The Internet Has Put ‘The Other Cavaliers’ Back on the Roster

A 2018 Saturday Night Live sketch about everyone on the Cleveland Cavaliers who was not LeBron James has returned as a meme about being technically useful and obviously secondary. “The Other Cavaliers” originally presented the supporting players as men with plenty to offer—just not much that involved playing basketball.

The sketch was uploaded by SNL on May 6, 2018, with Donald Glover among the cast in Cavaliers uniform. Its new life began in early August 2026 through short clips, lip dubs and reaction posts. The phrase now works as a label for the forgotten members of any group: background characters, minor features, spare tools or colleagues standing beside the person doing all the visible work.

That makes the format unusually flexible. A post does not need to explain the original NBA joke in detail. “The other Cavaliers” already sounds like a category for people who are present on the roster but absent from the headline.

The revival also shows how archive comedy finds new jobs online. The sketch did not need a remake. It only needed a generation of posters searching for the perfect way to describe everyone who counts, but not quite enough to be the reason anyone showed up.