Links To The Present: Old Point Guard Edition

The Cavs are facing a bit of an injury situation right now.  Jason Lloyd is reporting that Kyrie Irving will probably miss the next two preseason games before returning from his ankle injury while LeBron James will be missing one of the next three preseason games to rest.  LeBron has a sore back.

“Kyrie moved around a good bit today, not in live practice, but in terms of the drills that we had. That’s a good sign,” Cavs coach David Blatt said. “He’s coming along. We’re not going to rush it, we’re being careful because we want him back on his feet full strength. But he did take a step forward today, no question.”

“I haven’t quite figured it out,” James said of which game he would skip. “I’m going to talk with coach and go from there. They’ve been managing it pretty good. I’m feeling pretty good right now and I want to continue that.”

LeBron has appeared a bit sluggish on the court and hasn’t been playing a ton in the preseason.  When he does play, his basketball intelligence is still showing, but he has had trouble shooting.  Terry Pluto has more on that topic in his column about the game against Miami.

James spent most of the game passing — he had eight assists. In the first two preseason games, he is shooting 6-of-19. Not sure what that’s about, but his outside shot seems very flat and a bit of line drive right now.

Pluto also brought up the Cavs subpar guard defense.

The defense remains very iffy, especially with how some of the opposing guards are able to drive to the basket with little trouble. When you don’t have shot-blockers, your guards need to play better position defense to make it more difficult for the opposition to reach the rim.

In my eyes, the Cavs defensive problems are related to communication.  While they are letting ball handlers get into the paint, it is mainly because players aren’t sure when they are switching coverage, trapping, or showing hard and recovering.  There’s a lot of hedged decisions that are creating holes in the Cavs defense.  The players need to make firm decisions and communicate said decisions with each other.

ESPN is running a story from their Cleveland Issue online.  In the piece, Brian Windhorst rehashes how LeBron got to Cleveland this offseason.  If you’re reading this blog and managed to miss how LeBron landed in Cleveland, I’m perplexed, but you can still get caught up.

Fear The Sword writer Chris Manning broke down Matthew Dellavedova’s game yesterday.  The verdict is that he’s a three-and-d player.

Everything considered, Dellavedova is a flawed player with a relatively defined ceiling. What he is right now – a scrappy defender with a decent 3-point stroke – is relatively what he’ll be over the course of his career. It doesn’t seem likely he develops above average ball handling skills to be a reliable backup point guard.

I’m not as down on Delly’s ball handling skills.  He just needs to get the ball up the court and to one of the Big three or Dion Waiters, or even Andy Varejao.  Easy enough, right?  He’ll be more appreciated when people realize he doesn’t need any touches to be happy on a team where a lot of guys need touches to be happy.  As always, Manning does a really great job of illustrating his points with pictures.

Today is the day of the old point guard.  Someday, I hope the Cavs own Kyrie and Matty get to the point where they are lamented like Steve Nash is by newspaper writers.  Bill Oram of the Orange County Register wrote a wonderful piece about the past year of Steve’s career.  

“For me, this is my last year of basketball, most likely,” Nash said. “So I’m not putting any pressure on myself other than to enjoy and to work as hard as I can. … To enjoy it for the last time is the goal.”

Then he will ride into the sunset. Because that’s how the story goes, right?

But the sun has already set. He’s seen the darkness and it was black and now it’s the dawn of a day that may not play out as a metaphor. There doesn’t need to be a Hollywood ending, because he could have had one if he wanted that and you only get so many of those in a lifetime. He could have retired that birthday night in Philadelphia; right on the spot he could have hung up his sneakers, happy, triumphant and 40.

But he wanted the money and he wanted to go out on his own terms and both of those things are OK.

That’s the thing about being the old man. You decide when it’s time to blow out the candles.

Jason Williams, White Chocolate, has decided to post pone completely blowing out the candles of his basketball life at the age of 38.  He decimated his opponent and smothered them with White Chocolate at the Orlando Pro-Am.  It’s a yummy site for viewers.