Farewell Preseason, Hello Reality

As tip-off approaches for the Cavs season opener in Memphis, the 2021-22 season already has a relentless momentum. That momentum has completely overflowed my own ability to run a deep dive on the Grizzlies, scouting out match-ups, reading statistics, looking at how the Cavs have fared against Memphis since the departure of the Chosen One and the arrival of John “Polar Bear” Beilein. Fortunately Nate Smith has just dropped a game thread, so do focus your comments on the Cavs-Grizzlies contest there.

Instead, I offer few random reflections on the preseason and the offseason, as the narratives from those months and weeks blend with the long and glorious chronicle of the National Basketball Association. This short essay also includes fragments of the NBA’s more political side (which is not to say purely American; this is a global league after all), which is a theme I hope to explore further this year in my posts for Cavs: the Blog.

Today in my bunker in Northern England, the windows raked with rain, I struggled with the existential comments of Doc Rivers (“This is not reality — this is sports”), and wondered how he could retain emotional poise amid the tempest of Philadelphia. Was this really the team that had entered the previous postseason as the top seed in the Eastern Conference? Wither the process? Or perhaps the lesson is that even protracted wars can be lost?

Further up the East Coast and on another end of the league’s highly addictive master narrative of soap-opera clickbait, I found myself drawn to the (perhaps inevitable, but still exciting) emergence of Enes Kanter as an advocate for Tibetan independence. Down in DC, Kanter’s statement was matched with a heftier Congressional shot-across-the-bow to the NBA and its related influencers on the issue of cotton sourced from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

Perhaps the NBA should consider extending the preseason by another two weeks, allowing analysts and bloggers to feast on the carcasses of dysfunction, and franchising the 76ers mini-camp and preseason into a reality show, preferably with a subplot involving Jason Kidd or Derek Fisher and Matt Barnes.

Or, more on point, as a counterpoint to the All Star break (hello Cleveland 2022!) the league might give the players another dedicated week for community and political engagement. The Pacers preceded their preseason game with the Cavs with a visit to a prison in Indiana, a genuinely illuminating experience to hear about. Malcom Brogdon is an engine of sorts, with passion (and an undergraduate dissertation) on clean drinking water and economic equality.

Even as the Bucks swallowed the Nets alive in the East’s season opener, the city of Kenosha was dealing with a new lawsuit by Gaige Grosskreutz (an extraordinary name which I read in Chinese-German as meaning “Reform the Huge Crucifix”) relating back to the paramilitary violence in that city fourteen months ago, events which had been responded to in part by the Bucks boycotting a game and then being convinced by former President Barack Obama that it might be better to go back to work. Boycotts, Obamas, and lawsuits aside, Kenosha is in the First Congressional District, which is in the Bucks backyard and went 60-40 for the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives. (The Democrat had impeccable national security credentials, but that clearly did not move the needle.)

One of the great achievements of the Cavaliers in both the offseason and the preseason was not to be the most dysfunctional franchise in the association, to not be host to the league’s most frustrating players.

Perhaps this is a reference to Kyrie Irving, who, before coming the poster child for Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, had been the primary prize for the Cavs’ 19-win and exquisitely painful 2010-11 campaign. Kyrie is so deep into his own cyclical thought patterns and has since leaving Cleveland has driven at least two other rabid fan bases insane. And the coastal sports media have little interest in his Cavs years as a basis for analysis of the man, so he doesn’t get compared to Sexton often enough. But for fans of the Cavs franchise, there is some merit in lining up the early years of both.

The young Kyrie lifted the Cavs from 21-45 (13th in the Eastern Conference) in his first season to 33-49 (good enough for 10th in the East) in his third season. Collin Sexton’s first three years is hard to gauge against Kyrie’s — two pandemic-truncated, or -condensed seasons make that difficult — but the Cavs went from 19 wins in his rookie season to the equivalent of 25 wins (in reality the Cavs won 22 games in a 72-game season).

If this number-crunching sounds nonsensical, I bring you the magic of Chris Fedor working out the Cavs’ potential for a play-in spot in an 82-game season:

It took 33 to get in last season. In an 82-game season that’s 36. So, 11 more than last year’s pace. And I added a couple extra because I can and because the teams in that range are better haha. https://t.co/P3egdk7MF3

— Chris Fedor (@ChrisFedor) October 19, 2021

And now game time is approaching, and thus a few incongruous questions need asking. In the pursuit of reviving his value and his career, is Denzel Valentine actually as de-motivated as Ben Simmons? Will Kevin Pangos light up Trae Young for four glorious minutes this year? Are the Minnesota Timberwolves beat writers justified in their excitement over Taurean Prince on that roster? Will Ricky Rubio make this his last year in the NBA, going out on a massive high note by orchestrating a trip to the playoffs and securing a place in Cleveland lore? Will Kevin Love stop at the UCLA Department of Psychology on a Cavs road trip, and meet and have some photos with his endowed chair in psychology?

Will Darius Garland really drop eight or nine threes per night? Forget Dylan Windler, is coach J.B. Bickerstaff fully healed from his leg/foot injury? Will Coach Buck get another chance to shine and guide the team to a win this year? Will the Cavs new roster of big men manage to bottle up the passing acumen of Clippers new big man Isaiah Hartenstein? Will Tristan Thompson make it through the year in Sacramento without being traded? Will Lauri Markkanen explode again against the Chicago Bulls?

Apart from upgrades to or overhauls of the Cavs roster, what did you find most compelling about the offseason and the preseason? What are your most unlikely predictions for the season that has just begun?