InstaCap: Struggling with Physical Play
2016-05-21Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving had their worst games since the playoffs began. Let’s hope it was a coincidence and they both got the stinkers out of their system. But give some credit to the Raptors. They played physical all night long and did a nice job contesting at the rim and closing out when the Cavs kicked out. It felt like a perfect storm of terrible play by the Cavs (LeBron, J.R. Smith, and Channing Frye aside) and gutsy performances by all of the Raptors. Despite that, the Cavs had their chances to steal the game. All good things must come to an end. As Brian Windhorst said on Hey Windy last Friday, he hoped the Cavs would stumble before the Finals so they could regroup and come back stronger. Better to get a game like this out of your system now.
Call me crazy, but we have all been watching the Lebron mental game as long as we have watched his historic greatness. I thought I saw something in Lebron’s body language and approach that basically said: “I’m not going to bail this team out, a loss will refocus us and take some of the media hype away.” After his post game, I stand by that assessment. Lebron is ridiculously intelligent and also weird, I could totally see him doing something passive and strange like that. On the flip side on a note to his greatness, the man gets his every… Read more »
Casey has a lot of nerve to “slam the refs” in this game… The Raptors played incredibly physical, you have to expect to be called for more fouls.
Eh. Irving and Love were terrible yet Cavs still within 8 late in the game.
I guess Ckeveland could lose if they shoot 35%, Busmack goes for 25 rebounds and Carroll shoots the lights out.
Chances of that happening again are near zero.
Print that shirt Tom
Biyombo doing his best Shaq impression: “Hey Cols, how my a$$ taste?”
https://youtu.be/aeaj9LNPSmo Lebron and JR post game interview.Lebron doesn’t seem defeated at all ,his body language says allot
Cavs didn’t get any Love tonight.. sigh
I was expecting a Leonard Cohen or Tracy Chapman song. ; )
It’s not a bad thing to have the spotlight (and growing pressure) of being undefeated off them. And if it stops people from saying Cleveland is the best team in the NBA right now (at least Barkley and Brad Daugherty were already on the bandwagon), that’s not a bad thing either. Golden State doesn’t need any extra motivation.
John Salley picked the Cavs to go 16-0 on Mike and Mike.
That’s crazy! Irrational exuberance / recency bias.
“Recency Bias” is a good term that I had not heard.
It explains a lot of whacky comments people make about sports teams. In every sport there is a huge difference between “Good Nights” and “Bad Nights”, even good and bad quarters. If you are hanging around gyms and playgrounds, it is common for the same teams to play two games in a row. Lots of times each team wins one game in a blowout.
I think I picked up that term from Cavs the Podcast.
Great Instacap as always Tom! Agree that the loss doesn’t raise concern per se, but it raises concerns as to whether we should be more concerned then we have been. I am really intrigued to see what Game 4 looks like… Cavs played badly but Raps missed a lot of open looks on offense as well, I have to think both teams have to feel like they didn’t bring their A-games tonight. But we did learn the Cavs C game won’t beat the Raptors B game, the margin of error isn’t that great.
My main concern is that the staff had no “Plan B”. It does not look like they even have practiced with Mozgov getting any minutes. Given that BB will get a one game suspension on his next flagrant foul, I would consider running pick and rolls with Timo, because BB will not be able to resist hammering him.
Also, it is time to have McRae on the active roster. We all love Mo, but there is nothing he can do in crunch time. The only reason I can imagine for him being active is that he is a veteran.