INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- LeBron James has already recruited two former members of “The Heatles” -- Mike Miller and James Jones -- to Cleveland. But it looks like he’ll have to hold off on helping to facilitate any other moves to get more of the band back together.
The Cleveland Cavaliers announced Saturday that they waived forward Shane Edwards, bringing their roster size to the league maximum of 15.
Cavs coach David Blatt made it sound like that’s how the roster would stand going into opening night against the New York Knicks.
"As of right now, yes, this is our roster,” Blatt said after practice Saturday.
That of course means that one notable former Miami Heat teammate of James, Ray Allen, won’t be joining the Cavs in the next five days before the season starts.
Allen has long been rumored to be making the trek from South Beach to northeast Ohio eventually, the most recent round popping up in early October that was summarily discredited by Allen’s agent, Jim Tanner, and Allen himself on Instagram.
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Cleveland has 12 guaranteed contracts on the books, plus forward Lou Amundson, point guard A.J. Price and rookie center Alex Kirk rounding out the group. One of those three would need to be scuttled to make room for the league’s all-time leader in 3-pointers should the rumored reunion between James and Allen ever come to fruition.
Of course, Allen’s biggest strength, outside shooting, has been a point of contention during training camp for the Cavs already.
Cleveland averaged 27.7 3-point attempts in its seven exhibition games, causing Blatt to say on more than one occasion that his team was settling too often from the perimeter.
One of the players on the Cavs launching the most frequently from beyond the arc was Kevin Love. While Love shot a quality percentage (43.5) on those 3s, he felt that too many of his overall looks were coming from deep. Last season, Love averaged 18.5 shots per game and out of those shots, 35.5 percent were 3-point attempts. In six preseason games with Cleveland, Love averaged only 9.0 shots with a far greater portion of them (42.6 percent) coming from downtown.
Love piped up about the disparity, telling Cleveland.com, “My entire life I've played the game from inside-out. So the more touches I can get inside to get myself going, the better. I'm not accustomed to starting out a game shooting a three, so it's just something that I see.”
James took note of Love’s comments, saying after practice Friday that, “I think we’re all going to go through an adjustment getting less touches” and adding, “he will get his touches, we need him to get his touches in order for us to be successful. Both inside and outside.”
James also said that he believed what Love said was “blown out of proportion,” but Blatt’s reaction to them suggest that Love drawing attention to the issue through the media served a purpose.
Love said that Blatt is using the week of practice the Cavs have between their last preseason game and their season opener against the Knicks to address his concerns about the offense.
“It’s been great putting in a lot of new sets in today, ones that I’ve been familiar with in the past,” Love said Saturday.
“Just make a conscious effort to get down there,” he continued. “I think more than anything that was my mindset of just making basketball plays. For me, that’s always started from the inside out. That’s really what I was trying to get across. That’s something that even in putting in the new plays today, the last couple days, something that we’ve spoken about. I think in the preseason we did shoot a lot of 3s but a lot of those shots are there just because of how well we space the floor. So, it’s just something that I mentioned. It’s going to take us a little while to look for different things out there, but we’re going to try to balance out the mismatches and go with our strengths.”