Cavs, Cleveland radio, and comedy with Chad Zumock – WFNY Podcast – 2015-05-26
May 26, 2015The Cavs are in the NBA Finals: While We’re Waiting…
May 27, 2015Atlanta Hawks – 88
Cleveland Cavaliers – 118
Cavs win series 4-0, advance to NBA Finals
Congratulations, Cleveland! You did it! Well you didn’t really do that much. But you sort of did. It’s hard to say why we follow sports, or at least do so with so much zeal. Ostensibly it’s about your team winning a championship. But it’s more about sharing experiences with family and friends, about being able to (however faintly or fuzzily) remember and — if you’re into the whole “extending your bloodline” thing — tell your grandchildren, “I was there when [blank] happened.” And a lot of [blank] has happened to Cleveland sports fans in the last half-century: The Drive, the Fumble, the Decision, Jose Mesa, etc. times infinity.
But it just so happens that championships are the best [blank] to be there for.
It’s unreasonable to expect your team to win a championship every year or even all that often. But it’s nice to have a chance, just an opportunity to let chance take its course and see if your number comes up on the dice. The 1995 Cleveland Indians run to the pennant was my first experience with a team that flirted with greatness, and it’s something I’ll never forget. After eliminating the Atlanta Hawks 4-0 on Tuesday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers are going to the NBA Finals for a roll of the dice for a championship. So crack a beer, listen to some Hootie and the Blowfish, and let’s party like it’s 1995.1 But first let’s take a peak behind Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
30, 11 & 9 – LeBron James was so so close to averaging a triple-double in the Eastern Conference Finals, only .7 assists per game short of the incredible feat. Had he played in the fourth quarter, he most certainly would have accumulated the three missing assists to complete the triple-double. It was easy to scoff at all the iso play and the 37 field goal attempts in Game 3. Hardcore basketball fans have become so obsessed with efficiency at the expense of appreciating volume. Floods aren’t efficient, but they will wipe your house off the face of the earth, and James was a river overflowing its banks, washing away the Hawks hopes and dreams in the process. Although James barely missed the triple-double, it was still an all-time great playoff series performance.
28.7 – The Cavs snagged 28.9 of the available offensive rebounds in Tuesday’s game. This basically means that every fifth possession was free — your local bakery doesn’t have that great a deal on bear claws. Timofey Mozgov and Tristan Thompson were great again. Thompson had a typical (only for him) five offensive rebounds (11 total), and Mozgov added three. The Cavs out-rebounded the Hawks by 23 in the series (153 to 130) and more than doubled them up in offensive rebounds (55 to 27). I’m beginning to think that no one can sustain the energy to fight Thompson for four consecutive games; going against him for rebounds is being locked in a phone booth with a gorilla for forty minutes. Mozgov added 14 points on 5-of-9 shooting, running the floor and putting a fence around the basket. The Cavs lone remaining traditional big men have been spectacular all playoffs.
41.9 to 15.6 – The Cavs shot 13-of-31 on three-point field goals (41.9 percent) in Game 4, contrasted with the Hawks’ 5-of-32 (15.6 percent). It’s easy to shrug this off as ordinary hot vs. cold shooting, and the Hawks were cold in the series (as they had been all playoffs). But the Cavs moved the ball from side-to-side, posted LeBron up so that a help defender would have to cross the lane and leave an open shooter, and made good use of their open shots. The Cavs also ran the non-Korver Hawks off the three-point line, an effort that contributed to the Hawks’ poor percentage. Throughout the series, the Cavs had more assists (84) than the Hawks (76), even though the Hawks had the reputation for being the generous and saintly distributors.2 The Hawks weren’t going to win the series without accumulating more assists than the Cavs, so the result made sense.
18 – The Hawks were unable to take advantage of their perceived matchup advantages inside throughout the series. Paul Millsap and Al Horford combined for only 18 points on Tuesday, an astonishingly low total. Horford, who was busy calling into question Matthew Dellavedova’s character on Sunday night, went 1-of-6 from the field for only two points when he should have been demanding the ball on every possession and forcing Mozgov to defend him from the triple-threat position along the baseline. Credit the Cavs big men for being the bad guys they needed to be and neutralizing what should have been a big Hawks advantage.
8 – The Cavs have eight days without a basketball game between Tuesday and June 4, when the NBA Finals will begin against the Golden State Warriors or … it’s going to be the Golden State Warriors.3 That’s a long time to be off, but it will be valuable time for them to rest, ice, practice, and repeat. Kyrie Irving returned to the starting lineup after missing Games 2 and 3, and looked more himself than he had in Game 1. He still has a limp and doesn’t trust his knees at times (particularly on defense), but was 6-of-11 from the field and effective on offense. The Cavs will need him in the Finals, as he adds a dimension to the Cavs two-dimensional offense and makes them pop off screen. Hopefully the rest will do him well. The real question is what I’m going to do without basketball for eight days. Talk to my family? Clean my apartment? Invest time in self-improvement? Fat chance.
30 – It’s still hard to believe the Cavs clinched with a 40-point victory. It was certainly a disappointing effort from a Hawks team that was no less ravaged by injuries (Thabo Sefalosha, DeMarre Carroll, and Kyle Korver) than the Cavs were. I don’t know if the Cavs have what it takes to beat the Golden State Warriors, but I know that this #squad had given an extraordinary effort, and I’m not going to count the Cavs out. But let’s worry about the Warriors later. Now, let’s party like it’s 1995; and maybe it’ll be like 1964 in a few weeks.
- For the youngsters, Hootie and the Blowfish is a musical act that had a popular album in 1995 called Cracked Rear View. An album was this vinyl disk that you either put on a record player or bought on a tiny disk that was played by a machine with lasers. And music was this order of noises created by instruments. Cracked Rear View came out in 1994 but didn’t hit No. 1 on the charts until June 1995, and it was everywhere in the summer of ’95, and so I always associate it with that Indians team. [↩]
- Rightfully so. [↩]
- The Warriors are up 3-1 and will likely clinch Wednesday night in Oakland. [↩]
38 Comments
Awesome game!!!!! Loved the Delly chants. the only thing needed were Miller sucks chants..lol
It is hard to believe they won by 40. The score was 118-88.
So excited!! Go Cavs!
Go Cavs!! Everyone was writing us off a couple of months ago. Just happy to have made it to the Finals!!!
Last night was just a party, start to finish. (And I still love Time. What a great song.) Every few minutes something would happen that just felt like icing on the cake, from the TT jams to ridiculous Swish threes to Mozgov to the Delly tip.
Four more.
I’m happy for Andy, even though he isn’t playing he is the first guy off the bench hugging and cheering. After the crap he’s gone through for 4 years it sucks that he doesn’t get to play but instead of wallowing he is doing his best to help out. I hope he retires a Cav.
Delly crushing his first three and then crawling up in Teague’s nether regions to deny the ball and then inducing a foul set a real determined tone. I’m pretty sure Draymond Green is going to choke him to death in the next series should be fun.
TT, just TT.
It’s really really good to have a Lebron on your team.
Couple corrections: Cavs won by 30 points last night, not 40. And Golden State is up 3-1, not 3-0.
Must have been the beer writing?
My version of Footnote 1: For you youngsters, Hootie and the Blowfish was a musical act that was led by a guy who looks and sounds an awful lot like the country musician Darius Rucker. I refuse to believe them to be one and the same person.
I’m still trying to figure this out: will the Warriors put Draymond Green on Lebron and leave Klay Thompson to guard TT? I know TT isn’t the most polished offensively, but that’s quite an exploitable matchup. And even if we don’t feed him the ball, TT will surely grab every O-reb. June 4th can’t get here soon enough…
P.S. I will be spending my time clearing out the DVR that has been backing up since my non-sports TV time has been cut in half.
https://twitter.com/munistadium/status/603528950908907520
Technically that Hootie CD wasn’t an album it was a compact disc. That label would only do albums if the sales were over 2 million. People were not buying new vinyl in 1995.
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Or, technically, they made vinyl for it 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBm4Mx3KThc
“Credit the Cavs big men for being the bad guys they needed to be and neutralizing what should have been a big Hawks advantage.” – come on now. On NBA.com t.v., Thomas said it best when he said, look at when LeBron was standing next to Horford and Milsap, LeBron James, as the point guard, towered over the Hawks “big men”. The Cavs were bigger, stronger, longer, faster and better.
Right. After it hit the sales quota. But they weren’t pressing all albums at this time on this label.
Atlanta was broken and I don’t just mean Korver their spirit was gone games ago. Al The Hammer Horford 2 points in an elimination game is sorrowful. It just shows Atlanta was all show and no go when it mattered the most. That’s one of the top 2 teams, record wise, eliminated. Soon it will be time for the Cavaliers to suit up and prepare to take down the top team, the media darlings, the newly crowned but more hype then substance Stephon Curry. To this I say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwwY9y6O3hw
Just proves don’t believe everything you read or hear especially if it’s on ESPN!
Remember, Horford was the guy who eliminated the Wizard with his passion not even two weeks ago. He not only had a forgettable series but was weirdly passive last night, like his own flagrant 1 scared him away from what was left of his game.
And Teague’s poking at Delly as soon as he checked into the game was laughable. Good for the refs expecting it and stopping it with an immediate foul call. A lesser officiating crew might have let the situation devolve just like game 4 of the Boston series.
I will always remember the 4th quarter when Joe Harris and Perkins scored. The starters went nuts on the sidelines.
I would have liked to see what might have happened had Wall not broken his hand. As for Horford I liked him but he’s not a true center he’s a PF, He wilted against a true, physical center in Mozgov. Add in TT who has summoned the powers of Dennis Rodman minus the dress and there you go.
Teague was chippy all series he got away with a few shots on Delly that weren’t caught but again the Hawks could pass and shoot when nobody played defense. The Cavaliers smothered them, not much was easy ever. Playoff basketball 101.
What about Mike Miller?
Did he score too? I remember Harris and Perkins.
What? Mike Miller is rolling over in his grave he absolutely drained a 3 right in front of the Cavaliers bench.
On the flip side, how are the Cavs going to match up on D? Shumpert on Curry, JR on Klay? Who can Kyrie guard right now?
For some reason, that bothered me less than the Waiters jersey I saw.
Thanks. Geezus those were bad.
Figured I wouldn’t have had first crack at this since it’s almost noon in the east, but I’m going to throw my jab anyways.
“So hard to believe, because they actually won by 30”
Believe it or not, no. A combination of Seep-Deprivation + WordPress Problems + Intoxicating Joy
Yea. They won’t be able to hide Kyrie on Bazemore like they did last night. It’s a big issue.
Well, forgive me for that one. I forgot that vinyl wasn’t cool again until the last five years and the hipster snobs made artists start producing vinyl records again.
It’s fine, I worked as a deejay in this era, vinyl was largely dead as disco.
Pearl Jam began doing some vinyl with the Spin the Black circle, and some limited release with Vs. and that was largely the extent of it. And they had some pull as the biggest act in the world then. And it pissed Sony off a ton too.
I loved how they, meaning Perkins and I believe James Jones or Joe Harris, even tried to get Haywood a score. Perkins fought in order to get a pass into Haywood in the paint, essentially telling Haywood to put it up, but the shot did not go in.
I’m assuming they’ll stick Kyrie on Barnes. I haven’t watched enough of the GS games to know how Barnes is used, and whether or not they’ll just run him off screens to try to exploit Ky, but it’s the only logical solution, methinks. Kyrie on Barnes, Shump on Curry, Lebron on Klay, TT on Green, and Mozzie on Bogut.
You need to catch up on your Seep. #pileon
If Brendand Haywood scores on your team in the playoffs, you are automatically relegated next season.
Hey- A little misleading with the rebounding numbers, they outrebounded them by 51, 208 to 157 for the entire series. DRebounds alone they got 153 to their 130. In the piece you imply that the DReb numbers are total rebound numbers….thought you might want to clarify. Good stuff though! Thank you!
That’s what I was thinking, but he’s got 5 inches on him and plays mid-range. He could destroy him. And they could easily just play a pick-and-roll game with Barnes/Curry or even Klay/Curry forcing Lebron to chase Curry around. That said, you’re probably right.
Cavs should do what Houston has done successfully at times – send both guys on a pick right at Curry to trap and force him to give up the ball, then rotate quickly to get back. He doesn’t get rid of the ball that quickly or well (surprisingly) when trapped so you have time to react to wherever he goes with it, and it takes time off the shot clock, plus he turns it over sometimes.