Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
You can’t make this stuff up- when I logged on tonight to write about the game I noticed someone found our site tonight using a search engine and the phrase “Mike Bown’s offense.” I’m kind of surprised they didn’t get some sort of error message there…
The Celtics beat the Cavaliers 89-73, as Boston out-shot, out-rebounded, and out-hustled the Cavaliers to take a 2-0 lead in the best of 7 series. LeBron James was slightly better than awful, scoring 21 points and shooting 25% instead of 11% from the field. The rest of the Cavs shot 41% believe it or not, led by Zydrunas’ 19 points on 9 of 12 shooting. Zydrunas was the only thing working for the Cavs on this night. He was hitting everything early on. Of course, the Cavs stopped using that weapon somewhere in the third quarter.
Here’s a quote for you-
Is that enough time for this team to practice the offense together? Is that enough time for this group to solidify the defense that has been somewhat sieve-like this past week? Think back to the Boston game. The Cavaliers couldn’t execute the half-court offense against the Celtics. Why? Because the Celtics are a good defensive team that you must execute your offense against in order to win. You can’t go one-on-one against the Celtics and expect to win.
The context of this quote? Well, it was written on March 10th, right before the Cavaliers played game #64 against the Trail Blazers, and 18 games before the playoffs. Who wrote it? Me. How about another one-
Delonte West (4.5 assists/game) is not distributing the ball well enough for this line-up to work. I’m not willing to throw Delonte under the bus here, as he is still learning the system, or….worse yet he does know the system, and the system is inadequate.
You guessed it, me again. Delonte had a few nice defensive plays in this one, especially the 4 blocks- including a block on Kendrick Perkins. But Delonte disappeared from the offense in the second quarter and never emerged again. The answer to my quandary is obvious. There is no offensive system here. I don’t bring up these quotes to pat myself on the back. Quite the contrary. If I can spot these flaws, having never coached or even played organized basketball beyond junior high, then certainly it must be obvious to Danny Ferry.
ESPN was kind enough to dig up these nuggets of gold for us, the 6 Cavalier playoff games in which they scored the fewest points-
- May 21, 2006 at Detroit- 61 points
- May 6, 2008 at Boston- 72 points
- April 24, 2008 at Washington- 72 points
- June 12, 2007 vs San Antonio- 72 points
- May 16, 2007 vs New Jersey- 72 points
- May 8, 2008 at Boston- 73 points
Anything jump out at you? Sure, 3 of them are from this season. But further than that, all 6 of them took place under the watchful eye and creative offense of Mike Brown. Further, each game featured the most prolific scorer in the history of the franchise.
Am I throwing in the towel? Do I recommend, like every talking head will tomorrow, that this series is over? Nope. To beat the Celtics the Cavaliers, and specifically LeBron James will have to knock down contested shots. They’ve done it before. Especially LeBron. For whatever reason he couldn’t buy a jump shot in Boston. Perhaps he can pick up a bunch of them for 23 cents each when he gets back to Cleveland.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Stick a fork in this one. Boston is way too good for Mike Clown’s non-existent offense. They tried to run a few things early on, which actually were working because Z was knocking down his jump shot. But they quickly turned back into the Mike Clown Cavs in the second quarter. No one got close to the rim, with the exception of LeBron going 1 on 4.
I really can’t watch this series anymore. Seeing Clown with that stupid dumbfounded look on his face makes me mental. When’s training camp?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I liked the play where LeBron was in the paint, and ran out to the arc to catch the ball, instead of just catching the ball on the arc.
There was another play (2nd quarter I think) where west handed the ball to lebron, then west and wally slowly sauntered away from lebron, creating some “isolation” space.
Also, LeBron has been making terrible decisions with the basketball. I don’t remember him looking this lost his rookie year.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Any chance that the “overrated” chance coming from the Boston fans will fuel the fire?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:05 am
The home crowd will fuel the fire Saturday. Everyone needs to relax. The casv have been down 0-2 the past 2 years. They won in 6 last year and lost in 7 two years ago (thank you flip murray for trying to pull down a one armed rebound at the end of game 6, you stupid *%&*^, I hate you)…sorry about that, I still have some pent up frustration towards Flip Murray apparently…..either way, back to my point, the Cavs need to win these next 2 home games to set up their customary game 5 road playoff win
May 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am
The Cavs look down right scared of the Celtics right now. No one wants to touch the ball. Not sure how you coach that out of them.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:53 am
MacNip, the problem is, those Cavs who came back are gone. This is a different team. A worse team. I mean, the Celtics only won 24 games last year. You can’t use what Boston did last year as an indication of what’s going to happen this year any more than you can with the Cavaliers. The only players who play real minutes that are left from the teams with resolve and heart that came back from those deficits are LeBron, Z, Sasha, and Andy. And Sasha and Andy are a shell of the players they were last year. I’ve seen nothing all year from this current roster of Cavaliers players that tells me they have the heart to come back.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Please don’t question my prognosticating ability (just ask Scott).
You are also forgetting about Gibson in that heart group. That makes Gibson, Sasha, Lebron, Andy and Z as players who have come back before (or, if you look at it, a complete lineup). Look, we go through this every series and every season with the Cavs. They play on emotion and need their home crowd to get them going. They have frequent mental lapses and ‘flip the switch’ when they need to. I use past years as examples because it is absolutely amazing how predictable this team is. Anyone who thought this series wasn’t going to be 0-2 at this point was kidding themselves.
Saturday night will be the reemergance of last year’s eastern conference champs…they will look like a completely different team. Get ready to ride the wave.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Once Cleveland wins this series, I will of course pretend that I never doubted them, or you, MacNip.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
I’m using a dirty fork for one.