Season Preview: Cleveland Cavaliers

And on and on we go... whee!!! Isn't this fun? At least it is for me.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Starting 5:
PG- Mo Williams
SG- Sasha Pavlovic
SF- LeBron James
PF- Ben Wallace
C- Zydrunas Ilgauskas

Off the bench
Guards: Delonte West, Daniel Gibson, Eric Snow
Forwards: Wally Sczerbiak, Tarence Kinsey, Darnell Jackson
Centers: Anderson Varejao, Lorenzen Wright, JJ Hickson

Not much in terms of major moves this off season, but I like the ones they made. They got rid of Joe Smith, good, they resigned Delonte West, good, they got Mo Williams, good. Mo Williams was a solid addition, the question is, will he be enough? Historically championship teams have had at least two All-Stars on their rosters when they won their rings, Mo Williams, not an All-Star. However, maybe LeBron can overcome that gap. Please, do not try to bring Ben Wallace and Wally Sczerbiak into the conversation. Anyways, the Cavs front office is doing a decent job of trying to take a hodge-podge of pieces and tryign to make something around LeBron, with the impending free agency pool of 2010, they're hoping that they can keep him. That being said, we're here to talk about this season, not next, so onward ho!

Ok, so basically the roster is the same as when they made the finals two years ago, replace Drew Gooden with Ben Wallace, replace Larry Hughes with Mo Williams, and Donyell Marshall with Tarence Kinsey or Lorenzen Wright, your pick. The starting lineup looks nice, Big Z has always been a consistent contributor, despite his age, however, he's not very good at producing on his own. Fortunately, LeBron has a good track record of staying healthy, and he's good at getting his teammates better shots. While Ben Wallace is all but useless on the offensive end, his defensive tenacity is always helpful, the question again remains whether or not he has enough left in his tank to eke out another stellar season. They need him to at least contribute on the offensive glass (beyond picking up his own bricked 2 footers) since he doesn't have the scoring touch of Drew Gooden or Joe Smith. His backup may very well be Varejao with Wright coming in for Big Z off the bench, and the prospects of post scoring don't look much better there either. All in all there isn't much in terms of post presence on the Cleveland offense, while you can do worse than Big Z, he certainly wouldn't be my first choice. Mo Williams by far is a more consistent contributor than Delonte West, Daniel Gibson, and former Cavalier Larry Hughes. He was the second leading scorer behind Michael Redd on the Bucks and is one of those PGs that while scoring is what he does best, isn't a bad passer either, kind of a poor-man's Gilbert Arenas, ok maybe a little better than that.

One can hope that the play book expands to something beyond "pass the ball to LeBron", and that LeBron would be able to also help create off the ball too. Too many good teams are too good at choking such a one-dimensional offensive set. Hopefully Mo Williams changes that. Still, I'm a firm believer that with LeBron anything is possible.

That being said I don't see a significant improvement over the middling season they had last year. Fortunately for them, that's good enough to get them into the playoffs in the East. 46 wins. I'm not gonna make any playoff predictions, why? Because they have LeBron.