Are the Cleveland Cavaliers really getting better as a team or does history as a franchise suggest something different? The Cavaliers have been around now for over 51 years. They’ve had 27 losing seasons. Not exactly a franchise statistic to write home about.
When you start looking more closely at their franchise’s pattern of winning and losing seasons, I’m concerned about exactly where they’re going as a whole franchise?
The team currently has a small core of young players, like guards Collin Sexton, Darius Garland and wing Isaac Okoro that I believe are here to stay for the immediate short-term future. But the opportunity to build on that small core of players and begin a new pattern of winning seasons is contingent on better coaching, better future draft picks and management that is smarter in adding free agents and trades involving veteran players.
At this moment, the answer to those concerns is still not in focus and that has me constantly going back and studying why and how this franchise has won in the past. I do think this franchise is close to turning the corner again, but I have my reservations.
Historically speaking, the Cavs have had three time periods where they won.
When the Cavs started up as a franchise in 1970, Cavaliers head coach Bill Fitch took over a new team and eventually got them to win on a regular basis. It took him and his players, like Austin Carr, Jim Chones and Dick Snyder to get there, but by 1974-78 the Cavs were an above-.500 team and made it to the playoffs.
“The Miracle at Richfield,” where the Cavs beat the Washington Bullets in the Eastern Conference Semifinals on a last second shot by Snyder, will live in Wine and Gold lore.
It wasn’t until Cleveland head coach Lenny Wilkens came around in the mid-1980’s that the team won again with any regularity. Players like Mark Price, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance, Ron Harper and Craig Ehlo played for Coach Wilkens and between 1987-1998 the team won and were an above average team for 10 of those 11 seasons.
The team made the playoffs nine times during that stretch and made it to the Eastern Conference Finals once. Unfortunately, during this time, the Chicago Bulls, led by the great Michael Jordan, were in the early stages of becoming a legendary dynasty as well. The Cavs lost to the Bulls four times in the playoffs during this time, including that Eastern Conference Final in the 1992 playoffs.
After that run, the Cavs hit rock bottom by the 2002-03 season, when they set a franchise-record worst 17-65 season record.
The Cavaliers returned to glory years, when savior LeBron James was drafted by the franchise in 2003. You know the rest of the story. The Cavs won and won and won.
The team made the playoffs five straight seasons between 2005-2010. They also made it to the NBA Finals in 2007, but were swept by a much more experienced and and talented/deep San Antonio Spurs team. The Wine and Gold would continue to get close during those early LeBron years but just couldn’t quite figure it out and get that elusive championship.
So when James left after the 2009-10 season, the franchise tanked again and were pathetic.
There wasn’t a lot of hope in Cavalier fan hearts, as those same hearts had been broken when James announced his publicly scrutinized announcement of taking his talents to South Beach and the Miami Heat, which ultimately played out formally via sign-and-trade. During this doldrum of a time, the Cavs did however draft current superstar guard Kyrie Irving.
And then it happened, in the heat of July of 2014, James made another monumental decision to return to Cleveland and promised a championship to the community.
And this time, in 2016, with James and Irving leading the charge, the Cavs were finally able to conquer their quest. They brought a long overdue championship to the city that hadn’t had a championship by any Cleveland professional organization since 1964 when the Cleveland Browns were crowned champions of the NFL.
With James departing Cleveland again in 2018, we are now in a new time for the franchise and so far, these last three seasons have had this team revert back to its losing ways. Despite some opportunistic moments where the Cavs have shown some fight to finally start winning consistently, they aren’t winning and that negative, and yet realistic outlook on the team, has me wondering about the following.
How much time will it take to get back to an above average squad that can make the playoffs and win championships like these past teams in Cavs history have done or gotten closer to?
We’ll get into the two key aspects in regards to how they turn things around from there.
Examining the coaching element for the Cavs
With these other teams of the past the Cavaliers either had a strong head coach/staff, great players or both. This current team has a head coach in J.B. Bickerstaff, who seems to be respected by his players, but is it enough?
His record as the Cavs head coach is 26-52. That’s a lot of losing.
With past Cleveland head coaches like Fitch and Wilkens, they didn’t win a ton at the beginning, but they didn’t have a record like Bickerstaff does now. I think it’s great Bickerstaff can communicate with his players, but at some point, that communicating has to transition to wins and that isn’t happening.
So let’s say the Cavaliers keep Bickerstaff around for next season; they have to win or the Cavs franchise has to look at the long term effect of this losing mentality.
If you want to see what type of effect the head coach has on a team, the Cavaliers don’t have to look very far. Exhibit A is just down the street in Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski.
The Browns had been awful for years. Prior to Stefanski’s arrival, the Browns head coach was Freddie Kitchens. With nearly the same players on the team, Kitchens was lousy as a head coach and the Browns were a sub-.500 team. With Stefanski in charge, the Browns ended up advancing to the Divisional Round this past season and now appear poised for an even deeper run next season.
Players have to buy into the what the head coach is trying to sell. I think Bickerstaff probably is doing and saying many things that are positive for his team, but in the end they are still losing a lot.
What’s the Cavs plan?
I do think part of the Cavs plans revolving around a young core of talented playmakers/scorers in Darius Garland, who looks to be Cleveland’s primary playmaker of the future, as KJG’s Joey Cornell expressed, and Collin Sexton is on the right path.
But, and it’s a hard but, until you can get a head coach and a system at this elite NBA level, I think these Cavalier teams are going to continue to struggle.
When you look back at those Cleveland teams of the past, the Lenny Wilkens-coached teams had the head coach and brought in some veteran presence to play alongside the young players then.
Nance was brought in from the Phoenix Suns and the Cavs won. The second time around for the Cavs and LeBron, the Cavaliers brought in players like veteran Kevin Love and the Cavs won.
The Cavs don’t have a superstar on the team now. Love is the lone keeper from that championship team in 2016.
The Cavaliers will pick up another young player in the draft. But what’s the long-term plan for this team? You don’t hear much from this organization on that front?
When you pinpoint stretches in franchise history where there was success it makes you wonder when will that next stretch happen? Will it happen? I’m always hopeful as a lifelong fan.
Losing LeBron the second time only magnified what one amazing player and his sidekicks were able to accomplish to provide a sparkle of brief and yet cherished moment in Cavalier history.
I do believe, based on this franchise’s historical patterns, that the team will someday win again, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Next season will be telling. Remember how it started this season, with the Wine and Gold winning three straight. They are 18-46 since then. There is a lot of work in front of this franchise. I hope they sense the same urgency that their die-hard fans do.