With less than three weeks to go until the start of the 2017-18 NBA season, the Cleveland Cavaliers have finally decided on their starting lineup and at least part of their bench rotation. With this being the deepest team in his entire tenure as head coach of the Cavs, Tyronn Lue has elected to play Kevin Love as the team’s starting center, promoting Jae Crowder to the starting power forward position and sending Tristan Thompson to the bench according to Jason Lloyd of The Athletic. Also according to Lloyd, Lue has also decided after a few days with Dwyane Wade on the roster to start shooting guard J.R. Smith and bring Wade off the bench as the team’s primary ball handler.
With so many moves going on with the team, there are a ton of pros and a few cons to Lue’s decision to slide players around in the starting lineup. These include the defensive and offensive implications of the Cavs starting lineup, fixing a lot of the spacing issues some of the team’s new players bring, and bolstering an already deep bench unit.
1) The beginnings of the Cleveland Conquerers
For the better part of the last two seasons, the Cavaliers starting big man tandem has always been Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson. But while the team was very successful during their run to three consecutive Eastern Conference championships, the tandem of Love and Thompson had a lot of flaws. For starts, defensively the combination of Love and Thompson was a detriment to the team due to Thompson’s smaller stature of 6’9″, exposing him against centers like DeMarcus Cousins, Marc Gasol, or even Jonas Valuncianus; coupled with the fact that Love always struggled to guard Thompson’s targets in the event teams forced the switch and isolated Love in a pick and roll scenario. Another problem with this tandem was the fact that Love, an extremely elite rebounder, has been unable to showcase his nose for the ball with Thompson, a player of equally elite rebounding status.
With Crowder, who was recently acquired from the Boston Celtics, joining the Cavaliers starting lineup, a lot of the problems the Cavaliers faced on the defensive side of the ball are lessened. Love is a much better post defender compared to Thompson and is able to hold his own due to his height and a lot of his defensive flaws can be covered by elite defenders like Crowder and LeBron James.
Offensively, the starting unit of Derrick Rose, Smith, James, Crowder, and Love, now known as the Cleveland Conquerers, is the best starting unit in the Eastern Conference and arguably can go toe-to-toe with the Golden State Warriors starting unit and their own “lineup of death”. The team, for now, will be starting three great three-point shooters in Smith, Crowder and Love and two great playmakers in Rose and James that will be able to attack the rim endlessly with so much floor spacing. But, by Christmas time, the Cavs will able to hit on all cylinders when Isaiah Thomas returns, spacing the floor even more for Cleveland and surrounding LeBron James with four outstanding perimeter scorers.
2) Two former Chicago Bulls guards will not clog up the lane
As mentioned before, instead of joining the Cavaliers starting lineup, Dwyane Wade will serve primarily as the team’s ball handler off the bench while Isaiah Thomas heals and as J.R. Smith’s primary backup.
With this decision, the Cavaliers will also not face the dilemma of not being able to properly space out their offense to allow players like Rose, Wade, and James to operate. Wade is a very ball dominant player, much like Rose and James, and being the first option off the bench for Cleveland would be huge for the team as he would be able to create offensively for the team and still be able to create plays like this with best friend LeBron James:
The other positive to bringing Wade off the bench for the better part of the season is the fact that Wade is 35 years old and his knees are not as sturdy as they used to be. Playing fewer minutes will be huge for Wade’s health during the season and will allow him to be a major part of the rotation well into Cleveland’s run for another NBA Championship.
Finally, when Isaiah Thomas finally recovers Lue can elect to start Wade alongside Thomas allowing the team to bring more three-point scoring off the bench with Smith. The possibilities for the Cavaliers are literally endless once the team is finally healthy by Christmas time this year.
3) An already deep bench gets even more depth from Thompson
Finally, the Cavaliers biggest problem heading into training camp for the 2017-18 NBA season was the fact that they had next-to-no depth behind Tristan Thompson at the center position. Behind Thompson, they originally had Edy Tavares, a raw prospect, and Ante Zizic, yet another raw prospect, both not ready for meaningful NBA minutes at this point in both of their careers. The team originally tried to bring in Kendrick Perkins to serve as Thompson’s backup but it seems less likely that Perkins will even be with the team beyond camp due to the fact that the team has so many guaranteed contracts. With Lue’s decision to instead bring Thompson off the bench, the team finally has addressed the biggest problem on their depth chart.
Now serving as Kevin Love’s backup at center, Thompson can still serve his role with the team as a high-energy defender that can gobble up as many rebounds as possible. He can fill the void left by players like Anderson Varejao and Matthew Dellavedova as Canadian Dynamite can be the spark that can help ignite a once anemic Cavaliers bench.
While he will not be starting for the team anymore, Thompson can still finish games with the team in crunch -time defensive situations as Thompson is one of the best defensive switching defenders in the league and can guard the pick and roll, something Love is exposed in on the defensive side of the ball.
With so many changes already to their rotation, Cavaliers fans can get a taste of what is to come during the preseason with Jae Crowder joining the starting lineup and Dwyane Wade and Tristan Thompson bolstering their bench. The new starting unit will absolutely demolish the Eastern Conference and the better part of the league on the offensive and defensive side of the ball and the team will continue the obliteration when Wade and Thompson check in off the bench throughout the season.