Irving's eventual return should give LeBron some much-needed rest

Kyrie Irving was one of the biggest reasons LeBron James was lured back home to Cleveland.

James played with two future Hall of Famers in Miami, but with all due respect to Mo Williams, James never played with anything close to an All-Star caliber point guard like Irving. He couldn't pass up that opportunity.

The two ball-dominant scorers took some time to gel at first, but they found their stride midway through last season. By dividing the court and playing off one another, the combination of James and Irving outscored opponents by 11 points per 100 possessions - a sliver behind the Golden State Warriors' league-best mark of 11.4 points per 100 possessions.

Injuries, ever his Achilles' heel, kept Irving from helping James achieve his quest of bringing a title to Cleveland. A battered Irving hobbled his way through the Eastern Conference playoffs, before a fractured kneecap finally knocked him out of the Finals.

For all of James' brilliance, he couldn't reclaim his kingdom without having all the King's men working with him. Without Irving and Kevin Love, an overworked James - and what was left of his Cavs - fell in six games to the historically dominant Warriors.

At first glance, James and the Cavaliers seem to be doing just fine this season. The 13-year veteran is posting his standard 26-8-6, and the Cavaliers are atop the East - just as everyone expected.

Look a little deeper, though, and their problems become clear: James is doing pretty much all the work. Love is putting up his usual numbers, and doing what he can to help, but Timofey Mozgov, Tristan Thompson, J.R. Smith, and Anderson Varejao have all gotten off to lethargic starts.

James somehow still has the Cavaliers playing at an elite level despite subpar showings from four key rotation pieces, and the absences of both Irving and Iman Shumpert. But it all falls apart for the team when James heads to the bench.

With James on the court, the Cavaliers perform at a level comparable to the San Antonio Spurs. When he sits, Cleveland can look like the Philadelphia 76ers:

Carrying a team on his back is nothing new for James, but he's already racked up over 44,000 combined playoff and regular season minutes in his career. That's why all the talk during the offseason focused on getting James some rest - because he's not the same 20-year-old that played over 3,000 minutes in each of his first six seasons.

The goal this year was for James to play less, not more. But since the bench has struggled, James has been repeatedly forced to clean up messes. His usage in clutch scenarios has ballooned to an absurd 52.6 percent.

Case in point: James was forced to log 44 minutes during last week's overtime loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. James scored five of his team's last six baskets down the stretch in regulation - including a number of painstaking drives to the hoop - but that took its toll for the next day when James was held out of the second leg of a back-to-back to rest.

Without James, Cleveland lost to the Heat in a landslide.

The bigger worry is James' jump shot, which has seemingly abandoned him this season. He insists that it's nothing, but he's shooting a career-low 27.1 percent from deep after topping 40 percent two seasons ago. Perhaps James' balky back, which required injections to treat in preseason, could be throwing off his accuracy.

Things look fine for now, but the bottom line is that James needs help. He can't keep doing it all on his own. That was never the plan, especially not after management spent over $200 million to surround James with a supporting cast this summer.

That's where Irving comes in. In addition to reuniting last season's second-best five-man unit, the hope is that the three-time All-Star can bolster the Cavs when James sits.

Irving showed he can do that last season, especially when paired with Love. The Cavs' lineup of Irving, Love, Shumpert, Smith, and Thompson managed to outscore opponents by 4.8 points per 100 possessions last season - a respectable figure for a lineup with only two All-Stars.

And of course, Irving's return also reunites the league's second-deadliest starting unit. The lineup of James, Irving, Love, Mozgov, and Smith posted a Net Rating of 19.3 - a hair behind the 19.6 figured posted by the Warriors' starting five.

The Cavaliers played at the rate of a .500 team when Irving played with James on the bench last season, but that's all they need - to hold steady while James catches his breath. Irving's return will go a long way to helping the Cavs do just that - and also ensuring the King gets some much-needed rest ahead of his attempt to play in a sixth straight NBA Finals.