Remember when Tristan Thompson said the East runs through Cleveland?  I believe what he meant was, “Every team in the East will run through Cleveland”. In his defense, I believe he was talking about the playoffs and I guarantee the Cavs won’t lose a playoff series this year.

The Cavaliers have been the worst team in the NBA this season and don’t appear to be improving much. To put it another way, the Cavs are so bad that they have looked more like “The Cankles” this year. Ty Lue taught us that with young teams there are no losses, just wins and lessons. With that logic, Cedi and the boys will have their PhD.’s by March. In all seriousness, I believe this team is especially tough to watch because fans have become a little spoiled by their beloved basketball team over the last 12-15 years.

Between LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Sasha Pavlovic, Cleveland has had a star player nearly every season since 2003. To put this into perspective, every 12 year old in Cleveland has been alive for 5 Eastern Conference Championships! Throw in the Indians’ World Series run in 2016, the Monsters’ Calder Cup the same year, and the Browns’ undefeated Pre-Season Championship of 2017 and you have entitled pre-teens all over Cleveland expecting unsustainable success by all of their local teams. Back in my day I used to have to walk to school and back, uphill both ways through driving snowstorms just to get home to see Michael Reghi do play-by-play of Chris Mihm and Wes Person.

Image: (basketball-reference.com)

I first fell in love with the Cavs in the late 1990’s and used to tune in to Channel 43 WUAB every night to watch Ricky Davis, Trajan Langdon, and Brevin Knight cobble together 20-30 win seasons. My claim to fame in elementary school was being the kid who knew how to pronounce Desagna Diop’s name correctly. I also got in trouble in class for using inappropriate language when the teacher overheard me talking about Bimbo Coles. The more I write this, I’m realizing that apparently I was the weird Cavs kid in school. The point I am trying to make is that one bad season isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Image: (cleveland.com)

In today’s NBA, teams want to either be championship contenders or tankers, and nobody does this better than your Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs have won the Eastern Conference or the draft lottery 7 times in the last 8 years and appear well on their way to making it 8 out of 9. If the young guys continue to develop, they land a top 3 pick in the draft, and I get to continue wearing my “This Delly Delivers” shirt, than I chalk this season up as a success.