National Basketball Association

Fourth time's the charm: Cavs' future on the line with No. 1 pick

Published May. 21, 2014 4:02 p.m. ET

Erik Malinowski

There’s never a bad time for Fun with Arbitrary Numbers, so here goes:

For the past 11 seasons — the length of LeBron James’ NBA tenure — the Cleveland Cavaliers have posted a winning percentage of .503. The 11 seasons before that? .471. And the 11 seasons before that? .436.

This tells us absolutely nothing substantive, save that the past 33 seasons of Cavs basketball have produced little beyond a slight historical uptick in win/loss rate and a generational pattern of sustained mediocrity. They’ve made just one NBA Finals, which every Cavs fan would sooner forget than celebrate, and have no championships of which to speak. It’s bad to love to Cavs.

But history is a comic with no punchline, and here we are again with the Cavs holding the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft for the third time in four seasons and the fourth time in 11 seasons.

The first time around was LeBron’s turn and he lasted seven seasons before bolting for points south. Kyrie Irving came along in 2011, and he’s now a top-25 NBA player. Anthony Bennett was last year’s next great hope, and he labored through what was arguably the worst season for a No. 1 overall pick.

Now, the Cavaliers get a do-over, another high-profile chance to prove they can finally put the correct pieces together and forge a team that can maintain a lasting period of success. They only had a 1.9 percent of landing this pick going into the Draft Lottery, so maybe the basketball gods are smiling down on this day?

If that is to hold true, and the Cavaliers are to break into the NBA’s upper tier of teams, they have zero room for error when it comes to this pick.

Only three times in 25 weighted NBA lotteries has the team with the worst winning percentage actually gotten the top pick. Tanking is no guarantee of getting the coveted top prize. The Cavs have been handed a gift, and they must choose wisely.

Kansas freshman Joel Embiid is already being touted as the Cavs’ top preference, but he’s coming off a stress fracture in his back, and he may have the cautionary tales of Greg Oden and Nerlens Noel following him until draft day.

Duke freshman Jabari Parker will get his looks as well, but another Kansas freshman, Andrew Wiggins, would seem to be the safest and most exciting pick for Cleveland. A 6-foot-8 slasher who can score and defend right from the get-go, a backcourt of Wiggins and Irving (sorry, Dion Waiters!) could be — should be — too much for Cleveland to pass up.

Work on developing Bennett into something resembling an NBA power forward, trade for a big man to ease up an aging Anderson Varejao’s workload, and suddenly you have a team that can makes an annual impact in the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

And then there’s The LeBron Factor. James has an early termination option on his contract coming up and he can opt out this summer, creating yet another Decision-driven offseason of chaos. Beyond next season, he has a $22 million player option for the 2015-16 season, so he can become a free agent then, too. While the Cavs’ personnel machinations are likely further from LeBron’s mind right now than his latest app update, the reverse certainly cannot be ignored. The Cavaliers would be clinically stupid for not gaming out, at least in some regard, how this pick would impact a potential LeBron return.

News has already leaked that the team is scouring the collegiate ranks for its next head coach — a smart move to entice LeBron, who can basically coach himself at this point the way Peyton Manning can move an offense downfield. This could culminate in a lineup that goes Irving-Wiggins-LeBron-Tristan Thompson-Varejao (or a Center To Be Named Later), with Waiters as the sixth man. Are you not entertained?

The chances of all this coming to pass are greater than the sub-two percent chances the Cavaliers inherited Tuesday night, but how much so is anybody’s guess. First, there will be a coach, then a pick, then free agency. And only then will we know the odds of success behind this, the Cavs’ latest best chance to rise from the NBA’s middle class and stand with some prestige. You have to like their odds this time because as the draft lottery has shown us, everything always seems to work out for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Well, until it doesn’t.