Peyton Hillis Discusses His Whiteness on The Dan Patrick Show
January 19, 2011While We’re Waiting… Revisiting Braylon, Howard Leaving Orlando and More on Shurmur
January 20, 2011When the lights, cameras and voice recorders were being turned off, Cavs head coach Byron Scott walked back towards the locker room and said, “Excuse me while I go and beat the [expletive] out of J.J. [Hickson].”
Drawing laughter from media members in attendance, Scott smiled and walked down the pine-laced hallway into the locker room as the door closed behind him. Hickson’s faux punishment was cultivated by a slip of the tongue from the day before as the power forward revealed that the Cavs have been working on adding the use of a “show” defense into their repertoire.
And if the defensive term looks familiar, it’s because it roots from the same defense used by former Cavaliers coach Mike Brown. Utilized best in pick-and-roll scenarios – something which they will see plenty of tonight against the Phoenix Suns – defenders flash out and disrupt the player with the ball as teammates temporarily help on any would-be cutter. After the defender “shows,” he then regroups on his man and the defense (ideally) rotates back to their respective assignments.
Under Brown, the Cavaliers were among the best in defense, allowing a league-fewest 91.4 points per game in 2008-09 and the fifth-fewest points per game (95.6) in 2009-10. This year, under Scott, the Cavs are 26th in the NBA, allowing 104.9 points per game and a league-worst 43.3 percent from the three-point line.
Succumbing to the fact that some of the players on the Cavaliers may be more comfortable running the defensive system that they may be more accustomed to, the young and injured group has spent the past two days working more on the “show” defense as they look give themselves a chance at coming out with a win.
The “show” defense will not be anything new for Scott’s team, as they have used it here and there in the past along with their calls of “red” and “blue.” It will merely just be used a little more often over the course of the next 41 games due to how well it worked in the past as well as how comfortable his team appears to be with the terminology.
“[History] had a litle bit to do with it,” said Scott. “For the most part, when we did stick to our game plan of showing at times, we did really good with it.
“I just said, ‘Look, let’s just pick one and stick with it.’ We’ll make everyone on the team accountable for it and being that they have a better understand of the ‘show,’ it kind of factored into that decision as well.”
Scott stresses that the biggest concern for him from this point out is to get better on the defensive end and show considerable, sustainable understanding of the philosophies involved.
The Phoenix Suns are 11-2 when scoring at least 110 points, but just 7-19 if kept at bay. Given the recent effort given by all of those players on the practice floor, there is no time like the present to put the new focus to work.
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(AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
12 Comments
I don’t know what defense they’ve been trying to run all year, but at times is looks as though they literally couldn’t be worse on defense. Hopefully this provides some continuity, but I doubt it will.
Mark Price is a long legged Mac Daddy! He pimps white women and black women!
Judging by the avatar of the first commenter, and the statement by the second commenter, I’m not entirely sure which website I’m on.
Don’t be a hater! When your favorite basketball team is in dead last, you can post anything you want anytime you want. Not even the strongest Shiva Blast could make me feel better!
In best Lombardi voice…”What the hell is going on here!”
How do we implement the “Activate Moondog So We Have Another Body to Play Defense” defense?
…..we may be that desperate.
They don’t have the length or athleticism to be a very good defensive team, but they honestly haven’t looked on the same page all season; even more so after Varejao went down. Can we play Byron Scott? That might very well help at this point.
Off the title: I thought this article was going to be another reference to the early 80’s Cadavaliers.
“The Phoenix Suns are 11-2 when scoring at least 110 points, but just 7-19 if kept at bay. Given the recent effort given by all of those players on the practice floor, there is no time like the present to put the new focus to work.”
Thanks for the worthless stat. They scored less than 110 points. So why didn’t Cleveland win?
@9 – the Suns won 7 out of 26 games when scoring less than 110 points. that is a .269 winning percentage.
the Cavs winning percentage going into tonight was .200. we are worse overall than PHX when they score less than 110.
It’s sad that a team has to “implement” a show on the pick and roll. This is something you simply do on a regular basis from the time you’re in Jr. High.
Just shows how low of a collective basketball IQ this team has.
“Thanks for the worthless stat. They scored less than 110 points. So why didn’t Cleveland win?”
My guess is the same reason the other seven teams didn’t: They scored fewer points by the time the game was over. Just a guess though, will have to confirm.