Cleveland Cavaliers going into tank mode a matter of when, not if

The Cleveland Cavaliers have no other choice to but to tank the season in order to keep their first-round draft pick in the 2019 NBA Draft.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have fizzled out of the gate to the tune of an 0-5 start and the tough pill to swallow in this mess is that they’re not even play elite competition.

Aside from their opening night loss to the Raptors, Cleveland’s defeats have come at the hands of Minnesota, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Detroit.

Do any of those squads really scare you?

More from Factory of Sadness

Atlanta and Brooklyn are terrible, yet both squads waxed Cleveland on their home floor.

I took a look at the ceiling/floor of this team before the season started, and thought they could be a low playoff seed. Worst case scenario, they were going to be one of the worst teams in the league…and it’s certainly trending that way.

Give ESPN’s Zach Lowe some credit because while many of us were blinded by our Wine & Gold glasses with hopes of the playoffs in the newest LeBron-Less era, the scribe picked Cleveland to be the second-worst team in the Association.

With that said, I don’t think this Cavs’ team is as worse as the squad we were “treated” to following LeBron James‘ first departure.

However, they’re probably not going to win many more games than the 2011-2012 squad won (21-45).

The question for the front office becomes when to go into full tank mode. If the Cavs start the season at 2-10, is there any reason to keep playing for the postseason?

Instead of fighting an incredibly difficult uphill battle to perhaps grab the eighth seed, the organization would be better off in the long run to be one of the worst 10 teams in the league so that they keep their lottery pick.

We’ll see. There are some winnable games coming up in the next five-game stretch with Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando on the schedule. There’s also two more losses you can pencil in (Indiana and Denver).

After these contest, we get a clearer picture of what the front office wants to do because there will be no reason not to trade Kyle Korver, J.R. Smith or Tristan Thompson.

They’ve just been so bad, I don’t know how they turn things around.

• We wondered if they’d be able to score. The answer is resounding now. The Cavs have a 103. 4 offensive rating (fifth worse in the league).

• Not scorings is an even bigger problem when you’re allowing 116.3 points per game (third worst in the league).

• And when the entire NBA has gone “3 crazy,” the Cavs are shooting 32.6 percent from the field (sixth worse in the league).

It’s these things that suggest the Cavs aren’t going to pull it together this year. You’ve got to be able to score in today’s NBA when half the teams in the league are scoring 110 points per game.

But to score, you’ve got to have someone carry the load. Kevin Love‘s averaging just 19.0 points per game and now he’s out with a sore foot. Who’s the next man up? Seriously, who’s the next man up?

Plus, you’ve got to hit 3s, and you’ve got to get stops.

Next. 4 WRs the Browns should target via trade. dark

Cleveland’s showed an inability to do any of these things early on, which will make it a very, very long season.

Home/Cleveland Cavaliers