full deal involved Toronto sending Jakob Poeltl and a 2019 first-round pick to the Spurs, who also sent over really good role piece Danny Green in the deal) with Leonard only playing in nine games the previous season due to reported “leg injuries,” and DeRozan was obviously one of the Raptors’ best players, too.

Though it’s still unknown whether or not Leonard will re-sign long-term with Toronto (he’s an unrestricted free agent this summer), it appears that the Raptors’ big gamble to acquire a superstar has worked.

Along with that, Toronto clearly had a smart approach this regular season only playing Leonard in 62 games due to them wanting to help Leonard’s “sometimes cranky quad muscles,” as Pluto put it, and he’s had an incredible postseason.

Embry had a bit more to say on Kawhi (who has averaged 31.1 points per game on 55.5% effective field goal shooting to go with 9.1 rebounds per game this postseason, per Basketball Reference), the superstar Toronto so desperately needed to get them to the next level, and how the Raptors have fully benefited from James’ legendary play no longer being in the Eastern Conference (the East is getting better overall even without James, though).

"“And Kawhi has been great,” said Embry. “Most of the time, greatness wins. With LeBron gone, the door was wide open for us and Kawhi has been the great player we needed.”"

The big takeaway from this interview with Embry for me is that the Cleveland Cavaliers had an outstanding run in LeBron’s return, and that if a team is going to have sustained success in the NBA and consistently be a contender, they need superstars to really get them to their true ceiling.

We’ll see if Cleveland can somehow acquire another potential superstar in the near future, which would almost certainly come via the draft if that eventually is the case again. For now, though, it is encouraging to see the Cavs seemingly being uber-aggressive in trying to accumulate draft capital to get back to relevance.