Call LeBron James, Cavaliers - It's Time to Blow It Up
The Cleveland Cavaliers are not a legitimate threat to the NBA championship.
They are a collection of mostly very good to above-average players put together on a team with the chemistry of a work office that can’t wait until it is time to clock out.
The most exciting thing about Game 3 of the Cavs versus the New York Knicks was that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift were courtside.
She must really love him to go watch this Cavs team get destroyed by the Knicks at home in what was a slog of a game to get through, with Timothee Chalamet already looking at places to stay in either Oklahoma City or San Antonio for the NBA Finals.
It’s over. It’s done. This core is more vanilla than three-day porridge left in the fridge.
LeBron James is a free agent, and even if your team isn’t as tantalizing as one led by Luka Doncic, give him your best pitch on why he should finish his career where it all started.
Not that a 42-year-old James alone will turn this team into contenders, but at least it’ll be more interesting if they’re playing the Knicks, Boston Celtics, or a rising team like the Charlotte Hornets in the postseason next season.
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The Cavaliers are just boring. James Harden tricked the basketball universe into believing that his 13th time in the playoffs would be the charm. Donovan Mitchell is a star, but he’s not a true superstar who can elevate a middling team to the championship round. Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen are legitimate big men in basketball and regular-season standouts, but in the playoffs, they are cannon fodder.
When the Cavaliers beat the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern semifinals, I proclaimed they would get swept. After three games against the Knicks, I haven’t flinched once on my prediction.
This current Cleveland team is like the current Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, or, to really hurt the fans of Ohio, the Cleveland Guardians of the MLB.
They’re teams good enough to do well in the regular season and win rounds in the playoffs, but that’s their limit. They aren’t teams that I can imagine confetti falling upon after winning the championship.
With this current core, investing everything into Mitchell, I don’t know if they can ever be a team that has the celebratory confetti fall on them.
But maybe they can at least mask their ceiling if James is smiling during his retirement tour.
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This story was originally published May 24, 2026 at 9:13 AM.