3 former Cleveland Cavaliers players in the NBA Finals

The Cleveland Cavaliers will be well-represented in the upcoming NBA Finals

The Cleveland Cavaliers are going to be well-represented in the upcoming 2023 NBA Finals, where the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat clash to see who takes home the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The Heat, an 8th seed, will try to do what the 1999 New York Knicks couldn’t do, and that’s going from the eight-seed in the NBA Playoffs, go to the NBA Finals and winning the championship. The Nuggets, the best team in the league, led by the rightful 2023 MVP, Nikola Jokic, are looking to put the finishing touches on a season where they’ve been nothing but disrespected.

The Heat, led by Jimmy Butler,  will see a team of undrafted free agents, and developed players return to the NBA Finals for the second time in four seasons, last heading there in 2020. Only five of those players are back for this trip, with Butler, Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo, and Udanis Haslem, but four of those names (sans Haslem) are still the driving force for this team’s success. Robinson, Butler, and Adebayo were integral to their success this postseason, while Herro has been hurt for most of the playoffs. He’ll return for the NBA Finals, which should really shake things up.

As for the Nuggets, after years of dealing with injuries to Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., both men are back and in rare form, giving Jokic some actual help for the first time in several years. Jokic is playing out of his mind and will be nearly unstoppable in the Finals, making the Nuggets the clear favorites, and with how good he’s been in this playoffs, could have a legacy-making series against the Heat.

And while all that’s true, Cleveland Cavaliers fans are not going to be left out of the fun, as the teams involved three ex-players who are going to be playing key roles in the success of their respective teams.