They won 61 games last season. If LeBron was worth 20 wins, they're still a 41 win team. Basketball-Reference.com gives him 18.5 Win Shares, so maybe a 43+ win team. Boozer probably makes us a 50 win team.
If they hang together they are a playoff team. If they start selling off pieces immediately, then they go straight to the lottery. They did just hire Byron Scott as coach, so I have a hard time seeing them break it all up immediately.
There's no way that team wins 41 games. 1- Mo Williams 2- West (NG contract, mentally disturbed, freak of Lebron's Mom's Nature) 3- Anthony Parker (ancient), Jamario Moon 4- Jamison (old, couldn't carry Wiz), JJ Hickson 5- Varejao, Z (ancient, FA) That's pretty terrible. Basically Varejao is the only guy I think of as maybe in the top 10 at his position.
I think they have a 25 win team without Lebron. A Jamison/Williams/Varajeo core doesn't get you a whole lot IMO. I think we may see the slash-and-burn treatment starting in a few weeks, there's really not a whole lot to build on.
Adding up win shares: Varajao 8 Williams 7 Jamison 6 Parker 5 Hickson 4.5 West 3.5 Moon 3 Gibson 2.5 Z 2.5 > 41
Mo Williams and Hickson, and Jamison can step up their games. The rest of the guys are seasoned veterans. The two things working against them are that everybody else in the East got better and the may not be able to overcome the organizational depression of losing LBJ.
I think this is a good example of why WS are a really vague statistic. Due to its fluid nature, basketball outcomes have very emergent properties that don't often break down with simple arithmetic to individual components. If the Cavs don't add anyone major, I'll bet you $25 that they don't win more than 30 games.
It seems to be a little worse then that for Cleveland. http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=6812
41 wins probably won't make the playoffs next season. 41 barely got us in, but only because Toronto imploded at the end. That blog entry basically says they're a lotto team, so do I. However, they do have $14.5M in cap space left. And few people thought Milwaukee would win 46 games last season.
I read another blog entry there, that said they played like the Wizards/Kings/etc. when LeBron was off the court.
Few people thought Brandon Jennings would be great out of the gate. I don't think the Cavs have anyone as good as him or Bogut either. Who are the gonna add with that cap space? Nobody I see that seems like a really difference-making player. Which is the real problem. That's a team that was built around a particular guy and a particular style of play, both of which are now gone. At best, it could be the sum of its parts, but those parts are still pretty mediocre. There's nobody there that elevates the rest of them, or really scares other teams in any way. Rosenthall, have you been reading Hayek lately?
