Farewell to the Cleveland Cavaliers beat crew

The ripple effects of LeBron James’ departure are still being felt as the Cleveland Cavaliers try to find out what comes next. But the people impacted by his decision aren’t just with the organization, it also extends to the people that have covered the team over the last four years or more.

The trio of The Athletic’s Jason Lloyd, ESPN’s Dave McMenamin and cleveland.com’s Joe Vardon have created a special bond over the last four years on the beat. Their professionalism and enthusiasm has shown through in their work and as a result, the coverage of one of the team has been exceptional.

The three of them sat down to do a three-hour interview with 92.3 The Fan where they went over the last four seasons. The highs, the lows, as well as many previously untold details.

We normally do a fair amount of aggregation here, which can be difficult when it takes transcripts from podcasts or radio appearances. A lot of the context and tone can be lost when it is taken out of it’s long-form format.

So rather than attempting to take highlights from the interview, here is the link to the roundtable in its entirety.

In the discussion they talk about where things went wrong with Kyrie Irvnig and LeBron James, when LeBron first started contemplating a move (hint, it was far before the Kyrie request) and when the decision was final. There are countless great anecdotes from the last four years, their opinion on Tyronn Lue, Koby Altman, as well Dan Gilbert.

The Cavs have been really lucky to have such a quality team of beat reporters over the last four years. The news portion of this, beyond the inside look at the team, is that McMenamin is almost certainly moving on from the Cavs beat. In addition, Lloyd is stepping away from the day-to-day coverage of the team, while Vardon will remain on the daily beat.