The Point-Fourward: Hangry Waiting

Four points I’m thinking about the Cavs…

1. I’m not a great cook. I don’t mean to say that I am totally inept. Like most adults, I have some regular standbys that please me and the occasional dinner guest, but I’m clearly not a master chef. Basically, if I have good ingredients, keep it simple and don’t stray too much from the status quo, I’ve a good enough feel for taste combinations that a rather fine dish can be had. Then there’s my buddy, Thomas. He is a legit chef. He goes mushroom hunting in the woods, uses spices that are harder to pronounce than “Giannis Antetokounmpo” and can do that cool one-handed egg crack thing while whisking with the other. His kitchen is at once pristine and somewhat disgusting. If you open the wrong yogurt container, you might find the innards of some dear departed soul from a once and future dinner party. He’s not big on proper labeling and doesn’t really care if anyone else can decipher his system. It’s his, and ultimately, the people who are fortunate enough to taste the final product don’t really care whether it tasted like garbage before he added Fennel Pollen. It’s not about the process. There are no awards for most orderly kitchen, best tasting raw duck, or most pleasant pre-congealed gelatin. The tasty ends really do justify a chef”s weirdo means.

In light of LeBron’s James’ “delicate” description of his team’s mental state following the Spurs’ beat down, it dawned on me that the 2016-2017 Cleveland Cavaliers are the basketball equivalent to a culinary delicacy. The ingredients are incredibly valuable, somewhat fragile, mildly nauseating to look at, and generally not to be consumed on a day-to-day basis. Still, with proper preparation, patience, and practice, those fancy ingredients can combine to make something sublime, even if only edible in May and June.

Essentially, when the Cavs won the championship last summer after playing a regular season of uninspiring defense and system free offense(or maybe I should say uninspiring offense and system free defense), it rendered the results of this regular season almost entirely irrelevant. If a team could fire its coach halfway through a winning season, deal with sub-tweets, not build a consistent scheme, not play its best players in a steady rotation, and still take down an historically good Warriors squad, why wouldn’t they double down on “the regular season doesn’t matter” thinking?

Before the season started, most people would say that the only thing that matters going into the playoffs is health. Our understandable desire to be entertained on a game to game basis naturally seeps into our evaluation of the ultimate goal. It makes sense. Why can’t the Cavs be both a delicacy upon completion AND a tasty appetizer? C’mon, let me have a spoonful of that sauce! We want to watch good effort and a solidly executed gameplan lead to 20 point blowouts. Ya know, of the winning variety. But the organization doesn’t care about how palatable the product is until the real season starts.

2. Question A: Why aren’t the Cavs’ running the fun jumbo lineup of Derrick Williams, Kyle Korver, Richard Jefferson, LeBron and         Channing Frye that so thoroughly destroyed defenses last month?

Question B: Why isn’t DeAndre Liggins getting burn with the starters?

Answers: J.R. Smith. He is an integral part of a championship dish. For the Cavs to win again, Swish has to be back in the groove both offensively and defensively. After the holdout to start the season, J.R. never really got locked in on the offensive side of the ball, but his defense was more or less adequate by regular season standards. Since his return from injury, J.R. has made dumpster fires seem appealing. He is slow in his one-on-one defense, having a particularly hard time sliding to his right for some reason. His team defense has been fantastically awful. J.R. literally has no idea where he should be, losing his man off ball, rotating to already covered guys, neglecting to sag into passing lanes on the weakside and generally making my favorite defensive punching bag, Damian Lillard look like a brilliant defensive mind in comparison. Smith is absolutely undermining any chance of a passable defense with his horrific play. And ya know what? That’s ok for now. The organization, be it Griffin, Lue, or LeBron knows that J.R. must be in shape for the playoffs. NBA players don’t practice enough to get into shape via team workout. He has to get minutes now, even at the expense of a regular season victory, in order be ready for May and June.

Same can be said for Deron Williams. No one has ever accused Williams of being a workout warrior, but he was particularly out of shape when he started suiting up for the Cavaliers. The Cavs will be in trouble if they are relying on Deron too much in the playoffs, but a healthy and focused Deron Williams is a bigger team plus than an out of position, offense hijacking Iman Shumpert. The Cavs are running guys into shape during March games and testing lineups with Deron and Kyrie. That’s the reason the fun jumbo lineup hasn’t been featured. It’s the reason poor DeAndre Liggins doesn’t get more burn. There are only 48 minutes of game time and the Cavs need to use them like a treadmill, ridiculous as that may be.

3. Question A: Is the Cavs’ laissez-faire attitude to system basketball going to catch up with them? Can they “flip the switch”?

Answer: Nope. Yep.

Regular season defense is about adhering to a consistent universal defensive principle and giving good effort. The Cavaliers do neither of those things for a variety of reasons. Playoff defense is about scheming against a specific opponent and giving maximum effort. Postseason defense drills individual player tendencies into defensive rotation strategy. Guys study all the moves and counter-moves from an individual and the actions of an offensive system on the whole. I’m not saying that they should be favorites to win the title, but the Cavs, barring injury, will absolutely make the Finals for the third straight season.

4. Question: Is Tyronn Lue a good coach?

Answer: Not really, but that doesn’t mean he is an awful coach either. Lue isn’t solely responsible for the defensive woes. Like I said, the entire organization recognizes that J.R. must get minutes right now, regardless of outcome. Clearly, maximum effort from LeBron and Kyrie that appears only in fits during regular season would help the coach out in the short term. Lue has also been given about as many moving pieces as I can remember for a defending champion. Remember when the Cavs had Mike Dunleavy? Considering all the roster turnover and mitigating circumstances, it’s not like a rotation really ever had a chance of becoming regular. Still, I don’t understand why Shumpert plays over Liggins. The Cavs won the Finals in spite of Shump, not because of him. I’m not sure what kind of leadership Ty really provides, but I’m assuming it manifests itself out of sight.

That brings us back to my overtly flawed cooking analogy. Maybe a master chef could take a kitchen full of average ingredients and whip up something delicious. Or one could take strange and beautiful ingredients and balance them to perfection. But coaching isn’t really cooking, especially if LeBron James is the main ingredient, kitchen and restaurant. Tyronn Lue is not manipulating passive ingredients eager to bend to his will. He is trying to unify a group of adults in an effort to reach an ultimate goal. He is only one of those ingredients and not a master chef or a mediocre me. We don’t know what’s happening in that kitchen and we won’t be able to truly judge the work until we take that final postseason bite. Nevertheless, I feel your frustration. Without tasty hor d’oeuvres, I’m starving for something good.