Cleveland Cavaliers: 3 Players That Disappointed This Season

Ever since LeBron James left for LA, the Cavaliers knew they were in for a pretty rough ride in the season that followed. And expectedly so, it was as tragic as many so predicted.

Cleveland went from being the Eastern Conference Champions last year to finishing as the second worst team on the East standings behind the New York Knicks this year. They ended their 2018-19 campaign with a miserable 19-63(0.263) win-loss record, an insurmountable 41 games behind the East leader in the Bucks.

In his last year with the Cavaliers, LeBron dragged a playoff-inexperienced roster all the way to the NBA Finals and that was one herculean task that nobody ever takes much cognisance of. Remove Bron from the equation and the wreckage that was the Cavs' most recent season, is all that remains.

Kevin Love returned for 18 games during the latter part of the season and helped his team to a 7-11 record in that period. Given they won just 19 games all year, Love's contribution was instrumental, however, it was too little too late. That tells us a lot about the incompetence of the support crew in terms of winning games.

Let's take a look at the three most disappointing individual performances for the Cavaliers during the lowly 2018-19 regular season.

#1 Cedi Osman

Cedi Osman was a second round pick by the T-Wolves back in 2015.

The 2015 Turkish Cup winner plays small forward for the wine-n-gold. Osman had his flashes of brilliance under James' leadership. But when he left, his absence required someone to step up and fill the void.

Unfortunately, Cedi could not be that person.

The Turkish baller played the most minutes this year (32.2) of any Cavs player but couldn't even score at least 14 points per game. Coupled with averages of 4.7 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game, the 23-year-old was not the force his teammates and coaching staff expected him to be. He shot 42% from the field and less than 34% from downtown, attempting nearly five three-pointers every game.

#2 Larry Nance Jr.

Larry Nance Jr. started his NBA career as a Laker.

After being traded to the LeBron-led Cavs side, Larry was part of the rollercoaster ride to the Finals in his very first year in Cleveland. However, what has followed ever since is clearly not what he'd have planned looking forward.

In the 67 games he played this season, he started in 30 of them and ended up averaging 9.4 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. With a miserable 71% conversion from the free-throw line he didn't really have much of an impact on the proceedings down in Cleveland all year. Despite having played over 27 minutes per game, he couldn't fill in the vacant spot for Love and was ineffective in scoring at regular intervals as well on defense.

Nance had signed a four-year, $44.8 million contract extension with the Cavs back in October of 2018, and it looks like the franchise might be reconsidering shelling all that money out for unimpressive returns.

#3 David Nwaba

David Nwaba went undrafted back in 2016.

After signing a 1-year, $1.5 million dollar contract with the Cavaliers in September of 2018, Nwaba finally found a home in the city of Cleveland.

During his time in Chicago last season, David scored a career-high 8 points per game along with 5 rebounds as well. When he brought his talents to the Cavs side, he wasn't as productive as was projected in the offseason. Retrospectively, he had recorded his career-high score of 21 points in February of 2018, but could only manage a little over 6 points on an average over the 51 games he played in wine-n-gold.

He got nearly 20 minuets of court-time and even started 14 of his games for the Cavs. However, in the gaping absence of both LeBron and Love, there were ample opportunities that the 26-year-old were not able to take advantage of.