Overview: Paul Pierce scored 17 of his 24 points in the first quarter of a 112-95 Celtics win. The Cavaliers have not won a game since the Republican Party officially became the House majority.
Well what were you honestly expecting to happen bullets:
Well, it was a throwback ass-kicking. Perkins came back from injury and absolutely manhandled the Cavs’ undersized frontline under the basket. KG got whatever shots he wanted against Jamison while completely shutting him down on defense — again.
Paul Pierce closed out the first quarter with a vicious “screw this, we lost to the Wizards on Saturday and I do NOT feel like playing more than 24 minutes against this crappy team” scoring flurry. Ray Allen was left open coming off of curls and spotting up. The Cavalier offense basically consisted of Jamison and Eyenga firing jumpers. The Cavs were out-worked and out-executed by a team with infinitely more talent. That generally leads to a loss. A few quick individual notes:
- I have two main observations about Eyenga: His jumper is better than I expected it to be, and he settles for it more than I expected him too. I understand that he’s afraid he won’t get the ball back if he passes it to Jamison, Hickson, or Sessions, but I’d like to see him try to be a bit more efficient offensively.
- Hickson is hustling. He had a huge night on the boards again, and he was active around the rim on both offense and defense. However, he still had a few laughably, laughably, laughably horrible defensive possessions. I’m not sure if he’s hustling for numbers or just doesn’t get basketball, and I’m not sure which is worse.
- People realize that the Cavaliers lost four players this off-season, and two of them were DNPs for the Celtics tonight, right? That’s all for me tonight. Cavs host the Nuggets on Friday.
Yes, but both were injured. You make it sound like Shaq and Delonte aren’t good enough to get off the bench, when the fact is they’d both be playing significant minutes for that team if healthy.
Opposite point. When the Cavs were the standard-issue worst team in basketball before Varejao and the other injuries, there was a lot of “It’s a whole new roster, Shaq, Z, and Delonte left too!” I promise I’ll go more in-depth on that at some point, but the Celtics have had Shaq miss games, Delonte miss basically the whole year, and Perkins miss every game until this one and they haven’t missed a beat. Every team loses role players in the off-season, and every team has injuries. Very few teams have EVER been this bad.
Even when Shaq and Delonte were on the Cavs, didn’t they miss a a ton of games too?
I hear you. There is no denying the Cavs are historically bad. But when they were good, they won despite injuries like the Celtics are doing.
It’s easy to look at the Cavs and just decide that Talent is linear and additive and that “losing” LeBron is evidence that 1.) He’s worth 58+ wins by himself (since the Cavs wont win again this year) and 2.) That LeBron made the right decision because the Cavaliers all suck.
I would love someone to use this as an exercise in how teams are built around superstars. I imagine that if the Magic lost Dwight Howard today – they’d be as bad as the Washington Wizards if not worse. That team is built entirely around 1 guy. The 3 point bombers by themselves are easy to defend as long as you take away the long ball. But when you couple that skillset with Howard, the effect is multiplicative.
The same could be said for the Cavaliers. They went after guys whose skillsets complimented LeBron James. The had nobody that could create offense efficiently and they didn’t NEED that to win.
The Heat may scratch 60 wins and the Cavs will be lucky to break Kelly Dwyer’s prediction – and when the dust settles, every human being with fingers and internet access will rush to tell us about how dreadful the Cavs were from 2003-2010 and how LeBron James was playing with D-league talent for 7 years. To me, that’s lazy. I’d like a Daryl Morey-like analysis of how players compliment each other.
Well, it’s really trying to answer an unanswerable question or chicken and the egg kind of question (since it will be impossible to truly test either hypotheses without controlling the extraneous variables).
If you think Lebron is a superhuman talent, then this is evidence that the Cavaliers sucked and he dragged a horrible team his whole career. If you think Lebron was great but not superhuman, then you point to (1) the other guys that left in the offseason and (2) that the team was built around Lebron. Of course, the answer is somewhere between the two (although exactly where on the continuum, I do not know). With each pathetic showing, however, I lean slightly toward the former.
Dwyane Wade dragged Miami to, what, 45 wins last year? That team sucked. It clearly was not built around him, he had to do everything for them. The Cavs, although completely contingent upon LeBron for the lion’s share of contribution, were constructed to magnify his effects.
He dragged the 07 team to the finals. They really were not very good.
Orlando without Dwight Howard would beat this team. I have no doubt about.
Yes, they would James. Of course, take away another starter (say….Brandon Bass?) their best bench player (I dunno, Ryan Anderson right now) and one more player off the bench who gets real minutes (you pick, Arenas/Reddick) and you now have a team being led by Hedo, Richardson, and Nelson. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but that sounds a lot like Mo Williams, Anderson Varejao, and Antawn Jamison. Game would be very close.
It seems like the only way Cavs win is if the opposing team chooses to lose…
The next possible win, IMO, is Feb 13 against the Wizards. What are the odds on that, I wonder…
The NBA is a superstar league. If you have one you’re going to be set up to be competitive on a nightly basis. The Cavs had one for seven years, and were competitive generally each and every night.
As for West and Shaq being DNP’s: they are both injured of course they did not play. In fact West still had a cast on his wrist. They each missed alot of time with the Cavs last season and it didn’t really matter; the Cavs continued to win.
Neither West or Shaq would have done much good this year for the Cavs. I love West’s game but realistically he is better suited as coming off the bench on a contender; not the focal point on a bad team. Shaq wouldn’t have fit the tempo the Cavs allegedly try to use; then again neither does some of the current Cavs players.
The Celtics do not need Shaq or Delonte to win games, they are better with them – yes of course, but they don’t need them. You sit Shaq and Delonte and you still have 3-4 hall of famers/all stars on the team(KG, Allen, Pierce, Rondo). Everyone hates on Miami for building this dark empire but we all know Boston did it first…
Anyways, the Cavs need to be what the championship Pistons were; a multitalented team with no real superstar. Why? Because no superstar is gonna come here if they had a say in it. They need to figure out who to keep, if anyone(maybe Harris, Eyenga and Gee if he finds a jumper) and start adding to that…
I dont keep track of any college basketball, but are there any players coming up to the NBA which the Cavs can hope to land on the draft? Anything worth looking for?
Trade JJ for ANYTHING and draft Sullinger!
the cavs need to rid of the huge contracts and veteran players and just start playing a lot of young guys. it probably wont make any difference record wise but what have any other veterans done to help this team anyways? its not worth having jamison or MO around anymore…i guess we’re stuck with sessions…boobie isnt playing all that great…so in essence its sort of a lose lose situation.
as far as draft picks…there’s a few guys that could help. it depends if we want a big man or a guard/playmaker…depending on what will help us quicker will be our guy….could be sullinger or that dude from baylor….or kemba walker from uconn who btw is really good.
i really think the Cavs need to lockdown a true pg and a solid big man who can get double doubles every night. Im hoping JJ can morph into the latter, but he’s yet to really do that. Yes he’s rebounding better but i dont see how he cant get double doubles every night.
Cavs were like 1-10 the last 2 seasons sans lebron. Look it up.
None of this is unexpected. The problem was the insane expectations people had for the team, and all that ridiculous talk about how the best “basketball” situation for him was staying b/c the team was just loaded with talent, etc.
I think that can be debunked now.
Blame ownership/management for signing these crap players & expecting a title out of it.
Take out kobe from LA and you got Pau, lamar, ron, artest, etc. maybe a 48-50 win team in the west on that alone.
Take out Dwight from Orlando & i’m pretty sure they still make the playoffs on sheer firepower.
The C’s have been winning w/various key players rotating in and out b/c of injury.
Those are contenders. The Cavs w/LBJ should’ve never been mentioned in the same breath as those teams b/c its obvious the level of talent around LBJ was not there. Hence the playoff disappointments.
Yeah, shaq also left this offseason. but they won 60 w/out him 2 yr ago. And West was out most of last year. So the main loss other than LBJ was Big Z.
A 60 win title contending team that loses a 38 y/o spot up center and its best player should still be deep and talented enough to at least win 45 games or so.
The bulls won 50+ when MJ went to play baseball.
It’s time to realize the man left for greener (basketball) pastures & that his decision (in the eyes of … Most Everyone) is now at least justified basketball-wise.
The closest analogue is the 99 bulls, but that team lost THREE HOF-ers and one HOF coach. Cavs lost 1 HOFer, 2 aging stiffs, one mediocre bench player. (And mike brown…but thats another story).
It’s honestly astonishing lebron dragged this sorry collection of characters (Mogotti lookin at you) to the # of wins they achieved.
Also w/the D-league comparison- Anyone actually remember when injuries hit hard a few years back and there was that one stretch where Lebron really had to play w/ several DL call-ups and won anyways?
The more i watch this season, the more I realize that the NBA DESPERATELY needs a franchise player rule. Dwight wants out? Mello wants out? They’re already talking about where Griffin will be in 2 years. It has to end.
Hey Damian, you are shouting into the wind. Everyone admitted already that it made sense for him to leave. And once again, the main problem CLE fans have is the asinine way he did it. The end.
This team is considerably worse than last years – no question about that. How much ‘credit’ to give LeBron is a question. He’s definitely the biggest impact but combined with missing the size of Shaq & Z, Delonte, and the constant injuries – there are defintely some games the Cavs would have won (or not loss by as much) if these other guys were around. The Nets game comes to mind as a game we would have won if Shaq was on Lopez rather than Hollins. Anytime we have to start a 6’9″ center in lieu of a Shaq/Z tells you how undersized we are.
I’m not trying to suggest that we would be a .500 team if LeBron was the only missing player from last year’s team and we didn’t have so many injuries. But we certainly wouldn’t be playing Harris, Gee, Eyenga, Hollins, Samuels nearly as much (if at all) if some of the other members of last years Cavs were available.
Remove the D-leaguers/Rookies from the team and replace them with solid/proven NBA players with size and/or skill, including a healthy Andy – and there is no question we wouldn’t be nearly this bad. LeBron was a HUGE loss, but not the only one.
the cavs single largest mistake was letting go of donyell marshall. it has just snowballed from there..
With LeBron carrying crappy players its true but he signed off on every move we made didnt recruit other FAs to come to CLE so we had to settle for the best possible moves out there. Every single player the Cavs have had in the LeBron area fit great playing alongside him. of course there not gonna be that good without him when he elevated the talents of every player on the roster because he was that great. We surrounded him with shooters because LeBron could get to hoop at will and had the IQ to get the ball to him. The Cavs were the best teams the last 2 years bc of LeBron that much is obvious. But when he was disinterested the true talent of the players would shine through. When LeBron came out scoring the Cavs were unbeatable because it opened up the rest of the team to do what they do best. but when he came out deferring to teammates to create opportunities they struggled because LeBron then had to bail them out and score a boatload of points later in the game. look at game 3 of the ECSF last year lebron came out on fire and everyone fed off him. and remember we dont win game 1 of that series without Mo Williams. Other games yes he did disappear. Its just the thing about LeBron was that he was so great he didnt need the best talent around him to win he needed the right players filling their roles and thats what we had. Howard Kobe and whoever you want to mention as a superstar taking them away is not as detrimental as taking LeBron away regardless of the other players on their team. LeBron makes those around him better more than anyone has, EVER in the history of the NBA. and he should have been able to win a Championship with how great he is on the Cavs team last year. He knew he was leaving so he Quit simple as that, and made the excuse that their wasnt enough talent around him to win. not realizing how important he was to the success of the team.
Erik that was great lmfao… Marshall WTF
Eh, Damian, I was going with you untill yu started naming off Laker players. It seems people suddenly over-value those who have won a championship as compared to those who didn’t. Ron Artest is quite bad right now and I’m not sure he’s helping that team win at all. It’d be like saying take LBJ off the Heat and oyu have Carlos Arroyo. It’s over-hyping one guys supporting cast to make it seem like LBJ had it so terrible here.
Yea, Lamar and Gasol are great….but after that the next best player is an oft-injured big man and then I don’t know who, but it isn’t Artest.
Yea, but Gasol is all-star starter great. The fact that he listed Artest on the list doesn’t make his point completely irrelevant.