Cleveland Cavaliers: Expectations for before the 2019-20 All-Star break
Last week the Cleveland Cavaliers released their 2019-20 schedule, which means the NBA season is creeping closer by the day. While the Cavaliers expectations are limited going into this season, it is always neat to go through the schedule and try to map out how the team will fare month-by-month, starting with before the All-Star festivities.
While the start of the 2019-20 season is still over two months away for the Cleveland Cavaliers, now is a great time to take a walk through their schedule leading up to the All-Star break.
The hope is that the team will get through training camp with a healthy, intact roster so that the Wine and Gold are ready to go come October 23rd.
You can view the team’s schedule here, per the Cavaliers, and also, here’s a schedule breakdown with Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor and WKYC’s Bud Shaw on an appearance on “More Sports and Les Levine,” with Levine hosting, anyhow, to give some backdrop.
So let’s jump into it.
October
The Cavaliers open the season in sunny Orlando, Florida to take on the Magic before coming home on Oct. 26 for their home opener against what looks to be a well put together Indiana Pacers squad, even with Victor Oladipo potentially sidelined with his quad injury until December or January, per the Indy Star‘s Matthew VanTryon.
Cleveland will close the opening month with a trip to the Milwaukee Bucks and a home game against the Chicago Bulls. These first few games may not end up in the win column for the Cavaliers, but in all reality, these games will be about testing different lineup combinations to see which players fit the best with one another.
November
This month sees the Cavaliers play 15 times.
Cleveland starts the month with seven of their first 11 games on the road, including trips to Indiana, the Philadelphia 76ers, Dallas Mavericks, and facing New York Knicks twice in nine days as the visitors.
Playing a good amount of their early games on the road will be tough for the Cleveland Cavaliers to overcome with their young team. But the hope is that the young players get the feeling of playing in an opposing gym and learn to come together.
With a team in the midst of a rebuild, wins and losses are not always the bottom line. What I would like to see is the Cavaliers stay competitive in most of these games and show fight and resiliency.
The Cavaliers get a taste of home cooking to close out the month as their final four games are at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
Those four opponents, the Portland Trail Blazers, Brooklyn Nets (who now have Kyrie Irving among other new free agent additions, by the way), Orlando Magic, and Milwaukee, are all postseason teams from a year ago, but on their home floor in front of the Wine and Gold fan base, they could pull off an upset or two.