A theoretical (not analytical or statistical) look at this Cavs team's potential.

I posted this in one of the threads that had very little traffic and realized it was probably too long for a simple post. Apologies for the lack of stats or anything concrete to back up my assertions, but it was really more of a freestyle ;) .

Usually depth doesn’t help you much in the playoffs. You need to put elite talent out there and depth often just represents a stock of less talented players with similar skill sets based on the coaching/team building philosophies of your F/O. This is probably not only the deepest team in the league, but I also think we have the most relevant depth. That is because of Lebron. I basically believe that this team can be two different teams depending on how a game is going.

Option 1: We can play the way we have played for most of this season. A fire breathing offense with two of the most offensively talented players in the NBA as a second and third option. This is going to get us wins when Kyrie is dazzling and Love is hot from deep and getting to the line. If this style of play is going well, we can just outscore any team in the league.

Option 2: It seems so long ago that the 7 player group of Lebron/JR/Shump/TT/Moz/Delly took 2 games off of the Warriors at full strength. Grif described this as a full identity shift through Lebron’s genius that was done out of necessity. The thing is, we can do it just out of preference if we want. Lets say Love and Kyrie are just having tough games to start offensively. D-Will/Shump/JR/Lebron/TT looks like it can be a pretty incredible team on the defensive end. We can play the same way on offense as we did for the 2015 finals. Mauling teams defensively and on the boards and using Lebron’s brilliance on offense to put up just a potent enough scoring attack. A complete 180 from the flamethrower above that turns the ball over frequently and is defensively porous.

Option 3: We can do a combination of the two. Kyrie/Korver/JR/Lebron/Love is a lineup that I expect to be good enough on the defensive end with Lebron flying around playing free safety like only he can when he’s going after another championship. Any wins in the half court should be cleaned off the glass with the outstanding defensive rebounding duo that Lebron and Love represent at the 4 and the 5. Then when you look at the offensive potential, it’s hard to imagine that group not being incredible. When you look at the difference between this team and even the LOD in GSW, EVERYONE can shoot. Neither KD nor Steph can be Lebron, but even if they could, they at best can only have 3 shooters out there. They will never have the space that Lebron can enjoy when they have Draymond out there, the only thing that makes their defense elite.

So if Lue can make these adjustments to our identity on the fly, as needed, I really think that this team can beat anyone in a series. We don’t even need to rely on shooting variance. Even if we are bricking everything from deep, that’s fine, lets just go to option 2 and rely on defense, low turnover rates and TT’s offensive rebounding. Oh awesome we’re super hot from deep! We can stick to a combo of option 1 and option 3. I think Lue has the keys to one of the most versatile teams in NBA history. The Indy series made me hopeful he knows how to drive it.