We’re beginning our end-of-season review series for the Cleveland Cavaliers. This time, we’re going to go with the report card format.

As is the case with our postgame report cards, a “B” grade represents a player or group meeting their standards.

We’ll start with Koby Altman and the front office.

Key moves

• Traded Isaac Okoro for Lonzo Ball.
• Didn’t re-sign Ty Jerome
• Re-signed Sam Merrill
• Signed Thomas Bryant
• Signed Larry Nance Jr.
• Drafted Tyrese Proctor
• Traded De’Andre Hunter for Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis
• Traded Darius Garland for James Harden

The Cavs had more postseason success this year than they have at any point since LeBron James left for Los Angeles. That’s an accomplishment.

The front office played a large role in that happening. They reshaped the roster at the deadline to one that could win multiple playoff rounds. However, that overhaul was only needed because of their missteps over the last few years. Additionally, the runway for success has been significantly shortened. They deserve criticism for that.

In many ways, the Cavs tried to build a roster to compete against the 2025 Indiana Pacers — a team they would never face again.

The plan last offseason was to increase their versatility at the expense of specialty players like Okoro and Jerome. This trade-off took away some of the intangibles that made the previous group special.

They weren’t the free-flowing motion offense that defined the 64-win version. Instead, they were mostly a jump shooting team that had very few on-ball playmakers. The Cavs didn’t lose their free-flowing offensive identity after the Garland trade — as he suggested last week — they simply never established it at all this year.

This season’s plan fell apart shortly after takeoff. Ball, Nance, and Bryant didn’t provide much versatility, with the main failure being Ball.

Injuries zapped Ball of being a productive player at all. He wasn’t able to get into the paint, and the outside shot abandoned him. Additionally, the defensive versatility wasn’t there due to his diminished lateral quickness. In the end, this all led to Ball not even being in the league by the end of the season.

These failed acquisitions, in addition to the team’s overall injuries, exposed the lack of playable depth during the regular season.

The front office made the best of a bad situation at the deadline. However, it was a mess they created over the past several years.

The Cavs made the wrong bet on Hunter at the previous deadline. He was supposed to solve the team’s ongoing issue at the wing and did for a short time, but it didn’t carry over to this year.

Hunter was bad this season for the Cavs. Fourteen points per game on .423/.308/.869 shooting splits isn’t worth $21.6 million for a team in the second apron. This is in addition to Hunter providing little to no value on the defensive end. Saving some money while finding much-needed depth was the right thing to do, but it was more of a band-aid than a solution to the real issue.

Now, they’re left in a worse spot on the wing than they were before the initial Hunter deal. The Cavs have fewer assets and are at risk of losing Dean Wade, their only truly capable wing defender, in free agency. There are limited avenues to improve on the wing outside of trading a member of the core four, or hoping LeBron decides to come home in free agency for less money than he’s worth.

The Harden trade was a somewhat similar situation.

The real issue was that this version of Garland isn’t worth a max contract based on how he’s looked after the toe injury. But even before the injury, there were reasons to be skeptical of his fit next to Donovan Mitchell well before this past trade deadline.

The front office continually dug its heels in with the previous core four group, despite warning signs that the talent didn’t mesh. Instead of moving Garland when he had more value — as he did in 2024 — they were forced to trade a hobbled version in addition to a second-round pick just to bring back a 36-year-old Harden.

On their own, none of the moves that the front office made this season were indefensible. Trading Okoro for Ball was a worthwhile gamble at the time, not re-signing Jerome made sense, and the moves at the deadline were correct in the moment. Only when you zoom out do the issues become clear.

The Cavs have the highest-paid team in the league, and still have a lot of the same issues that have haunted them each of their past postseason runs, despite winning three more playoff games this year. Except now, they have far fewer avenues to improve, and they have a much more condensed runway to compete.

Realistically, this group has two more years to be a threat to win the conference. That’s a timeline they imposed on themselves. And figuring out how to make the leap is harder now than ever.

The mistakes of the past caught up to the Cavs this year and could haunt them for the remainder of this era unless something drastically changes.

Grade: C-