FanPost

Bacon Rules: #4 A perfect World



A couple of seasons from now Kyrie could well be the best offensive PG in the league, Dion is drawing broad comparisons to Dwayne Wade as his FT attempts jump and he is scoring 23 ppg, Tristan Thompson has grown into his defensive role and is a top 10 rebounder no matter how you slice, Noel has put on a few pounds and is blocking and altering shots on D while he and TT score efficiently on offense. While optimistic none of these projections is farfetched and if all four happened the Cavs enter the consciousness of the league the way the Thunder did a few years ago. Cush a young team with several offensive options that basically can't be stopped one on one and an overall talent level that means they will almost always have a mismatch in their favor somewhere on the court that they can exploit.


In addition to this they could pick up up to 3 extra lottery picks by the end of the 2015 season and are in control of their salary cap and can't lose a player they don't choose to for many seasons.

In a perfect world the Cavs could be a contender without any major acquisitions relatively quickly, if their core 4 (assuming they pick Noel) progress to within 10-15% of their individual ceilings it hardly matters who they have starting at SF or who they wind up with on the bench as long as they aren't a dumpster fire in terms of depth.

As a Cleveland fan all I can say is- it isn't a damn perfect world. Injuries happen, players fail to develop, bad or just unlucky trads happen. Conflict between teamates happen, an inability to align Kyrie and Dion's games could happen. When the future is so wide open and your youth has such potential it can be sobering to think of the teams like Portland whose future was so bright, who thought they had three young studs only to end up back in the lottery with just one very good player entering his late 20s.

Carl Landry, Andre Igoudala are among the FAs that could improve an ovious deficiency for the Cavs, but the Cavs were a 20 something win team for the third straight season. They have a lot of actual holes and their current solutions are based on potential not actual performance. I view landing one of these players for multiple seasons is assuming that the linear growth continues to happen without enough respect for the risks that it might not. There are a lot of ways this young team can go and most of those paths are playoff bound for multiple seasons in a row, but many of those paths, perhaps even most, end up like the Atlanta Hawks of a a few seasons ago. Very good teams that have no real shot at a championship and not much room to make a major move that they need to get them past the best 3-4 teams in the league.

Overall I think the Cavs need to be in a risk taking mindset still. As an example moves like offering Sac's pick +2 second rounders for Thomas Robinson is much more likely to flame out than a signing of Carl Landry but it also has the potential to land us an offensive power forward who could be a thrid big that is a huge advantage over a top heavy team or a big piece in a major trade later when our real holes have been clearly identified.

Not that I wouldn't love to see a 5 seed from the Cavs with a real shot at winning a playoff series next season but I would rather their moves were still of the mindset of a rebuilding team- which is what they are- and not a contender looking to add a few smaller upgrades.

This is a Fan-Created Comment on FearTheSword.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff at FearTheSword