ATLANTA — The chaos in Cleveland comes off as both familiar and distant to Heat forward Udonis Haslem.
His team has been where the Cavaliers currently stand, adjusting to life without LeBron James.
But his team also never succumbed to the disarray that has seen one coach in Cleveland fired after six games and another uncertain about whether he wants the promotion.
“Me and D-Wade had that conversation actually the other day,” Haslem said of the turmoil of Cleveland’s post-LeBron existence.
When James first left in 2010, the Cavaliers would go on to have the NBA’s worst combined record over the following four seasons, until his return from the Heat in 2014.
This time, in the first two weeks of the season the Cavaliers benched their veterans to go with youth, went back to their veterans, fired their coach, and then told the veterans they again would have to give way to the long view.
The Heat, by contrast, remained in the playoff chase the season following James’ departure and then moved within one game of the conference finals the next season.
“We didn’t, obviously, crumble when LeBron walked away,” Haslem said. “And that does say a lot about the franchise.”
That doesn’t mean there weren’t parallels. Both teams somewhat mortgaged their futures amid final desperate acts to encourage James to stay.
For Cleveland, it was last season’s trades for George Hill, Jordan Clarkson and Rodney Hood.
With the Heat, it was the drafting of Shabazz Napier and the signings of Josh McRoberts and Danny Granger.
The difference is that Cleveland went all in earlier, at the February trading deadline.
For the Heat, the final desperate acts came in June and July, leaving less time to sort out the future.
To the Cavaliers’ credit, they at least approached the draft with an awareness of a rebuild, with the selection of Alabama guard Collin Sexton, who figures to have a more enduring future in Cleveland than Napier had in Miami.
Now it appears, with Kevin Love sidelined, there will be another deep dive into the lottery, which during the previous down cycle rewarded the Cavaliers with three No. 1 overall selections, including the one utilized on Kyrie Irving and the pick dealt for Love.
All of which should have made the transitions easier for Cleveland.
But didn’t.
“It does say a lot about the guys that are here currently and the guys up in the front office and the decisions that were made to keep this franchise in the running for the playoffs and being a competitive franchise regardless of losing the best player in the world,” Haslem said.
There were times when Haslem considered joining James in Cleveland, just as former Heat championship teammates James Jones, Mike Miller, Chris Andersen, briefly, Wade did.
Instead, he opted for stability.
“It’s all I know. So I don’t know the chaos. I know the grass isn’t always greener on the other side,” Haslem said. “So for every complaint I could have, I have three, four, five reasons to be thankful.”
To Haslem, the difference is in the Heat’s developmental program, that even during the good times the team was taking a long view on the practice court, in the G League.
“At the end of the day,” Haslem said, “I believe in the culture. I believe in the system, if you look at Derrick Jones, if you look at Tyler (Johnson), if you look at myself.”
Haslem said he appreciates what those left behind in Cleveland are enduring, including Heat 2006 championship teammate James Posey, now a Cavaliers assistant coach.
But he also appreciates that there, at worst, has been hope for the Heat in each of those five post-LeBron seasons, that management never tossed the roster aside in hopes of lottery riches.
“So we definitely recovered well,” he said. “And when you look at it on the other side and you see Cleveland, you realize how fortunate we were to recover the way we did.”
