2014 for the Cleveland Cavaliers is tough to view as a whole. I say that in the sense that everything that happened to this team in the last 12 months doesn’t feel like it could have occurred in a single year. We went from the cellar to the penthouse so fast it made my head spin. I was experiencing borderline Cleveland sports depression (not the first time, and far from the last) in May, worrying if Kyrie was going to resign with us and by the end of June I woke up every morning thinking about the Cavs like an 8 year old kid waking up on Christmas.
We finished the 13-14’ season with 33 wins, missed the playoffs again and were back in the lottery for the 4th straight year. If we don’t win that lottery a lot of things are different right now. We’d probably be wondering what could have been if we had overpaid for Chandler Parsons this offseason and maybe we can make the 8 seed in the East this year. But we did pick #1 again and that set off the crazy chain of events of everything from Kyrie resigning, to LeBron coming home, to trading for Kevin Love and signing guys in free agency who never would have dreamed of coming here. And now we’re 5 games over .500 and a lot of people are disappointed with our play. Last years team was “led” by Jarrett Jack, Andrew Bynum, and Luol Deng. This year we have LeBron, Love, Marion, Miller, Jones, and some leadership for Kyrie, Dion, and Tristan. Things have been rocky early on but I’ll take the 2nd half of 2014 over the 1st a million times out of a million.
HIGH POINTS
January 6th- Cavs acquire Luol Deng. At the time this looks like a great move and gives hope the Cavs will be able to make a push for one of the final playoff spots in a decimated Eastern Conference.
*February 15th – Kyrie Irving is named all-star game MVP
*February 20th– Cavs acquire Spencer Hawes. This is a lot less about his on the court play. I just really liked Spencer Hawes. Seemed like someone you’d want to go out and have a beer with. This may only be a high point for me personally.
*March 11th– Cavs host jersey retirement ceremony for Big Z. Also a quasi-recruiting move for LeBron.
*May 20th– Cavs win the NBA Lottery for the 3rd time in 4 years.
July 11th– The Decision Part II. LeBron announces he is re-joining the Cavs in a letter by Sports Illustrated
August 23rd– Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett are traded for Kevin Love. Love forms the new Big Three in Cleveland along with Kyrie Irving and LeBron James.
October 30th– I’ve never seen the Downtown Cleveland as alive as I did on this day. Opening night for the New Cavs. The party was one of the best times I had this year and I loved every second October 30th from the moment I woke up until the game tipped off. We won’t talk about what happened the rest of the night.
LOW POINTS
*January 1-April 30: All games played by the team.
*February 8th– Chris Grant fired. The guys who was leading our grand plan for rebuilding since the day LeBron left is fired and everyone is left wondering how to get out of the deep shit the Cavs seem to be in.
*February 12th– Andrew Bynum is suspended by the team for conduct detrimental to the team. Bynum came in with high expectations that he could get healthy and be a force. That didn’t even come close to happening.
*April 7th– Rumors surface about a locker room rift between Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters. Kyrie criticizes Josh Gordon for his sharing his opinions on the matter.
*May 12th– After signing Mike Brown to a 5-year, $20-million contract, Brown was fired after one season.
*Decemeber 29th– Rumors surface that Coach Blatt is not getting through to his players.
BIGGEST SURPRISES
*David Griffin – Griffin was named the interim GM after Chris Grant was fired. There were other GM candidates the team considered hiring in the offseason but Dan Gilbert decided to stick with Griffin as the permanent GM and all he did was steer the ship the right way for LeBron to come home then negotiated the trade for Kevin Love.
*Free Agent Signings – Before this summer Cleveland was the opposite of a free agent destination. It was a place people fled. This summer was different though. It obviously started with LeBron, but after that both Mike Miller and Shawn Marion took less money to come here and we also got James Jones who has played well in limited minutes.
*Hiring of David Blatt- This was more of a “we have no one else to hire” move. The Cavs interviewed SIX other coaches before they even talked to Blatt. Alvin Gentry, Tyronn Lue, Lionel Hollins, Vinny Del Negro, Adrian Griffin and Mark Price. After those six interviews the Cavs were either turned down by the candidates or not impressed by them so that how we got our coach. Prior to this season, Blatt had never coached in the NBA. He was renowned as one of the best coaches in Europe but it’s been a rocky start to his first season in the Association.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS
*Andrew Bynum/Luol Deng/Jarrett Jack- I, personally, was very excited about all three of these guys when they joined the team. Maybe it was my undue optimism to hope for the best with one of my teams but they fell flat on their faces here. Bynum was never healthy enough to be effective and Deng never fit in. Not long after he joined the team he was criticizing the culture of the locker room. Jack played great in Golden State before coming to Cleveland and has played well for Brooklyn since he left. Not sure why he couldn’t do anything worthwhile in his one season here.
*Mike Brown- We should have known what we were getting here. A lot of you probably did. But Mike Brown the second time around was even worse than the first. His no-offense coaching and system was back in full effect, only this stint the team didn’t play any defense either. Poor guy is only making $4 mil a year to do nothing for the next four years. Rough life.
*Anthony Bennett- It wasn’t Bennett’s fault he was part of the worst draft class in a decade and never should have been the #1 pick in the first place. But it’s entirely his fault for being an out of shape loser from the day he got here. Glad we shipped his weezing, chipotle-craving ass out of town.
*LeBron’s play- Ok call me a hater, whatever. Whether it was the weight loss, the time off, the mileage, or the chemistry of the new team, something doesn’t look the same with King James this year. He isn’t finishing as well at the rim, he’s had some nagging injuries that have caused him to miss games, he’s shown some poor body language on the court and he’s now taking this “we aren’t a good team” attitude. Dude, any team you’re on should be a good team. Fix it.
*Anderson Varejao’s injury- Varejao was our best interior defender and playing his ass off like he always does. Boom. Torn achilies, out for the season. It’s not just the loss of Varejao this year that hurts, it’s the fact that this is like the 5th year in a row he’s been out for an extended period.
2015 OUTLOOK
So that brings us to what’s ahead. Right now we’re in a bit of a rut. Since Christmas we’ve lost to the Heat, barely beat the Magic, had some injuries, gotten blown out by the 6-win (at the time) Pistons, and lost a game to the Hawks. Not to mention our players might be starting to dislike the coach. Not a good way to end the year. I predict 2015 brings some shakeups. We’re going to try to add a new big to diminish the impact of losing Andy. I would not be surprised to see Dion traded. He’s been playing well as of late so hopefully that trade value is high. I drank the kool-aid this offseaon and predicted 64 wins. Not gonna happen. I’m going to scale it back and say we come in somewhere around 50 and get the 3-seed in the East. We’ll win the first playoff series easily but round 2 and (hopefully) the conference finals could be tough. How 2015 goes is really going to depend on if the team can come together, embrace their roles, and play the right kind of basketball. If we do, the Larry O’Brien trophy isn’t totally out of the question. If we don’t, LeBron has an opt out, Love is a free agent and we have ourselves a terrifying offseason ahead. Let’s hope 2014 and 2015 don’t end up being mirror images of one another.
Bottlegate 