The Cavs have built a roster that looks ready on paper. They have two players with future Hall of Fame upside, they made the offseason move they needed to make, and yet the league still isn’t fully sold.
That hesitation isn’t rooted in ignorance. It comes from what everyone watched in the Knicks series, and from the way Cleveland handled the pressure when that matchup started to slip away. The doubts have lingered because the playoff questions haven’t gone anywhere.
Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe put it plainly during an appearance on the Wine and Gold Talk podcast with host Ethan Sands.
“I think Cleveland’s going to have to prove it,” Washburn said. “And I think there are a lot of doubters out there considering what happened against the Knicks.
After that Game 1 loss, a game that they should have won big time, that changed the whole tone of the series. They lost that; they pretty much lost the series.
Are they mentally, emotionally tough enough to get through the gauntlet now with New York?”
That Game 1 loss has become the image attached to this group’s recent playoff life. It’s the moment that keeps getting revisited because it said so much about how the Cavs looked when the series tightened. Even after two straight seven-game series before that, the bigger story around Cleveland has been the same: when the postseason gets rough, can this team stand up to it?
There are still basketball reasons for the skepticism, too.
Donovan Mitchell remains one of the conference’s most dangerous scorers, but the rest of the picture has changed. Cleveland is counting on Peyton Watson to make an impact, on Evan Mobley to keep climbing, and on James Harden - now 37 - to serve as a real postseason playmaker.
Washburn said Harden can still help in the right lane.
“I still think a team could be very, very, very good with him as that facilitator, but not that primary scorer,” he said. “And then you hide him a little bit defensively. But I still think he can get guys the ball wherever they need to.”
The catch is obvious: Harden’s last NBA Finals trip came in 2012 with Oklahoma City, and asking him to guide a team through the Eastern Conference in 2027 is a very different assignment than the one he’s had in the past.
There’s also the bruising side of the playoffs, where Cleveland still has to answer for itself. Can Jarrett Allen and Mobley survive the frontcourt battles that come with a deep run? Can this team go into a tough road game in May and take it?
“I think the Cavaliers have as good a chance to get to that third [seed] as anybody else,” Washburn said. “But I think there’s a level of mistrust at this point because of the last couple years in the playoffs and that Knicks series.”
That’s the reality for Cleveland right now: the ceiling is real, but the trust has to be earned.
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What makes the situation even more intriguing is the idea that Brown could be had on a minimum deal, which would make him a tidy fit for several teams looking to shore up their guard depth without sacrificing flexibility. Nothing is settled yet, but for a club like the Cavaliers, monitoring a player with championship experience and a reputation for fitting just about anywhere is the sort of offseason detail worth watching closely. [Read more 🡒]