Cavs: KJG roundtable on best moments, favorite players of the 2010’s
By Dan Gilinsky
The 2010’s are coming to a close very soon, so the KJG team touched on their favorite Cleveland Cavaliers’ moments, LeBron James’ return and more in the latest roundtable.
There’s been some really fun times this decade as a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and there’s also been some really tough times with the team in a full-rebuild after LeBron James left the first time via unrestricted free agency to the Miami Heat in 2010.
The Cavaliers from the 2014-15 season through the 2017-18 season went to the NBA Finals each time, though, and that was amazing as a fan of the Wine and Gold.
In this KJG roundtable, I figured I’d ask the KJG team about their favorite moments of the 2010’s, and whether or not the team members went with specific instances or just touched on the general 2016 championship time was up to them.
In a general sense, I asked them about their favorite moments of LeBron’s return to Cleveland in that 2014-18 stretch, and again, what a time that was as a Cavs fan. There were plenty of Kyrie Irving highlights then, and of course, that was the case before LeBron came back and Kevin Love was traded to Cleveland, too, though.
I understand that how the Irving situation ended and how his trade request was handled by then-rookie general manager Koby Altman was far from ideal, and LeBron left via unrestricted free agency again in the summer of 2018, to the Los Angeles Lakers, pretty much putting Cleveland in a rebuilding situation.
On the bright side, it’s still fun to see young pieces such as second-year guard Collin Sexton, who currently leads the Cavs in scoring with 17.4 points per game (though he’s in a three-point shooting slump) according to NBA.com, along with rookies such as Darius Garland and Kevin Porter Jr. get big minutes now while under the tutelage of head coach John Beilein.
The growing pains are there, yes, but if Cleveland can continue to develop those players gradually, perhaps a piece such as Garland can turn into a franchise-type player over the course of the next decade, and we discussed that sort of thing in this roundtable, too.
Alrighty, so let’s move on to the first roundtable question looking back on the 2010’s.