Cleveland Cavaliers: LeBron James era is both a failure and a success

The Cleveland Cavaliers era with LeBron James is not one-sided.

One way to sum up the Cleveland Cavaliers era with LeBron James is exciting yet disappointing. While the good outweighs the bad, the latter cannot be overlooked.

Cleveland has had James on their roster for 11 of the 15 seasons he has been in the NBA. Yet, just one championship has been won despite getting to the finals five times. Now, blame does fall on the front office for how they have put together rosters over the years too but that is not all.

The coaches, as well as James’ teammates, deserve blame too for how they have coached and played respectively. Still, that is not all. For as good as Cleveland has been with James, he also deserves blame for how the seasons have turned out.

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He could have been more willing to update Cleveland sooner on his plans in regards to a contract. Speaking of contracts, not only is his way of dealing with contracts not ideal, but James’ influence to sign players to deals not worth their talent impacted Cleveland’s salary cap. Tristan Thompson and J.R. Smith are players who come to mind.

In addition, the Cavs’ decisions on who they would hire as a head coach seems to speak more to keeping James happy rather than hiring a good coach. That is not to say it is bad but can lead to coaches being irrelevant in Cleveland. There are ways to achieve both simultaneously.

No wonder given how all of those aspects have been part of Cleveland’s era with James that we have seen rosters with Thompson, Ira Newble, Daniel Gibson, Timofey Mozgov, and Jordan Clarkson, among others. Given the contracts going forward, it is going to be a challenge to really upgrade the roster.

To think if things were done differently and specifically the approach to acquire talent to surround James, that the Cavs should have more than one championship to its name.

As much of a failure James’ time has been in Cleveland, just think about the accomplishments that were made. First and foremost, it is great for the Cavaliers to get James to come back home to begin with.

From there, it is because of him that the Cavaliers have their first championship in its history. There are no words to explain what that means to the city, northeast Ohio, and their fans.