For the past two seasons the Cleveland Cavaliers have been building up their team with young and energetic players that are now starting to win games and it has the fan base loving what they’re seeing. If you’re a lifelong fan of the franchise or just a casual fan, this Cavs team is becoming the best game in town and the chatter around the water cooler is upbeat and everyone is ready to watch another game.
It’s always helpful when that team is winning as well and right now the Cavs are playing good basketball and have an 8-2 record. They lost a tough one the other night to the LA Clippers but still are upbeat as they continue on their West Coast road trip. Let’s look a little closer at three reasons why this team so easy to love.
Reason No. 1: They’re fun, and the best game in town
When you follow these young Cavaliers players on social media platforms you immediately get the idea that they genuinely enjoy playing basketball with one another. Fans of the team are continuously saying how much fun it is to watch this team play on a nightly basis. Maybe part of that fun observation by so many, is because the football team in town is always struggling to find that same type of happy or fun label but that’s for another FanSided sports website.
Whatever the reasons are for each of us, when you watch these Cavs games, the players seem connected and playing for each other. The other night after Cleveland beat the Los Angeles Lakers the team gave their head coach J.B. Bickerstaff the “Junk Yard Dawg” award, which is an award the team usually gives to a player that had a great game. The eldest player on the team, Kevin Love, gave the award to Bickerstaff in a very playful way that was caught on camera. We certainly got another glimpse into a team’s fun-loving spirit.
.@cavs head coach J.B. Bickerstaff receives the Junkyard Dog chain after their big win in LA ‼️pic.twitter.com/4fJfWX5eFd
— NBA (@NBA) November 7, 2022
So how can you not love a group of players that is playing the game with a happy energy? It seems like it’s been contagious the last two seasons and now that the team is winning a lot early in the season makes this whole thing with the team even better.
Reason No. 2: Team ball
As a middle and high school coach myself, I’ve loved watching this Cavaliers team play the game these past couple of seasons because the game is about the team and playing as one, where the players are engaged, involving their teammates and not seemingly worried about who gets the shot as long as the team scores the bucket.
So often we see the NBA be about individual performances and while we’ve seen that a bit with players like Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, or Jarrett Allen having great individual performances, it still comes back to the team with the Cavs.
The Cavs had a player named LeBron James before this latest group of players and everyone knew when you watched Cleveland play games, that James would have the ball in isolation often and it would come down to him making the play. The year that the Cavs won the title in 2016, they had a more complete team where the ball was passed around a bit better.
Enough about the past, this new group of Cavaliers are all very unselfish and seem like they really want the other guy to have success. Sometimes, you can build on that team chemistry as you work with a team and that has really worked well with this group of players today.
Across the NBA, sports analysts also are giving props to the Cavs because of their unselfish style of play and that’s so much fun to hear if you’re a fan of the team. Even the Cavaliers legend in LeBron chimed in on this newer iteration of the Cavs’ fun team spirit, and how they seem to just love the game, more than anything.
When asked if the Cavs are a contender, LeBron joked that he "got in trouble" last time he talked about Cleveland. He praised the Cavs' young guys for seeming more focused on ball than social media or anything else, and their "grandpa who looks over everybody", as in Kevin Love. pic.twitter.com/6WWEY4PfN1
— Michael Corvo (@michaelcorvoNBA) November 7, 2022
Reason No. 3: Winning always helps
The team has now won eight games already. The last time the team was this good so early in the season was in the 2017-18 season. If the team were sitting at 2-8 instead, maybe loving this squad wouldn’t be so easy.
Winning helps everyone and everything. If the team wants to see what losing feels like they just have to walk down East 9th Street to First Energy Stadium to see their football team falling flat on their faces. That Cleveland team is much harder to love these days.
A year ago, the Cavs got to a point by midseason where they were winning and surprising the rest of the NBA. That team ran out of gas and couldn’t quite make it to the playoffs. This season already feels a bit different because they have that prior years’ experience, and they have a new star in Donovan Mitchell. The fact too that Mitchell was traded to Cleveland and seems to be happy to be on the team makes this season even more powerful.
Can this team get to the playoffs and stave off a collapse like a season ago? It’s still very early in the year, but winning games now will make having to win games later a bit less of an issue. We can at least hope that’s the case.