The most difficult part of this long regular season for the Cleveland Cavaliers will be ignoring distractions and just enjoying this great team. The team has a year of ignoring negative narratives and distractions on their collective resume whether we’re talking about Kevin Love fitting in or David Blatt keeping his job, but each year brings a new round of potential landmines.

You can already see some of them coming, so it’s important to get out in front of some of these before they even happen. Knowing what’s coming and being prepared to deal with it or ignore it will only enhance your enjoyment of the 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers. And really, that’s what we’re all about.

The Cavs should trade ______________.

The early favorite for this rumor is Tristan Thompson. Per the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, sign-and-trade potential evaporated once the Cavaliers played their first game. Furthermore, a team cannot trade a free agent it has signed for three months after the deal is agreed upon. But don’t let that stop Twitter or message board folks who don’t want to research before spouting off. We live in a fantasy sports culture now and especially in the NBA with ESPN’s Trade Machine, you get a lot of junior GMs trying their hand at team-building.

In the case of the Cavaliers it’s hard to imagine a better set of players and depth on the roster. That doesn’t mean that the Cavaliers won’t make a trade or do some things, but the chances that they’ll choose to do wholesale revisions to a roster that includes LeBron James, Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, and Thompson by trading a glue guy like Thompson is pretty ludicrous. You just know when the already rampant Carmelo Anthony trade rumors fire up into the raging inferno they’ll undoubtedly be, that someone will write the “CARMELO ANTHONY TRADED TO CLEVELAND TO WIN A TITLE WITH HIS BUDDY LEBRON JAMES???” headline.

The Cavs are better without ______________!!!

We’ve seen these kinds of stories for years whenever star players miss time. Undoubtedly this article is being schemed already with Kyrie Irving missing the start to the season and Mo Williams fueling a Cavs team that appears to be moving the ball well very early in this NBA season. Hell, I’m a little bit scared that something might have been written on this very website suggesting the Cavaliers were playing better at various times with Kyrie missing before LeBron James came back. And look, those were dark times. We were all very desperate for solutions, but we need to learn.

The Cavaliers aren’t “better off” without great basketball players. There’s a lot ot be said for teamwork and chemistry, of course, but those things are generally gained with time spent playing together. There are awkward moments when guys first get back and rotations get disrupted. Sometimes weird things happen when a guy has to sit down and the role players step up and play out of their minds for a game. The right bet is always on the most talented players, so don’t get caught up when the margin of victory for the Cavaliers is higher in games that LeBron rests this season than the games he plays.

Did you read the quotes from ______________ after last night’s game?

Something we remembered last year as Cavs fans became reaquainted with relevance was what it was like to have the NBA media world hanging on every word LeBron James said after each and every NBA game and practice. The NFL has an advantage in creating popularity because there’s some scarcity. MLB has the reverse problem because there’s too little scarcity. The NBA is more like MLB where we don’t need quotes from LeBron James and his teammates as often as we get them. The perspective on something LeBron says after Game 15 gets remembered, dissected, extrapolated and otherwise skewed to the point that there’s no pulse left in the flatlined patient named “reality.”

LeBron says Kevin Love will be the focal point? Cool. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean LeBron believes in Kevin Love more than Kyrie Irving. It doesn’t mean that the Cavs don’t need Kyrie Irving. It also doesn’t mean that LeBron is ceding control of the team or otherwise giving up preference for game-winning shooting opportunities. Don’t try too hard to find more meaning to it than what is there.

The Cavaliers’ record against ___________ spells bad things for the playoffs!

LeBron tried to teach or remind us that the regular season has nothing to do with the playoffs and after last year’s deep run to the Finals—we should know or remember. The Playoffs are a different sport than the NBA regular season. Despite what happens on a random December night in whatever contending team’s basketball arena, it can’t be assumed to portend great or awful things about the Cavaliers as they contend in the playoffs.

We know that by the time the Cavs get to the postseason they will treat each series separately with some kind of strategy. Did anything the Cavaliers did in the regular season indicated that in the Finals the Cavaliers would grind it out with Delly playing meaningful defensive minutes for the Cavs? Did the Cavs’ one win in four games against the Atlanta Hawks paint a meaningful portrait of how the series would ultimately go? The Cavs swept the Hawks.

I’m sure there are plenty more, so leave them in the comments. And remember this isn’t me talking down to you. This is a reminder for myself as well. We’re all prone to getting caught up in the ups and downs of a marathon season with all the overstated quotes and performances therein. These are things you and I both know about this long season, so keep them top of mind. That’s your best path to enjoying what should be an entertaining year without allowing it to get ruined by the “reality TV” stuff that threatens all the enjoyment of having one of the best NBA teams ever assembled.