We’re (SLIGHTLY OVER) half way through the season, which means it was only a matter of time until I emailed a CtB favorite, Scott Raab, and asked him to come on.
On today’s podcast Scott and I discuss Tristan Thompson’s breakout season, Dion Waiters’ progress, Kyrie Irving’s game, whether or not Byron Scott will be around next year, The Cavs in general, and recent moves for the Browns and Indians.
We can be found on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/cavstheblog/0023-raab-3
And on iTunes at - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cavs-the-podcast/id528149843?mt=2
Really enjoyed the show. Considering that last one with Raab was all doom and gloom, he was really up beat. Nice to get more insight on Mallory as well. I disagree on Coach Scott but otherwise…Well done.
I completely disagree with the assessment on Coach Scott. It is completely unfair especially given the talent (or lack there of) that he has to work with. His weird and what might seem ludicrous rotations could be attributed to seeing which players are actual long term pieces. In the case with Luke Walton, the experience that he gave our young players while on the court out valued whoever we were going to put in there anyways. As you can see that has changed with the acquisition of Speights and Ellington.
Also why do you want coach Scott to show so much emotion? I actually respect his demeanor because I don’t want to see him explode and have our young player follow suit. He’s calm and collective and just watching from the sidelines on how his young players react to certain situations. This year is another rebuild year, those who had hope of the playoffs obviously had their overly optimistic fan goggles on. Grant made no moves in the offseason other than drafting our picks, so how would we all of a sudden become a playoff contender? Again that is not Coach Scotts fault. Just like it isn’t Kyrie fault that he has no one to pass it too, Scott can only do so much with what he has.
I absolutely think Coach Scott is the right person for this job especially the way that Kyrie and the other players have grown towards him. Kyrie calls him his basketball dad, and the new comer Speights has been given him a lot of praise as well. Coach Scott holds his players accountable, and that is more important at this stage in the rebuild, than wins are.
I enjoyed your podcast but really disagreed on this part of the segment.
I think Raab wrote a really great book but it’s hard to take seriously the opinion of someone who admits that they are following the Cavs through the box scores and not watching the games.
Vedwin
Yep. He’s trotted out here as someone whose opinion we are supposed to respect. But he has done nothing to deserve it. One decent book does not make someone an expert on the Cavs or Cleveland sports in general. Maybe get an expert in here next time?
I agree with the previous two comments. He said he does not watch the game which is essentially saying anything he has to say is based off of incomplete information. What is he doing in his precious time if he is supposed to be a sports writer? He is also still very pessimistic, which is really not what I want to listen to when I believe this team is on the right track and I think Scott is the right coach for the team.
I enjoyed the podcast, but I find it hard to take Raab’s opinions seriously when he openly admits to not even watching the games.
On another note, the audio quality of this podcast was way better then the CtB group ones. Whatever you did different Mallory, keep doing it.
Thanks guys for pointing out the unwarranted hatred of Coach Scott. It seems that your complaints come down to “I don’t like that he doesn’t yell on the sidelines and make a fuss.” Yeah, that’s because he’s a professional and stays level-headed. Yes, sometimes Mike Brown would get pissed off at a ref’s call and start yelling… but that was usually in the playoffs when it actually mattered.
Scott has been to the Finals twice. He’s not some unproven coach. His system has been shown to work. And yes, he will absolutely be here next year because he’s doing a great job developing players and improving the team.
Raab and Mallory seem upset that we’re not competing for the 7th or 8th seed this year. Playoffs are fun but not if you build a team that’s a perennial first round loser (like the Hawks). That’s what you do if you try to force it too early.
We’re right on track: star player, experienced coach, young talent, a high draft pick this year, a pile of future picks, and cap space. In my opinion, this team has the brightest future in the next 5 years
Bill -
I’m not going to argue with you over the merits of tanking vs winning, but I’ll say this – did the hawks (or Pacers, or Bucks, etc. etc.) ever have a player of Kyrie’s caliber?
Bill
Yep. We are on track. There was a really good article at the more nuanced Cavs blog, FeartheSword that spells it all out. Here is the link.
http://www.fearthesword.com/2013/2/4/3950626/6-reasons-to-be-patient-with-the-cavaliers-rebuild
Mallory,
You should know that getting Kyrie had nothing to do with tanking, but a great trade by Grant. Tanking only would have netted us Tristan Thompson. So your question should be, with the 4th overall pick, did the Pacers or Bucks also get the 1st overall pick? That answer is no (so I think) which means your question about the bucks and pacers is no longer comparable. You cannot compare apples to oranges. So I guess my question to you Mallory is did tanking win us Kyrie? That answer is no.
Mallory –
Your point seems to be that with Kyrie we should be good enough to make the playoffs. I would agree with that if we had even a single other player on the roster who is a legit starter on a playoff team. But we don’t. TT is showing monster potential, but it wasn’t until the last month or so that he really became a legit impact layer. I love me some Dion, but he is not a finished product yet (same with Zeller). Speights, Miles, Ellington and Gee are decent pieces but not legit impact players.
How can you seriously argue we should be in the playoffs? I just don’t see it. What playoff teams in the past would you say are comparable to this Cavs roster?
They made a lot of good comments in this podcast. I’m getting excited for the future with our young core.
Hot Sauce and Ryan -
You’re misunderstanding my question – do the middling teams like the Bucks, Hawks, or Pacers (or Nuggets) have a player of Kyrie’s caliber? No. That’s why they haven’t gone deeper in the playoffs. Regardless of where any player was drafted. Period.
This has nothing to do with being a playoff team or not. Simply noting that, with Kyrie, there is the potential that on any given night, he’ll be the best player on the court.
Can anyone show any evidence whatsoever that making the playoffs as an 8 seed makes a young team better in future seasons? Because I can show you a ton of evidence that adding a star player makes a team dramatically better. I can also show you a ton of evidence that the higher you draft the better chance you have of drafting a star player.
“Tanking” this season is a no brainer. There is not a single logical argument against it. Getting good too quickly was one of the biggest downfalls of the Lebron era. If we were terrible the first two years of his career like we should have been (and we didn’t trade first round picks for Jiri Welsch) we would have had a dramatically better team.
Josh -
The bulls with Derek Rose seem fine. They made the playoffs his rookie year.
The problem with the Lebron era was NOT getting good to quickly – it was AWFUL drafting and poor cap management.
What, exactly, is your evidence that tanking works? What NBA team has won a championship by tanking?
Josh,
The Bulls were 41-41 (8 seed) in Derrick Rose’s 1st and 2nd season. I think it was good experience for them. Were #1 seed in the East the season after lost in the ECF to the Heatles after that and of course last season Rose went down and they got bounced in the 1st round. Obviously their future depends on Rose’s health. But they seemed to be on an uptick before the injury. hard to say the playoff experience early was bad for the growth of the team.
The Spurs lost in the 2nd round of the playoffs in Tim Duncan’s first season. Won the title in his second. And have won two titles since. Since they selected Duncan 1st, they have drafted #20 once, #24 twice, and no other draft pick has been higher than 26. 15 years of not drafting higher than #20. In that time they are the NBA’s winning-est team.
The Bulls also drafted their second and third best players in the top ten as well. They didn’t just spend one trip in the lottery and create this team. Though I will grant that the Bulls are the one example of a borderline title contendor the Cavs could hope to emulate. But since your lone criteria for finding a team to model our rebuild after is winning a championship, I guess they don’t count either.
As for titles won by tanking, the Spurs pretty certainly tanked for Duncan and have four titles as a result. But I think believing we should only follow a model that has won a championship is silly anyways. The Thunder, our clear role model in this current rebuild, our one of the two best teams in basketball and very nearly won a title last year. Thinking we shouldn’t follow them because they haven’t won a title yet is pretty ridiculous.
And yes, the problem with the Lebron era WAS getting good too quickly. Look at the two drafts following Lebron. Having a top five to seven pick in them would have given them a shot at several star level players and given us a substantially better team.
Bottom line without adding at least one more star these Cavs aren’t ever going to be title contenders. And far and away our best chance of adding another star is with a top five or so pick.
Tom,
As noted above, Rose has two other top ten picks starting beside him. And also as said above, they are the one exception I will give you here.
Tim Duncan was one of the ten best players ever. Probably top five ever. Do you think Kyrie is one of the top five players ever? Top 50 players ever? Duncan also one that first title with another hall of fame 7 footer. Making the second round of the playoffs his rookie year is not why Tim Duncan won a title. Those two situations are not remotely comparible. And once again, it should be noted the Spurs landed Duncan by tanking. Had they played Robinson the previous season they don’t draft Duncan and have zero titles right now.
Wow! Hats off to the commenters on here. Honest criticism and well-reasoned arguments! Bravo! Seriously. Was a lot of fun to read and I have nothing to add! Ha! Well done…
The Duncan draft was an anomoly…the Spurs were a darkhorse contender already with The Admiral, Sean Elliot, and a nice supporting cast. They shut down Robinson with back injuries, and lucked into adding an all-time great to a playoff team.
I think Indy is a good example of a team getting a tatse of success by hanging around the bottom seed and getting better from there, but then again, the 6′ers and the Bobcats did the same thing and look at them now. There is no magic formula besides the golden rule: don’t draft a bunch total busts (ala Johnny Flynn, Wesley Johnson, Derrick Williams)
Josh – the Spurs “tanked” one season. not repeatedly. Yes, they landed Duncan, a superstar MVP-type player and built around him with 2nd(!) round draft picks and player development. Obviously Kyrie isn’t a top 5 all-time player much less top 5 right now. But I think he could become a top 5 player in the NBA soon.
The Spurs are a fair counter to your “there is not a single logical argument against tanking”. Good teams develop their players and their coaches fit a system leveraging their personnel.
I like that the Cavs are going to build through the draft and through trades. That makes sense. If they are organically bad that’s enough tanking for me. One of the worst seasons in NBA history netted Tristan Thompson. I love TT – but are you willing to go through that year after year? A trade and willingness to spend an insane amount of money is what netted the Cavs Kyrie Irving – not tanking. And last year, ironically enough, losing that coin toss cost the Cavs Anthony Davis. That Thunder model? They said they’d have drafted Greg Oden had they won the #1 pick. They did some smart things, and got lucky. As long as the Cavs aren’t sacrificing future flexibility to “win now” I’d like them to try to be the best team they can be – to compete every night and win as many games as they can with the players they have.
Re: tanking, I think it was Kevin who did a great series last year on the effectiveness of “tanking.”
Generally, most teams that are repeatedly in the lottery year after year have NOT found long-run success (think Wiz, Bobcats, old school Clips and Kings, etc.) Success is usually a mixture of hitting on one star player, and then building through a variety of means. There is no single plan.
Mallory – I understand your point better now. Thanks.
Blast from the past. Here’s an old Krolik CtB article which hits the nail on the end as to what went wrong with building around LeBron: http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=2761
We’re not intentionally tanking. We’re giving minutes to our young players and filling in the holes with cheap free agents. This allows us to make trades like we saw a couple weeks ago.
We could’ve signed some more expensive free agents and had a good shot at making the playoffs this year. Perhaps Leonardo Barbosa, Kenyon Martin, and Andrei Kirilenko.. But, that’s dumb because it hurts our flexibility and future.
We aren’t “tanking.” We’re letting this team develop and not overpaying for short-term help. That’s just being smart and building for the future.
Okay, so let’s look at the last 10 NBA champions, and whether they got there through tanking or other means.
2012: Heat: Tanked, but for cap space to buy two superstars and one all star, not so much for draft picks.
2011: Mavericks: Didn’t tank, built around a superstar with smart trading and luck. Playoff team for a decade prior.
2009,10: Lakers x2: Didn’t tank, built around a superstar with smart trading and luck. Playoff team for forever.
2008: Celtics: Had a losing record for previous two seasons, but won through trades for superstars. Tanking intentionally seems unlikely.
2003, 05, 07, Spursx3: Perennially good team, didn’t tank. Built around a superstar. Playoff team for forever.
2006: Heat: Built around two superstars. May have tanked for one of them.
2004: Pistons: Didn’t tank. Went to playoffs four of previous five years.
It seems like tanking isn’t the most common way to get there. Major trades and signings tend to be more effective. The biggest thing is that in almost every case, at least one superstar is necessary, and the Cavs have that. We can hope to try to draft another, and do what OKC has done, or we can follow a model that seems much more successful and either trade for one or sign one. In my estimation, we should make every effort to win as much as we can. The only way a star signs with us is if we can show him that we’re well on our way to contention. This season hasn’t showed that.
Pretty sure I read in a Bill Simmons column that the Celtics tried (and failed) to tank for Duncan.
Maybe in 1997, the year Duncan was drafted. Not particularly relevant to their 2008 championship.
I agree with Bill. I get the feeling that many people equated not spending in FA to tanking. I don’t think that’s accurate. I think Gilbert learned from the first time he went big into FA by signing Hughes, Marshall, and Jones as the pieces around LeBron. A mistake in FA can set your team back a few seasons. Especially if you have to overpay (as Cleveland will) to land a quality FA. I think they are being cautious, which is smart.
Personally, I think they had plans to go after Bynum. Kind of glad that trade with the Lakers and Orlando didn’t happen.
Oh yeah – they are definitely sticking to the plan. But do people really think that while he’s sitting on the sidelines, Byron Scott is thinking “i don’t really care about trying to win this game”? And that that is a mandate from the top?
Do people think that when Chris Grant was adding C.J. Miles and Jon Leuer this offseason his thought was “now THIS bench will REALLY suck”
Well, Byron Scott may not be emotional on the sidelines, but apparently he is in the locker room.
http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2013/02/cleveland_cavaliers_catch_heat.html
BTW, excellent job on the podcast Mallory.
Re: Kyrie Defense and fighting through picks: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8915581/the-chicago-bulls-coach-tom-thibodeau-quest-perfection
” Their point guard, Kirk Hinrich or Nate Robinson, will jump in front of the pick and try to force the ball handler away from the screen and to the left side. I don’t have access to the fancy statistical databases that could verify this,3 but I’d bet heavy that Chicago is one of the two or three best teams at getting opposing point guards to go left. Hinrich might be a non-entity on offense and one of the most boring players in the league, but he is willing to engage in physical battles to get between a point guard and a pick. “He has always been very, very difficult to screen,” says Gar Forman, the Bulls’ GM.”
Honestly? I don’t know if the Cavs are trying to lose this season or not. If they’re not trying to lose on purpose, the future is pretty uncertain, I’d say. What does it say that the Cavs show up for games against tough opponents but suck against opponents that should be pretty easily beaten? I’m not even sure. If anything, it seems like a pretty strong indictment of Scott’s coaching.
On the flip side, if the Cavs are intentionally losing, they’re making it harder to sign quality free agents any time soon. I don’t agree with the strategy, but at least if they are tanking, we can assume we’re not seeing the best they have to offer, so there’s hope. It’s a poor strategy in my opinion, but the optimistic fan in me wants to believe it.
As far as coach Scott goes, I don’t mind that he’s stoic. Phil Jackson was pretty stoic. Tony Dungee was stoic, and never swore at his players. You can be successful and stoic as a pro coach. But both of those guys seemed to actually have an ability to game plan and teach. I’m not saying Scott can’t, but honestly, looking at the way this team plays (in our losses, mostly) it appears we don’t run an offense, have no plan on defense, and individual player development/teaching, other than Tristan, seems minimal. Kyrie is just a monster talent. I suppose expecting much development out of Zeller and Waiters isn’t particularly wise in season, but I feel like Scott hasn’t even really tried to correct Dion’s shot selection. Would an ultimatum of “if you take a contested jump shot, you will be benched” to Dion be out of line? Would some consistent planning on when Zeller does or doesn’t help on D be out of line? It seems like neither of those things have happened. Admittedly, they’re not my decisions, and I’m not a pro basketball coach. He probably knows better than I do, but just watching the games, it seems like both of those things should happen. And they haven’t.
What it comes down to is if the Cavs are actually trying to win games, Scott should probably be fired. Because most of the time it doesn’t look like they are, and that’s on coach Scott.
My take on Byron’s stoicism on the sidelines is that he’s letting our young players play and learn from their mistakes. Not that he’s bad at his job or disinterested.
I’d rather him coach like he is than try to micromanage everything thing they do and make the afraid to actually play ball (take chances.)
Random, mostly unrelated stat:
In winning games, Kyrie Irving has the highest PPG of any player in the NBA at 30.1. Durant is second at 29. Among the top 40, he is second in 3P% at 53.2%, behind only OJ Mayo. (And Tim Duncan, who hit both of his 3P tries in wins).
Of the top 15 in PPG in winning efforts, he is 10th in minutes.
He may already be a top 10 player in the league. Provided he plays a full career and avoids injuries for the most part, he has basically no ceiling.
One more random stat:
Of all SG with at least 100 3PA, Dion Waiters has the second lowest FG%, ahead of only Andre Iguodala.
Someone tell the kid to not take threes with more then three seconds left on the shot clock. Like, ever.
Each team is unique. I don’t see the Rose Bulls as a comparable team to Cavs. Noah, Deng, Brad Miller, Gordon were already on the roster. If hypothetically the Cavs already had a season TT, Waiters and their upcoming first rounder and then landed Irving the following year they might be more comparable situations. When the Cavs landed Kyrie they had odds and ends leftover from the Lebron era, a best player who makes $9 million a year for less than 40 games a season and some d leaguers. They are winning more now than they were earlier in the season, which does fall in line with what the Thunder did in Durant’s second season. The best case scenario for this season is that they start to learn how to win games over the second half of the season and still get to land a top five pick in the draft. It’s always possible they trade that pick on draft day in a package for a second star.