Headline her and here and here
On January 5, the Cleveland Cavaliers suffered an embarrassing defeat, falling 95-92 to the purposely bad Philadelphia 76ers.
Their record fell to 19-16, LeBron James had been looking listless through much of the year and Kevin Love looked lost. The grand Big 3 experiment hashed out in James’s return to the Cavaliers seemed to be failing.
Whether out of panic from losing to the 76ers or a weeks-long consideration that Cleveland had been less than the sum of their parts, that was the day the Cavs made the first of two trades that wound up altering their season.
The deals didn’t seem important, at the time. Depth is important to any title contender, but top-end talent is what makes a contender. The Cavs already had that. They had LeBron James. They would be fine.
Still, the reinforcements, first JR Smith and Iman Shumpert in a three-team deal with New York and Oklahoma City, and then Timofey Mozgov from Denver a few days later, proved their worth.
The Cavaliers bottomed out at 19-20 on January 13 but were 32-9 the rest of the way.
In the play-offs, those trades are proving even more consequential. Smith is averaging 13.5 points per game. Shumpert is just over 10 per game. Mozgov is a presence in the middle, with nine points and seven rebounds.
Injuries are the one great variable in the NBA. But teams can plan ahead. The Cavaliers came up with a contingency plan back in January that just may deliver them a championship in June.
