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Team Profile
Cleveland Cavaliers: Five things you need to know
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Four Australians have played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, from a championship ring to 58 seconds.
- Sydneysider Tyrese Proctor is contracted to Cleveland through 2029 on a rookie deal.
- Matthew Dellavedova won the 2016 championship, the only title in Cavaliers history.
- Andrew Bogut's entire Cavaliers career lasted 58 seconds before he broke his leg.
Cleveland has handed a uniform to four Australians, and the results could not be further apart.
One left with a championship ring. One left with 58 seconds of court time and a fractured tibia.
The newest is Tyrese Proctor, the Sydney-born guard taken 49th overall out of Duke in June 2025 and signed through 2029 – the only Australian currently on the Cavaliers' books, and the latest name on a list that runs from a cult hero to a cautionary tale.
It suits the franchise. For a club founded in 1970, the Cavaliers have had the most famous player of his generation, two separate LeBron James eras, and one of the great comebacks in championship history – and exactly one title to show for it.
Australians who have played for the Cleveland Cavaliers
Four Australians have worn a Cavaliers uniform, and their careers could hardly be more different.
Tyrese Proctor is the current one. Drafted 49th overall out of Duke in June 2025, the Sydney-born guard is signed through 2029 on a four-year rookie deal worth USD $2.15M in 2026-27, making him the only Australian presently on Cleveland's books.
Matthew Dellavedova is the most significant, and it is not close. Undrafted out of Saint Mary's in 2013, he earned a roster spot on the pre-LeBron-return Cavaliers and became a cult figure in Cleveland for exactly the qualities that never show up in a box score. His defining stretch came in the 2015 NBA Finals, when Kyrie Irving's injury pushed him into the starting lineup against the Golden State Warriors and he produced a 20-point Game 3. A year later he was a rotation guard on the 2016 championship team. He returned to the club in a three-team trade in December 2018 and stayed until 2021, giving him two separate spells in Cleveland before he came home to the NBL.
Luke Travers was selected 56th overall by the Cavaliers in the 2022 NBA Draft. The forward from Perth returned to Australia with the Wildcats and Melbourne United before signing his first two-way contract with Cleveland in August 2024. He made his NBA debut on November 1, 2024 against Orlando, scoring four points with two rebounds, two assists and a block in a 120-109 win. Travers played 12 games for the Cavaliers in 2024-25 and another 12 in 2025-26, alongside a G League run with the Cleveland Charge, before being waived on 1 February 2026 to clear roster space for Dennis Schröder and Keon Ellis.
Andrew Bogut has the shortest and cruellest chapter. The 2005 No.1 overall pick signed with the defending champions in March 2017, chasing a ring alongside LeBron James. He fractured his left tibia 58 seconds into his debut on 6 March 2017 and never played another minute for the club.
One left with a championship. One left with 24 games. One left with 58 seconds. One is still there.
2026-27 team snapshot
The Cavaliers enter the new season with a retooled backcourt and an obvious piece of unfinished business.
Cleveland finished the 2025-26 regular season 52-30, fourth in the Eastern Conference, under head coach Kenny Atkinson. That was a step back from the 64-18 of the year before – the second-best record in franchise history – but the postseason went considerably further.
The Cavaliers beat Toronto in seven games in the first round, then overcame a 2-0 series deficit against the top-seeded Detroit Pistons to win the semifinal in seven. It took them to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2018, where the New York Knicks swept them 4-0 on the way to ending their own 53-year title drought.
The roster looks different because of one February trade. On 4 February 2026, Cleveland sent Darius Garland and a 2026 second-round pick to the LA Clippers for James Harden, ending the Garland–Donovan Mitchell backcourt pairing that had defined the previous four seasons.
Mitchell remains the leading scorer. Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen still anchor one of the league's better defensive frontcourts. Max Strus, Sam Merrill and Schröder provide the shooting and ball-handling around them, with Jaylon Tyson and Australian guard Tyrese Proctor developing behind.
The 2026 offseason has been about subtraction. Larry Nance Jr. left for Indiana, Keon Ellis signed with Brooklyn and Dean Wade joined Philadelphia, all in free agency. Cleveland added guard Meleek Thomas in the draft.
Why the Cavaliers matter
Every NBA franchise has a relationship with its city. Few are as literal as this one.
Cleveland is a city defined in sporting terms by a 52-year championship drought across three professional teams, and by the fact that the man who ended it was born 60 kilometres down the road in Akron.
The Cavaliers are not a dynasty. They are a franchise that has twice been the centre of the basketball world and twice had it taken away – and whose one title arrived in the most improbable circumstances available.
That is why they matter. Not sustained excellence, but the sharpest peaks and the deepest troughs in the league.
The Miracle of Richfield
The Cavaliers spent their first five seasons as an expansion team learning how to lose.
Founded in 1970 and coached by Bill Fitch, they won 15 games in their first season. Then came 1975-76.
Cleveland won the Central Division, reached the playoffs for the first time and beat the Washington Bullets in a seven-game series decided by a string of last-second finishes at the Richfield Coliseum. The noise those crowds generated gave the run its name: the Miracle of Richfield.
The Cavaliers lost the Eastern Conference Finals to the Boston Celtics, but the franchise had its first defining memory.
Mark Price, Brad Daugherty and the team Michael Jordan broke
The late 1980s produced the best Cavaliers team of the pre-LeBron era, and one of the most painful moments in franchise history.
Built around point guard Mark Price, centre Brad Daugherty, forward Larry Nance and wing Ron Harper, and coached by Lenny Wilkens, Cleveland became a genuine Eastern Conference contender.
Then, in the deciding game of the 1989 first-round series, Michael Jordan rose over Craig Ehlo at the buzzer and hit the shot still known simply as The Shot.
That team never got past the Chicago Bulls. It remains the great what-if of Cavaliers history.
LeBron James, the hometown pick
In 2003 the Cavaliers won the draft lottery and selected an 18-year-old from Akron.
The impact was immediate and total. LeBron James dragged a modest roster to the 2007 NBA Finals, where the San Antonio Spurs swept them, and turned Cleveland into appointment viewing for seven seasons.
In 2010 he announced on live television that he was taking his talents to South Beach. The reaction in Cleveland was not gentle.
The return, and the 3-1 comeback
James came home in 2014, and the franchise reached four consecutive NBA Finals.
The middle one is the reason the Cavaliers have a banner.
In 2016 Cleveland faced a Golden State Warriors team that had just gone 73-9, the best regular season in NBA history, and fell behind 3-1 in the Finals. No team had recovered from that deficit in a championship series before.
The Cavaliers won Game 5 in Oakland, Game 6 at home, then Game 7 on the road, 93-89, on the back of LeBron James's chase-down block on Andre Iguodala and Kyrie Irving's three over Stephen Curry with 53 seconds left.
Cleveland's 52-year wait was over. Dellavedova was on that roster.
After LeBron: the Mitchell era
James left again in 2018, and the Cavaliers fell to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
The rebuild that followed produced Darius Garland and Evan Mobley through the draft, Jarrett Allen through a trade, and in 2022 the arrival of Donovan Mitchell from Utah, which turned a young roster into a playoff team almost overnight.
Under Kenny Atkinson, that group won 64 games in 2024-25 and reached the Conference Finals in 2026. It has not yet reached a Finals. That remains the gap between this era and the last one.
The greatest Cavaliers of all time
LeBron James is the franchise's all-time leading scorer and the only player to deliver it a championship. Mark Price remains its finest pure shooter and the standard for Cavaliers point guards. Brad Daugherty was the No.1 pick who gave the late-1980s teams their spine, and Larry Nance their athleticism.
Zydrunas Ilgauskas played more games for the club than anyone. Kyrie Irving hit the biggest shot in its history. Donovan Mitchell is the most productive scorer of the current era, and Evan Mobley its most important defender.
Five Fast Facts
- The Cavaliers have won one NBA championship, in 2016, and remain the only team to recover from 3-1 down in the NBA Finals.
- That title ended a 52-year championship drought across all three of Cleveland's major professional teams.
- Four Australians have played for the franchise: Tyrese Proctor, Matthew Dellavedova, Luke Travers and Andrew Bogut.
- Andrew Bogut's Cavaliers career lasted 58 seconds before he fractured his tibia.
- The 64-18 record of 2024-25 was the second-best in franchise history.
Historical Timeline
- 1970: Franchise founded as an NBA expansion team.
- 1976: The Miracle of Richfield delivers a first playoff run and a Central Division title.
- 1989: Michael Jordan's "The Shot" eliminates Cleveland in the first round.
- 2003: LeBron James selected first overall out of Akron.
- 2007: First NBA Finals appearance, swept by San Antonio.
- 2010: James leaves for Miami in "The Decision".
- 2013: Matthew Dellavedova signs as an undrafted rookie.
- 2014: James returns to Cleveland.
- 2016: Cavaliers overcome a 3-1 Finals deficit against a 73-9 Warriors team to win the title.
- 2017: Andrew Bogut breaks his leg 58 seconds into his Cavaliers debut.
- 2022: Donovan Mitchell arrives from Utah; Luke Travers drafted 56th overall.
- 2025: Tyrese Proctor drafted 49th overall out of Duke.
- 2026: Darius Garland traded for James Harden; Cleveland reaches the Eastern Conference Finals and is swept by the Knicks.
Looking ahead
The Cavaliers have spent four seasons building one of the East's best regular-season teams and have now finally converted it into a Conference Finals appearance – then been swept once they got there.
Harden replaces Garland's shot creation with a different kind of playmaking, and at 36 he narrows the window rather than widening it. Mobley and Allen give Atkinson a defensive base most contenders would want. Mitchell, at his peak, remains the reason to believe.
For Australian fans, the long view sits further down the roster. Proctor is signed through 2029 on a team that expects to be competing for as long as that contract runs.
The history of this franchise says the swing between contention and irrelevance can be polar in both directions. What it also says is that when Cleveland does break through, it does so in a way nobody forgets.
