LeBron, Cavs May Be Overshadowed by the Warriors but Need Them to Fuel Repeat

Believe it or not, the best thing for the Cleveland Cavaliers would be for the Golden State Warriors, as soon as possible, to live up to all their glorious preseason acclaim.

The quicker the Kevin Durant indoctrination happens, the bigger and juicier the carrot that gets dangled in front of LeBron James and his defending NBA championship team as it hikes through the long regular season.

Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue knows full well that complacency can set in unless his team finds additional motivation for the repeat process. And Durant’s move out West is just what Lue needs for the Cavs to keep growing and prove people wrong yet again.

“With us, with Kevin Durant going to Golden State and all the talk about that,” Lue told Bleacher Report, “that fuels our fire. We’ll see how it plays out.”

The Warriors’ start, however, has been far from illustrious.

They opened with a 129-100 home loss to the San Antonio Spurs. The Warriors appeared so disorganized and fearful of making mistakes that the final score might as well have been 73-9.

Since then, Golden State has slogged to close victories in New Orleans (122-114) and Phoenix (106-100) against talent-poor teams. The Warriors play in Portland on Tuesday night, and then the first Durant vs. Russell Westbrook showdown comes Thursday at Oracle Arena.

The Cavaliers, meanwhile, are 3-0, which is good enough. Their banner went up, and their intensity naturally went down after they dispatched the New York Knicks on ring night. But the Cavaliers survived Friday in Toronto in one of those the-other-guys-want-it-more games, winning by three over the Raptors they eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals in May.

The Cavs also slogged their own way Saturday against an outclassed Orlando Magic team that scored 37 fourth-quarter points as Cleveland opted to take the final 12 minutes off on defense.

Indeed, opponents are going to be more fired up than the Cavaliers time after time this season. Such is the nature of the champions’ wearing a bull’s-eye.

But if the Cavaliers see the Warriors living up to the greatness so many have predicted, it’s going to provide significant help for Lue to convince his team to use the regular season for growth as opposed to sitting under gray skies, waiting for the calendar pages to turn toward spring.

Lue remembers how the Los Angeles Lakers, early in his playing career, had to find motivation for their (successful) repeat bid in 2000-01. The …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com