Preseason rolls on, Cavs fall to Pacers 102-79

the big fella likes to shoot

To say I’m excited for the Cavaliers first post-Decision, non-tanking season would be an understatement. I have probably watched more preseason NBA basketball this year than at any other point in my life. Sure, 2013 marks the first time that every preseason game has been televised (about friggin time) but I snuck in a road trip to Canton to watch the Cavs face the Bobcats (not to mention the obligatory trip to Swenson’s).

With a young roster feature two intriguing rookies and a coach who is implementing this thing called “defense”, I’ve been soaking up as much preseason Cavaliers basketball as I possibly can. And while this preseason has been a lot of fun, it’s kinda hard to draw many conclusions from October basketball.

The Cavs lost to the Pacers 102-79 in Cleveland on Saturday night. What does that tell us? Could the young Cavs, after beating up on teams like Orlando, Philly and Milwaukee, not handle a top team like the Pacers? Or did Mike Brown simply let his bench go against Indiana’s starters for much of the third and fourth quarters? (It… did not go well).

Even though I’m cautiously optimistic about Cleveland’s 3-2 preseason record, knowing that the Pacer victory improved Indiana’s preseason record to a paltry 1-5 is a bit of a wake up call.

Huh. The Pacers, a team who took Miami to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals, were winless in four preaseason games before Saturday. Oh ya, that’s right. These games don’t matter.

Sure, that should probably be obvious given the fact that someone named Matthew Dellavedova got the most court time of any Cavalier. But still. As much as I’ve enjoyed flashes from Anthony Bennett and Sergey Karasev, I’m beyond ready for the real games to start.

David West led all scorers with 20 points, and Lance Stephenson added 13, as the Pacers took care of the Cavs by a final score of 102-79. Kyrie Irving led the Cavs with 15 points and five assists and top pick Anthony Bennett notched his first double-double, with 10 points and 11 rebounds.

Stray observations.

The Indiana defense is pretty good, me thinks.  The Pacers held the Cavs to a putrid 29% from the field. No one shot well. Kyrie was 5-13, Dion Waiters, after starting 0-6, finished at 4-13, Bennett was 3-11 and Karasev was 1-7. Indiana didn’t let the Cavs get easy inside looks and the Cavs were more than happy to keep chucking inefficient jumpers. The only two Cavaliers who made more shots than they missed were Tristan Thompson and Alonzo Gee, which makes all kinds of sense….

Anthony Bennett has no conscious. The big man likes taking threes. He chucks ’em early, he chucks ’em often. Which is fine, to a degree. Bennett has definitely shown that he has the outside range, but I’d like him to be a little more… prudent with his shot selections. But he is clearly skilled. Bennett has good off-the-dribble moves and I love having him be at the receiving end of pick-and-rolls. Yes, he still looks gassed most of the time, but he’s clearly playing hard and it doesn’t look like he’s completely lost defensively. With his big body and offensive arsenal, I hope he would be a little more polished in the low post, but I imagine that’ll come in time.

I like Pacers coach Frank Vogel. He seems smart. The Pacers are well coached and well run. Vogel seems pretty bright and engaging in interviews and he seems to have the ear of his squad. I’m gonna be interested to see how they do this year with a non-terrible bench.

Tristan Thompson right handed free throw watch: 5-6. You can’t help but encouraged by Tristan’s switch to his right hand. He’s taking short pull up jumpers and it looks… normal. I’m still baffled he made it this far shooting left handed.

Kyrie Irving is good at basketball. This is just a reminder. I cannot wait for him to play more than two quarters.

Preseason basketball!! The teams combined to shoot a whopping 83 free throws. 83! David West took a whopping 14 of those freebies. Meanwhile, former Knick Chris Copeland hoisted 11 (!!) threes. Bennett and Henry Sims both fouled out (Sims only played 17 minutes. Impressive!) and Irving, Varejao and Thompson all finished with five fouls. To top the night off, we got to see old friend Donald Sloan play some minutes for Indiana.

I don’t need to see Earl Clark take any more long twos. He’ll come around a screen on the wing, dribble into the middle of the floor and then chuck a 19 footer off the dribble. Yuck. I can I choose “Door #3” in the Clark/Alonzo Gee small forward battle?

This was Sergey Karasev’s worst game thus far. Karasev finished with four turnovers and shot just 1-7 from the floor.  Indiana’s defense can do that do a guy. For the first time this preseason, the sweet shooting Russian looked indecisive and it seemed like he was thinking and not simply playing. Like Bennett, Karasev doesn’t look super lost defensively nor intimidated by the NBA competition.

and finally…

Just one more week until the real games. The Cavs finish their last week of the preseason by going on the road for some home games. They’ll face the Sixers on Monday night at the Schottenstein Center on Ohio State’s campus and then travel South to Cincinnati to face the Wizards at the US Bank arena on Wednesday. The Cavs will finish their preseason with a back-to-back (which seems… odd) and will face the Bobcats on Thursday in Charlotte. Their regular season opens on Wednesday, October 30th against the Brooklyn Nets at The Q.

(Photo by David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images)