MLB News: Cleveland Indians claim Tampa Bay’s Joey Butler
December 7, 2015Buckeyes Roundball Roundup: Splitting a pair with the state of Virginia
December 8, 2015Happy Tuesday WFNY!
Fair warning, most of this is being written quickly on Tuesday morning. Normally, I prefer to write most of my WWWs on Monday nights, and then just finish up a few details on Tuesday morning, particularly covering anything that may have happened overnight. However, my internet was out at home last night, making it difficult to look things up or even use my preferred Google docs to write and save my work in the cloud.
This morning, my internet was still out. It’s been down for over 18 hours. I’m not sure I’ve ever been without internet for this long while I was at home. I’ve been places on vacation before where there’s no cell phone or internet service, but never at home. Not having internet for extended periods of time at home is a strangely boring and isolating feeling. You don’t realize how interconnected we all are as a society with the internet until you’re in a place you normally have service but now find yourself without it.
There are ways around this, of course. I could have tethered my phone to provide me service for my laptop, but I didn’t want to do that for reasons I won’t bore you with. In fact, I realize I’m probably boring you right now anyway. I’m telling you all of this just because I found it to be an interesting unintentional experiment. The ubiquitous nature of “The Internet” is a fairly recent thing. Our family got our first PC in 1996. I bought my first desktop in 2000, with my first laptop coming in 2003. My first smartphone was in 2007 (a Pantech Duo which ran some bastardized form of Windows on it). In 2009 I bought my first iPhone, the 3GS. Even though I had a smartphone in 2007, it wasn’t the easiest to use in all areas and it didn’t offer the portability you think of today. Really, I would say the iPhone in 2009 was really the gamechanger for me and the way I felt about an ever-present connection to the world via the Internet.
Six years later, it feels like an internet connection is a constitutional right1. I’m always amazed at how rapidly our world changes these days. Of course, things have always changed. Nostalgia has been around forever, and every generation looks at the next generation with a skeptical eye. Change is nothing new, but technology has taken change and catalyzed it into exponential growth. I often think about how interesting it will be if this rate of change continues. I mean, obviously at some point we will hit a point of diminishing returns where you simply can’t develop new changes any faster, but I wonder what this world will look like 100 years from now. I’d give anything to see what the future holds for this planet and its inhabitants. Anyway, these are the things I contemplate when I’m bored and don’t have the internet to occupy my attention. Lets talk about some sports, that’s why you’re here anyway.
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The Cavaliers aren’t boring anymore. Ugh.
Last week I wrote in WWW about how the Cavaliers were delightfully boring. They were just winning, and life seemed fine. Then they lost all three games last week and suddenly it feels like the whole thing is imploding. So what the heck happened?
I wrote in my Behind the Box Score on Saturday that I can offer excuses for all of this. We can comfort ourselves by saying that the loss of Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert, combined with Timofey Mozgov’s obvious rust/injury/whatever you want to call it are starting to catch up to the team. And there’s probably some real truth to that.
Furthermore, these are just sort of the ebbs and flows of an NBA season. Any distress over this current stretch of games is likely partially a reaction to the Golden State Warriors. I sort of liken it to LSU football. They considered getting rid of Les Miles, one of their best coaches they’ve ever had and a coach who has won a national championship and two SEC titles in his ten years there. For most teams that would be a heck of a position to be in. But it looks different when you’re constantly looking directly up at Alabama and Nick Saban. Similarly, I think the Cavaliers are getting sore necks from looking directly up at the Warriors.
The Cavaliers came out this season playing basketball with a real joy. They were moving the ball on offense better than I’ve ever seen a Cavaliers team play since LeBron joined the franchise. Everything seemed fun, and the team was winning. But they also lost a game here and there. And they had a couple close games against what would be considered “weaker” opponents. And Golden State kept winning. And winning big, just absolutely thrashing any team in their way. And LeBron noticed.
Suddenly, the Cavs weren’t fun anymore. LeBron went into super serious mode, riding his team because they weren’t winning the same way the Warriors were. He questioned the hunger of the team. He openly and out loud asked why his team didn’t seem as hungry as the team that just won the NBA Title. In LeBron’s mind, the team that lost should be the hungrier team. And slowly but surely, the Cavaliers started playing basketball like a team under a ton of pressure. Players started getting tight, the ball stopped moving, and everyone more or less reverted back to just watching LeBron play.
Furthermore, Kevin Love’s play has fallen off a cliff. He has missed every three point attempt he’s put up in this current three game losing streak. As his shot began to fail him, his aggressiveness and assertiveness in the offense declined as well, and now he’s back to looking like a shell of the player we know he’s capable of being. This is where you miss Kyrie Irving and his unflappable confidence. Kyrie would be able to help take some of the pressure off and let Love rediscover his game. But with Kyrie out and LeBron needing rest, all eyes were on Love at the worst possible time.
Losing streaks are never fun, and everything feels so bleak right now. But as I say every season, things are not as bad as they seem right now. This will pass and the team will get back to playing better basketball. I feel like a team needs to overcome some adversity to really become a great team. It takes those trials to force a team to come together and fight their way out of it. And when they succeed, they will be closer than ever because of it. So as much as the team is not fun right now, it’s important to remember that this here, right now, is what will make what comes next so much more fun. Remember, it was the early season struggles last year that made the bowling storyline so much fun.
So while I’m not happy about the way the Cavaliers are playing right now, I’m also not freaking out about it. These things happen all the time. Very few teams have ever gone through an NBA season without hitting a stretch where they sort of lost their identity and had to struggle. That doesn’t mean the Cavaliers don’t need to worry about it and try to fix it. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that struggle of figuring out what’s wrong and addressing those problems are what will make this team even greater in the long run. As long as they can, indeed, figure it out. I’m confident they will.
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Lets talk about the Browns!
LOL, just kidding.
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My favorite music of 2015 (30 through 21)
Continuing my list of favorite albums of 2015 from last week, we’ve reached the rest of the albums that fell outside my Top 20. Every year I try to identify how “deep” I think the year was in what I personally consider great albums. This year, I place the cutoff at 25, meaning that 25 through 21 are albums that I absolutely loved and had a very hard time leaving them out of my top 20.
As always, a reminder that these are merely my personal preferences. I make no value judgments on this and wouldn’t dare tell you that you should agree with me.
21. Refused – Freedom
22. Metz – II
23. FIDLAR – Too
24. Wavves x Cloud Nothings – No Life For Me
25. Surfer Blood – 1000 Palms
26. The Prodigy – The Day Is My Enemy
27. Noisem – Blossoming Decay
28. Torres – Sprinter
29. Kylesa – Exhausting Fire
30. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love
Next week we’ll break into the top 20 and I look forward to sharing more with you.
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That’s all I have for you this week. Enjoy the rest of your week and here’s to hoping the Cavaliers turn things around this week. And that I get my internet service back.
- You can take away my internet when you take it from my cold, dead hands, amirite? [↩]
14 Comments
Just out of general irritation….
The Spurs rest Duncan, Ginobli, and Leonard and beat Philly by 51 freakin’ points! 51!
We struggled at home to beat them by 6.
Ugh!
And THEIR prized free agent steps up and drops 26 and 9.
LBJ sits out and OUR prized FA goes for 5.
You know who’s boring? The Spurs. Focused and professional are boring.
Not listless and apathetic.
The Cavs WISH they were boring.
Our family has “disconnect to connect” days. Phones are put away and/or we go away somewhere. No internet, no phone calls (unless emergency). Those are ALWAYS my favorite days.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much of a connected-addict as anyone else. But, the freedom from engagement is thrilling. It puts me alone with my own thoughts and on those directly around me.
Then, I go right back to the modern way of life. But, it’s cuz I love y’all and wouldn’t want to stay away 🙂
17 years running the same system makes it easier to integrate new parts and for all the old parts to run seamlessly when one of those pieces is under repair.
I refuse to upgrade to a smart phone, and join the legions of phone zombies.
I get lots of comments when I whip my good ‘ol slide phone to text. lol
My wife….”Ohmygawd….put that thing away.”
That helps, but it’s their consistent attitude and effort that make them efficient killers.
I was there for a long time. Finally broke down a couple years ago. In some ways, I’m glad. In others, not so much. Give and take as with all things.
refused, metz and kylesa…nice
Sleater Kinney show is tomorrow night; probably been waiting on this show for like 10 years.
The second half of last year there was nobody more efficient an offense as the Cavs and that was them playing together 4 months under Blatt.
To Bode’s point imagine the Cavs with newly drafted LeBron as the starting point and then integrated
Kyrie and Love after 4 years of James development all under Pop’s
leadership.
Same here, granted our twins are only 2 but it is a rule between my wife and I that from the time we get home together with the kids to the point of them going to bed there is no phone, ipad or internet use.
This is our one go around with children and there’s no way I’m missing it for anyone’s Tweet.
Everyone is always compared to San Antonio but they are a different team, a different organization. If Golden State can continue to do what they are doing while adding titles they’ll unseat San Antonio. It’s no different then when Chicago was dominating the league until Detroit came along.
But as far as the Cavs go they’ve lost three in a row lets not try and make this story into something more. I agree however that they haven’t looked good in the losses. What I don’t like is all of the inside talk that seems to be happening. I still believe instead of playing with the guys available they are looking forward to the starting backcourt being back as a cure all. The glaring problem I see is the inside game on both ends. There isn’t any. I want to see more inside play from Love because really he’s the only threat.
Oh there’s such a great line in that comment but I’ll let it go just like the Cavs defense.
I’m concerned. Kevin Love is not very good at basketball. I mean, he’s alright but a max player? No way in hell. Kyrie’s good but there’s no reason to think he can play the game at a high level and stay healthy. The Cavs should be looking at the W’s because they are a much better team.