“You can’t compare this group to ours,” Gooden said. “This group has already won a championship. We were like a deer in headlights.”

Good points from Gooden, but I’m not budging. For all it supposedly lacked in terms of know-how, that Cleveland team ranked fifth in the league in defensive efficiency. It muscled past the second-ranked Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals when LeBron, at age 23, scored the Cavaliers’ final 25 points in an unforgettable series-turning classic in Game 5.

James, as a result, finds himself in an 0-2 deficit in an Eastern Conference playoff series for the first time since (gulp) 2008 — even though he’s coming off a 42-point, 10-rebound, 12-assist performance.

The results of Tuesday night’s draft lottery, on top of the February trade spree that exiled Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder, means Cleveland has replaced Irving with Jordan Clarkson, George Hill, Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., Ante Zizic and the No. 8 overall pick (via Brooklyn) in the N.B.A. draft next month. That fivesome combined to score five points in the Cavaliers’ 107-94 defeat in Game 2.

The Other Cavaliers, as they were mockingly dubbed in a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, figure to play better in the next two games at home. But when Boston is 8-0 at home in these playoffs and 37-0 as a franchise after seizing a 2-0 lead in any series, it’s becoming a serious strain to imagine James leading Cleveland on a comeback.

Which means it’s not too early to start picturing James in another uniform.

James has offered roughly zero hints about his future plans over the past nine months, but a move to a franchise better positioned for championship contention feels even more inevitable now than it did in 2010. That’s when the Cavaliers were pounded by the Celtics in the conference semifinals, leading to James’s controversial defection to Miami.

James’s return to free agency is just 44 days away and — unless his wife and children tell him they can’t bear to leave Northern Ohio — what incentive would the native of nearby Akron have to stay with the Cavaliers beyond sentimentality?

Does James have some culpability here? Do the short-term contracts he has insisted on signing since returning to the Cavaliers in the summer of 2014 add to the immense win-now pressure and seemingly ceaseless drama that have smothered everyone involved with this franchise for four consecutive seasons? Sure.

Yet it’s most certainly not James’s fault that the team’s owner, Dan Gilbert, had a decaying relationship with the highly rated general manager David Griffin, which prompted an unforeseen parting in June 2017 — when Griffin was in the midst of trying to execute trades for the likes of Paul George and Jimmy Butler. Nor did James advise the Cavaliers to cave into Irving’s trade wishes last August and send him to Cleveland’s foremost rival in the conference when Irving still had two seasons left on his contract.

James was convinced that Cleveland should at least bring Irving to training camp to try to work out a truce and then trade him later if those efforts failed. Everyone is obviously smarter in hindsight, but regret in Cleveland over the refusal to go that route is inevitable after the failures of Thomas and Crowder to fit in, as well as the false hope spawned by the February trade spree.

According to Smith’s version, which he relayed through the ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin at the time, James threw in an expletive for emphasis, so convinced he was that the infusion of athleticism and newness was just what Cleveland needed.

What Griffin’s successor Koby Altman was really trading for, of course, was a fully engaged LeBron. And, apart from his Game 1 clunker against the Celtics, James has never been better in the postseason — individually.

The rest, though, was a mirage.

LeBron’s rampages were barely sufficient against the Pacers and appear to be in vain against the Celtics when Al Horford is playing the most forceful two-way ball of his career. And when the irrationally confident Marcus Morris has helped limit James to 11 points on 4-for-14 shooting in their 56 head-to-head minutes. And when Boston’s savant of a coach, Brad Stevens, is getting so much out of the relative neophytes Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum while James is plagued with such intermittent help.

My personal rule when it comes to playoff prognostication is simple: You don’t pick against LeBron James when he’s facing a fellow East resident. Even when he’s halfway to elimination.

But I can’t muster the gumption to claim that James is about to lead the broken Cavaliers to four wins in next five games. Not even after three full off days to regroup and refuel.

Maybe he’s faced more dire predicaments, but never before with a cast that’s doing so little supporting.