While over-analyzing any single game is possible, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ remodeled team looks much more equipped to defeat the elite teams in the NBA.
What spectators saw from the Cavaliers in their former iteration was a team that was old, slow, sloppy, disjointed, dispirited and dysfunctional. Those six words serve to encapsulate what had become a chaotic season in a downward spiral that not even Nostradamus could have seen coming.
The trade of Kyrie Irving initially yielded a return of Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, the Brooklyn Nets first-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft and a 2020 second-round pick from the Miami Heat.