During LeBron James‘ final season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, they made a last-ditch effort to compete by adding Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose to the roster. Of course, the experiment ended up being a total failure, and former Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue explained why in a recent episode of “Club Shay Shay.”
“LeBron gave them the leeway to do whatever they want,” Lue said. “But I just think trying to figure it out, playing with each other, the spacing, the shooting, and all those components played a factor. It just wasn’t a good fit. They could still play, it just wasn’t a good fit basketball-wise. That’s just kinda how it didn’t work. But if I had a little bit more time, I would have been able to figure it out.”
LeBron came back to Cleveland after a four-year stint with the Miami Heat, where he won back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013. It was a major victory for the Cavaliers, instantly putting them back into the championship picture.
Unfortunately, by LeBron’s third summer back in Cleveland (2017), the team was in decline and struggling to keep up with its competitors. Kyrie Irving was already gone, Kevin Love was battling injuries, and the Warriors were an obstacle they couldn’t hope to overcome. The pressure was real, and the Cavaliers were failing to live up to King James’ standards.
In response, the Cavaliers decided to bolster the roster with trusted veterans and former All-Stars like Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade. While the fans were excited to see LeBron reunite with his former Heat teammate, things didn’t turn out as they hoped.
Leading up to the 2018 deadline, the Cavs were just 31-22 with a team that just clearly didn’t work. Wade was putting up a career-low 11.2 points per game on 45.5% shooting. Meanwhile, Derrick Rose was averaging just 9.8 points and 1.6 assists per game on just 43.9% shooting in just 16 games.
In the end, the Cavaliers moved on from both Wade and Rose after just half a season. In a series of moves, GM Koby Altman traded them both (along with Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Channing Frye, and Iman Shumpert) to bring in George Hill, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson, and Larry Nance Jr. Cleveland went on to win 50 games in the East before making a Finals run that year and losing to the Warriors in a 4-0 sweep.
With his second straight Finals loss, James elected to try his luck in Los Angeles, and the rest is history. He never teamed up with Wade again, and Rose would bounce around to different teams before his retirement.
Despite their collective accolades, the James, Wade, and Rose trio just didn’t work for a multitude of reasons. Between bad spacing, inconsistent play, and a poor defensive performance (they finished 29th out of 30 on that end), they were never true contenders that year, and it’s probably why the experiment didn’t even last a full season.
While Tyronn Lue believes Wade and Rose could have made an impact, he wasn’t given enough time to see it through, and we’ll never know if the Cavs could have recovered from their rough start.
