The Point Four-ward: The Unofficial Stretch Run

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers as they pick back up after the All-Star break…

1.) You may have read the following comment from LeBron James following Sunday’s All-Star Game and raised your eyebrows just a bit.

Asked about his aggressive first quarter of the showcase game (in which he scored 15 points on 6-9 shooting in eight-plus minutes) James said:

It’s my obligation and my responsibility to go out there, if I’m feeling 80 percent or 85 percent or 90, to go out there and give my fans something. Give my fans what they wanted to see. And hopefully I did that.

The good news is that James viewed himself at somewhere between 80-90 percent on a day where he was still looking at several days off before picking the season back up again on Friday night. He also threw out those percentages after he’d scored 30 points on 11-21 shooting with five rebounds and seven assists in a performance that would have surely netted James the game MVP award had the East not fallen to the West 163-158.

So, 80-90 percent of LeBron James is still pretty darned good.

 2.) The bad, of course, is that James, nursing nagging injuries to his knee, back and wrist, still views himself as being at less than full strength. It’s usually a bit closer to the playoffs when NBA veterans start taking up the “no one is 100 percent at this point in the season” torch, so James’ gauge of his own relative health comes across a bit more like candor than spin. He is still hurting (to some degree) and both he and the Cavs will have to continue to manage that situation.

The Cavs will need him as close to that 90 percent mark if they, as many All-Star break prognosticators suspect, really have turned the corner and are now legitimate championship contenders.

In other good news, though, James spent time in Miami again this week — and we all know how well his last South Beach sabbatical worked out for the Cavs.

What Cavs fans are really waiting to see come Friday’s game against the Wizards is if the week off not only gave Kevin Love’s injured eye enough time off, but also righted whatever ailments (his back, mostly) many have pointed to as contributing to the power forward’s overall struggles this season.

3.) There are roughly two months and exactly 27 game remaining in the regular season. The Cavs immediate road gets a lot less cushy (and infinitely more interesting) than its Jan-Feb stretch of (much needed) softballs. That starts with the Wiz in Washington on Friday, followed by LeBron and Kyrie’s version of Groundhog Day when they wake up in NYC on a Sunday morning for the second week in a row (this time to face the Knicks). The Cavs then tie a bow on the month of February by visiting Detroit, hosting the league-leading Golden State Warriors and then visiting the Pacers of Indiana a week from Saturday.

Clearly, the two games you’ve circled on the Cavs 2014-15 schedule (presented by Discount Drug Mart) that you still insist on hanging on the back side of your bedroom door are the team’s visit to DC and next week’s hosting of the Dubs (well… the other Dubs, as I guess you could call the Wiz “the Dubs,” as well).

It’s been a couple of months now since we put a pin in the Cavs/Wizards attempt at renewing their Eastern Conference rivalry. So far, we’ve seen nothing to make us believe that we know all that much about how a post-season match-up between these two teams might go. The Cavs followed up a blow-out loss in Washington with a well-lubricated performance (and a win) in their rematch.

But the Wiz have been slipping just a bit (4-6 in their last 10) and they have yet to match up with the new-look Cavs. Of the Wizards advantages over the Cavs in previous meetings, the most striking has been their strength inside with Nene and Marcin Gortat. That advantage now has to, at least, be recalibrated with the emergence of Timofey Mozgov.

This one will be for sole ownership of the fourth seed in the East, folks.

Then, after the Cavs semi-sleep-walked through a loss in Chicago in the final game before the All-Star break, you’d think they might get up for a game at home against the Warriors, the other team (as mentioned in the link above) now leading the odds race for the title.

But more on that next week…

4.) In case you haven’t noticed, the Cavs still have a roster spot open and — while Ray Allen’s people have said that the 39-year old guard will be making his decision soon — a more pressing need for the team might be available even sooner.

The Milwaukee Bucks have been discussing a possible buy-out for oft-troubled, oft-suspended, oft-defensively praised center, Larry Sanders.

Should this happen, Sanders, whose general desirability has been well-covered by this blog and its readers, would immediately become the best big man available. But is he even a realistic target for the Cavs?

CtB’s own cap guru, Nate Smith, helped me out by weighing in with an explanation of… well, numbers. Here’s the crib sheet (as I understand it):

This Cavs team’s current salary of $81,604,221 is over both the league-wide salary cap of$63,065,000 and the luxury tax line of $76.829 million. That means that the team would be limited to offering a pro-rated minimum player salary to Sanders.

That’s probably only enough to bring Sanders into the fold if he and his agent feel that the Cavs are the perfect situation to rehabilitate his career. He wouldn’t have to start here. He’d get some minutes, some probably key minutes, and some probably key post-season minutes. All he’d have to do is show that he can temper down the crazy and contribute to a winning team.

Plus, Sanders would have just been given the bulk of his $44 million contract. So, he might not have to immediately chase the money.