Bennett was pretty bad, but otherwise they haven't done that poorly of late. I mean they did manage to get Irving and Thompson in the same draft, Waiters seems like he is finally reaching his potential down in Miami, Zeller was a solid pick for outside the lottery, Wiggins was the right pick (though Embiid may ultimately end up better), and even some of their 2nd round picks have made the league (like Danny Green and Joe Harris)
Joe Harris is a success as the 33rd pick in the draft because he averages 5 points for his career? From that second round around him Jokic, Glenn Robinson, Jordan Clarkson, Dwight Powell, Jerami Grant, Spencer Dinwiddie, Jarnell Stokes, KJ McDaniels were all players that were drafted right aaround him and are still playing along (some with more significant roles) Pretty faint praise to call that a success.
That was obviously a pretty deep draft, but yeah a 2nd round pick coming off his 3rd season averaging 22 mpg and 8 ppg and 3 rpg is a good pick. Obviously Jokic was a monster, but aside from him it could reasonably be argued that Harris had the best year of all those players last year. So yeah, he was a good pick.
Also is Thompson that great a pick? All stars Kemba Walker, Kawaii Leonard and Klay Thompson were all taken in the 11 picks after him. Valuncinas and Vucevic are pretty similar players taken afterwards. He is ok, but definitely not a huge nailed pick for the 4th pick in the draft.
Thompson is an interesting pick. He has clearly been better than Williams and Kanter taken at 2 and 3. He has been comparable to Valanciunas who went 5th and has been far better than 6-8 (Vesely, Biyombo, Knight). Obviously Walker, Thompson, and Leonard are all better, but in re-draft Thompson might very well go 5th, which makes him at the very least a decent pick.
Also not sure how to count some of their picks because it is unclear if they were drafted for other teams but these are actual guys drafted in the first round by their team since Lebron: Christian Eyenga, Luke Jackson (lottery), Tyus Jones, Sergey Karasev, Jared Cunningham.
Jackson was a long time ago, like 10 Cavs regimes ago. Eyenga is a weird one because he kept going back to Europe, including during the lockout, but the Cavs ended trading him with Sessions and picked up a 1st round pick and the right to swap 1st rounders. Cavs dumped Karasev in the trade that brought Zeller to Boston so they could sign James. Hard to make much of that, but yeah that was a bad pick. Cavs didn't draft Cunningham or Jones. Cunningham was part of the Zeller trade. They traded the Jones pick for 3 second rounders including Cedi Osman who they just brought over this summer.
Sure Irving and Wiggins were nice picks, but they were also consensus number 1 picks so hard to call that out as amazing. Obviously getting one of the worst players in the entire draft with the first overall pick is so bad it is difficult to make sense of. Worse some of the few guys they did draft in second round were traded quickly before experiencing success elsewhere (Crabbe, Crowder and Green waived after one season).
Wiggins wasn't quite a consensus #1 pick. There was much debate about Wiggins, Parker, and Embiid. Most pushed Embiid back because of the injuries, but plenty of mocks had Parker going 1. Sure Wiggins was the guy the majority had at 1, but it certainly wasn't a no brainer. Irving was the consensus #1. I'm not sure they actually drafted Crabbe as there was some weird trading with that pick. They didn't draft Crowder, he was in the Zeller trade as well. No idea why they waived Green, but I'm sure it was just a roster crunch type thing as it was right before the season started.
If the Celtics had done the same picks as Cleveland the last 15 years there would be at least twice as many fire Danny Ainge threads. We have raked Danny over the coals for Fab Melo, James Young and Jr Giddens in the last decade or so but he has at least gotten some solid contributions from his late first's for an extended period. Have the Cavs even had anyone as good as Avery Bradley that stayed with their team that was not a top 5 pick?
probably not, but a lot of that is mostly they just flat out have traded a lot of picks or either been very terrible (and thus pick in the top 5) or very good (and thus pick at the end of the 1st round where finding diamonds in the rough is that much harder). I think Zeller is about the only fairly recent 1st rounder they've had that was in the middle of the 1st round (they had to trade to get him as well). He isn't Bradley, but he has been solid value for that pick range.