The Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the most exciting young teams in basketball. They are coming off of a big season last year, making the play-in tournament. Although they fell short in both of their play-in games, this was still the first postseason action that the Cavaliers have seen since LeBron James was on the team in 2018, if you’re considering that the postseason that is.
With the Cavaliers being such a young team, it appears that the sky could be the limit for this core. Darius Garland and Evan Mobley both have shown that they have the potential to develop into superstars in the near future.
In the past two seasons, the Cavs have come out of the gates hot and there is no reason that it should not happen again this year, but with more sustained success past that, in my opinion.
The Cavs will get off to a hot start this upcoming season, but can they maintain that? Their experience from last year should help.
Now, the opening schedule for the Cavaliers does have some rough patches in it, as an aside. Some of these include playing the Boston Celtics twice in the same week, two matchups against the Milwaukee Bucks, and a difficult stretch against Western Conference opponents.
Despite this, Cleveland has proven to be a resilient team and they will likely be able to steal a few games against superior opponents.
If the Cavaliers can get off to a hot start, there is a chance that three players on the team could make the All-Star Game. Those players being Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen.
For this to happen, Cleveland would likely have to be a top-two seed in the Eastern Conference then. Depending on how hot the Cavs can start the season, there is a chance they could hold onto one of the top seeds in the conference until the All-Star break.
With multiple players set to make a big jump over the offseason, or in the case that they have, this could be a completely different Cavaliers team than we saw take back-to-back losses in the play-in tournament.
This team has gotten a taste of the postseason and they have made it clear that it is their number one goal to make it into the legit playoffs. As a result of this, they should be coming out of the gates hot. The question is how long they can hold it up.
One of the biggest roadblocks for the Cavaliers last year was injuries. If the team would have remained healthy throughout the regular season, there is a good chance that they could have secured the sixth seed in the East and would have avoided the play-in tournament.
This could be a huge season for the Cavaliers and they will start the season off right, I believe.