The good news is that you cannot really look at the score of last night’s 18-point loss to the Detroit Pistons as LeBron James took a scheduled night off with the season coming near.
The bad news is that no matter what this team seems to do to improve around James, the Cavaliers still rely oh so heavily on one man. Sure, the Pistons played their starters for most of the game. However, this team is full of veteran players. It isn’t like Mo Williams, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Wally Szczerbiak are new to this whole basketball thing. (We’ll let J.J. Hickson slide…for now)
Mike Brown has considerable reason to be a bit on nerve about last night’s double-digit turnovers. Especially, as pointed out by Brian Windhorst, when their transition defense has been average at best. You can’t turn the ball over 17 times and then allow the opposing team to score on more than half of them. Well, assuming you want to win the game, anyways.
The entire game seemed to have been orchestrated by the opposing backcourts, with Rodney Stucky and Richard Hamilton combining for 35 points; Mo Williams, Danny Gibson and Wally Szczerbiak went for 42. On the other side of the coin, Zydrunas Ilguaskas, Anderson Varejao, J.J. Hickson and Ben Wallace combined to go 6-for-25 from the floor. Ouch.
Thankfully, I think we can all agree that this team plays a different game when their leader is on the floor. Once the regular season rolls around, we likely won’t be seeing every player on the roster receive 20 minutes of play. At least, let’s hope not…
**
Author: Scott
Scott is a co-founder/editor of Waiting For Next Year who resides in Cleveland, Ohio. Feel free to follow him on Twitter or email him at scott@waitingfornextyear.com.Scott has written 1701 articles for Waiting for Next Year.
I choose to look at it as: LeBron was resting up so that he could put on a show for the WFNY staff in Columbus tomorrow night.
I was glad to finally be able to watch a game on TV. The game was sketchy, but it is preseason and the gameplan used tonight will not be used in the regular season. It was just to give JJ, Kinsey, and Mo some experience with their new teammates. Speaking of JJ, I’ve been looking all over for a picture of that putback slam he had last night. That was awesome. Its a little early in his career to be screamin like that, but I liked that he was aggressive. Let’s face it, we haven’t had an aggressive scorer in the PF position in forever. And that over under layup he had showed he’s got some finesse. The first half definitely showed how raw he is though. Putting up dumb shots and missing switches on defense.
Hickson’s slam was pretty, but his defense was really ugly. We all knew it would take him a while to get used to NBA level defense, and he proved us right last night. A couple of plays he looked like he was guarding a spot on the floor instead of a player. He just wouldn’t move. He was so unsure of who he was supposed to be guarding, or where he was supposed to be helping that he wouldn’t move his feet at all. The Pistons took advantage with easy baskets cutting through the lane. Hickson has a lot of work to do before he can be trusted on the court in any critical situation.
I think LeBron was resting for Greece.
Pray for a healthy LeBron. It should be really easy for Ferry to evaluate his team, just take LeBron of the court and see what happens. Of course Mike Clown is still running the show, so again pray for a healthy LeBron. It should be noted by doubters across the globe that LeBron is the best player on the planet. He makes the Cavs a contender despite the maddening ineptitude of their head coach. The Lakers without Bryant are still an above .500 team. The Cavs without LeBron may win 20 games. Paxson put this team in a huge hole talent-wise. F U Paxson.