CLEVELAND -- After not playing a game for more than a week during the All-Star break -- as lengthy a hiatus as the NBA schedule allows unless it's time for your team to be Gone Fishin' -- everything came mighty quickly for the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday.
Somehow the Cavs wedged in a shootaround, a game and a trade deadline that seemed to be hovering over the team for months as the final lifeline that general manager David Griffin could use to try to get his squad up to speed with the league's other top contenders.
Cleveland wasn't the only team to pull off such a compressed schedule -- their opponent, the Chicago Bulls, had to, as well as the rest of the association -- but there felt something particularly high-stakes about the Cavs' day.
As last year's runner-up in the Finals, everything the Cavs became about this year was figuring out how to fill in that invisible gap that could take them from being second best to champion. The question coming into Thursday's deadline was: Just how far off course did Cleveland view itself?
The Cavs already made one dramatic move this season, firing coach David Blatt despite a 30-11 record that was tops in the East. Would they feel the need to make another one, breaking up their core rotation that led them to that mark? No less than a third of the roster was involved in trade rumors, starting with a key cog in Kevin Love and including the likes of Iman Shumpert, Timofey Mozgov, Anderson Varejao and Mo Williams.
Ultimately, the Cavs settled on a relatively minor transaction that saved them major money (more than $10 million in salary and luxury taxes) and added the additional shooter they coveted. Out the door went popular locker room guys Varejao and Jared Cunningham (along with a protected 2018 first-round pick) and in came Channing Frye -- a 6-foot-11, stretch-4 who shoots the 3-pointer at an admirable rate (38.7 percent for his career).
Everything went so quickly that Griffin was still finishing the trade calls with Orlando and Portland -- the other two teams involved in the deal -- when he was supposed to start his pregame news conference, delaying the start of it close to 10 minutes.
Everything went so quickly that Varejao and Cunningham's player portraits were still hanging in the hallway next to the Cavs' locker room come tipoff.
Everything went so quickly that there was little time for it to sink in that, yes, indeed, this is pretty much the final version of your 2015-16 Cavaliers.
Mind you, they do have two open roster spots and they could feasibly fill one with one of the top-tier buyout candidates (think Boston's David Lee or Minnesota's Kevin Martin -- as I previously reported, the Cavs don't think Joe Johnson is going anywhere). But those names, like Frye, don't move the needle much. Griffin described Frye as a “complementary player,” and coach Ty Lue admitted, “I really don't have a vision yet,” for how he was going to use him.
Basically, all of this is to say that the Cavs aren't going to have some trade deadline deal or buyout bargain come in and save the day and suddenly catapult them ahead of Golden State or San Antonio.
They got to work with what they got. And Thursday's 106-95 win over the Bulls was a good first step toward starting to get more out of their existing group. Yes, Chicago was without Jimmy Butler and yes, the Bulls mostly erased the Cavs' early 17-point, leaving Cleveland to have to build back a separate 20-point cushion in the second half, but it was a brand of basketball you could believe in.
The Cavs played with pace, but not out of control (only 10 turnovers). They took open shots, but didn't always settle for the 3 (they only launched 24 attempts from deep). They played to their strengths (LeBron James had 25 points on 19 shots, Kyrie Irving had 19 on 18 shots) but still spread the ball (half of their 42 made field goals were assisted, compared to Chicago having just 12 assists on 37 makes). Love looked liberated (15 points and 15 rebounds) and even joked to reporters afterward, “The fact is, you guys are stuck with me.” Tristan Thompson and Mozgov took it to Chicago's sizable front line, combining for 27 points, 17 rebounds, three steals and six blocks.
The most encouraging part of it all was their defense, which held the Bulls to 95 points on just 39.8 percent shooting and acing the No. 1 thing Lue was harping on coming out of the break.
“I just like our physicality,” Lue said. “I thought we were physical at every position and that's what set the tone for us early. If we can play like that every night, I like our chances.”
That's what this season is supposed to be for the Cavs: a chance of a lifetime -- an opportunity to eradicate a half-century-long championship drought and free a suffering city from generations of pro sports torture.
Maybe things will start to slow down again and the Cavs will take the time to realize the true value in what they already have in each other.