Kevin Love‘s duties in taking over for LeBron James as team leader include organizing the Cavaliers’ annual pre-camp workouts, writes Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com. Love, whose leadership role was cemented when he agreed to a four-year, $120MM extension this summer, is hosting the voluntary sessions this week at the University of Miami.
Most of the players who are under contract are expected to attend. Coach Tyronn Lue is in Miami as well, but won’t participate if the players-only tradition continues. Tristan Thompson, Cedi Osman and Ante Zizic are all out of the country to play in World Cup qualifiers.
James, who signed with the Lakers in July, organized the workouts in each of the past four seasons. They are usually held in vacation spots, with coaches and front office personnel accompanying the team but letting the players run things.
There’s more today out of Cleveland:
- Osman can look forward to a much larger role in his second season with the Cavaliers, Vardon notes in a player profile. Osman may inherit James’ role as starting small forward, although Rodney Hood is also a candidate. The 23-year-old saw action in 61 games as a rookie, averaging 3.9 points per night. Osman played several years in Europe before coming to the NBA and appeared much more polished in this year’s Summer League, according to Vardon.
- Collin Sexton will need to improve his shot, especially from long distance, to become a Rookie of the Year candidate, Vardon states in another profile. Sexton tied with Suns center Deandre Ayton as the favorite for the award in a poll among players drafted this year. However, his success could depend on improving his accuracy from 3-point range, where he hit just .336 last year as a college freshman, and just .242 in SEC games.
- Thompson, who owns a championship ring and has made four straight trips to the NBA Finals, hopes to create that same atmosphere of success on the Canadian national team. He has been playing for his home country for nearly a decade and believes there’s an opportunity for Canada to become a major player in international competitions. “Right now we have a wave of really good players in the NBA,” Thompson said, “but who knows? Maybe 15 years from now we have a drought, so while guys are here and at a high level, let’s take advantage of it.”
Cleveland will be a much better team without Lebron, there will be more unity and every player in the lock room will be more comfortable.
So a possible 8 seed and first round exit is better than an NBA finals team? Lol
No one cares about the Finals, they load so who cares? They weren’t supposed to beat Indiana so realistically they were a first round exit. If Kyrie had played in the ECF the Cavs would have got smoked. Indiana won that series for anyone who watched it, the NBA didn’t want them to eliminate Lebron though.
Ummm. I care about the finals and you’re saying they were “realistically “ a first round knockout is stupid. They won and ran thru the rest of the east. They underperformed for most of the year but anyone who felt they were the underdog in that Indiana series were proven to be fools.
I saw the series, they rigged the last 2 games so Lebron wouldn’t get bounced in the 1st round.
Lebron gpt robbed of calls in gm 6 at least. You must have gotten tired of him by then… you run hot and cold on him.
You make my head hurt Dionis
They’ll play team basketball and everyone on the team will be able to play to their strengths which will make them fun to watch. We will see a lot more ball movement.
Say this and forget about all the foolishness you spoke of earlier.
Dude you say so many absurd things. Yes, players will have more room to grow. Yes, it could be exciting. But completely ridiculous to even fix your mouth to say they’ll be a more successful team is baseless and silly.
Nah man, dionis is spot on. The loss of the best (or near best player) in the world can only help a team.
I know when I was playing u12 ball our best player went down with a nasty infection and we plowed through what had previously been daunting opponents.
As a rule loose your best player =’s improvements right.
Cleveland might play more team ball & whatever you care about, but the important things, they will be a much worse team, they lost almost 40 national televised games, they will lose fans on the arena & so on… yeah I can see how much better it is to play team ball. Fans wanna watch stars, that is why we pay big bucks, not to watch a bunch of average Joe’s (except K-Love)
Retaining Love is good for the Cavs’ style, production and brand, like it would be for any team signing him.
For the Cavs he also, as the article notes, helps to bridge over good team habits and attitudes from winning years.
Love’s presence as obvious new leader also discourages divisions caused by players battling to be the new leader after the old leader leaves. There is no such battle now with his extension. The vision Dionis has is possible but I think extending Love was necessary for it to happen.