Why doesn’t the 2018 Cleveland Cavaliers get more heat as a failed super-team?

The 2017-2018 Cleveland Cavaliers were a failed super team that never gets discussed.

The 2022-2023 NBA season will always be known, in part, for the end of the Brooklyn Nets superteam. Once a squad that bolstered Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden, the trio was shipped out in three separate deals over the last 18 months, ending what could’ve been a perennial dynasty had the three stuck together, been healthy, and played as well.

Instead, Harden got sent to Philadelphia, Irving to Dallas, and Durant to Phoenix.

The failure of this version of the Brooklyn Net’s superteam has made me think about the 2017-2018 Cleveland Cavaliers, aka the time the team tried to make itself into a super team. The team started its reshaping when it traded away Kyrie Irving for Isiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, and a first-round pick that would become Collin Sexton.

They also signed Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose in the offseason, while still having Kyle Korver and Kevin Love from the year prior. The team was properly hyped and everyone thought that with the addition of Wade as a second-unit player, Rose and Thomas as the new one-two-point-guard-punch, and the shooting of Love and Korver, with LeBron James guiding the team, this team was destined for success.

By February, the entire team would get overhauled. Wade would be shipped back to Miami for a second-round pick in 2024, while Thomas and Channing Frye went to the Los Angeles Lakers for Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr., and Crowder and Rose went to Utah for Rodney Hood in a three-team deal that also included the Sacramento Kings.

The Cavs had potentially five different future Hall of Famers on their roster that season (James, Irving, Love, Rose, and Wade), and somehow couldn’t get the team over the hump. So why don’t we talk more often about this failed superteam?

Why don’t we talk more about the 2017-2018 failed Cleveland Cavaliers’ superteam?

So why don’t we talk more about this specific squad’s failings? Some may say that they got to the NBA Finals and that alone should take them out of the running for a failed superteam, but keep in mind, that by the mid-way point of the 2018-2019 season, James, Wade, Rose, Korver, J.R. Smith, Rodney Hood, and George Hill would all be gone.

This was a squad that was built around All-Star names and dumped most of them before the 2018 NBA Trade Deadline. It lasted less than one full season, and by the start of the following season, everything got blown up.

Yes, this is absolutely a failed super team, so why don’t we talk about it? I think for one, the age of everyone involved. While Rose was still in his second prime (if you will), Wade and Korver were near the end of their careers. Wade’s name was still lofty, but his impact was not.

The other reason was that the team still turned all of those older pieces, even the malcontents like Rose, into useful players, for at least the rest of the season. Because they made those trades and made the NBA Finals, I think people look more forgiving of this team than they should.

Except this was also the season where Smith cost the Cavs Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Had they won that game, who knows what the Cavs could’ve done during the rest of the Finals? The momentum would’ve swung hard.

So yes, it’s a failed super team and while it may not be as egregious as the Brooklyn Nets and their recent super team or their super team from the early 2010s with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, the Cavs had a failed super team that shouldn’t be overlooked, because the drama that came with this team alone was palpable.