Links to the !!Present!!
2013-03-18
The Cavaliers will be without Kyrie Irving against the Pacers.
-The Cavs host the Pacers tonight. The Pacers haven’t exactly been on a tear lately, so a pre-March Madness upset special is a real possibility.
-On the other hand, an upset might be tougher without Kyrie Irving’s late game exploits, as Jodie Valade reports. One aspect of Kyrie’s game that I particularly appreciate is his steals on help defense. He’s become quite proficient at sneaking up behing small forwards and big men for steals, leading to some timely fastbreaks.
-The Cavs are in the 50% of the leage that use the SportVU camera tracking system, and it’s pretty cool. Jodie Valade, AGAIN!
-Is Byron Scott the coach of the future for this team? Jim Ingraham, writing for the New-Herald, thinks the Cavaliers’ issues with consistent effort all come back to Coach Scott. I happen to agree with him, although I think Scott’s rotations are a larger issue. His insistence on allowing the Cavs to hemorrhage points for half of the fourth quarter before bring back the starters has cost the team quite a few wins. It leads to ten-point deficits, and that leads to Kyrie Irving hero-ball, which works about one in four tries.
-Mary Schmitt Boyer is intelligent and opinionated, and she podcasts. It’s your lucky day.
in regards to scott and his rotations, its my uneducated opinion that (keep in mind this is a gut feeling) his rotations may be a coming from the top down. I can imagine B. Scott walking into C. Grant’s office every few months and CG saying “listen Byron, i’m not saying we tank or anything, but i would STRONGLY suggest this type of rotation” or “Listen, this rebuild is a project we are in year x, given that we want to be around x number of wins, so play your players accordingly in rotations and minutes” its hard for me… Read more »
It’s unfortunate to see their best players get hurt (Irving, Varejao). The team defense has been a concern. But I do like where the Cavaliers are going, up until this point. And I think Byron Scott is doing a pretty good job with the young talent he has. Next year is a big year, though. There needs to be significant improvement. If the Cavs cannot win between 40-45 games next year, then we may be looking at a coaching change during the 2014 summer.
Now that we have the Herculoids things have changed a bit, Rich. It’s true. But this was an issue for the first 2/3 of the season. Also, at this point I would rather have the young bloods try and win on their own merit.
“His insistence on allowing the Cavs to hemorrhage points for half of the fourth quarter before bring back the starters has cost the team quite a few wins. ”
Considering the bench has regularly been outplaying the starters, this statement doesn’t hold weight anymore. Like against the Spurs, the team started to hemorrhage points after he brought the starters back in.
BS is not my favorite coach but it seems to me that they would have unloaded him a year ago if they didn’t like what he was doing.
Scott isn’t the problem. It just has to do with inexperience. It’s already documented that our bench plays better than our starters, and it’s already known that the bench also has a lot more NBA experience than our starter. If our team continues to be this horrible defensively next year, then a change of coaching will be necessary, but I think Scott knows that next year he will be on a short leash to make the playoffs, and that will not happen with our team allowing teams to shoots 50% in the 4th and 47% overall.