Normally, I don’t pay much attention to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Certainly not before LeBron James, and presumably not after. But I’ve been looking at the Cavs for a couple of weeks, before and after The Decision, and …

Things are going to be horrible there.

The night of The Decision, Cavs owner Dan Gilbert famously predicted the Cavs would win an NBA championship before LeBron James does … but that was the anger talking. Or maybe some power anti-depressants.

We are about to see how awful the Cavaliers are going to be. And, like, right now.

Consider:

First thing the Cavs did, post LeBron? Once they had that big salary off the books?

They gave an offer sheet to … drum roll, please … Kyle Lowry.

Yes. Kyle Lowry.

“Who is Kyle Lowry?” you ask?

Kyle Lowry is a backup point guard who plays for the Houston Rockets. Who averaged 9.1 points and 4.5 assists per game last season. The Cavs gave him an offer sheet … $24 million over four years.

The Cavs were interested because Lowry is only 24 and has an upside, as well as quickness, but consider these two new realities of Cavaliers existence:

1.  LeBron James, two-time MVP, leaves … and the first guy the Cavaliers set their sights on is a backup point guard who averaged 9.1 points per game. And the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the main source of news on the Cavs, made a game effort in describing this as an important offer sheet situation. No. Really.

2.  And the only thing more pathetic than this vague idea that “Kyle Lowry will help us get over LeBron”? Houston matched Cleveland’s offer.

Kyle Lowry is staying in Houston. And let’s just guess and say Kyle Lowry is relieved he gets to stay with the Rockets.

The Cavaliers are so screwed.

Nobody wants to play there. They didn’t want to play there when they had LeBron and were winning 60 games a year.

They really, really don’t want to play there now. Zydrunas Ilgauskas just left to play for the NBA minimum in Miami. Well, heck, may as well. At least it will be warm there in the summer.

All the Cavs can do is blow up the roster and start over. If they just let go, right now (starting with Delonte West) … and don’t even bother with a pitiful struggle to be the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference (a team built around Anderson Varejao, Mo Williams, Antawn Jamison, Daniel Gibson) … maybe they can get in the lottery a couple of years and get a couple of nice, cheap players, and be decent. Eventually.

Fans at the prominent franchises on the coasts worry about the prospect of a down year or three between 50-win teams … but for Cleveland? This could take five years before they contend. More, if they have bad luck on draft day.

More, if they try to contend with what is left behind, right now.

LeBron leaves, your first thought is, “those guys won 66; even without LeBron, can’t they win 41?” As it turns out, probably not. And it probably would be better for the franchise if they didn’t.

It’s even worse than we thought, post-LeBron. Even worse than Cavs fans thought. I feel sorry for them. Really. I do. That franchise is destroyed. Rebuilding it … well, see you in 2015.