All it took was some timely moves and a little draft luck but it seems like the Cleveland Cavaliers are back to NBA competence for the first time in the post-LeBron James era. With the promotion of head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, the Cavaliers adopted the “dog” mentality, forming an identity defensively while playing through their best players on offense.
Even with injuries to the majority of their key players and having one of, if not the hardest schedule to start the season, the team is still sitting 3 games above .500 and is in sole possession of the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference.
The pinnacle of this season’s success has come over the last four games where the Cavs have pummelled teams as of late. Over every team’s last four games, the Cavaliers are one of two teams to be undefeated in that stretch, the other being the Houston Rockets. Over that stretch, their defensive rating sits at 97.7, the best in the league. They are also averaging the second-most blocks per game, have the best defensive rebounding percentage, and have limited their opponents to just 41.5 points in the paint.
Offensively, the team has been clicking during this stretch, averaging 111.5 points per game, dominating teams in the paint, and taking advantage of open threes when defenders collapse on their bigs.
The biggest factors to this team’s success over that stretch have been the tandem of Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen, both of whom are having All-Star-level seasons for the Cavaliers. With the All-Star game being in Cleveland, the media may have an extra incentive to get at least one of these players to participate in All-Star festivities this February.
With that said, we’ll discuss each player’s likelihood of accomplishing something only a few Cavaliers players have been able to over the last two decades.