Terrelle Pryor’s Future
October 21, 2010Colt McCoy and Drew Brees Sift Through (Lack of) Size and Similarities
October 21, 2010The Cleveland Cavaliers currently stand at 5-2 in the preseason with just one more preseason game left to go, tonight against the Milwaukee Bucks in Columbus. The team is heading into the regular season with their spirits and confidence soaring. This is no small feat consider what these players have been through.
Forget just the players this team lost in this offseason. I mean, that alone would be reason enough for there to be a malaise setting in with this team. There’s more than just that, though. The team had to go through much of the preseason without veteran leaders Mo Williams, Andy Varejao, and Antawn Jamison. It would have been easy for this team to let each other feel sorry for themselves and mope through preseason.
Instead, what we saw was a team of younger players see this as opportunity. A chance to fight for a spot in Byron Scott’s rotation. A chance to prove all the doubters in the media and fans across the NBA wrong. A chance to showcase skills that were often not allowed to blossom under the dominance and greatness of LeBron James. A chance to start over. A fresh start for everyone, and as I’ve been saying all summer, there’s just something inspiring about the quality of new beginnings.
JJ Hickson has shown signs that he’s making the leap and is possibly even ready to lead this team in scoring, putting up 14.9 pts and 8.9 rebounds in just 25 minutes per game. Ramon Sessions has shown an ability to push the ball and get the offense into easy scoring chances. Daniel Gibson has played with the biggest chip on his shoulder of all and has responded by showing off a more well rounded game that includes drawing fouls and getting to the line. Ryan Hollins has shown that Byron Scott’s system can fit him and in limited exposure he might be able to provide some energy and athleticism off the bench when needed. And Manny Harris has elevated his game to the level that he even beat out Danny Green for the final roster spot, something few of us would have thought would happen earlier this summer.
So it’s amidst the general feeling of encouragement that we enter the regular season where the team will really be put to the test. The team has certainly impressed those who have followed the Cavaliers this preseason, but the general public is still skeptical. The question, then, is what are the pitfalls that will affect this team? What are the weaknesses that will make the difference between the Cavaliers winning 40 games and winning just 25 games?
To be certain, this team has more than its fair share of weaknesses and will go through more than their fair share of troubles and trials this season. The bigger picture, though, is the question of what was or was not exposed about the Cavaliers this preseason. In other words, if this team has so many weaknesses that so many pundits are projecting fewer than 25 wins for this team, why did the Cavaliers (without Mo Williams, Andy Varejao, and Antawn Jamison for the most part) look so strong against their opponents?
One of the biggest factors for the Cavaliers was simply luck. The biggest problem I see for this Cavalier team, beyond the lack of a true superstar to put the team on his back in the 4th quarter in close games, is the team’s inability to match up well with teams who have big, overpowering post players. It is in this regard that the Cavaliers were most fortunate this preseason.
Looking at the NBA opponents they have played, the Cavaliers have managed to dodge playing really any imposing centers. First they played Charlotte and Nazr Mohammed played just 11 ineffective minutes. Beyond him, DeSagana Siop didn’t play and Kwame Brown wasn’t on the roster. Next up was the Wizards, the Cavs’ only loss to an NBA team this preseason. While the Cavs lost and the Wizards do indeed have a pretty good young center in JaVale McGee, it was still early and thus McGee only played limited minutes. Next was the Rockets who decided not to play Yao Ming or Brad Miller against the Cavs. The Mavericks then used a combination of Tyson Chandler and Brendan Haywood against the Cavaliers, and the 2 centers combined to play 30 minutes total and put up and combined 11 points (on 5-5 shooting from the field), 13 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots. The Spurs didn’t use Tim Duncan against the Cavs and Tiago Splitter didn’t play either, but Antonio McDyess was still mildly effective. Finally, against the Sixers, Spencer Hawes didn’t play and Marreese Speights didn’t play well at all.
Finally, the Cavs wrap up against the Bucks who have one of the game’s best centers in Andrew Bogut, but Bogut is limited by his elbow injury and I would be surprised to see him play all that much tonight. So in general, the Cavaliers really didn’t play too many great post players in the preseason, and that’s likely a big reason why they had some favorable matchups even without Andy Varejao, the team’s best defensive player.
On NBATV’s preview of the Cavaliers, Brent Barry said that he thinks the Cavs will be able to surprise teams early in the season and that if the Cavs get off to a hot start, they might get enough early wins to carry them through to the playoffs again as the 8 seed. It may not be that simple, though.
In the first month of the season, the Cavaliers play against the Celtics twice (featuring the two O’Neal’s plus Kevin Garnett), Sacramento (with their fully loaded frontcourt of Thompson, Landry, Cousins, and Dalembert), the Nets twice (Brook Lopez), Atlanta (Horford and Smith), San Antonio (Duncan and crew), Milwaukee (Bogut), Orlando (Dwight Howard, enough said), Indiana twice (Hibbert and Foster), and Memphis (Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol).
In other words, the Cavaliers’ bigs had best be ready for a brutal test early. When I initially broke down the Cavaliers’ schedule, I noted that the Cavaliers had some winnable games the first month in terms of strength of opponents. That’s still more than true, but the question will be how well the Cavaliers actually matchup against these teams. If the Cavaliers struggle defending the post, they could be in for a brutal opening 3 months of the season. This is why it’s essential for the Cavaliers to get off to a good start and carry over the momentum they’ve built this preseason.
We know what Andy brings to the team in terms of defense and ability to disrupt opponents in the paint, but beyond him, there are more questions than answers. JJ Hickson has the size and athleticism to defend, but still lacks the overall grasp of consistency on the defensive end. Ryan Hollins has size as well and is an excellent shot blocker, but does he have the strength to do battle down low? Leon Powe frequently struggles staying out of foul trouble. Antawn Jamison often looks hopeless against more physical low post players.
For the Cavaliers to get out and run like they want to this season, it will be especially important that they defend the paint well and be relentless on the boards. The Cavs have been excellent at this against their preseason opponents, but once regular season comes, we simply won’t know how this team responds against opponents with better low post players until we see it.
If you want to know the difference between a 40 win Cavs team and a 20 win Cavs team, this first month could very well make all the difference in the world. We have yet to see how the Cavaliers will handle quality low post players and the prospect of finding out quickly is both exciting and frightening. The entire tone of this season depends on this first month of basketball.
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Photo: (AP Photo/Al Behrman)
10 Comments
I went to the 76ers game in Cincinnati and they looked pretty good. They did their fair share of running, Boobie/Andy/J.J. looked like completely different players taking a bigger role in the offense. Hollins even looked good and had a couple fast break dunks. Along with lacking a crunch time scorer, they will be undersized in pretty much every game they play and are going to get killed on the boards this year costing them a lot of games.
I’m not quite as worried about that aspect. Varejao is easily our best post defender, and one of the best post defenders in the country, and he wasn’t around for any of those previously-mentioned preseason games either. Dwight Howard is the only center who I think will get the best of Varejao more often than not. Most power forwards in this league don’t have a post game anymore, so defending the post against them isn’t as important. If you look at the best power forwards… Boozer, Nowitzki, Garnett, Bosh, Stoudemire, Aldridge, Randolph, Hickson?, they all would rather score in transition, score on cuts, and shoot elbow jumpers than battle down low on offense. It seems like centers are the only players who have “post moves” anymore.
Those teams didn’t play their bigs, but the Cavs didn’t have Andy for many of those games either. He makes a huge difference, as he is one of the best defensive bigs in the NBA. JJ got better on the defensive end also, so we should see some improvement from him.
I also think their ability to get out and run is going to help because when they face Boston, LA, Portland, San Antonio, etc. they’ll be able to really push the ball and leave those bigs in the dust. Let’s also not forget the fact that we still have some tremendous shooters on this team and that really stretches the floor and pulls those bigs out of the paint for a tremendous pick and roll game.
We’ll get killed some nights against ORL, Chicago, ATL, etc. in the paint, but we got killed last yr by those teams in pick and roll. To get you have to give sometimes right?
If we have a decent start (say .500 by the end of Dec.), I feel the Cavs will easily be a 4-5 seed come playoff time. Their schedule feels that front loaded…
The running O and the energy on D may tire out/get into foul trouble some of those opposing C’s. Antwan’s biggest assist to this team may be his ability to get down and draw fouls on those bigs, then hit his FTs.
Anybody know if Scott’s rotations are usually bigger due to the running? Cavs actually have decent depth, so this may have an even bigger impact.
Biggest pitfall would be a reversion by Mo and others to taking those long jumpers on the run. If they can keep attacking and getting those bigs into foul trouble, they can seriously play with some of the better teams in the NBA. Otherwise they’ll end up playing nice tight, losing basketball.
Let us not forget that we’ve got some pretty tough athletes potentially coming off the bench. I know they’re not fantastic at defense or anything but Powe can hang for 3 or 4 fouls against a low post push and I’ve seen Jawad do the same. Plus, i’m hoping our perimiter ball movement and speed will create turnovers- hopefully offsetting the post game weakness a little bit. Lastly, these big centers we keep taliking about (there really aren’t that many we just play them all early this season) score slow. I think with speed and decent shooting we can at least keep it close.
As a casual Cavs fan, I hope they can pull it off this year. Exactly what is, I am not sure… From what I read, a #8 seed is basically worthless since we probably would not win it all and then get excluded in the lottery.
So I’m not sure what to think about the situation. Seems that high lottery pick(s) are the way to basically do it or pull off some behind-the-scenes team signing.
I think it’s interesting that most of the so-called “experts” last year would say that we are a 7-8 seed without LeBron Jones. Well, with no LeBaron they’re saying we’ll win anywhere from 12-30 games. This team has enough talent to make the playoffs in the east. There are a lot of teams (KNICKS) that are getting overrated when it comes to expected w/l.
Under Byron Scott the first couple years the Hornets were terrible. But in 2007 when they seemed to come out of nowhere to have the best record in the West they were playing very good basketball on both ends. They were 5th overall in offense and 7th overall in defense. I see a lot of similarities in that team to this one. Although they did have Chris Paul and no one on our team individually comes close to what he can do on the court when fully healthy, we have a combination of young, quick athletic guys that can get up and down the floor and facilitate for our bigs just as much as Paul did by himself with the Hornets.
Now we can’t splice the DNA of Boobie, Mo, Ramon and Jarmio to create this hybrid like Chris Paul, but all of those guys will have their chances to facilitate and make plays in this offense.
As far as the bigs go there are a lot of similarities.
You have Tyson Chandler and Andy. Both high energy guys that create a lot of problems in the post. The big difference here is that Andy can defend man to man whereas that year Chandler was more of a shot blocker in the paint.
You have David West and JJ. Is this the year JJ breaks out into that true power 4 that we’ve needed since Boozer tricked the blind man? David West was very undervalued when he was drafted and has turned into a pretty legit athletic undersized 4. Pretty much what JJ has the ceiling to be.
Then you have bigs coming off the bench for them like Melvin Ely, Hilton Armstrong, Ryan Bowen and Julian Wright. Is that greater than Power, Hollins, Samuels and Jawad? That remains to be seen, but I like their chances.
In comparison we’re lacking that superstar type in Chris Paul, but that team also didn’t have a proven all-star coming off the bench (or starting depending on how Jarmio fits into the starting rotation in the first couple of games). That team also put up about 20 3’s a game. With Boobie getting more minutes and the depth of guys we have that can shoot the 3, we probably won’t be too far off with that number.
Bottom Line, I like our chances finishing 5-8 in the East with this current team. And if we can use that trade exception to improve at some point we shouldn’t be the Lottery Team that most “experts” expect us to be.
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