The Bulls are the Cavs’ biggest rival for the next 5 years

It’s safe to say that the Cleveland Cavaliers have exceeded everybody’s expectations this season. Heading into the season, it was difficult to know what to expect from the Wine and Gold, who had several players show individual growth last season, but the club was coming off three years finishing in the high lottery. That won’t likely be the case this go-round.

Early on, the Cavaliers burst onto the scene thanks in large part to stifling defense, effective ball movement, Darius Garland taking a Year 3 leap, Evan Mobley making a rare impact on both ends for a rookie, and veteran buy-in.

Now, the Cavs are not nearly the team they were before most of the time prior to the All-Star break, and it’s unfortunate that Jarrett Allen is currently dealing with a finger injury. He could reportedly be back for a postseason run and chose to not have surgery, but we’ll have to see.

Even still, the Cavaliers’ defense has still up big for them, on the plus side, and in second halves of games more recently and post-All-Star, they’ve been far better and on-point with rotations.

In general, though, this has been such an enjoyable season to be a Cavs fan, and this is still largely a young group that is an ascending squad in the Eastern Conference. With that in mind, in the next five seasons to come, it doesn’t seem to be necessarily outside the realm of possibility that we could see the team steadily grow, with several crucial players still young, and the team already looking to be ahead of schedule.

So with that said, who looks to the biggest rival for the Wine and Gold for the foreseeable future? KJG’s own Josh Cornelissen gave his take on why that looks to be the Brooklyn Nets, and our own John Suchan detailed why he believes that’s the Milwaukee Bucks. I personally have a different team in-division in mind, and that’s the Chicago Bulls.

The Cavs and Bulls both appear to be teams on the way up in the East. Here’s why Chicago is Cleveland’s biggest rival for the next five years.

We’ll continue on with KJG’s “Rivalry Week” by taking a look at the current rivalry outlook between the Bulls and Cavaliers, and then examine why Chicago and Cleveland could very well end up being bitter rivals once again.