The Cleveland Cavaliers are presently running at 16/5 to win an NBA Championship. This season. Despite their best three players never having stepped foot on the court together as professional teammates. These are the shortest odds available for any NBA team right now. They’re odds with a good chance to disappoint a lot of people.

And if they do, a lot of people are going to blame Kyrie Irving.

To understand why, you must first acknowledge that having LeBron James on your team comes with massive expectations, which, in the hands of a lesser supreme being, would normally be something of a concern. Cleveland, of course, had already experienced this duality first-hand — like Miami before and after it — so no one should have been surprised when The Chosen One’s return sparked immediate speculation about how quickly the young Cavs would be able to contend for a title. The acquisition of Kevin Love last month has only heightened those already lofty ambitions.

The triumvirate by the lake notwithstanding, it is Irving who stands to benefit most from LeBron’s presence. And it is Irving — the 22-year-old point guard and newly-minted FIBA World Cup MVP — who will be exposed to the greatest risk of being crushed under the weight of expectations.

Think I’m being overly dramatic?

Consider the birth of LeBron’s last Big Three. After Decision Day, 2010, Miami’s title odds leapt to a prohibitive 2/1. So, what’s really changed so radically between then and now? Isn’t LeBron even better now than he was then? (Rhetorical question.) Hadn’t the Heat’s roster been almost entirely gutted to make room for the salaries of Chris Bosh and James after Dwyane Wade officially re-upped with Miami? By contrast, these Cavs — while by no means perfect — at least have a somewhat promising combination of young talent in Dion Waiters and Tristan Thompson, and veteran contributors like Anderson Varejao, Shawn Marion, and Mike Miller. Surely, Cleveland’s preset-day roster is far more imposing than what the 2010 oddsmakers would have expected Miami to have been able to slap together after LeBron’s talents were taken to South Beach?

Bosh and Love, quite stunningly, were peas in a pod before joining forces with the force that is James:

Bosh, age 26 at signing (2009–10): 23.9/10.8/2.4/1.0 per 36 minutes.

Love, age 26 at present (2013–14): 25.9/12.4/4.4/0.5 per 36 minutes.

Advantage Love, at least on the offensive end. But if you care less about counting stats and more about offensive efficiency? Check this out:

Bosh (2009–10): .592 TS%, .522 eFG%, 28.7 USG%.

Love (2013–14): .591 TS%, .524 eFG%, 28.8 USG%

I mean, that’s borderline spooky. It’s easy to forget — and very important to remember right now, if you’re a Heat fan — what a beast Chris Bosh is capable of being when his team asks him to be its primary offensive option. And while Bosh’s current defensive value is very real, that is mainly the product of an evolution that has taken place during his four seasons in South Beach; 2010 Chris Bosh was a better defensive player than 2014 Kevin Love but not by so much that Love’s defensive rebounding value doesn’t at least make it a fair fight.

Given the broad equivalency — or, frankly, advantages to Cleveland — inherent in the above comparisons, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the disparity between Miami’s opening 2010 odds and Cleveland’s current 16/5 figure lies in the gulf that separates 2014 Kyrie Irving from 2010 Dwyane Wade. And, indeed, this is where the otherwise tempting comparison between the two teams fails. Because at the risk of stating the obvious, for all his poise and polish and potential, Kyrie Irving is no 2010 Dwyane Wade. To wit:

Wade (‘10): 26.4/6.5/4.8/1.8/1.1 per 36; 34.9%(!) USG, .562 TS%, .500 eFG%

Irving (‘14): 21.3/6.2/3.7/1.6/0.3 per 36; 28.2% USG, .533 TS%, .480 eFG%

A few things to notice here:

1. Assists: I’m curious about how many of you would have guessed that Wade averaged more assists per minute in 2010 than Kyrie did last year. The enduring images of the pre-LeBron Heat teams mostly involve Wade repeatedly going 1-on-5 against a wall of defenders in search for a finish or a foul. Ever the playmaker, Wade was somehow able to create half a dozen baskets a game for his teammates while playing Rambo.
2. Peripherals: As for the rebounds/blocks/steals combo, it’s a resounding and unsurprising victory for Wade and it speaks to something even bigger: athleticism. Wade has hit that combination of numbers (4.8 boards, 1.8 steals, 1.1 blocks) three times (most ever) and only nine other guards have done it even once. Among that group are a handful of guys — Michael Jordan, George Gervin, Dennis Johnson, Eric Bledsoe — known far and wide for their athletic freakitude. Kyrie Irving is quick and he is skilled but he is simply not a physical marvel on that order.
3. Shooting Efficiency: I’ll be honest: before I pulled these numbers, I thought this would be the one area where Irving had the edge. I was wrong. To this point in his career, Irving’s 3-point shooting has not been sufficient to close the gap created by the young Wade’s penetration and penchant for foul-drawing despite the historically onerous offensive burden Flash carried in the years prior to LeBron’s arrival. When you’re capable of producing at that level on thirty-five percent of your team’s possessions, it shouldn’t surprise anyone when adding a scorer and passer on James’ level to the mix raises your efficiency — and the team’s overall offensive output — to a truly elite level.

Even insofar as those numbers speak to Wade’s brilliance, they miss the most important reason that the new James/Irving union on the Cleveland perimeter can’t be expected to mirror the one that LeBron walked into in Miami. Before James and Wade truly began to click on offense, the 2010–11 Heat buttered their bread with a defense built around the hellish mayhem that their two uberstars were able to create on the perimeter. That defense finished in the top 5 in the league in eFG%, defensive rebounding, and overall defensive rating. The Cavaliers simply don’t have the personnel to do that and likely will rely on Anderson Varejao — who has averaged 40 missed games per season since 2010 — to come anywhere close to those marks.

Kyrie Irving is a really good player. He’s still just 22 and, though his productivity has plateaued since a rookie year that stands among the best ever, he has plenty of potential to grow into a legitimately great one. He offers a combination of playmaking and outside shooting that exceeds any teammates LeBron James has had in his career to this point. This, in itself, is a big deal. At some point in the next half-decade, James’ game will need to adapt as the strain of being all things at all times will necessarily begin to take a toll on his body. If he can save miles on his legs by building his offensive approach increasingly around his low-post game, his strength and passing from the block will pair better with Kyrie’s long-range lethality and twirling incisiveness than it would with Wade’s power and savvy.

As a long-term bet, LeBron’s collaboration with Kyrie and Love makes a whole lot of sense for all involved. And the caveats to the odds that the union will reap immediate dividends should — repeat, should — be clear enough. But a funny thing happens when you bring LeBron James on board. Attention, visibility, and expectations ratchet up, often to unreasonable levels. And while everything discussed above that separates Kyrie from the heights Dwyane Wade once reached can seem obvious enough when viewed in isolation, moments will arise this year when websites and newspapers and networks with minutes or column inches to fill will start to postulate about why the shiny new Cavaliers aren’t doing what the Heat used to do. Because just like America loves a comeback story — and LeBron’s reversion from mercenary to hometown hero most certainly qualifies as that — it also likes a nice, clean narrative explaining why one doesn’t go to plan.

If and when the Cavs stumble, as any newly-compiled team at times must, detractors will look to the New Three. And they’ll see the greatest small forward ever, doing what he does. They’ll see a power forward whose capacity to put crooked numbers in the box score has very few peers. And they’ll see a talented but flawed young point guard who, for all his shooting and his passing and his national-team heroics, will simply not be prime Dwyane Wade.

Some will surely convict him on those grounds, and it won’t be fair. But how Kyrie Irving reacts to the perceptions created by his detractors may just define the high-risk, high-reward phase that his career is about to enter.