The Cleveland Cavaliers are set to see LeBron James from the other side of the floor this season, and the matchup already has a strange twist attached to it. According to Dave McMenamin of ESPN, James is dealing with chronic arthritis in his left foot during his first season with the Philadelphia 76ers.
James is 41 and remains the oldest active player in the NBA. A lot of people expected him to head back to Cleveland in the summer, but instead he shocked the league by signing a two-year contract with Philadelphia.
That decision left Donovan Mitchell as the centerpiece in Cleveland, and Mitchell made it clear he had imagined a different ending. He told Ashley Nicole Moss that he thought James would sign with the Cavaliers or the Golden State Warriors. Mitchell wanted to play with him, but he’s not dwelling on what didn’t happen.
The Cavaliers brought Mitchell in from the Utah Jazz before the 2022-23 season, and he has been everything they hoped for and more. He’s averaging 26.7 points per game in the regular season and 27.3 points per game in the playoffs in a Cleveland uniform. Last season, the seven-time All-Star pushed the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference Finals, the first time Cleveland had reached that stage since 1992 without James.
The Knicks swept Cleveland in that series, but the Cavaliers still backed Mitchell in a major way. He signed a four-year, $273 million maximum contract extension this offseason.
Mitchell’s scoring résumé is already elite. He enters this season with career averages of 25.1 points per game in the regular season and 27.8 points per game in the playoffs with the Jazz and Cavaliers.
Cleveland’s opening night brings the storyline into focus right away: the Cavaliers start the season against James and the 76ers in Philadelphia. The atmosphere should be loud.
James isn’t walking into that building alone, either. Philadelphia also added former Cavaliers wing Dean Wade, while James joins Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid on a roster built around star power. His deal with the 76ers is a two-year, $8 million contract.
The Cavaliers, meanwhile, will open with James Harden, Mitchell, Peyton Watson, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen in the lineup. On paper, that’s a loaded group.
Even with the new chapter in Philadelphia, James’ place in Cleveland history is untouched. He is the best player in Cavaliers history and, arguably, the greatest player ever. He sits first all time in points, field goals, games and minutes, and he’s the only player to rank in the top five all-time in points and assists, the only player to win three Finals MVPs with three teams, the only player with 40,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 10,000 career assists, and the only player to reach 50,000 total points across the regular season and playoffs.
Across his career with the Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers, James has averages of 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.5 steals and 0.7 blocks per game. He’s a four-time MVP, four-time champion, four-time Finals MVP, one-time scoring champion and one-time assists champion.
Mitchell now gets the chance to chase the kind of Cleveland finish James delivered in 2016, when the Cavaliers won the championship over the 73-9 Golden State Warriors.
In Other News...
Evan Mobley Debate Just Got Uncomfortable For The Cavs
A speculative Evan Mobley-for-Matas Buzelis trade idea has surfaced in the kind of offseason chatter that always lands a little harder when it involves a cornerstone player. For Cleveland, the premise is uncomfortable because Mobley remains one of the leagues most valuable young defenders, the sort of player who changes the floor on that end even when the offense is still evolving. For Chicago, Buzelis is the more theoretical piece, a young forward whose appeal rests on the belief that his scoring upside can keep growing into something bigger.
The debate gets interesting because both sides can talk themselves into the basketball fit, even if the idea lives entirely in hypotheticals. Cleveland would be weighing whether to move off a proven defensive anchor for a higher-variance offensive swing, while the Bulls would be asking how much patience they have for Buzelis to reach his ceiling. Nothing about this points to real negotiations, but it is the kind of thought experiment that exposes just how delicate the balance is when a team starts wondering whether its best long-term answer is already in hand. [Read more 🡒]
Three Young Cavs Suddenly Have A Real Shot To Matter
Craig Porter Jr., Tyrese Proctor and reserve forward Jaylon Tyson are all at a stage where the Cavaliers can still reasonably imagine more coming from them. For a team trying to keep building around established pieces, young depth matters, and Cleveland has a few players who fit the kind of long-view conversation coaches and front offices like to have in-season. The appeal here is not just age, but the chance that each can sharpen a specific part of his game enough to stop being a developmental name and start becoming a dependable rotation option.
Proctor has already drawn some attention from Kenny Atkinson, who recently pointed to the guards physical development as part of his progress, and that only adds to the sense that his timeline is moving in the right direction. Porter and Tyson, meanwhile, are still in the category of players whose next step could come from simple but important growth, including greater shooting aggression and more consistency. None of it is finished, but for Cleveland, the possibility that a few young players might meaningfully matter by 2026-27 is the kind of internal upside that can shape a roster more than any outside rumor. [Read more 🡒]
LeBrons Latest Health Concern Changes Clevelands Biggest What-If
LeBron James latest health update has added another layer to the long-running conversation about what might have been in Cleveland. After leaving for Philadelphia for what is expected to be the final two seasons of his career, James is now dealing with chronic arthritis in his left foot and lower-back issues, according to an ESPN report. It is the kind of news that resonates far beyond his current team, because for Cavaliers fans it brings back the familiar mix of admiration and regret that has followed every twist in his late-career arc.
James reportedly monitors the problems daily as part of his training, and last season he missed about a month because of sciatica. For Philadelphia, the concern is obvious: availability always shapes everything around a player at this stage, from rhythm to lineup stability to the larger ceiling of the season. For Cleveland, it only sharpens the old question of how different things might have looked if this version of James, with all the wear and tear that comes with the miles, had been part of the present instead of another teams future. [Read more 🡒]