Should we be worried about the Cavaliers?

Lebron James by Erik Drost (CC BY 2.0)

No.

That's the short answer: No. You could stop reading now if you wanted to (please don't)

We do this every year with LeBron teams. They struggle. Everyone freaks out. They recover and make the Finals. Repeat.

Sure, this year the struggles have come earlier and deeper than usual. The Cavs lost four straight to put their record at 3-5 to begin the year before recovering slightly and winning two of their last three. 11 games into the season, and a LeBron team is out of the playoffs? Crazy! The world is ending! Is LeBron James done?

Really the only troubling thing about this start is that LeBron has been great (well usual LeBron great) at 28.9 points, 9.1 assists, and 7.3 rebounds, and the Cavs have still been losing. Everyone looks kinda old, and, without Isaiah Thomas yet, it looks like LeBron is missing Kyrie Irving (possible sub-grams aside) as he struggles to work in the eight new players on the roster as the only real creator on the team.

The offense is not the real issue with the team early on.

Cleveland is dead last in the league in defensive efficiency (as of November 9), and the upcoming return of Thomas certainly isn't going to help on that end. I don't know if the Cavs old heads have it in them to be a top-5 defense or anything, but I think most of the issue right now is just effort.

The Cavs are chilling right now. It's November, they've made the Finals for three straight years. They feel like they can turn it on and make the run whenever they want, and they probably can.

They'll be fine.

The Celtics, however, are looming. They've won 10 in a row and Kyrie looks great. Who knows where they'd be right now without the Hayward injury? The Cavs might actually be in some trouble.


Thanks as always for reading! Follow BtA on Twitter @NBABehindtheArc and Facebook for updates on all my posts, random thoughts during games, and probably stupid jokes.