“It’s early.” Repeat that 3x. Of course with time: trends, ranks, and outliers become less noisy and more meaningful. Trends level off, ranks become more stable between games, and outliers become more impressive. Here’s a few that I researched after a little quiet reflection.
Trending: UPWARD.
Omri Casspi and positive adverbs can stand to be in the same room with each other lately. Now, I can only count on one hand the number of times I have been forced to pay attention to Omri Casspi on a basketball court since Kyrie Irving had his suit drycleaned. However, almost every one of those times I saw something positive. He looks like a walk-on playing defense – earning every minute he gets. (It’s quaint) He seems to be a three point threat, even though a few of the shots have the body language of “this could be my last chance – better make it count”. You could make the case that Casspi’s NBA career has been in decline since he arrived on the scene. But this year might be different. Casspi’s production in general seems to be trending back up. Specifically his 3PFG% the last 11 games looks like this.
a healthy 18/36 on the year
If he can keep his 3PFG% above even 40% that would be an asset for this shooting-deficient team (assuming he gets more playing time – something that many on this blog have advocated). The Cavaliers have no shortage of 3 point gunners, but are lacking in marksmen (at least so far this year). We’ll check back with Casspi at a later date. There are some harbingers that he’s on the up and up.
"I don't always google my name, but when I do, I make sure safesearch is on." - CJ MILES the most interesting man on the Cavs bench
Ranks: Dead last, 6th Worst
Is there anything more irritating than a guy shooting contested jump shots off the dribble and missing? Repeatedly. With no course correction. This irritant alienated one fan so much that he blessed the world with this url: http://heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com/.
I think we need to find that guy and ask him to author:
http://heycjmilespleasetrysomethingdifferentperhapsspottingupforthreeortryingtodrawfouls.com/.
I had high hopes for CJ Miles. At least until my buddy Wes (@WesEarick) prophesied to me that CJ Miles would be the Cavs 2nd leading scorer. Given my history debating Wes on NBA topics I had this premonition that CJ Miles was headed for a Lamar Odom-like deterioration. (He once said Wilson Chandler was a future MVP) I was looking over Miles’ season stats and one thing that I found particularly jaw-dropping was his 4 FTA to 89 FGA. Wasn’t this guy supposed to be a pseudo-slasher? I swear I’ve seen a youtube video of him dunking OVER people. At the very least, he seems to have some competency putting his head down and driving. So what the heck? As it turns out, Miles career FTA to FGA is around .2, meaning, he shoots 1 free throw for every 5 shots. For comparison’s sake – Alonzo Gee’s career FTA:FGA ratio is .37, almost twice as high. So clearly, getting to the rack and drawing a whistle isn’t his strong suit. For the irrationally-optimistic Cavs fans out there I guess we could argue that “CJ Miles just hates flopping” or something. But 4 for 89? That’s GOT to be the worst mark in the league right? Actually no, that record belongs to San Antonio’s Matt Bonner who has yet to attempt a freebie despite 47 FGA. Once I saw this I was challenged, as Matt Bonner can be pretty valuable. But my preconception was/is that having a respectable FTA:FGA ratio is a sign of a good player, especially for a wing. It’s a little more complicated than that, but so far this year, if an NBA player had a higher than league average FTA:FGA ratio his Win Share/48 minutes would also be higher than average. Obviously the corollary is that owning a less than league average FTA:FGA ratio would have a lower than league average WS/48. There’s no succinct (sorry RickOH) way to describe the relationship between FTA:FGA and WS/48. But I think the visualization is kinda neat. So I put one together here:
[ https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bxo35h7IHewyNGhXY1poeVhYMUk ]
Click on the 100% thing to blow it up and then use the arrow keys to scroll along. The dotted red line is the league average WS/48, and the vertical red arrow is the range. The dotted blue line is the league average for FTA:FGA and the vertical blue line is the range (which is quite more dynamic). [A quick note on everything to do with league related statistics: I filter out all players with less than 150 minutes at this juncture.] Draw your own conclusions from the data, but, on average, it doesn’t pay to have a very low FTA:FGA ratio unless you are an elite spot up shooter or have some other ways to contribute. So CJ Miles is the worst in the league in WS/48 and 6th worst in FTA:FGA. I think he needs to drastically change both of those ranks immediately. Actually I think he needs to draw some fouls and hit a few quiet set shots from the stripe to calm the heck down. Getting to the rim should could open things up for him a bit more – making him harder to defend. He needs to change SOMETHING especially if Wes’s “2nd leading scorer” prediction has any hope of materializing. (Although that would be all the proof you need that the Mayans were, in fact, right).
From Oct 30th chat
Outliers: Tristan Thompson’s Block Party
Yes, this title in intended to inflame the masses. Honestly, it’s the Cavs entire team that is partying, it just seems wrong to have it anywhere other that TT’s house. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I knew the Cavs were getting stuffed at the rim a lot. But I had no idea how prolific they are at it. I was also aware that TT’s blocks (the ones where he blocks the OTHER guy) were down from last year. Digging a little deeper, I learned that the Cavs are worst in the NBA in getting blocked (not completely surprised) but also worst in the league at wagging the finger (a little surprised). The Cavs block differential? That is our outlier of the day – and it. is. BREATHTAKING. For the full effect, click on the image, and then click on it again to get the full screen.
The Cavs block differential (-99) is more than DOUBLE the next worst team – Golden State(-48), who has played without Andrew Bogut for all but 73 minutes this season. Let that sink in. I think we can safely tar and feather the next person that utters something along the lines of “Tristan Thompson can be our Serge Ibaka”.
Very eye-opening….or maybe that’s not the right word….more like a confirmation of our collective fears.
Quick question: What does it mean when I (or many other cavs fans) look at a draft class, pick a few candidates for our draft slot, and CG picks completely different guys from out of left field that end up not being as good as the consensus BPA? I’m not saying this happens on all of his picks…but you can’t deny we are seeing a disturbing trend
…examples…
1.Christian Eyenga instead of Dajuan Blair, we all knew it was the wrong pick.
2.Tristan Thompson at #4 (for this one, whether you believe me or not, I wanted Kenneth Faried…can you imagine our team with him right now instead of TT?) I understand not wanting to bet on Valunciunas coming overseas…but how can anyone watch game tape of TT and Kenneth next to each other and pick TT instead…wowzers.
3. Marvin Williams – blast from the past and his atlanta hawks days…but wow with the talent available in that draft its hard to say that was anything but a blown pick.
4. EXCEPTION to the RULE: I actually like DW…but I would have honestly picked Harrison Barnes. This is the only time that I would admit that he has been right and I have been wrong. probably.
Basically…we see the trend of CG going with his gut and trusting his scouts…ignoring the “experts” consensus. That’s fine…if he’s right…but we’ve already seen a few blunders (TT, Eyenga, Marvin Williams)
Do you guys trust CG? You like CJ Miles and TT? I’m not so sure. But DW gives me a little hope….thoughts?
I think that we just have the benefit of hindsight. DaJuan Blair at the time raised serious health questions – didn’t he have no cartilage in both knees or something horrific sounding? That’s always a huge turn off to GMs, and you can understand why. Yes, in hindsight I would much rather have had him (or, you know, anybody) than Eyenga but he hasn’t been effective enough in San Antonio to make me truly mad about that call. We missed out on a potentially useful backup PF, I guess.
Tristan… meh. Yeah IMHO he’s a terrible player right now, but he was always going to be raw. I actually have hopes for his development into a low double double guy – someone who might average 11-11 a night in the not too distant future. Faried aside, because apart from you not many Cavs fans I knew were clamoring for him (actually none) the best other prospects still available were Brandon Knight, Kemba walker, who were PGs and not going to be picked, Kawhi Leonard who needed the Spurs to look this good so early, and maybe MarShon Brooks if you like volume scorers. Jonas didn’t want Cleveland and made that clear, and I don’t find him all that impressive. So I think maybe Chris made the right call with that – high potential big men are always good.
I don’t know anything much about Marvin williams because I wasn’t following the Hawks closely.
Dion and Kyrie I think have been great decisions, even if Kyrie was less a decision and more of a done deal.
So I don’t think we have a trend of anything much, other than a GM doing his job and making a very difficult decision, without the benefit of hindsight, trying to do the best for the team’s needs at the time of the pick. I suspect we’d all find it harder than we look – make a note of your draft picks for a team you like over 4 seasons, but don’t cheat: write them down and put them in an envelope to be opened later, and I bet you anything you will have made some terrible calls as well. Drafting is really, really difficult.
I give him great credit for Kyrie. There was a lot of clamoring for D Williams, whether or not that was “real” or not. Also, I thought Gilbert seemed to be very high on DW as well, or at least “reports” had him saying as much. I was worried about a PG who played a few games at Duke, but sat more for injuries than he played.
At the time, can anyone say that they wouldn’t have been at least a little intrigued by drafting Williams #1 and then grabbing Brandon Knight or Kemba Walker to pair them with? I thought that would not have been a bad move at the time and I admit not being overly high on either Kyrie or DW. But, there weren’t any better options either.
I will say though that I LOVED Kenneth Faried as well. I didn’t think he was necessarily lottery material, but you can’t teach a motor into someone. You can always teach technique. Look at Anderson Varejeo. If we had Faried, we may never miss a rebound when they would have been on the floor. I personally think that rebounding stats are vastly undervalued, especially in the draft.
If you watch all the games, you shouldn’t be surprised by this.
Can anyone find a ratio of field goals attempted to # of times blocked? From watching the Cavs I bet Tristan has a staggering number of attempts block, it’s probably between 1/4th and 1/3rd of his total shot attempts.
He had this same problem in college as he was one of the worst finishers in the NCAA. I doubt this improves very much over his career.
Tristan takes too much time to gather before he launches up for a dunk. He is also not explosive enough to power through NBA PFs. He never uses his off arm to shield his opponent, he doesn’t know how to use the circle to force contact for a foul, and he has no idea how to use his body against NBA defenders.
Another problem Tristan has is his foul shooting. Given that he is a bottom-tier foul shooter, opposing teams will aggressively try to block his shot. It is always better to foul him than to give him anything resembling a quality look at the basket.
Tristan needs to develop a pump fake in the post. Since opposing NBA players over-commit on their attempts to block him (since he is so easily blocked), he can find some easy baskets with a solid pump fake.
Devil’s advocate: Pump fakes don’t work when you take the ball down to your knees before launching….
I hate to say this, but Tristan is a tight-end playing the wrong sport.
“Do you guys trust CG? You like CJ Miles and TT? I’m not so sure. But DW gives me a little hope….thoughts?”
No, no, and no. I don’t trust him at all. I am also not convinced that DW will be a better pro than Harrison Barnes. I think this will happen, but Barnes has a better shot, is taller and jumps higher, and already has some rudimentary post moves. There are lots of things I like about Dion, I think he’s probably going to be good, but the book isn’t closed here.
Blair has no ACLs in either of his knees, that was the problem. It’s a birth defect and I don’t have the slightest clue the medical ramifications of this so I can’t hate on CG for passing on him.
TT is a great pick if he was taken in his projected range(15-25). As the 4th overall pick, we passed on multiple better players for a guy with solid measurable but little skill. Faried, Jonas, Leonard all were obvious choices that we somehow passed on.
I can’t rant about Tristan enough today, I don’t want a defensive and rebounding specialist playing starting PF. I want my PF to score 20 pts a game and play next to a defensive Center. Tristan is not Serge Ibaka, he will never block shots well due to a lack of athleticism and skill. He isn’t going to alter shots, he just bodies well on defense. Sorry, that isn’t enough to be a starting PF in the NBA.
Having a defensive specialist at PF means we need to find a center that can score well. This is literally the HARDEST player to find in the world. We’re not getting one, there’s only one every 5-8 years and they usually get drafted #1. Scoring PFs however, can be found on a yearly basis and in free-agency.
Let’s be honest about CG, Irving was a no-brainer handed to him as the #1 pick. Please tell me what other brilliant choices he has made?
Is DW OBVIOUSLY better than Barnes? Barnes scores at about the same rate on a team where he is not a top offensive option.
Is TT better than anyone drafted within 5 picks of him?
Should CJ Miles and Luke Harangody be playing professional basketball? These are guys we gave money to in the off-season.
Is Marvin Williams over Chris Paul and Deron Williams the worst draft selection ever made?
These are legitimate questions you need to ask about our GM.
The question of Grant being good I think is very easy to answer. After LeBron left the Cavs were awful and had no one to give them hope. They are now much better and have a true star in Irving and a budding star in Waiters.
He’s done this without tying the Cavs down with bad contracts or blowing draft picks. I definitely trust him to make the team better in the future.
Worrying about guys like Dajuan Blair is dumb. He is a backup on a good team that had huge injury concernes coming into the NBA. I’d much rather the Cavs at the time to roll the dice on a riskier higher upside guy than get someone who may develop into a good backup sometime down the road.
The Thompson pick still looks decent. Take the chance on a high upside big man, who at the very worst will probably end up still being a good defender/rebounder/bench guy.
If I’m not mistaken, it was Danny Ferry who drafted Eyenga, not Chris Grant. In any case, every other team also passed on Blair, and he’s pretty good, but he’s not tearing up the league.
Cols, getting the number one pick and taking who 80% of people thought was the best pick doesn’t make you a good GM, nor does drafting a guy who looks like has has tools but is still a long way off from resembling anything close to a star.
Trading Mo for the #1 draft pick was a great move, but had more to do with luck than being a superb GM. <2% odds that pick turns into #1. He hasn't made bad contracts, but any GM can simply not sign large contracts. What makes you a great GM is not only avoiding bad contracts, but also signing good contracts. Grant has only shown the ability to do half of that, so the jury is still out. As far as I'm concerned, TT is probably going to wind up a blown draft pick. He might be a serviceable backup, but at #4 you have to do better than that, even in a weak draft. The kid has shown next to no improvement from last year. His defensive awareness seems better, but there is absolutely nothing else that stands out as significantly improved. I get he's a project, but projects aren't supposed to completely stagnate. That is not a good sign for a successful project.
Isaac, please link to somewhere other than unsubstantiated rumors where Jonas flat out said he wasn't coming to cleveland. Regardless, even if he did, the same rumors were said about Rubio to Minnesota, and injuries aside do you think that now if they could do it again they would have rather taken a backup PF there instead? We didn't need Jonas last year or this year even, we could have waited him out if we thought he was the best player, and thats if these unsubstantiated rumors were true. The only quote I've heard from the guy was, “My biggest point is to go to the NBA," Valanciunas says. “It's my dream. My goal is to improve so I can play in the NBA.” We could have waited him out, I doubt we would have needed to.
Cols…Have you looked at our record the last two years? We’re still not very good.
Not saying I don’t think we WILL be good, but saying we’ve much improved is a fallacy. We haven’t. At least not very much.
WitmI Tom and I touched on the blocked shots thing in our last podcast. Basically TT gets blocked some absurd number (Tom, was it 60%?) of the time that he takes a shot. He takes WAY too long to gather and doesn’t finish hard. I actually find it upsetting to watch him because, every time he does it, we all know how it’s going to end.
MF
OK, tell me how this starting five that includes Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters is not better than the starting five from two years ago.
Saying we haven’t improved is only true in crazyland where the only thing that matters is our absolute record without any context at all.
How did you get to be a writer on this blog?
WitmI – ask and ye shall receive. Here’s a look at the league’s blk% leaders. I filtered out those players that haven’t logged at least 48 minutes. Of note about TT, he’s not the worst, but he’s the most profilic of the worst, and he has less chance of regressing to the mean as he’s had many more minutes at this rate than some of the people higher than him. Only person really in his league (this was shocking to me) is MKG.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bxo35h7IHewyTWxRSlpScUdWdFE
Cols – Saying we’ve improved is seriously biased. Yes, Kyrie is good and so is Andy, but we also don’t have Jamsison, who although infuriatingly bad on D was great on O, and Hickson who was, down the stretch, playing better than Tristan currently is. (on that note – Tristan’s PER and TS are WAY lower than Hicksons were when he played for the Cavs, at about the same age. Are we really that sure TT is a huge improvement?)
Again, I’m speaking based on what we CURRENTLY are producing. This has NOTHING to do with our future. Context means nothing when saying how good a team is. Does the context of us losing to the Spurs in 2007 or Orlando in 2008 mean anything? Heck no – all that matters are wins versus losses when contextualizing reality.
Now, you can project the future all you want, but it’s meaningless – you it’s all one big giant guess. What we do know, though, is that we’re currently 4-14. Saying we’re improved is a matter of opinion, not fact.
Also I forgot about Sessions. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing we traded him, but he’s definitely a talented guy we no longer have.
OK
So on a supposedly serious Cavs blog, Mallory has actually come out and wishes for Jamison, Hickson and Sessions over the current players.
I think you should lose your writing license for a little bit. Maybe go back and watch the games from two years ago and then watch the games this year.
This has to be the craziest thing I’ve read about the Cavs in forever.
I think that Mallory’s response is exactly why people are frustrated with this blog. The thought that the team is no better off than they were two years ago because they are still losing games is absurd. A person who writes for a blog about the Cavs and can’t see that they are better has no business writing about basketball.
It seems pretty clear that the front office has always intended to rid the team of nonproductive older players in favor of letting their high draft pick young talent develop for better or worse over the course of a season or two, because if they don’t develop as fast as you want, you get another high draft pick.
Cols,
Where did I say I FAVORED older guys over younger ones? You’re twisting my words.
What I CLEARLY said was that, based on numbers alone, we are NOT a better team RIGHT NOW than we were last year or the year before. Are we BETTER OFF? Probably. But that’s not remotely part of what I’m saying.
Look at it this way – Better NOW does NOT mean the same thing as BETTER OFF. Please note the distinction.
@BrooklynCavalier: bingo.
Truth be told there’s very little to no chance the Cavs will build a championship team, I think it’s just the state of the NBA. Teams in markets like Cleveland have almost no other option than to build this way if they want to even enter the discussion. Most owners don’t have the patience to allow their GM’s to see a plan like this through because you’re going to suck hard for a few years and attendance is going to plummet. (fortunately he got lucky and wound up with Kyrie, who may or may not be good enough to be the best player on a championship team, but he is without question exciting enough to put butts in seats.)
Say what you will about Dan Gilbert, and there’s a whole lot to say, but I think we’re pretty lucky to have him as an owner. Of course learned this the hard way by screwing the pooch with the best player in the NBA but that’s a topic for another day.
Mallory
You are stating that you do not thing we are a better team this year than last year or the year before. That’s crazy. I am not twisting your words, here is your quote “we are NOT a better team RIGHT NOW than we were last year or the year before.”
Mallory, I gotta be honest here, sometimes you come across as being negative for the sake of being negative. It’s not like you’re always wrong, by any means. What I think Cols is talking about is fixating on the negatives, and largely ignoring the relatively few positives we have to work with here.
No – we’re not much better record-wise than two years ago. We are, though, indisputably in a better position going forward. To say that the Cavs aren’t “better off” – not better, but better off – then two years ago is an exercise in absurdity.
I have to side against you here Mallory. Statistically speaking, these Cavs are vastly improved from last year, even if that isn’t obvious from win/loss record. The best measure of how good a team is, statistically speaking, is Hollinger’s power rankings.
I can’t find stats from last year, but I know that in his season preview for the Cavs Hollinger noted that last year’s Cavs actually won several more games than they should have won statistically, based on how many points they scored and allowed: http://espn.go.com/nba/stats/rpi/_/sort/EWL/year/2012. By expected win/loss, they Cavs were the second worst teams in the league last season, and because factors such as strength of schedule and home/away games average out over a full season, it is safe to say that they finished 29th, or at best 28th, in Hollinger’s rankings last year.
Today, they rank 21st in Hollinger’s rankings, due largely to a tough opening schedule in which they’ve played twice as many away games as home games. This is a very significant improvement. If you don’t trust Hollinger’s method, estimated win/loss (calculated just on points for and points against) indicated a .226 win percentage last year, compared to a .292 win percentage this year. And that’s a 30% improvement *not* accounting for the tough schedule.
Also, no matter how you twist it, Jamison was NOT having a positive impact on this team. Defense is half the game, and he competes for worst in the league honors there. He wasn’t even anything special on offense…17 points on 40% shooting? I mean, I guess it’s not bad, but it’s hard to get excited about. Guys like that are a dime a dozen. He was not an asset in any sense of the word.
The picture attached to this blog perfectly captures TT’s problem. He is going up to the basket angling AWAY from the defender, allowing him to extend his arms and make the block. If he goes up INTO the defender, he either (a) creates separation for clean finish, or (b) draws a foul.
Who can teach him how to finish properly? I don’t know who that would be, but I know who it is NOT: Zydrunus Ilgaskus.
“…they Cavs were the second worst teams…” –> “…the Cavs were the second worst team…”
@Brian – good comment. But, I’m curious about your ‘screwing the pooch” comment. Are you saying that simply because LeBron left (a bottom line kind of thing)? Or is that comment derived from the fact that the Cavs didn’t win a championship or didn’t ever get LeBron a “running mate”? I’m going to assume in my response you mean one of the latter ones, since that is the general sentiment. Here’s my take:
I’m of the thought that LeBron put the Cavs in win-now mode in 2005 and they were concerned he wouldn’t re-sign when his rookie deal expired so they spent all their cap space on long term deals for Hughes, Marshall, and Jones. That got them to the playoffs, and pretty much guaranteed they would never be able to add talent through the draft. (Boobie Gibson actually looked like a steal for a time). If the Cavs would have been patient and just sat on everything until the “right” deals came along and didn’t panic and sign Hughes to the max, things would have been better long term. In 2004 the media hysteria was already in full swing about LeBron’s “next team”. There were the ORIGINAL L.A Bron? Headlines on ESPN etc. And when LeBron made that angry ‘we have to get better, that’s all I’m saying’ demand after they barely missed the playoffs in 2004 – the organization got scared.
I’m not saying they did it all right. But, can we say in hindsight that being a hard-ass with LeBron or being really patient and making LeBron wait was the right thing to do? I think the organization was in a bit of a no-win situation, and I blame LeBron for a lot of that.
Tom
I agree with you about LeBron. Had LeBron said he would be in Cleveland for his whole career and they were sure he’d stay they could’ve planned long term. As it was they had to be in win now mode and it didn’t work out.
But I put most of that on LeBron. It’s hard to plan when you are constantly afraid of your best player walking away.
I’m sorry if people think a truthful look at the current incarnation of this team is negative, but I see no reason to sugarcoat this team and this season. Do you want me to start every statement with “we’re young and we’re getting better, but…”? I can, if that’ll help. For better or worse, we’re not very good now. Regardless of your expectations for how this year would play out, for how it will end, and for how next season goes, at our current state, we’re a mess. We could talk for hours about what that means, and we do that a lot – I prefer to let Kevin, Tom, and Nate speculate since they enjoy analyzing numbers and making predictions.
I’ll say I’m a realist. When we get better and start winning, I’ll be the first to come on here and declare it.
Nathan, you’re arguing over miniscule differences. As a team, we’re not much better if at all, and we’re still really, really bad. Jamison was WAY more consistent than any other guy on our team right now beyond Andy and Kyrie, and Sessions, pretrade, FAR exceeded any production from our bench so far.
Brian really nailed his comment – the chances of us winning a championship are slim to none – the NBA has forced us into this argument basically – it’s a lose/lose unless you get lucky like OKC, and even then the odds are stacked against them.
I absolutely never said we weren’t better off. It would be crazy to say definitively that we weren’t. That being said, can you definitively say we ARE? Beyond Andy and Kyrie, there are NO sure things on this team – every player has some serious work left to do. Even Kyrie’s D could be potentially destructive.
It’s fine to be excited and happy about the future, but on a day to day basis there is no use overlooking what’s staring us in the face – a bad, bad, bad basketball team. Will we improve? Probably. Does that mean we’re good now? Heck no.
All I can say is go back and re-read my comment. The differences are not as “miniscule” as you claim, especially when you consider that Kyrie is currently injured, and factor in how vastly our bench has improved now that there’s been some time to work out a suitable rotation.
To clarify, I don’t think this team is good, or even mediocre right now. I do, however, claim that they have improved markedly from last season, when we would routinely get blown out by 20 and 30 points. Similarly, I think we still have one of the 5 worst benches in basketball, but that’s a step forward from earlier this season when we had possibly the worst bench rotation in the history of professional basketball.
You think the loss to Detroit was bad? We lost in Detroit by a score of 116-77 last April. Will we win against the Bulls tonight? I don’t know, but i’ll bet a thousand dollars we’ll do better than the 107-75 defeat we closed the season with last year. We’re not good yet, but to say we haven’t gotten better is pure madness.
Kyrie was injured last year too. As was Andy, especially during those games you just cited. If we were playing without Andy tonight to a Bulls team missing it’s starting PG and SG, I’d bet dollars to donuts the game wouldn’t be much different. Even if we had Waiters playing. That’s pretty sore improvement.
You can cherry pick numbers and score, but a .06 difference isn’t much – certainly not at the level of markedly different. Miniscule? Maybe.
Nathan – one thing you are overlooking is that after the all-star break, the Cavs were in total tank mode, they traded away Sessions, they kept Varejao and Irving on the pine to the point that it was obvious – and we all just pleasantly blocked that losing out of our minds because we saw them beat the Thunder and play some decent near .500 ball and just assumed “that’s what we’ll be next year – a team battling for the 8 seed”.
So a better data point for what you are arguing would be to look at Hollinger’s ranking for the Cavs on January 10, 2012, the first time they were released last season, the Cavs were 17th. http://realcavsfans.com/showthread.php?38578-Hollinger-Power-Rankings-Are-Out
The Cavs are not 17th right now and I doubt the Cavs will be 17th on January 10th, 2013. So it is not wrong to say they aren’t as good now as they were last year, I’d venture that if you asked most Cavs fans whether or not the future is brighter today than it was the day after LeBron left they’d say ‘yes’ – without hesitation. I’d guess some of the faithful (like myself) are very high on DW’s potential from the early returns and think that adding him makes the future from today’s vantage point brighter than it was the day after draft day. The point is, I haven’t seen anyone from the blog or in the comments suggesting that the Cavs as a team are a house of cards about to crumble. (hell how can they be they’re so bad right now). Certainly Mallory is not saying that. In some cases he’s providing a counterbalance to the people that act like “we’ve made it”. We haven’t. Many Cavalier fans think the jury is out on Chris Grant. They see some positives and some negatives and mostly things that are too early to tell.
I really don’t understand why this fight keeps breaking out. Stop revising history. Here’s a simple google search using the words “cavs playoffs” and only viewing results between December 5th 2011 and January 30th 2012. https://www.google.com/search?q=cavaliers+playoffs&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&ei=_J-_UNPyLqXw0gHh04GQBg&ved=0CB0QpwUoBg&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A12%2F5%2F2011%2Ccd_max%3A1%2F30%2F2012&tbm=
You’ll notice 4 different articles discussing the very real possibilities of the Cavaliers battling for a playoff spot. I can guarantee you there will be no such discussion this year despite the east being significantly weaker without Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard. As far as I’m concerned, it takes almost no real effort to understand the distinction between “better than” and “could eventually at some point if things work out if young guys actually show the improvement we are expecting…become better than”. So Mallory thinks the Cavs would get better if they signed some proven talent instead of tanking again. What’s wrong with that? He’s not convinced that if we just keep picking 4th and somewhere else we are eventually going to become like the OKC Thunder. Yeah, he’s probably right about that.
Let’s stop going down this hole. I thought you guys would like the charts I put together and have something to add/subtract. New topic – what do you guys think of Omri Casspi’s discernible improvement from last season?
So Mallory thinks that the Cavs team from two years ago is better than the team we have now.
I think it is safe to say that we can ignore his opinions from now on. Please do not write anymore. Leave the blog to the guys who actually know something about basketball.
@Grover – TT’s got to do something different around the hoop. Has he ever tried dunking with one hand and using his other arm to absorb the contact – giving himself the separation he needs to not get blocked.
Love what I’ve seen from Casspi the last few games. Brings some serious energy/size/strength/D that we’ve been sorely missing. If his shot starts falling a bit more consistently, he’ll make a great bench SF.
Only concern is that he’s not the kind of guy who can survive playing 12 minutes a night. The more we play him, the better he’s been.
I think that Omri Casspi improving is totally expected. Players get better all the time.
It’s an advent miracle! I’m running with this. Ok, Cols, when you say “is totally expected” did you mean “nothing surprising” or did you mean you actually expected him to be among the league leaders in 3PFG% when he’s never done that before? When you say players get better all the time does that mean that you were surprised LAST YEAR when Casspi regressed from the previous? What, in your opinion is different between this year and last year for Casspi?
Mallory – I completely agree. I think it was Colin or Nate on our podcast a few weeks back that said that Casspi is a serious “confidence” player. He seems to fit that bill to be. Do you think the Cavs should “play small” with him at the PF from time to time or would that just be murder at the defensive end?
@Tom
Regarding Gilbert and Lebron. For all of Lebron’s faults (and I agree with you that he didn’t make it easy on the F.O with a lot of his tactics), ultimately it wasn’t his team to run, and that’s where I think Gilbert screwed the pooch. That panic basically killed our chances at multiple championships.
And you’re right, it’s easy to say that in hindsight. At the time I didn’t have a problem with it. It seemed like the most important thing was to make sure Lebron stayed. But I think its fair to expect a professional organization if its being well run, to have more foresight than the average fan. I don’t put all of the blame on Gilbert. While he inherited a once in a lifetime game changing superstar, he also received a tremendous mess of bad draft picks, bad trades of draft picks, and poor handling of free agents from the previous regime. But at the end of the day it was his job to convince Lebron we are going to build you a dynasty, be patient.
Tom -
I vaguely remember us having already played him at PF a bit – if my memory serves me correctly it didn’t work well. I think eventually he could learn to defend fine as long as whoever he’s up against isn’t a serious post threat. He runs hard, though, and certainly seems to care on both ends. Also, he rebounds well for a SF who doesn’t play a ton, so I guess it’d be possible. He just doesn’t have much bulk.
Comment monster ate my comment. Hopefully I’m not double posting this:
@Tom
Regarding Gilbert and Lebron. For all of Lebron’s faults (and I agree with you that he didn’t make it easy on the F.O with a lot of his tactics), ultimately it wasn’t his team to run, and that’s where I think Gilbert screwed the pooch. That panic basically killed our chances at multiple championships.
And you’re right, it’s easy to say that in hindsight. At the time I didn’t have a problem with it. It seemed like the most important thing was to make sure Lebron stayed. But I think its fair to expect a professional organization if its being well run, to have more foresight than the average fan. I don’t put all of the blame on Gilbert. While he inherited a once in a lifetime game changing superstar, he also received a tremendous mess of bad draft picks, bad trades of draft picks, and poor handling of free agents from the previous regime. But at the end of the day it was his job to convince Lebron we are going to build you a dynasty, be patient.
Yeah
I sort of expect that young players get better. It’s when they don’t that it’s surprising.
Mallory – I just think he needs more minutes. He’s got a hand hand right now the Cavs should give him more time. You may recall my “biggest disappointment” in that podcast was watching Hickson play passable basketball because at the time (this was after a rather poor start to the season – again see chart above) I thought that Casspi might not be a part of the future. But he’s a young guy. If he can keep doing what he’s doing now and gets more minutes – that’s a valuable 7th or 8th guy off the bench. So I should have held out longer before I declared Casspi a bust – it’s still early but he seems to be turning it around.
I’m not sure if anyone else posted this or not, but SI had an interesting article on Varejao and his trade value.
http://nba.si.com/2012/12/04/anderson-varejao-trade-cleveland-cavaliers/?sct=nba_t13_a0
Scuzz
Good article, Thanks!
I’m coming around to the idea of not trading Andy. Usual caveats of unless they get an offer they can’t refuse, etc.
Disclaimer: the article also lists several trade options at the end. A few of them seem a little far-fetched. The main point though, is why the Cavs shouldn’t trade him.
@Brian – gotcha. Yeah I get what you are saying. He’s not free of blame. You know what I’m talking about though, right? The DAY the decision happened so many wanted to crucify Gilbert for ‘coddling’ LeBron. It’s total bs. Those same people would have been writing huge WTF CLEVELAND?! articles if Gilbert had tried to play tough guy with LeBron over the years. The reality is, The Cavs bent over backwards for LeBron and did everything they could given the circumstances.
I guess it’s not obvious how much better(/worse?) this team is after adjusting for tank mode and injuries (although it’s worth noting that the Cavs this year are, again, being uber-conservative in terms of injuries and making *ahem* questionable personnel decisions at times).
I’ll stop arguing, but one last question:
“You can cherry pick numbers and score, but a .06 difference isn’t much – certainly not at the level of markedly different. Miniscule? Maybe.”
Where does the .06 number come from? I’m totally confused as to where this came from. Yes, it’s miniscule, but what is it?
Win % – it’s actually .56 but I rounded. But yeah, the argument is sort of moot. For the time being, we’re just not very good. Sad, but true.
@Scuzz – I love that article. If I would have known SI was going to put that out I wouldn’t have written my Don’t Trade Varejao article a few weeks ago. They are using the exact same (correct) logic.
@Tom
I didn’t get a chance to read your article, but I will.
I think the most interesting point they made (and perhaps you did as well), was how the Cavs could become competitive again quickly. After this season, they will be 30 mil under the cap. Even more, dependent on what they do with Casspi, Miles, and Leuer. If Gilbert and Grant are planning to go into free agency next season to try and build a winner, they definitely should keep Andy.
The divide between the writers on the blog who think the Cavs suck and will suck forever and the commenters who think the Cavs are going in the right direction is pretty startling.
So CJ Miles? No one else floored that he has 89 FGA and only 4 FT?
Cols, can we cap your “the writers are so negative and it’s ruining everything” posts to like 4 – maybe even 3 a day? If you can agree to a limit to this madness I assure you I can manage comment deletion once you’ve reached your threshold. I’ll even notify you when your balance is low. That way you won’t even have to take responsibility for your trolling. Oh and there’s no fee for overdraft – again, I’ll just kindly “manage” it.