Cleveland Cavaliers: The three toughest road trips of 2019-20

The toughest road trip: Jan. 9 through the 18, 2020

The Cavs find themselves facing, yet again, a six-game road trip. This time they are heading all the way across the country and back, and facing three legitimate contenders.

As Josh Friedman of KJG noted, this trip will be the toughest stretch of the toughest month for the Cavaliers. The Wine and Gold find themselves starting out against a middle-of-the-road Detroit Pistons team, who boast the likes of Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond.

The Pistons ranked in the top five in 2018-19 in both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage (per NBA.com), and Drummond was the main reason for that as he led the league in total rebounds (per Basketball Reference), and he and Griffin (a very polished inside-out scorer and great passer) will be really tough for the Cavs’ bigs to handle for the better part of four quarters.

Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr., and Tristan Thompson will then have to deal with the multifaceted Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets established themselves as a threat to steal the NBA title last season, grabbing the two seed before getting ousted from the Western Conference Playoffs by the likes of Lillard and McCollum, and Denver has plenty of weapons.

The challenge does not end with the Nuggets, though, as the Cavs travel to Southern California to play the revamped Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers on back-to-back nights. Four MVP caliber players in two nights (in the Lakers’ LeBron James and Anthony Davis and the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard and Paul George) will give Cedi Osman and Cleveland’s forwards all that they can handle and more.

Furthermore, these matchups, depending on how well the Lakers and Clippers stars mesh, could be the toughest two-game stretch of the entire season for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Cavs then close out with a back-to-back on Jan. 17 and 18 against the Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls, who are both rebuilding.

Both teams have two promising young primary playmakers in Ja Morant and Coby White, and they, along with Memphis’ Brandon Clarke and Jaren Jackson Jr., along with Zach LaVine and Lauri Markkanen for Chicago, won’t make for particularly favorable opponents for Garland and others for Cleveland, anyway.

That’s especially the case with the Cavs probably facing fatigue.

So again, this January stretch is the toughest road trip of the 2019-20 season for the Cavaliers.