Recap: Cleveland 122, Charlotte 95
2013-02-06A twenty-seven point home victory, when Kyrie, Tristan, and Dion combine for 58 points on 78% True Shooting? Thirty-three assists, leading to 57% field goal shooting, with only six turnovers? Holding the opponent to single-digit offensive boards and scoring twenty-three points off their turnovers? Regardless of the foe being the Bobcats, those outcomes impress.
Soon Kyrie AND Dion will need to thrive off the ball - next year, I expect to see Tristan running the point.
The team started fast, with Kyrie and Dion combining for thirteen points in the first five minutes. Waiters tossed a sweet transition oop to Gee, Tristan threaded an interior dime to Zeller; the starters forged an early 19 to 13 lead. Inspired by the return of The Luke Walton, who pitched in four points, the bench extended the margin to thirteen as the first frame ended.
Early in the second, the subs flexed the ball-movement-heavy offense they now exhibit regularly; for the game, Walton, Livingston, and Ellington combined 14 assists without a turnover. Cleveland lead 43 – 29 when Charlotte called timeout with eight minutes remaining in the half. Tristan Thompson flashed his entire arsenal, scoring thirteen points on a variety of strong post-moves and nifty finishes, as he, Dion and Kyrie combined for 22 points in the final eight minutes of the quarter; Charlotte scored twenty during the full twelve. Cleveland cruised to a 65 to 41 halftime lead.
The dominance continued in quarter three; Tristan hit a hook, Dion scored six in ninety seconds, and Kyrie needled a three-quarter frozen-rope to Zeller for a dunk. Eventually Kyrie nailed three triples in quick succession, the starters began ambling to the bench with over three minutes left, and they never returned. Cleveland led 100 to 67 heading to the fourth.
And then it was garbage time. Everyone got to play and score…except Casspi, who missed both shots; oh Omri. There was a Boobie Gibson sighting; what does his future hold? Byron Mullens padded his stats with ten garbage time points. Anyways, not much to say about the fourth quarter.
Cleveland won walking away, looking like the fearsome juggernaut they have become.
Onto some bullets:
- Cleveland scored their first four points via Kyrie and Dion post-ups. Recently while watching Rodney Stuckey destroy Waiters this route, and also Russ Westbrook create back-to-the-basket, I hope the Cavs do spend some time focusing on this aspect of the game for their young guards. Particularly for Waiters, as strong as he is, this could constitute a minor, yet effective scoring means.
- This was a strong game from Dion. He made his first six shots, including the aforementioned back-down, but also a nice tear-drop floater, and one emphatically dunking drive. He finished with 19 points and 5 assists.
- Kyrie made all five of his three-pointers. Relatively speaking, it was a quiet, highly efficient, team-leading 22 points.
- Marreese Speights finished with 11 & 10, while Ellington added 16 & 5 on 67% true shooting. Jon Leuer posted perfect 100% True Shooting for Memphis tonight though; who wins the trade now?
- Tristan kept making his righty-hook…it’s unstoppable. Later, after a ten-foot push shot, Austin Carr screamed “He’s right-handed! He’s right-handed!” Thompson must have heard him though, because next he hit the left-handed hook. Colin tabulated some back-of-the-napkin math, and extrapolated that TT will average 45 points per game on the 2015 – 2016 champions. I think he forgot to carry a number; it’s got to be 55. Thompson posted 17 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 blocks, while missing only one field goal for the evening.
The Cavs emerged victorious in six of their last nine, and recently surpassed Orlando in the standings. Watch out Toronto; with five straight upcoming home games, we’re gainin’ on ya.
One thing I dont think commenters really get: writers on blogs, 98% of the time, DO IT FOR FUN. If you think the opinions are wrong, or the writing is bad, you can raise objections, or stop going to the site. Basically, at this point, get over it! The team looks good. just enjoy it
Hey, the first “he’s right handed!” was actually Campy, which was a little wierd. Ive never heard the post game color guy randomly blurt out something in the live broadcast like that.
Campy has a theory that Tristan is actually naturally right-handed. Seems that way given how smooth he looks going with that hand, even when he attacks from the righ side he’ll still take a right handed shot at times…
Mallory, I don’t think star potential is premature. Calling him a star would certainly be premature, but I do think he shows the potential to get there. If he turns into a 17 and 11 PF who is one of the best defensive big men in the NBA is that a star? I would say yes and I think that is well within his range. I do share your concern about him and Andy together though. It can’t be a complete coincidence that TT’s emergence came IMMEDIATELY after Andy went down. If we keep Andy next year, I would like… Read more »
I think that Andy and TT are not going to have to co-exist. I think they are probably going to trade Andy in the off-season or at next season’s deadline.
As for Zeller, I imagine he’ll get better at shooting and defense.
“star” potential may be a little premature, Josh. He’s greatly improved and extremely efficient, yes, but I don’t know that he’ll ever be a star. Particularly when he’s playing next to a talented center, like Andy- that will likely eat up some of his rebounds and shots.
Actually, do you guys think Andy and TT can co-exist? I used to, but TT plays a much slower, more methodical game than Andy, who is more frenetic and whose game is more dependent on catching the other team off guard. I don’t have a definitive opinion either way – I’m honestly curious.
I think they can play together, yes. Usually “playing together” refers to offense – spacing, usage, etc. I honestly don’t think any Cavalier big needs to be much of a shot creator with Irving and Waiters in tow. The main thing is, can they defend together – and I’d say yes. Also, the other team can just forget about ever getting a rebound. Put it this way, Mallory. Tyler Zeller isn’t exactly spacing the floor right now. The guy is pretty shaky outside 15 feet and defenses know that. I’d actually argue Varejao is a better jump shooter right now… Read more »
From our Nov 14th podcast: Mallory Factor II says: November 19, 2012 at 10:23 am 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… Read more »
Mallory- I don’t think I would agree that there is an argument from Klay or Kawhi over TT. At least not for the “new” TT. I don’t care how replacable one position is compared to the other, I would never take a role player a ‘potential’ star level player. I guess a lot of it depends on how you feel about Waiters vs. Thomas Robinson. I personally never wanted anything to do with Robinson and I haven’t seen anything from him to think differently. But I’ll take Waiters and TT over Robinson and Leonard/Thompson 1,000 times out of 1,000. I… Read more »
Evil Genius – I love TT’s game now, I do, but there is an argument to be made for both Klay Thompson and Kahwi Leonard – namely that had we drafted one of those guys (who both would’ve complimented Kyrie perfectly – seriously, amazing spot up shooters who play D?????) we would’ve been more likely to go after someone like Thomas Robinson (who is buried on a crappy Kings team – I wouldn’t overlook him yet) or Andre Drummond. The thing is, SF is probably the most important position in the NBA because of the discrepancy in talent between a… Read more »
@Tom – I agree about the “fit” argument. Early on, it was hard to see why TT was an upgrade at all from JJ aside from age. Now, with his dramatic improvement, it’s hard to make an argument for anyone else in that class (even Kahwi Leonard). The question I’m not sure if there’s an easy answer to, is whether or not this transformation was coming with or without AV going down for the season.
@Genius – agreed. That was exactly my problem until mid December. Was TT going forward better than Hickson going forward? The answer went from “not sure” to “emphatic yes” over the last 2 months. To Quote Brian Windhorst, TT has “been a revelation”. So yeah, now the question is whether this is about flying without Andy as a wingman. I think it’s hard to answer as there wasn’t a significant amount of minutes with the two of them playing together to compare against. We’ll find out next year I suppose. The best thing about TT to me, is not just… Read more »
Mal: Oh, I agree, but when the guy on TV that everyone is watching is negative, it radiates.
Nate – In Bilas’ defense, Tristan really did need to learn those things. He just suddenly did learn them. Go figure.
SwIrving – ignore it. Who’s your favorite bench guy (beyond Deon) and why?
COLS HE SAID HE WAS QUOTE “DEAD WRONG” ABOUT TRISTAN! do you want him to drive to your house and kiss your feet or what man?
Seriously, can we ban this guy or at least implement a filter I can customize to not see his posts? Its insufferable and a complete downer to the mood of the team right now. We are on the upswing, guys are jelling and getting better, its actually fun to watch, and cols wants us all to suck his **edited** about it.
Every awesome Cavs game’s recap devolves into this stuff. Ok, now this is an honest request…not an attempt to created 20 more comments worth of fighting. The one time I really dove into these discussions, my general theme was that the “Earlier this season, C:tB had a doom and gloom narrative” has become it’s own narrative, with a breadth and depth disproportionate to the actual events. Can someone who has that opinion scroll through the November and December posts and create a referenced list of times when C:tB issued a doom & gloom statement? I’m not talking about pointing out… Read more »
Jay Bilas described Thompson as someone “who needs to learn how to play and how to score.” That’s an incredibly negative assessment of a #4 pick. Considering Bilas was the draft expert on TV panning the pick, he probably had as much influence on the negativity surrounding it as anyone.
Josh, I appreciate it – You’re a good dude too. I’m the voice of the concerned fan – you definitely don’t have to agree with me, but that’s what makes this fun.
At least the arguments are about underestimating a players’ ability/ceiling rather than overestimating. The back and forth over who was right about TT will always take a back seat to the fact that TT’s overnight transformation is a huge boon to this team. At least we’re not stuck talking about Derrick Williams and Brandon Knight. For the record, nobody could have been more negative on TT (or should be in a position to eat more crow) than Mike DeCourcy at SN: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nba/feed/2011-03/2011-nba-draft/story/2011-nba-draft-pick-by-pick-analysis-kyrie-irving-derrick-williams-jimmer-fredet
@Genius – And the thing about feeling good or bad moments after draft night (for some people) had a lot to do with rebuilding philosophies. BPA versus fit etc etc. A lot of those things work themselves out over time. I had my heart set on JV before draft night but I knew about Tristan’s draft rater score and had read his review. I warmed up to him quickly, it was the “fit” thing that bothered me until about mid-Dec when I felt like Tristan was by far the BPA at that spot in hindsight so fit became secondary and… Read more »
Similar to Godwin’s Law, Cols’ Law states that every comment ssection will eventually devolve into Cols making a snarky comment and then everyone arguing about it.
Jon – Nope! We’d all moved on from the paradigm of Cols’ law. This was about Hot Sauce trying to resuscitate Cols’ law and me trying my darnest to squash it. [Fail?]
Man, the comment section has been crazy here lately! FWIW I think a lot of the TT anger comes from the fact that this blog was EXTREMELY negative about drafting him over JV. And really they were kind of arrogant about their negativity basically saying anyone who wanted TT over JV was kind of clueless. Honestly I don’t even remember which of the writers who are here now were even there then, but I think it left a lot of people with a bad taste about the whole thing. Other than that I enjoy most of what’s written here. I… Read more »
Alright Josh, I’ll stop policing the comments.
Wow, we gotta get rid of Byron Scott. I mean did you see his rotation in the fourth quarter? Kyrie Irving wasn’t even on the floor! Scott was just standing their on the sidelines with his arms crossed! Ugh!
People point out that the writers here were way way wrong about everything at the beginning of the season so we can have a moment of accountability and all we get is a bunch of rationalizations.
Hey Tom stop berating your readers. You write a blog. dont like criticism? A) stop writing. B) stop reading the comments and participating in the discussions. Yes you guys call it as you see it. You’ve been wrong about several things and as readers it would help us to trust what you’re saying now, if you would be honest about what you’ve been wrong about and what you’ve learned from it going forward. Acting butt- hurt about it and attacking readers is not the way to go. I think the blog as a whole has not shown the patience that… Read more »
Ctown – ok, I don’t think you understand my point, but in an attempt to not “berate” you I’ll just sigh, say “thanks for reading” and move on. [Kidding! Why would I do that?] I enjoy participating in the comments section. There is a subset of commenters that are so far outside any reasonable “criticism” that I do not even take them seriously. It’s just wasted bandwidth. It doesn’t bother me, per se, it’s just pollution, noise, whatever. Look you hated my snarky comments about waiters the other day right? (Or maybe that was someone else.) That’s fine – I… Read more »
I honestly can’t believe Washington cut him. Crazy.
It’s close between Livingston and Speights. I love Speights’ inside/outside game and the confidence and swagger he brings, but Livingston really brings not only leadership and d but also great floor vision and spacing. I’d agree with you and give the slight edge to Livingston as I think he helps make things happen for Speights, Ellington and even CJ.
Evil Genius – Silly, stupid question, but a fun one – which bench guy is most valuable?
My vote goes to Livingston (for leadership/D) or Speights (for scoring ability)
I could see Walton, but I’m not sure he’s as valuable as the others.
All the Tons have been great lately. Livingston, Ellington even Walton. Resign them all CG! And Speights too!
Separately, IMHO, as one of the 80 super serious Cavs fans (one of I’m sure only 3 that live in the Greater LA area), I would much rather read the stimulating analysis and prognostications of the writers of this blog than the frequently baseless tripe that spews from the keyboards of most ESPN “writers.”
Keep up the great work fellas! H8rs gonna H8, let’s hope they don’t procreate.
Tom –
Who cares? Lets move on.
WE WON, BABY! WE WON!
Who else loves Shaun Livingston? Give ’em $2 mil a year to lead our D. PLEASE CHRIS GRANT! PLEASE!
Sorry Mal, not in the mood for haters anymore. Every single game I watch Tristan with glee and like 2 to 3 numbskulls (yeah I said it) have to ruin it with some tweet resembling something like this “BUT JONAS IS SO AWESOME” It’s insufferable at this point.
There’s like 80 super serious Cavs fans in the whole world right now and half of them frequent this blog. STOP TURNING ON EACH OTHER
I rarely choose to wade in on this issue, but, I will counter, Hot Sauce, that the blog has evolved into more of a chorus of writers, and less of a single voice. Given that, we will all have different opinions with varying degrees of zeal when it comes to expressing those opinions. Furthermore, with a chorus, it is often necessary to take on, for the sake of argument and variety, a viewpoint that is not 100% representative of the authors’ personal viewpoint. I posted a definition of “schtick” the other day to hint at that. In this vein, a… Read more »
Hot Sauce – I really do appreciate your comments, because I think they’re largely constructive not mindlessly critical. But I think your comparison to a coin flip is off. Coin flip indication is luck (unless you’ve taken a statistics class, but whatever) – you’re taking a shot in the dark. However, watching the way an NBA team plays now does have some baring on the future. The future itself is a coin flip – Waiters COULD put it together or he could not. Truthfully more times than not the players don’t put it together – it’s just a sad fact… Read more »
If it appears that I am trying to prove that I am right and you are wrong, I apologize. What I am trying to do is battle hard for a philosophical position. Specifically, my critiques are aimed at illuminating proper inference. If someone flips a coin and it is heads, it is not a proper inference to predict heads for the foreseeable future. In fact, any inference about the future is incorrect. The event of one coin flip tells us nothing about future coin flips. My comments here are aimed at deconstructing and discouraging reasoning of this form. There has… Read more »
Hot Sauce: thanks for the response. Here’s a few things: -Using logic to predict the future in a “what is the road map for this team” is a little bit different than “just because it was heads now doesn’t mean it will be heads next time”. -Apology accepted. Obviously I was going to assume that you were trying to prove you were right when you post a comment saying that you were right and “here’s the proof”. -Consider me unimpressed that by Dec 30th, you saw potential in the young Cavs. We saw potential in Waiters in early November. (Some… Read more »
I wanna know who has the balls (besides my buddy Wes, for whom I have timetagged documentation) to say they KNEW C.J. Miles would be a productive starter/6th man that has almost single handedly won the Cavs like 2 games. That the signs were there and we were all being so negative back when he had a -5.2 PER. Any takers? FWIW, Nate comma Kevin, I SO called that Luke Walton would invigorate the 2nd unit and generally be awesome. [Of course this is patently false]
“Just because he who must not be named is listed at SF doesn’t mean thats the position he actually plays on the court, its more like a point-power forward at this point. Hes smart and talented enough to make playing with a true SF we draft this year possible.” – There are more SF’s than scoring than PF’s, which makes his value more at PF, but still, if given a competent supporting cast, he can destroy SF’s easier (in my opinion, but I wonder what the stats say). And on offense, who cares it he a “point-forward” or whatever. It’s… Read more »
Just wanted to point out that the schedule may also be a huge factor in this, the cavs still have the least favorable home/away split in the league, and, if my count is right, as of Jan 19 they’d played 10 more away games than home games, that’s down to about 6 now, but still, that has a huge effect on the players’ level of play, on practice time, on how the team looks. Part of what we’re seeing now is the schedule evening out a bit…this isn’t to lessen the players’ improvement, but just saying that some of it… Read more »
I understand why people tell Cols he is beating a deadhorse, but I think it’s unfair. Cols’ makes an important point: many of us foresaw this success awhile ago, while a lot of the writers here did not. How is that not a relevant topic for this blog? As an example, I posted the following back in December in response to a “doom and gloom” post about a road loss to Brooklyn. The recent ascendance of the Cavs makes perfect sense to me, and, as evidence below, seemed obvious months ago, even when we were struggling. “Hot Sauce says: December… Read more »
2012/11/08 at 8:27 am Hot Sauce: I was at the game and couldn’t disagree more with Jimbo. I also love Cols comment about emo-blog. Totally agree Ok great, we get it, Sauce. You’ve won. You won in late december when the Cavs started looking not atrocious and we all shrieked with glee. (read this recap from NOVEMBER and tell me we’re all doom and gloom and never saw any potential) You won when you criticized the “tone” of a sports blog and the tone changed (because you wanted it of course). You won because you knew TT would be a… Read more »
Tristan is an athletic specimen with rare quickness for a man his size and the work ethic to improve his game.
Which is why all the doom and gloom over his play was premature. He looked like a deer in the headlights last year and clearly it affected his play. Not every rookie comes out playing gangbusters like Kyrie.
Oh, and wait until he busts out his jumper. You know he already has one, he almost put up a J during the 2nd quarter last night. Still reluctant due to confidence issues I suppose.
The starters killed it this game and earned a well deserved 4th quarter off. But it’s so nice to finally have a bench that doesn’t me want to cover my eyes as they blow decent leads. It’s already been touched on quite a bit, but the new guys have completely elevated the level of play and confidence of the whole team. That said, I don’t think there are too many FA big men off the bench I like better than Speights, or 3 and D FAs I like better than Ellington. For that matter, not that many FA backup PGs… Read more »
Cols, you have said it on every single one of those articles, and the articles saying the future is bright but here are some concerns (which far outnumbered the articles with an overall negative vibe). Its been said, get off your horse, and shut the hell up or contribute to something other than beating the dead horse. Its dead, move on. As far as waiting on a SF for lebron, its a bit outrageous to think that’s why we drafted Dion or didn’t splurge in free agency. Dion was a good prospect and we were in just as dire of… Read more »
Ben
Yep, Grant can certainly draft. I hope he gets a chance to hit on one more top 5 pick.
Tom, maybe he practiced and got better. Or maybe Byron Scott is a good coach who was able to teach him some things.
2012/11/07 at 7:37 am
Cols714:
Yep.
I agree that Tristan Thompson will never be all that good.
Mentality and intrateam competition is far more important than many people realize. The defensive work by Shaun and the ex Griz guys brings an entirely new feeling to the team. Every practice, that second unit is probably D-ing up the first unit, forcing everyone’s ball movement to improve. Since we have had a relatively light schedule recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if practice (gasp!) actually has helped. Our first unit with Andy was always among the best in the league numberwise, and naturally it took some time to get adjusted to the loss of his PnR and high post passing.… Read more »
I wish I had all the Cavs games on DVR. I get Nate’s point about “Ricky Vaughn” and I get that young players can and do improve if they work very hard. I also get that it’s possible someone like Big Z came in and really helped Tristan’s footwork or touch or something. All of those are, in my opinion, POSSIBLE explanations for the (unprecedented imo) growth of Tristan Thompson. Actually the most plausible explanation to me is that he was out of shape or battling an unknown (to everyone) ailment – either physical or mental and it went away.… Read more »
Carson,
The Cavs are 10 1/2 games behind Boston for the 8 seed with 33 games to go, but even assuming that Boston regresses and that 40 wins gets in, you’re looking at the cavs needing to go 25-8 to close the season to get there. The team’s improving, but I there’s no way they play .750 ball like that for the rest of the season.
The bench is light years ahead of where it was, that’s for sure, Alex. But replacing D-Leaguers like Pargo, Sloan (literally one of the worst players in the league), Samardo, and Leuer with Livingston, Miles, Ellington, and Speights is a massive upgrade. There was a point earlier in the year when the Cavs starters had among the best +/- in the leaue, and their bench had the worst. That’s obviously changed.
Cols, Everyone knew the team was a work in progress. I’m an advocate of patience. I wasn’t worried about the lack of free agent signings in the off-season, or the poor record it propagated early on. flexibility is key, and the more ping pong balls the better. I had my concerns with Thompson early this season when literally everything was getting blocked, but then again I knew he was raw. I was willing to give him about 2 more seasons to pan out before personally judging him as a bust or not, at least wed have a cheap rebounding machine… Read more »
I think people should put more emphasis on the difference bolstering our bench has made in this team. We were routinely getting beaten so badly with our second unit until we brought in Livingston, Speights, and Ellington. They actually play some defense, and the results are what we see here. It is so amazing to be able to watch not only palatable but pretty delish Cavs basketball again!
Cols, you’re a broken record. Stop trying to bring everyone down after a feel-good win.
Richard
Blinded by homer stupidity? The Cavs have a bunch of young highly drafted guys. Of course they were going to need time to figure things out. This was obvious and pointed out here many many times. Yet we got article after article about how we are all doomed.
Turns out the writers were way way way wrong about this team. It needs to be said.
Call me crazy but am I the only one who thinks that #8 seed is possible THIS year? Look at the standings — it’s not all that unrealistic to think they can, especially if the 5 game win streak the Celtics-sans-Rondo went on is any kind of fluke. The Cavs are only two losses away from being the #10 seed, I think they can keep up this pace and play the Heat in the first round of the playoffs, that’d be awesome!
I’m reveling in the unbelievable serendipity of the Cavs getting the two best players in the 2011 draft, and the possibility that both these players could be head and shoulders above everyone else who was in it. It’s even more beautiful because no one knew this at the time. The first had his college career cut short by injury, and 13 games wasn’t enough to see how good he was. The second has had a “Ricky Vaughn discovers glasses” moment with the revelation that he’s actually right handed. Love this team.
…Draft pick is destined for super stardom. Stop claiming you’re basketball intuition I’d perfect and that no one should be allowed to be skeptical of their favorite team our the players it trots out.
I think you enjoy running your epeen out on these blogs more than you do watching the Cavs
oops. Hit the send button before I was done.
The Cavs were 4-12 at the end of November, 7-25 at the end of December (a month where they effectively lost their second best player for the season,) went on to a record of 9-31 midway through January and were projecting a total of 23 wins for the entire season. 1 Win to Portland, and 1 loss to Utah later and we trade a bench man for two players, one with a PER of 22.2 and the other with a 16.2 since the trade. Both players are not the only reason for our recent success but to pretend they aren’t… Read more »
The turnaround was not pure development and seasoning. Maybe fan panicking spurred Grant’s hand (yeah right but it’s a thought!) Grant made a smart trade, a roster improvement most here thought was needed. The infusion of energy and talent has led to the other players playing a little better. If they had just “stayed the course” I don’t think they win all 6 of those last 9.
Wait, the Cavs have gotten better? Maybe nobody should’ve panicked earlier in the season.
Just because he who must not be named is listed at SF doesn’t mean thats the position he actually plays on the court, its more like a point-power forward at this point. Hes smart and talented enough to make playing with a true SF we draft this year possible.
Would a Nic Batum, Paul George, MKG, Harrison Barnes, Chandler Parsons, Kawhi Leonard, etc. (as different as they all are) really be THAT bad to have on the same team as you know who?
BPA (minus PG) is what I’m saying.
D – I have been saying the same thing about the SF position for the last year as well. Why use a lotto pick on the position that you are gunning for the FA in summer ’14? If all other 4 positions were locked, maybe they would, but this team has had plenty of needs in the last 2 years. And, we should be shooting for better than an 8 seed next year. And, if the Cavs kept up the 2 wins, 1 loss pattern (who knows?), they would end up with 37 wins, which could be enough this year.… Read more »
Kyrie is so good that sometimes I just laugh when he starts doing crazy things because I half expect them and THAT is ridiculous in itself. Last night when TT scored all those 2nd quarter points and netted that 10 foot floater I had the same reaction. He is unbelievable right now. Also – I love me some J Hill comments. I’d bring back Sir Luke. My fave play last night was when he jumped up for the steal led the break – stopped when he realized he didn’t have numbers and hit a trailing Ellington for 3.
Bric, it’s not just optimism. This team SHOULD be a playoff team next year. Period. This should be the last “lottery pick” year. I expect the Cavs to compete for the 8th seed next year. They’ve got to move forward. After this year, no more with the lottery. Can’t become Sacramento…er….Seattle.
And, I hate to open this can of worms, but I wouldn’t hold your breath on the Cavs getting a long term solution at SF this year. I think there’s a reason they’ve repeatedly refused to seriously address the position…
J Hill is just right. Luke had 5 assists tonight in limited time. Everything flows with him and Livingston in the game. Pardon my optimism, but I think this team can be a playoff team next year. Tristan’s incredible improvement, Waiters’ continued elevation of his play, and a big improvement by Tyler Zeller are needed, plus a SF in the draft or free agency. Will someone please tell Tyler that if your legs are crossed, if you are standing straight up, if you do not anticipate well, then Tyrus Thomas is going to beat you to the bucket. So will… Read more »
Oh Joy! This game was a treat to see! Lovin the bench!!
I agree with J Hill. Funny that I was actually thinking about it earlier today. I’m an advocate of team continuity from year to year. At the right price, I would absolutely entertain the idea of bringing back Walton.
Also, we have won six of our last eight. Not sure why Kevin went back one more game to state we won six of our last nine. Also, 5-2 since the trade.
Spots,
The last nine games are:
Jan 16 – Beat Portland
Jan 19 – Lose to Utah
Jan 22 – Beat Boston
Jan 25 – Beat Milwaukee
Jan 26 – Beat Toronto
Jan 29 – Lose to Golden State
Feb 1 – Lose to Detroit
Feb 2 – Beat OKC
Feb 6 – Beat Charlotte
It’s 5 of the last 7 and 6 of 9.
If this game doesn’t get the juices flowing about our future, Chris Grant’s plan and drafting prowess, and all thing Cavs, then God help you! Great recap. Go Cava!
Am I the only one who isn’t against bringing Luke Walton back next year? I mean obviously on a minimum deal but he seems to really help out some of these younger guys especially with his passing.