Links to the Present: It’s All Okay Edition
2014-04-21
The long disappointing Cavs season is finally over. People are trying to figure out what went wrong with the team, and one positive thought has emerged. The team has the same problems as last year and no new ones. Is Mike Brown the right coach? Can Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters play together? Will Tristan Thompson finally become a quality starter? Can the team stay healthy?
Dan Gilbert’s press conference about this season and his plans for the off-season is Tuesday, so he will hopefully answer a lot of those questions then. Until then, we can look at the news that has come out since the Brooklyn win and be happy that there has been no drama.
The Cavs’ two stars, Irving and Waiters, are in favor of Mike Brown returning according to Mary Schmitt Boyer of The Plain Dealer.
“Being under Coach Brown, he’s a constant teacher, and I [Kyrie Irving] needed that as a person and a player. I’m truly appreciative of that because it’s only going to make me better in the long run.”
“I’d like to see Coach come back,” Waiters said. “We’ve been together for a year. The ups and downs, he stuck with us, we stuck with him…”
Even though it’s hard to tell how much of a change Brown made for the team, it’s good news that the players aren’t ready to throw him in a fire.
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Kyrie and Dion have no problems with each other if you ask Luol Deng. Bob Finnan of The News-Herald & The Morning Journal reported Deng’s quotes along with his own thoughts about the Cavs not playing Irving and Waiters together sooner.
“It’s a distraction,” [Deng] said. “I mean all this stuff that I hear, but when we’re in the locker room with these guys every day, they love each other. I can’t say one word or one incident, and when we get on the court, we never think twice about it.”
If there is one player on the Cavs that I trust, it would have to be the player who is no longer attached to the team saying positive stuff.
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Mary Schmitt Boyer put up some questions this morning about what may be answered during Dan Gilbert’s press conference tomorrow. Check it out if you need some things to ponder all day and want to hear Mary’s thoughts.
In her “Hey, Mary!” column, the same questions that I mentioned above are covered by her. She’s a Mike Brown supporter, and has no clue about what to do with Kyrie but isn’t interested in lottery picks for him.
A team intent on getting better cannot keep changing coaches every year. I think the team improved as the season went on and that’s why I would be in favor of Brown’s return.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know — and so should you — that tying hopes to lottery picks is a risky proposition.
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The report cards for Cavs players are coming out finally. Bob Finnan has released one with extensive thoughts about each player; Andy and Matty D are his highest rated players.
Rick Noland of The Chronicle Telegram put his ratings out too. His piece is shorter and more generous as five players earned a B rating.
The commonality between both of the report cards is not surprising. No players earned an A.
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Terry Pluto of The Plain Dealer brought up some good points about the Cavs this weekend in his article.
In 2011-12, there were three teams that averaged at least 100 points. In 2012-13, there were 11. In 2013-14, there were 17.
While Irving missed 11 games, eight were started by Waiters. The Cavs were 4-4, beating Indiana, Detroit, Toronto and New York. They lost to Brooklyn, Houston, Oklahoma City and Miami. So they were 2-4 vs. playoff teams, and 2-0 vs. teams missing the playoffs.
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Bill Livingston of The Plain Dealer put out an emotionally driven piece about his thoughts on the Cavs off-season. It is definitely angry. It ends with this, “Whatever happens, it will be a while before Cavs fans go to the ATM and take out the victory parade.”
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Cavs: The Blog’s own Robert Attenweiler is continuing to blow up the internet. He was mentioned in a Grantland “NBA Shootaround” post by Corbon Goble. Robert’s first thought reported was, “I love Dion Waiters.” I’m glad I’m not the only person who does. But could Grantland give us a proper citation already?
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Former Cav Larry Hughes hasn’t made the news with anything basketball related for a long time. Still, he’s making the news in other ways.
Former Knicks player Larry Hughes was walked out of the Trump SoHo hotel in handcuffs Friday after a night of partying at notorious club Greenhouse, which he partly owns.
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For all you draftniks out there, this is fascinating and pioneering work, Eric Weiss attempts to develop some analytics for using psychological factors to predict NBA success.
This age-old question regarding the balance of Nature vs. Nurture has become a mainstay in sociological research within the corporate world. Companies such as Google are investing in “Behavioral Analytics” to match their best candidates to their ideal work environments.
Research of this type has been more difficult do in the NBA due to limitations in the sample size of quality personality data. Appropriate metrics for quantifying work environments have further muddied the waters. However, things are beginning to change.
Analyzing data collected on 358 of 420 draftees from 2007 to 2013 reveals some promising trends when it comes to understanding some of the factors that lead down the road to the coveted draft day “Steal,” as well as the dreaded “Bust”.
Finally, if you’re fed up with Tankapalooza 2014, “riggin’ for Wiggins,” and “playin’ sorry for Jabari,” there’s a movement afoot to fix tanking. The NBArrassing campaign is just getting off the ground, and is being supported by fans, bloggers, and media from around the country. If you’d like to help ensure we don’t see another season of general putrid NBA play, you can sign this petition. The goal is to get 10,000 signatures to send to Adam Silver, and stop the NBArrassment.
KJ: I mostly agree with you about the fact that the team has improved by virtually all measures and they showed much of the improvement we expected to see. I think the people shouting for Gilbert to blow it up (like Tony Rizzo) have no idea what they are talking about and should stop comment on the Cavs for a long time. Also, the team would probably have finished better if not for the Bynum experiment retarding all progress. That being said, I would not be opposed to bringing in a new coach IF: He has a real plan for… Read more »
WHo is trying to steal my idea
Is part of that NBArrassing campaign have something about the refs ruining the playoffs by calling these wussy touch fouls.
The debate between Nate and Kj illustrates a major point about statistics:
Statistics (and various methods of ranking things) are methods of producing simple numbers that attempt to summarize complex situations. Even if the data is good and the math is right (both of these are often in doubt), it is still hard to know what the numbers mean.
“Easy” does not necessarily mean accurate. Of the top 17 teams in defensive rating this year, 16 made the playoffs, a more accurate rate than FG% http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2014.html Last year, 15 of 18, and the Wizards only missed because their offense was so bad. http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2013.html Obviously, the relationships are correlative, but my point is that just looking at Opp FG% doesn’t tell the whole story of the Cavs defense that gave up a record number of threes. Because of this, the Cavs “improvement,” while not insignificant isn’t as great as some would make it out to be. So I’ll retract, Opp… Read more »
KJ – you need to pick your battles. FG% is a stat. You can’t get upset with “stats” or “you guys with your stats” while you’re touting a…STAT. FG% is like batting average and eFG% is like On Base Percentage. It’s really that simple. It’s a more accurate way to represent shooting efficiency. While I’m on the subject – here is another “stat” that is relatively worthless at describing winning or efficiency: Double-Doubles (especially ones with Points + Rebounds). It’s fine if a coach wants a team to pay attention to a particular measurement throughout the season to motivate his… Read more »
The point is – the defense improved from last season and the transition defense improved dramatically as the season progressed.
Certain things “passed the eye test” more too. Individually, there was less shock and awe on the perimeter as teams had to work a bit harder to get past the Cavs guards (still not too difficult though)
KJ, it does matter what kind of shots opponents are taking. If there are hit 50% on all two’s or 45% on all threes, I think you are worse off in the second scenario. Although EFG is also misleading as two’s generate more free throws than 3’s, so 50% from 2 and 33% from 3 are not the same thing, as hitting 50% of your two’s also generates a lot more free throws/foul trouble than 33% on 3’s. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between. But regardless, if you are looking at the least favorable overall team D stat… Read more »
Oh and the year before, 9 out the top 10 and 13 of the top 16 teams in Opp FG% went to the playoffs. So, yeah, I’d say it’s a pretty easy way to see if a NBA team is any good…smh…
Yeah, Nate, it’s so stupid that the 11 teams ahead of the Cavs all made the playoffs! Way to put me in my place, Nate! Yet again your advance stats have drop-kicked my point into the dumpster where it belongs! Bravo!
Seriously, if you silly stat geeks even knew half of what you actually think you do, you’d be dangerous…lol!
Btw, S.A. has won plenty FIXATING on Opp FG%…
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Y’all… I think I may have hit upon an idea to fix the draft completely, none of this wheel stuff. Well, we already know an auction is the best way to allocate players, but how to work out the currency? You can’t give teams more tokens for more losses because that would make tanking even worse. Give every team the same amount, say 100. Let’s say every team throws 100 on Embiid or something. Put the teams into tiers of 4 (for at least the first 16 picks), in reverse order of record. So, the 4 worst teams are the… Read more »
How about a petition to fix NBA League Pass Broadband? Tanking isn’t that big of a deal. It’s a natural bilroduct of not having a salary cap and it’s been around for 30 years.
Opp FG% is a stupid way to measure defensive effectiveness. FG% means nothing. The FG% is going to go down because teams were taking an unprecedented amount of threes versus the Cavs. Effective field goal percentages (much better) had the Cavs go from an abysmal .523 to .508. or 29th ranked to 17th rank. Certainly an improvement, but not the 30th to 12th that everyone is touting.
As far defensive scoring per pace adjusted (the only thing that really matters). The Cavs moved from 109.4 to 107.7, or 27th to 19th — an improvement, but not a culture changing one.
Good points, KJ. Out of curiosity, what is the youngest team in the league?
“Even though it’s hard to tell how much of a change Brown made for the team.” Really? This kind of thing drives me nuts. He took them from last to 12th in Opp FG%. You can try and minimize that but it was huge. Plus, anyone who watched every game know that the Cavs played “the right way a whole lot after Jan 1st.” The improvements were obvious for the 2nd youngest team in the league.