Cleveland Cavaliers: Five best starters of the 2010s
#2 – Kyrie Irving
Boy, did the Cleveland Cavaliers catch a break when they landed Kyrie Irving in the 2011 NBA Draft. As we have seen with the recent, thus far, short rebuild, it often takes landing a player the caliber of Irving to help speed the rebuild up.
Even before James announced his return in the summer of 2014, many NBA experts had the Cavaliers as a team that was going to make the playoffs in the 2014-15 season, and the majority of that hope was due to Irving.
Of course, they were a lock to make it once James returned and James perhaps overshadowed Irving, slightly.
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The 2016 NBA Finals MVP would have been Irving’s, with the stat line he put up, in almost any other year outside of 2016 because James’ stat line was even better.
Irving had a historic performance to help lead the Cavaliers back from a three games to one deficit that year. Per Basketball-Reference, Irving averaged 27.1 points, 3.9 assists, 3.9 rebounds, and had a shooting split of 47/41/94 over the course of those seven games.
He also hit the game-winner, which will go down as one of the greatest shots of all time, courtesy of the NBA’s official YouTube channel:
Irving also had masterful performances throughout the regular season in his career. It was truly something spectacular to watch. Despite the way he left Cleveland, it would be an absolute shock if his #2 jersey isn’t hanging in the rafters of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse one day.