HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors

Sometimes it might take a while, but there’s always a way to fix a bad team.  Yes, the Cleveland Cavaliers were historically bad in 2010-2011, but there have been far worse teams transformed into something respectable in the past, and it could happen again with the Cavs.

That said, this is probably going to take a while.  As we’ll see in the rebuilding plan that follows, "youth" is an operative word in this process, and collecting that young talent and giving it time to grow takes time.

But Cavs fans shouldn’t care how long it takes.  All they need to know is it’s possible. 

It is, and here’s how:

1 – Move Antawn Jamison
There’s no way to sugarcoat the fact Cleveland gets fixed via a youth movement, and Antawn Jamison is about as far from being a spring chicken as it gets.  The last remaining vestige of the team’s desperate attempts to keep LeBron in Ohio, Jamison needs to be moved for symbolic as well as financial reasons.

The first step to starting over is purging yourself of your past.

Of course, you don’t just get rid of a guy as good as Jamison for that reason and that reason alone.  As a $15+ million expiring contract in 2011-2012—a year when several franchises could be scrambling to dump salary under a new, possibly more restrictive collective bargaining agreement—Jamison could actually hold some value.  To trade him out for draft picks and/or talent more in the age range of a team set to rebuild for the next five years is simply the smartest way to go.

2 – Figure Out Who the Keepers Are
Once Jamison is gone, it’s time to figure out who of the remaining players is worth keeping around.  There’s zero reason not to completely restructure this team, so identifying which players are young enough, talented enough, and cost-efficient enough to hold onto is key the rebuilding process.

Before looking at anybody else on the roster, it’s probably worth noting right here and now Baron Davis will be on the roster at least through the end of next season.  The final year of his deal ends in 2013, and while there’s a chance some team could bite on his expiring deal that season, you’re probably not going to be able to unload him before then.  We’ll leave it up to Byron Scott to worry about actually playing him, but just know it’s a forgone conclusion he’s going to hang around for a couple more seasons.  That was the price of acquiring that extra lottery pick in this June’s draft.

But who else should stay?  Anderson Varejao is the obvious answer to that question.  His defense, rebounding, and energy is the kind of thing a good team needs, and while he’s never going to be an All-Star, he’s a guy worth keeping.  Other teams want him, but I’d resist the temptation to let him go.

Otherwise, hold onto Manny Harris, Samardo Samuels, and Semih Erden because all are extremely young, all have reasonable potential, and none have contracts that exceed $800,000 in 2011-2012.  J.J. Hickson is similarly cost effective ($2.4 million next season and a QO for $3.6 million in 2012-2013), but that just about wraps up the list of players Cleveland should keep, and even then it should be with the understanding that only Varejao is somebody you’d want in the starting lineup long-term.

3 – Clear Whatever Cap Space You Can
If you’re keeping Varejao, Harris, Samuels, Erden, Hickson, and (grudgingly) B.D., then that means everybody else has to go.  The good news is after the 2012-2013 season, just a little over two years from now, only one—Varejao—is under contract, and Christian Eyenga will have a very inexpensive team option.

That means even if Cleveland is unable to trade the likes of Daniel Gibson, Ramon Sessions, and even Davis, they really only have to wait things out a couple more seasons.  The important thing is to avoid locking in on any dumb long-term free agency contracts before then.  Let the cap space come to you, and hold onto it.

4 – Draft Well
{AUTHOR_BOX}Now that you’ve essentially cleaned your plate, it’s time to actually start building the main pieces of the team.  Cleveland isn’t exactly a free agency hot spot at the moment, so the best chance they’ve got of building a winner again is through the draft.  They seem to understand that, which is why they did the Baron deal, but now that they’ve got two good picks, it’s more important than ever that they use those picks wisely.

Duke’s Kyrie Irving is the best player in this draft, and if Cleveland ends up with the #1 pick they deserve, that’s the guy they’d be best off selecting.  It’s a point guard’s league right now, and Irving is a top point guard prospect.  He makes the most sense.  Of course, if they end up with Derrick Williams instead, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

What they don’t need to be doing is taking a risk on Lithuanian center Jonas Valanciunas.  He may end a perfectly good player, but Irving and Williams are the sure things in the top three, and one of those guys is the pick to be made.

With their other lottery pick (the one they got from the Clippers), they’ll be picking in the 8-10 range.  Depending on whether or not they get Irving, Kemba Walker could end up being a spectacular offensive player, but Terrence Jones from Kentucky would be a nice snag in that range as well.

Keep in mind, though, that the Cavs need to draft well not only in this draft but in the next two or three drafts.  The 2012 draft has several exciting prospects, the most notable of which include Austin Rivers, Michael Gilchrist, James McAdoo, and Quincy Miller. 

In short, the Cavs have to nail the next few drafts.  It’s the most important part of the plan, and if they fail there, the rebuilding process will only take that much longer. 

5 – Stay Young, and Give the Kids A Chance to Gel
Assuming steps 1-4 go as planned, the last piece of the puzzle is just giving all those new players time to grow and gel together.  A lot of the players who end up superstars in the NBA tend to make the leap somewhere around their third season, which means it will probably be about three or four full seasons before the Cavs are really ready to roll.  That’s a fair amount of time to give a young roster to develop, and by that time they’ll have plenty opportunities to draft and use cap space to bring in free agents to get themselves competitive.

Told you it wasn’t going to be a fast process.

But for teams that really want to rebuild the right way, this is how it has to be done.  Cleveland doesn’t have the advantages a city like New York or L.A. does in terms of appeal to free agents, so that means the only way they can really get ahold of top-flight players is through the draft.  That means this is going to take time.  There’s just no way around it.

If it’s done right, though, it could mean good things for the Cavaliers.  In two years, heading into free agency, they could potentially have a core built around Derrick Williams, Kemba Walker, and Austin Rivers.  That’s not a bad batch of youngsters to have on one roster, and it’s exactly the start they’d need towards getting fixed.