The hysteria in this thread is pretty amusing...
The Cavs are 20-10 against the Eastern conference, while the 1st seed Celtics are 22-9...
The Cavs have been playing without their starting point-guard all season and are just implementing him now...
If Isaiah Thomas could score 29 ppg and drag his team to the ECF playing with Kelly Olynyk and Amir Johnson, I think he'll probably be ok playing with Kevin Love and the best player in the world Lebron James.
Sheesh...
Yeah, there's this thing called "context" that matters.
Record against top 7 teams in the league (GS, Boston, Houston, Toronto, San Antonio, Minnesota, Cleveland):
Cavs - 1-6
Celtics - 5-1
Granted, I will say that only 2 of their games were at home where 5 of ours were at home, but this has largely been the M.O. of the Cavs this season, especially their winning streak - beat the bad teams to better the record and lose to the good teams. They really don't have any notable wins against good teams this year. Their lone win against a top opponent was us on opening night, which given the circumstances of that game doesn't really count in my mind.
As for the IT comment, it's their defense that has been suffering, which IT will only make worse. He'll probably make their offense better, but how much that will be neutralized by his defensive deficiencies is yet to be seen.
Stop being so logical when responding to the Cleveland apologists
If context is what matters, recall that this same discussion has been had each of the past few seasons. Yet the Cavs reached the Finals every one of them. I'd argue it's less logical to place more weight on several months of data versus several years of data. But hey, knock yourself out.
You realize your argument is self-refuting, right? With context mattering, the fact that the context of this season is much, much different than the last several seasons means your argument makes no sense and refutes itself.
1) No Kyrie --> Major Change in Context
2) Implementing two new starters into the equation --> Major Change in Context
3) Implementing your new second/third best player that is heavily ball-dominant into your starting lineup halfway into the season --> Major Change in Context
4) Figuring out how to deal with IT being a walking mismatch defensively that will be exploited all playoffs long, as Westbrook did today --> Major Change in Context
5) Somehow getting an even older team this year that is even worse defensively --> Major Change in Context
And that's beside the point that this whole narrative of "they always do this" is a revamped version of the appeal to tradition logical fallacy.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot the other change in context of Lue inexplicably changing the starting lineup to move Love to the 5 to fit Crowder in. That's yet another change making these analog arguments fallacious and irrelevant.
EDIT EDIT: Oh, and that's also forgetting to consider the fact that the East is MUCH, MUCH better this season with several legit contenders for the Eastern crown (Boston, Toronto, Cleveland) and several faux contenders that will nonetheless be tough outs in the playoffs (Milwaukee, Washington, Miami).