Cleveland Cavaliers

It's been a decade since the Cavaliers won the NBA Draft Lottery and LeBron James promised to "light up Cleveland like Vegas." In case you haven't noticed, it didn't work out that way.

With the lottery coming on Tuesday and the draft next month, fans are looking for some veteran help for the 2013-14 Cavaliers.

I love the NBA Draft. The draft and the time leading up to it are incredibly fun, even though I'd rather be watching my team in the playoffs instead of watching prospects from college. Regardless, it's something that I really enjoy and the next 5 weeks or so are going to be pretty interesting to see what plays out. This week, Sam Vecenie and I fired up the Skype machine and discussed the prospects in the upcoming draft. We certainly disagreed on several players and engaged in some mild debate. I changed his mind on a few guys and he changed my mind about others. What we came up with is a Big Board of what we think are the top 30 prospects in the draft. Some important points: This is not a mock draft. This is not team specific. This is purely our ranking of the top prospects as prospects. It has nothing to do with what teams will be drafting them and it has nothing to do with the Cavaliers. We will put together a community Big Board of prospects specific to the Cavaliers at a later date. Actually, you will put that together -- I'll set it up so we have a vote to determine the top prospects that we want for the Cavs. But we'll do that a bit later. Follow @ConradKazNBA Follow @Sam_Vecenie The NBA Draft Combine was this past week and we got some measurements on guys that might have changed our minds a little bit. Some guys were bigger than we expected while others were quite a bit smaller than we had hoped. I like to think that we aren't too reactive with regards to the combine, but it certainly did factor into a few of our decisions. We ranked them purely 1 to 30, but we also broke it up into tiers. This is how we thought about the tiers: the order of players in a given tier is more or less interchangeable. They're intended to give you an idea of what we think are similar or comparable prospects. It gets tricky when comparing guards to centers, but we did the best we could. There's clearly a lot of time before the actual draft, so our rankings may go through a few updates and changes as we get closer and closer. But for now, here's our Top 30. I didn't write comments about every player, but I gave you some thoughts about some of the more interesting or difficult rankings that we have. Tier 1 1. Nerlens Noel, Kentucky Noel is in a tier all by himself. Sam and I agreed that he's easily the best prospect in the draft and the vast majority of teams would take him first overall. It's a little weird because he's not an absolute lock to go first. Some of the guys in the next tier could go first, but as far as pure prospects go, Nerlens is the best. Tier 2 2. Ben McLemore, Kansas 3. Trey Burke, Michigan Burke is really the only guy other than Noel that I could see going first overall. He was clearly the best player in college basketball this past season and had better than expected measurements at the combine. Some people thought he wouldn't even be 6-foot. He measured at about 6'1.5" and had a wingspan of over 6'5". That's big enough for him to be considered first overall. I wouldn't be shocked to see the Orlando Magic take him if they get the first pick. But again, this isn't a mock draft and we determined that Noel and McLemore are still better prospects. 4. Otto Porter, Georgetown 5. Anthony Bennett, UNLV 6. Alex Len, Maryland This tier really boils down to: "could you see this player going 2nd overall?" I think the answer is a resounding YES on all of these players, so that's why they are all grouped together. Tier 3 7. Victor Oladipo, Indiana He's easily the best 6'5" small forward in the draft. (I joke because I care, David.) 8. Cody Zeller, Indiana Zeller is one of those guys that really benefited from the combine. He tested extremely well athletically and measured quite well too. Sam was working on placing him 5-7 spots lower than this before we found out about those numbers. It might be an overreaction on our part, but we basically determined that those numbers mean he has a g

Most mock drafts have the Cavs, prior to Tuesday's draft lottery, picking Georgetown small forward Porter if their first pick stays at No. 3. Cavs also have the 19th pick in the first round.

As the measurements of this year's top draft prospects emerged from the NBA combine, I started wondering how each prospect compared to the current members of the Cleveland Cavaliers. In order to find those answers, I searched through the wealth of historical data provided by DraftExpress.com. I was unable to locate measurements for Anderson Vareajo, C.J. Miles, Mo Speights or Daniel Gibson. I did find the predraft measurements for Tyler Zeller, Tristan Thompson, Dion Waiters, Wayne Ellington, Kyrie Irving, Shaun Livingston, Alonzo Gee and Omri Casspi. I compared those eight Cavaliers to the top-rated big man, shooting guard, point guard and small forward on most people's boards by selecting Nerlens Noel, Ben McLemore, Trey Burke and Otto Porter, respectively. I then made the following chart in excel to answer my initial question. Data gathered above via DraftExpress.com For more of a power forward comp, I tried using Anthony Bennett. He measured 6'7" with shoes, weighed 239 points and has a 7'1" wingspan but he wasn't measured in the other three areas. As far as Bennett is concerned, though, he weighs 12 pounds more than Thompson did at the combine and is almost two inches shorter. Zeller, meanwhile, weighed 41 pounds more than Noel in case you were wondering. Ben McLemore is about an inch taller than Waiters and in a little better combine shape from a body fat perspective. Trey Burke is not as tall as Irving and doesn't weigh as much as Kyrie did either, which suprised me for some reason. Otto Porter's 7'1.5" wingspan was pretty surprising too in the sense that he's not only longer than Alonzo Gee, he also has a longer wingspan than both Thompson and Zeller. Or is it wider? Either way, Porter has some freaky measurements for a small forward.

"Sherwin-Williams really wanted us to help celebrate the city and its hometown with something that really encapsulates all of the vibrancy and energy we have downtown," said Lisa Zandy, senior account supervisor for the Sherwin-Williams account at The Adcom Group.

Cavaliers GM Chris Grant doesn't need the whole 2013 draft class to be strong -- just the players he selects.

The Memphis Grizzlies, for years one of the most depressing franchises in professional sports, are now one series victory away from the NBA Finals. They play in a tiny market. They don't have a conventional superstar, though try and tell me Marc Gasol isn't one. They have made controversial moves. They have moves that have gotten them absolutely killed by the media. They have made moves that should have been crippling to their franchise. But again, they stand four wins away from winning a brutal conference. How did this happen, and what does it mean? They have simply been lucky There is something to this. This theory is basically that they really aren't that good of a team, and have been blessed by teams that may have been superior had they been at full strength. The Los Angeles Clippers struggled with Blake Griffin hobbled; when he was healthier early in the series the Clippers jumped to a 2-0 series lead. Once past the Clippers they rolled through an Oklahoma City Thunder team missing one of the top 10 players in the world, and even without him each contest was quite close. Perhaps Russell Westbrook was the difference. I don't know how much stake to put in this; I think Memphis would have had a pretty good chance to beat the Thunder even with Westbrook with how good their defense is. Even if they would have been beaten handily, though, they are a small market team in the Western Conference who would have been right there with teams featuring Chris Paul and Kevin Durant. They have built something impressive down in Memphis, and its worth analyzing. They have taken risks This is an understatement. They have made some hard choices, some of which have worked out splendidly, and some which should have been disastrous. First, the impossible to defend: General Manager Chris Wallace drafted Hasheem Thabeet and traded Kevin Love for OJ Mayo. They received no value for Kevin Love, a key member of the United States Olympic team, and Thabeet washed out of Memphis pretty quickly. They gave Tony Allen a three year contract in the Summer of 2010. I see this as the perfect way for a small market team to utilize free agency. Find a guy who has a specific NBA skill that you can acquire as either a fringe starter or key bench piece that won't hamper flexibility moving forward. Allen was already an all-world defender before he came to Memphis, and he has more than earned the $10 million Wallace gave him. The Cavaliers, moving forward, can follow this example. In a way, the CJ Miles trade is similar to the Allen signing, on a smaller scale. With Miles, the Cavaliers got bench scoring for cheap. This summer, the Cavs can look for guys who will buy into Mike Brown's system. Despite having Greivis Vasquez and Kyle Lowry, Memphis instead chose to invest in their high draft pick Mike Conley. Conley came out after just one season at Ohio State, and he couldn't shoot and wasn't physically ready for life in the NBA. Memphis could have sold low on Conley and shipped him off, instead opting to build with Lowry. Instead, they extended Conley, known as a smart player with his head on straight at a price mocked around the NBA and let Lowry go. Lowry continues to make as much news for his talent and solid play as for the headaches he gives his head coaches as he bounces from team to team. At some point, the Cavs may have to make a tough choice in extending either Tristan Thompson or Dion Waiters to a deal that is a little richer than observers around the league might find prudent. Betting on our young players might be the right play; it was for Memphis with Conley. Zach Randolph, written off by much of the basketball world while he appeared to waste his career away with the Clippers, was brought in. The cost to Memphis: Quentin Richardson. Since arriving in Memphis, Zach has rejuvenated his career, cutting out the three pointers, bullying power forwards in the paint, and even committing himself on the defensive end of the floor. The first

Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni thinks Phil Handy will be a great addition to the Cleveland Cavaliers coaching staff

Check out Dion Waiters in this really impressive video of him working out this summer.