Cleveland Cavaliers: 2019-20 NBA season preview

Predictions

The Cleveland Cavaliers improve, marginally, but still finish near the bottom of the league with 23 or 24 wins.

The hope will be that their lottery luck is better in May 2020 than it was in May 2019, when they fell all the way to No. 5 overall despite tying for the second-worst record in the NBA.

There are just too many pieces that don’t quite fit and too much for the kids to learn before they’re going to be ready to contribute regularly.

Beilein’s system will help and the players will buy into it, but the 2019-20 season will be very much an early step in a much longer process of rebuilding rather than a giant leap forward for the franchise.

But if the Cavaliers can keep the roster somewhat stable after having a whopping 27 players wear their uniform in 2018-19 and the young players can show some growth trends, there will be some hope for a brighter future.

Cleveland fans don’t like to hear this statistic, but the last time the Cavaliers made a playoff appearance without LeBron James on their roster was 21 years ago, in 1998, and the franchise hasn’t won a playoff series without LeBron since 1993.

Progress will be slow for this group, but it’s also essential for the franchise that there is some progress shown in 2019-20, lest the clock start to tick faster and the chair temperature begins to increase for general manager Koby Altman.