Live Thread: Cavs @ Pistons
2016-04-24Take the advice of a Detroiter. Steady as she goes for Cleveland this primetime. One more night of what we saw the last three games, and the Cavs should be able to take a few days off. I’m not even changing up the intro format, a collection of things Cleveland needs to focus on. Here’s your bullet points
- Avoid getting sucked into dirty the play. Adam Silver has apparently ordered a “boys will be boys” edict this playoffs. There have been a conspicuous lack of flagrant fouls called on some really rough play so far, and an unwillingness to fine, let alone suspend players for cheap shots. So far we’ve seen Isaiah Thomas (the Younger) slap a guy without a suspension, Kevin Durant elbow Salah Mejri, Andrew Bogut try the Kelly Olynyk arm bar on Dwight Howard, and Detroit level a bevy of cheapies, including this one.
Things really reached ridiculous last night when all-NBA nice guy, Kevin Durant picked up a garbage time flagrant two against Justin Anderson. Funny enough, it looked far worse than Drummond’s. Of course, the Flagrant two came in-game for Durant, so he won’t get suspended. This won’t end until someone gets knocked out of the playoffs. Be on your guard, Cavs.
- Keep containing Andre Drummond. Everything for the Pistons begins and ends with him offensively and defensively. He’s either going to shut down under SVG’s withering criticism, or he’s going to bring it. If the Cavs play it right, Andre will try the first and then revert to the second.
- Make Reggie Jackson a jump-shooter. He was 1-8 last game, and despite shooting 35% this season, he’s 31% on his career. Don’t give Reg wide open looks, but don’t run him off the line, either. Controlled closeouts will be key.
- Don’t be afraid to go to the bench. Cleveland has been playing its starters heavy minutes, and guys like Reggie Bullock and Stanley Johnson have YOLO shooting. So, if’s Stan’s smart, he’ll release the young guns and tell them to run. Cleveland will have to avoid the turnovers, and go to the bench if the guys on the floor start start sucking wind.
- Avoid the “Disease of more.” Kyrie, Delly, LeBron, Love, TT, and J.R. are all playing great right now. Don’t eff it up. Keep doin’ what you’re doing, Cavs. We’ve spent a lot of time this year discussing who “fits” on this team and whether a guy like Delly might make the Cavs their most effective when he plays with LeBron. But the way the Cavs are playing right now, who cares? Just keep defendin’, passin’, shootin’, runnin’, and, you know, ballin’. The discussions of who starts doen’t matter when everyone’s playing well. In the words of Crash Davis, respect the streak. In the words of Jack White, Steady as She Goes.
Curry has a MCL injury. That is significant. Warriors should still be able to handle the Rockets. There is no way they sweep the Clippers without Curry though.
This was a very tough team, more so than the Celtics last year. I cannot believe all the 3 point shooters they have. WOW. They have made the Cavs tougher. No way does any other team in the East sweep these Pistons. Drummond was a good challenge for them. It took Lebron, Love and TT to battle him. We might not see any Mosgov next series unless there is a blow out. I still believe he will be needed against Whiteside or Valcunias even if it’s for 5 mins so that starters get a rest.
I hope the next opponent that the Cavs face bring their A game like the Pistons did. The Cavs need it so that they can as ready as possible if they reach the finals.
Overall a good series for the Cavs but they can do better defensively IMO. They allowed too many PPG’s per game to an 8th seed.
By the way, it seems the Cavs decided to go back to the extremely slow pace offense again.
Reggie Jackson spouting about awful refs is hilarious. Unless, you know, he’s talking about their blown calls against the Cavs. Andre Drummond’s Elbow (ADE)… c’mon. Go away Detroit. Enjoy your off-season.
He will get fined. Nothing in this series warranted a Ref suspension. Calls went their way more. I could not believe the blatant blown calls on Lebron. I do however agree there does need to be a better system of ref accountability. NFL & MLB do fine their refs. MLB is even more stricter. I def seen a side of Reggie that I could see why Durant & Westbrook did not like him.
Without a doubt there needs to be ref accountability. The NBA releasing a statement (which they didn’t even bother for the ADE) and “admitting” their mistakes does nothing. But for Reggie to be the one complaining about it? Come on. And none of their fans even see it. They think LeBron gets away with murder but refuse to recognize that the Cavs are routinely subject to non-basketball plays and very, very hard fouls with nothing to show for it. The FT disparity for this series is 88-67 in favor of Detroit. They shot 21 MORE free throws than a team… Read more »
I cannot believe people are complaining about a sweep. Irving went for 31 and basically win the game on offense and defense in the last minute. Let’s celebrate for a bit.
I agree. Pay attention to any other series and no teams have someone they can go to late for offense. Kyrie is the man. And he allows LeBron to spend his energy more effectively on the defensive end, where he’s a playmaking monster!
I mean, the game isn’t even close if Cavs execute their offense, move the ball. But you take the win, get the week off.
Kyrie kinda almost lost us the game, then kinda won the game. But initially had almost lost the game with horrible decision making that put us in a situation that we should never have been in, but then he kinda won the game. So…… where are ? Next round, ok. Rest up .
I hope you guys put up the Bye Bye Kyrie vine with JR of all people holding him back to behave. LoL
Man…if Delly sees only 15 mins a game next series I will write Lue a strongly worded letter. Gotta find minutes for him. He singlehandedly grabbed an 8 point lead and the rode the pine during the stretch run for the most part. That doesn’t make a bit of sense. Keep Kyrie in and put Delly at PG. we have worse options than that for goodness sake.
It’s really weird he is doing this because he criticized Blatt for having such a short rotation. He wanted to expand the number of players. Now, his rotation is even shorter!! You have to trust your subs.
Lue has done this in the past. I think he is intentionally playing the starters a lot of minutes as a mental challenge, knowing that the Detroit series was in hand. He is throwing them into the fire for longer run preparation (e.g., Heat, Spurs, Ws).
Idk. I found it very interesting Doc Rivers did exactly the same thing on racking huge mins on the starters the last game. It backfired on him on the last game though.
Wow…Pistons shot 7 percentage points better from the field and made 1 more fg than the Cavs. Puts into perspective how important the offensive rebounding was and making a couple extra threes is. Thank you TT and JR.
Really hope they’re in the gym doing walk throughs by Tuesday. good opportunity to get some real practices in. kind of silly for a 1 seed to be learning the playbook this time of year but necessary
Gonna go out on a limb and say the debate about Kyrie’s style of play will continue…
We swept the first series guys. This rest will pay huge dividends come Miami in the ECF.
Hoping the Hornets win their next game. Let all these teams wear each other out.
Good win. DET might be a tougher matchup for us than BOS or ATL. Drummond is a beast and they were young and hungry. Solid sweep. And I still feel like we are kind of only trying about 85%. We have a couple more gears to go to.
I guess I wonder when these gears kick in, if not now, when? If we have more gears, why not just try to obliterate them by the fourth quarter every game and get even more rest? We swept an 8th seed which is what this team should if it is fully healthy. Detroit didn’t back down, but our d has a ways to go in my opinion. Detroit never had the shooters or talent to compete, but the talent gap will lessen the further we go. Some of these fairly consistent defensive breakdowns, like many in the first halves of… Read more »
The gears kick in when they need them because they have great veterans, and, most importantly, LeBron. This series (as you note) was tough. They Cavs (while not playing perfectly) elevated their play above the regular season. The next round they will elevate more. Its a pacing issue. You don’t want to go all out against Detroit.
Cavs sweep… Spurs sweep… Curry has injury issues. I think we may have our Finals matchup…
If Curry can’t go full against the Spurs… that will be MAJOR trouble for them.
That would be great. We would have a good chance against the Spurs. But the Warriors dont scare me as much as they did in the middle of the season. They have slipped a bit. And the Clippers are going to put one hell of a scare to them before going down.
We shall see. One series at a time.
Whoever come sout of the Hawks-Celtics slugfest is going to be slaughtered by the Cavs. The Celtics are terrible, just plain hard(=dirty) with no talented player taller than 6 feet and the Hawks are so mentally soft. Maybe, just maybe, we lose a game.
We will beat either one in four or five but the Celtics are so dirty. Their coach sucks.
Where is the call in show??!!
sorry Cols. Haven’t figured it out yet.
Really impressive series.
So, one way to look at it is that Kyrie’s half court shot at the end of the third was the winning margin…
Tonight Irving was better on defense than Delly.
That is never true.
Absolutely no one said that on NBATV, TNT or ESPN.
That 12th straight victory ties an NBA record. The Lakers dominated the Supersonics in the 80s. Cavs could break the record next year.
How long did it take you to find that? I tried to google it and never found anything relevant.
It honestly took me about 5 hours. I’ve been hand jamming these in from BBall-ref for every team vs every team.
I started doing it last week.
No injuries, no suspensions, no game for a week.
Thats too long! Who am I gonna bet on now? I know my Cavaliers and they paid me good money. Especially the sweep and the under on the Lebron threes made were great!
And Curry has some ankle/knee issues.
Another end perspective – thank god it was Reggie Jackson doing the last shot. He’s just as iso-driven as KI. They both acted as if it was a 1-on-1 game and the other 8 players didn’t matter.
If it was against the Spurs, my bet is that we’d be going into OT
If that was against the Spurs we might be going back to Cleveland.
Agreed.
Lue once again out coached Gund
I disagree, there is only so much a coach can do when your QB on the court makes terrible decisions.
Reggie Jackson has got to be tough to deal with for SVG…he might call up Jameer Nelson one of these days…
If JVG coached the Cavs they’d have won by double digits.
We are truly spoiled. It’s very hard to win 4 straight games in the playoffs. Great series by Cavs.
They are going to walk all over whomever comes out of Hawks-Celtics. Looking good so far for sure.
Reggie Jackson really has the worst decision making of any “good” PG in the league.
2 days off then 3 straight days of PnR drills in the gym fellas
except Shump. He has to do that thing where you dribble figure eights while stepping forward
you have been on point with your responses tonight, tooo funny
Sure, the highlights will show KI and his “shooting from literally everywhere” but he almost cost us the game at the end with his KIso play
Don’t dribble to the corner.
For some reason, basketball 101 things don’t seem to be his specialty (PnR stuff)…
He won the game with that three on ISO and his defense at the end.
Both things are true. He made some great plays and some bad plays.
Taking a contested three from the corner was beyond stupid, but he stayed in front of Jacksom
Tough D. I think a good no call. Jackson went sideways into Irving to try to get the call.
Jackson was dumb there. Playing to draw the foul by jumping into Kyrie instead of taking the best shot. You’re never getting that call at the end of a game.
agreed he was playing for a bail out
https://vine.co/v/iUwUgl13uUj
Delly looks to the ref to make sure before he celebrates.
I kinda did that too considering how the refs were tonight.
Yes.
Whoa. What a finish. Holy heck.
Great defense by Irving. He did not foul.
Good result but terrible shot by Irving there. Good d on final shot
I always said what Kyrie taketh on offense he giveth on defense haha!
Nice D there by Kyrie after ridiculously terrible offense.
That was Irving.
Great defense at the end.
Love to see the Delly Bron PR here with Love on the weak side, but we won’t.
Kyrie should be taking all our ISO possessions. Lebron should be passing or getting to the rim. No need for him to go three ball
I think James is annoyed because he’s getting hammered every time he drives.
not sure how we could have defended that better…I guess Kyrie could have trapped but then wide open 3…pick your poison
Agreed. And the help defender didn’t want to foul.
Good D by TT…for about 10 seconds.
Don’t know who called the switch there, but didn’t really need it. Delly was going under on purpose with a hedge.
Anyone ever had a Reds wicked Apple?
Great Iso play by Irving.
COLD BLOODED!!
Kyrie gone rogue.
Kyrie said, “SCREW YOUR OFFENSIVE PRINCIPLES!”
MFREAKINGQ!!!!
https://vine.co/v/iUwtp9eM9zD