The Cleveland Cavaliers is a franchise that has arguably the best player: Lebron James. Although he did leave for the Miami Heat, James still came back and delivered them a championship title in 2016. Also, a fun fact: that was the city's first professional sports title in 52 years. Unfortunately, despite reaching the Finals yet again in 2017, they lost to the Golden State Warriors. Now in 2018 the Cavs started sluggish and, despite having a completely new roster after making trades, they still look the same.
From starting as a definite finalist team, the Cavs are now surprisingly in the 4th seed at the Eastern Conference. One of the problems for the team was the first half of the season. For some reason, the team didn't have the chemistry needed, and it showed on the court. Unfortunately, Kevin Love was the scapegoat during their struggle. Although the team was venting out their frustrations, nothing was improving. It seemed that the Cavs General manager had seen enough. Once the trade deadline started GM Koby Altman, traded most of the roster for a much younger and athletic group of players for their old ones. After the the deadline, the revamped Cavs' first two games were up against the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder. Two top contenders, one in the East and the other in the West, and they won against both. After that they lost six out of the last eleven games and some of the teams they faced off weren't even in the playoff talks.
Injuries are always going to any team in any sport but it's the coach and the players' job to press onward regardless of it, but for the Cavs the situation is much worse. In an article from NBA.com LeBron James said "We have pretty much five guys out of our top nine or top 10 of our rotation not playing because of injuries. It's next man up, but sometimes you just fall short." Another Cavs player Kyle Korver also chimed in, "It's hard to gauge because we just have so many guys out...We're so low on big men right now. So when we're small, they're just kind of switching everything on us and we're not able to -- there's not a lot of movement out there for us." Big men like Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson are key players for the rotation and with them out its makes it that difficult for the Cavs to do anything.
With just a decent amount of games left, the Cavs need to finish strong. Although the Celtics and Raptors are the main threats, they still don't have the current best player: LeBron James. However, in order to once again reach the Finals, the team itself needs to recover and play toghther as much as possible.