It might be early in the season, but six straight losses have us feelin’ a little blue.
On today’s podcast Tom Pestak, Nate Smith, Dani Socher and I spent some time talking about what we’ve liked and haven’t liked so far this season. Topics we touched on were the Cleveland Cavaliers’ bench, Tristan Thompson’s game, Kyrie Irving’s passing, Dion Waiter, Tyler Zeller, and why the heck we keep getting blocked so much. Plus much, much more.
As always, we’re on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cavs-the-podcast/id528149843
Also, you can find us on SoundCloud at http://soundcloud.com/cavstheblog/0015-is-it-summer-yet
Keep on the look out for more podcasting fun soon!
UPDATE: I need to fix the intro – it’s time to mix it up a bit. Any musicians/DJs/Etc. interested in helping me make a new intro song email me at Malloryfactorii@gmail.com or tweet at me @malfii – I’ll feature you on a podcast in exchange!
The Cavs have been blocked 89 times and have swatted only 21 shots. Both worst in the NBA.
I love the Dion love in the podcast. I thought it was funny that only one person was worried about shot selection and when called on it, just sort of changed the subject.
On the defensive problems, I think they’ll get better eventually. They might need a coach who has a better defensive philosophy (but stay away Mike Brown), but I think that they have the talent to be good defensively and players usually pick it up after a couple of years in the league.
Overall, I like the podcasts, but I think you guys may need to keep it as optimistic as possible. There’s going to be tons of losing this season, which is OK considering Dion, Kyrie, and Andy.
And no, JJ Hickson should never be mentioned again. He was pretty awful in Cleveland. No need to pretend that they should’ve kept him.
I’m kind of amused by this sequence: “Did we give up on JJ too soon?” Then, most of the panel (or just Mallory) is looking for every opportunity to give up on TT in his second season. Awesome.
NDK -
I haven’t given up on TT yet – like Nate has said, these guys are still essentially rookies. That being said, his improvement, thus far, from year 1 to year 2 is minimal, and he actually seems to have lost a step (like Tom said)
In general, I have some major frustrations about this team. There’s an overwhelming sense of forgiveness on this blog, which I get – we love these guys and want to view them through the prettiest lenses possible. But I for one feel like it’s our duty to dissect every aspect of our team and weigh it on the scale of this season – for the sake of thorough discussion and for the sake of an interesting conversation.
But don’t get me wrong, I still think Tristan can be good. In fact, he can still be great. So can Dion, and Kyrie’s flaws are normal for young guys. But the only way for them to get better is to acknowledge those flaws, and it doesn’t benefit anyone for us to overlook them, even if they can be attributed to youth and inexperience.
I’m not suggesting we overlook his flaws. They’re legitimate and need to be addressed, and I’ve personally lowered my thoughts on his ceiling a bit. But it’s ten games into year two, and more and more people just sound like they’re done with him already.
I think Kyrie’s performance last year has skewed people’s perspective on how quickly young players should develop.
NDK – here’s the difference between giving up on JJ Hickson too soon and what you are trying to imply we are saying about Thompson.
1.) No one advocated we TRADE Tristan Thompson for some below average wing player. If the Cavs do that, I promise you I will be pissed.
2.) JJ Hickson has a proven track record of being able to finish around and above the rim. He is an excellent rebounder, and he has good form on his shot.
His flaws are that he’s always out of position on defense, he takes too many jump shots, and since LeBron left he’s been on awful teams and he’s not really good at creating for himself in the post.
You can look at Hickson’s flaws and at least put on a wishful thinking cap and hope that he’ll eventually learn how to defend and maybe learn a few post moves or just stick to finishing off the weak side. He’s certainly got the athleticism to be viable, and he’s shown the ability to finish around the basket even when contested. It’s getting increasingly more difficult to look at Thompson and come to the conclusion that he will ever be anything but a liability on offense. Guys that can’t catch don’t suddenly learn. Guys that have no touch don’t suddenly develop it, and most players never improve their FT% more than a few %-age points. If he becomes such a dominant defensive force like Ben Wallace then we can all eat crow but I find that highly unlikely. #4 picks are for superstars, not above average defensive players/rebounders with no offensive skills to speak of.
JJ Hickson also had the worst hands of any power forward I’ve ever seen. We’d be trading blocked shots for turnovers out of bounds. I’m convinced that TT can learn how to be more creative on his shots. I’m not convinced JJ will grow bigger hands.
Tom -
Those are fair points. But if Hickson can warrant a wishful thinking cap in year five, why shouldn’t Tristan warrant it at year two? It’s not that I think he’s a superstar-in-waiting, but I think more patience is a reasonable request.
I agree with whoever’s assessment it was that he shouldn’t have bothered with a mid-range shot this summer. Free throws, hook shots, and a pump fake would’ve been just fine with me. He’s still a strong offensive rebounder, a (slightly) improving defensive rebounder, and is holding his mark to to a single-digit PER. If you think he won’t improve anymore than what he is now, then that’s a fundamental difference that we won’t be overcoming.
The “superstar at #4″ comment… Um, who in that class after Kyrie? Kawhi Leonard is a good player, but I think he gets a healthy boost from playing in San Antonio. Klay Thompson? Jonas? Also, keep in mind that we would be roasting CG alive if Jonas was still in Lithuania because the Cavs drafted him.
As for the trade for Casspi, I think the front office decided they were done with Hickson, for reasons that go beyond just basketball skills. They drafted Thompson, then traded Hickson. Perhaps someone has more info than I do, but I don’t know if they had that trade lined up before the draft. I think they were ready to move on and got what they could. Also, I think they valued that first-round pick more than Casspi, however conditional it might be, but I get your point.
It just seems like people are becoming increasingly disillusioned with Thompson to the point of writing him off, and I think we could all rein it in a bit. If he’s still getting blocked at this rate by the All-Star break, then set him on fire (metaphorically speaking).
Tom Pestak,
Early this season, by percentage of available misses, Hickson is a top-ten defensive rebounder in the league, on par with the Reggie Evans’s and Anderson Varejao’s of the world. If that keeps up, great for him, but it is a huge leap over his career averages. If that decreases to inline with his career averages, he is still just JJ Hickson. His assist and turnover rates are at career worsts since his rookie season, his block percentages are at career lows. The RAPM stat that I noted in Saturday’s recap considers him as performing worse than TT so far this year.
I always liked the Hickson trade, not necessarily for what it brought back, but because Hickson was sort-of a symbol of the failures of the Lebron era. I am glad that Boobie and Varejao are the two remnants of those teams. Also, hopefully Sacremento’s 11th pick in the 2016 draft brings something worthwhile.
TT has made improvements this year in defensive rebounding, true shooting, and assist rates. The type of reasonably expected improvements that should be seen from a 21 year old (not wild aberations like JJ’s d-rebounding at age 24). While I agree that superstardom is not in the cards for Tristan, if he becomes a double-double guy who increases his true shooting to league average (54%) at his peak, I will be content. I think he can do that.
Mallory,
As one of the ‘forgivers’, I agree with your sentiment that someone needs to be critical of player flaws. I appreciated Nate’s posts last Thursday about Kyrie’s defense. Kyrie is undoubtedly horrible at defense; worst in the league last year according to Synergy Sports; bottom 6th percentile this year according to RAPM.
This franchise just finished with a superstar that was above the law. If the new superstar isn’t performing in some regard, he should know about it, even if it is reasonable to assume he will improve with age. Like you said; the only way to get better to is acknowledge flaws.
Kevin -
The argument isn’t if Tristan can be a passable player, it’s whether or not he was worth that #4 pick. See below for more:
NDK, your comment is true – there weren’t a TON of guys available last year who look like stars (You forgot Faried though) but there may have been a player that, paired with Hickson, Kyrie, and now Waiters, made a lot of sense. The fact was we already had a passable player (Hickson) with a similar skill set to Tristan, at least on offense (has TT”s D been THAT breathtaking? I’d say no) and we gave him up for someone who thus far has looked anything but passable.
Imagine we had taken Leonard (who I was sort of hoping we’d trade down for on draft day) or Klay Thompson – those are two guys who fill a real need for us. Even Marcus Morris has played well in the role of stretch 4 and would’ve been valuable on a team of JJ, Kyrie, Andy, Zeller, and Waiters.
Obviously this is all moot – it’s not happening – but to think we gave up a passable guy for one who wasn’t…that’s sad.
I’ll add this, too – everyone on here, particularly the ones who rage over us continually drafting in the lottery, pounds home the idea of assets. We gave up an asset, no matter how small, for a non asset (I don’t see anyone knocking down our door to get Omri) – that’s definitely not a good thing.
Kevin – I totally understand the cultural residue sentiment for trading Hickson. It’s just hard for me not to think this team would be in a better place going forward if they’d have tried to teach Hickson some defense and left him at PF backing up Varejao, had drafted JV 4th alongside Kyrie, and signed Sessions (still a young player) to a reasonable deal to play backup.
Now you’ve got a core of young players that includes: Kyrie/Sessions, Dion/Boobie, Gee/scrap, Varejao/Hickson, and JV (a true center and younger than TT). Maybe not, but I think you can at least make an argument that there is more talent there than TT+Zeller+Casspi+Slone.
A for Hickson, he was thrust onto a team with championship expectations that could keep him on a very short leash. He had to deal with the LeBron fallout, and then he had to play for the Kings. He hasn’t exactly had a nuturing environment to develop in. I’m not saying he’s any good. I’m not sure I’m even saying he is/will be better than TT for his career. But I don’t see THAT much added value with TT, whereas someone like JV or K Leonard could potentially be a huge value added. What do you think to the questions in the podcast ‘Why are the Cavs getting blocked some much”?
Mallory,
I get that. I just think JJ was on his way out for basketball AND non-basketball reasons. I think Byron and CG had their minds made up. If JJ stays, does he develop under Byron given all the nonsense from ’10-’11? Do you move away from Byron for the sake of JJ? I think the answer to both of those is “No.”
I don’t really like Casspi, and I think he was just a flier. My judgment of a passable player in exchange for JJ will be based on the Kings’ pick, should we ever see it. If we don’t, then that sucks.
For conversations like this, I think Danny Green was the bigger whiff when it comes to these kinds of things (which was mentioned), and I still hold that San Antonio is a non-insignificant source of variance in his development. If he could’ve/would’ve developed like that with the Cavs, then that’s a guy who I miss in this lineup more than JJ.
Before you’re releasing the podcast could you try and up the volume a bit or something? I find the podcast to be generally pretty quiet.
As much as I am defending this stuff…. it is really hard to look back at that 2010 draft and play monday morning quarterback. I’m glad we picked Kyrie which wasn’t a total slam dunk. I think the other stuff makes for an interesting argument but I am not calling for Chris Grant’s head or anything. I really like picking Waiters over Barnes too.
Jason –
I’ll do my best to up the volume – weirdly, garage band has it sounding totally balanced.
Tom,
Regarding the Cavs getting blocked so much; I don’t know. TT, Sloan, Samuels and Gee are all in the bottom 10% of NBA players for the percentage of their shots being blocked. Of all NBA players with over 100 minutes this year; TT has gotten the highest percentage of his shots blocked.
Here’s my long-term solution…ditch Sloan and Samuels. Turn Gee into the combo back-up he is meant to be. Hope Tristan gets better with age. That’s all tongue-in-cheek, but three of those four things should be easily accomplishable (just not this year).
I was a JJ fan but Tom it is LUDICROUS for you to comment on TT’s hands while talking about JJ who had not-good-hands, to put it mildly…
And I’m sorry but where TT was drafted is besides the point. There is practically no such thing as value in the NBA draft due to it being only 2 rounds and only 15 players on each team. This notion seems to be, to me, a NFL draft thing which is almost ALL about value due to the length of the draft and the numbers of players for each team. There is no correlation between to the two yet time and time again we see analysis that references draft position and/or value. Zombie meme alert!!
While we’re talking about bad hands – Ben Wallace had terrible hands, and I feel like Drew Gooden had bad hands. If this was TT it would have been blocked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utun3FmLxbQ
Tom- have to take a bit of an issue with you here: “most players never improve their FT% more than a few %-age points”. I beg to differ. Here’s the FT% trend for Andy Varejao over the course of his career:
Year 1: 54%
Year 2: 51%
Year 3: 62%
Year 4: 60%
Year 5: 62%
Year 6: 66%
Year 7: 67%
Year 8: 68%
Year 9: 76%
Varejao’s hands and touch were as bad or worse than TT’s are in his first couple of years. What sets TT apart from JJ is work ethic. Due to that, I’ll stay patient for a couple years. Won’t even begin to judge him until year 4.
I still think Grant’s trade of Hickson was one of his better decisions as GM. There was no guarantee there was going to be a season or that Hickson would even play for the Kings. Omri hasn’t panned out, but Hickson didn’t pan out for the Kings either. At some point (2015 or 16 probably) the Cavs will be getting a top 12 pick for him.
JJ was a starcrossed player. He was a big who could neither defend the paint or stretch a defense out with a midrange game. Rather than fork over $7 million a year or more on Hickson they got future assets.
Tristan still has a lot of work to do on his game, but he’s got plenty of time to do it.
Grover – I’m acutely aware of Varejao’s improving FT% throughout his career. I used it as evidence for his value in my post last week. (check it out if you haven’t) I highlighted it because….drum roll please….It’s VERY RARE.
Good lord people
Did you just spend a half hour of the podcast discussing JJ Hickson?
Yep. Please, no more of this.
Cols…I have no idea what podcast you were listening to but, considering the podcast was almost exactly one hour, I don’t think we spent 1/2 of it talking about Hickson.
Cols – who would you like me to make the refund check out to?
Oh it’s free, sorry, no complaining then. What a great podcast!
Less Hickson next time please.
I think the JJ trade was good on multiple levels. There is a reason that both M. Brown and B. Scott benched him and he saw the court again more because of injuries to other players than any other reason. Some people thougth it was just a bad coaching decision by M. Brown to bench him, but when Scott did the same thing, that tells me there is/was something else going on with JJ. Also, JJ was asking for more money than we were willing to spend on him, he never could learn the offense (besides at C where it’s dummied down) and he always ‘clashed’ with Scott. Add all that up, plus consider at the time of the trade Casspi was a decent and improving SF, it was a good trade.
Obviously now we know that Casspi has played like garbage for us, but at the time of the trade, all signs pointed that Casspi should have been solid for us – judgeing the trade at the time, not in hindshight, good trade.
As far as taking TT #4 overall, I thought (and think) that was a mistake. IMO we should have taken JV and if not him then Kwahi Leonard or Klay Thompson. That’s who I was pushing for at the time of the draft, not just in hindsight. Looking at how they’ve perfromed to date compared to TT, I still feel like any of those guys would have been a better fit on our team.
The combination of passing on JV/Leonard/K. Thompson and lettig the TPE go for nothing, and letting Danny Green go for nothing when we didn’t have anyone to fill his role (Gee wasn’t viable at the time) – I think all these things were ‘mistakes’ of CG. Obviously, TT may still prove to be the best choice and we don’t know what kinds of deals we could have gotten for the LBJ TPE, but these actions/inactions by Grant do create cause to wonder and second guess him. Just like Waiters/Barnes may be a fair critique of Grants decisions (right now it seems he got this one right but let’s wait till the end of the season to judege).
Just saying, I don’t have a problem with the JJ trade at all. But several of Grants other decisions I’m still waithing to really pass final judgement on. I’m not ready to say he is a great GM (as some others have), I’m not ready to call him a bad GM either (as others have). I’m just waiting another year to see how his decisions pan out. It’s unfortuneate that we ‘have’ to wait but that’s how it is. I think making the decision to judge him too soon isn’t fair and waiting too long to move on from him would be a ownership mistake. I’m not sure when/how we strike balance between not giving a player or management enough time to prove themselves. But we did give JJ enough time, but we haven’t given TT or Grant or Waiters etc. enough time.
My problem with the HIckson talk is that after we traded him, he was cut by one of the league’s worst teams. Now, he’s about the 5th best player on a 0.500 team. I have a hard time envisioning the scenario where I say “too bad we don’t have JJ Hickson”.
As far as Valanciunas, Hickson, Sessions vs Thompson, Zeller, 12th pick in 2016; I am fine with what the Cavs have. The big variable is Valanciunas (I can completely live without the other two), which to me, has little to do with Hickson.
Cutting ties with Hickson, and any vague notion of seniority or control he may have had on this team, is cool.
The NUPE,
At the time of the draft, I thought Klay Thompson was limited as far as potential. He was good last year, and people were excited about him, but at least through 10 games this season…he’s been really bad. He’s almost 23, too. Next year is pretty much the start of his prime.
With Leonard, it will be interesting to see his performance in a few years once he is separated from the Parker – Ginobli – Duncan crew.
Generally, I agree with your sentiment though. Very few of Grant’s decisions have had enough time to either prove good or bad. He could be the next Sam Presti…he could be like ten other jokers who mess up a bunch of lottery picks. Obviously Irving was good. Waiving Danny Green was not good. Everything else = non-determinate. Next year is the decider.
Only somewhat related, but who was the source of the “Valanciunas won’t come to Cleveland” rumors? Was it his agent speaking directly to the media or was it a “source close to him” that told “someone with the team”, that then elaborated to the media? A link would be helpful. It’s not possible to bring Valanciunas up without this rumor being mentioned, and while I’ve seen the rumor 1000 times, I don’t recall the source.
How exactly has JV performed better than TT, The Nupe? Talk about another Zombie meme! The “Jonas is better than TT” is turning into one…
I’m actually excited in a way to see the offense go through Saint Weirdo (I’m all for the nickname btw eff those who don’t appreciate appropriate anagrams). It might actually aid Weirdo in his maturation. It’s a bummer to hear of our star going down, but he’ll be back soon. I always felt the Cavs were built to be a lottery team this year. The bench isn’t an accident. It was intentional to cost them games. If Kyrie was healthy they’d still be a deep lottery team. This will just further cement that. We’re all here because we care. We REALLY care. It’s not convenient to be a Cavs fan now. We REALLY CARE. Like drive 6 hours to Oakland from LA just to see them lose to the Warriors care and then drive 6 more hours back to LA the next day care. We may differ on opinions in this lovely forum but we’re all in this together. All for one and one for Noel…or Muhammmad…Or Poythress or…