Quick Recap: Cavs 100, Nuggets 99
2012-03-08
I’ve been doing the quick “Daily Dime” recaps on Cavs games for ESPN recently, and I really should be posting them in their entirety here. Here’s what I had for tonight, with a few additional night and an awesome Gary Clark Jr. song:
MVP: Kyrie Irving. Irving was quiet for the first half, but erupted late, scoring 10 points in the last 2:35 seconds of the game to give the Cavaliers a 1-point victory.
Additonal notes:
I’ll give Jamison credit: he was a major factor, and his bag of tricks was way too deep for Faried in the first half. Generally, Jamison regresses to the mean after a hot start and goes back to around 50% TS by the end of the game, but this time he cashed out and didn’t shoot much in the 2nd half.
I was president of the Nene fan club last year, so I’ve been disappointed by his season and was sad about this game. Since when did Nene settle for turnaround jumpers against Jamison? He got some easy baskets, but last year Nene’s game was ALL easy baskets.
Tristan Thompson did nothing.
In some ways, I’m glad that Kyrie has made some bad late-game turnovers lately, because it allows us to appreciate fourth-quarter performances like this instead of locking him into the binary “CLUTCH OR NOT CLUTCH” argument that makes sports discussion dumber. He’s young, he’s fearless, he’s polished, and he put the team on his shoulders when it mattered tonight. He won’t do it every night, but he’s a guy you want on the floor late in games. That’s good enough for now, and it should be good enough for later for rational fans.
Fun and/or depressing fact: the Cavs have won 3 of their last 11, and all 3 of those wins have come by exactly 1 point. Without Andy, this is not a good basketball team. At least there’s Kyrie, and at least we’re hurtling towards the lottery. I’m not sure I can write about this team anymore without being bitter about no Jonas. This is not schtick — it’s legitimately painful to imagine how much better the team would be in the future with Jonas starting at center next season instead of Tristan Thompson hopefully becoming the second-best undersized left-handed Canadian big man with no offensive game to speak of in the league. Until next time, campers.
Detlef Shremph, Rick Smits, Drazen Petrovich, Vlade Divac, Arvydas Sabonis, Tiago Splitter, Yao Ming, JJ Barea, Turkoglu, Serge Ibaka, Andre Kirilinko… Kyle’s statement was pretty dumb.
Since Tristan Thompson averaged a double-double and 2 blocks per game while helping to carry the Cavs to the championship on my NBA 2K12 franchise.
And Pau Gasol and Marc Gasol and Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker and Ricky Rubio and Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Luis Scola and Nikola Pekovic and when did a player have to be the best player on a championship team to be considered better than Tristan Thompson?
There is also that whole thing about European players having GREAT success in the NBA. There’s Dirk and there’s…well no but what about…no not him either…alright well there’s Dirk
Who the hell cares about Jonas at this point? Ok, we agree: I wanted Cleveland to take JV at 4 as well, but it didn’t happen. Let’s move on.
As for this game, Irving vs Lawson at the end was simply amazing to watch. Surprised, though, that the Nuggets were as lethargic as they were for much of the game they seemed to be settling a lot despite the fact that their frontline easily outclasses ours.
TT will always be hard to judge because if he develops well most of his contributions will come defensively and never show up in the box score. He didn’t have a great night tonight, but his best plays were all on defense and he stayed active on that end every time he hit the floor. He looks like he’ll hopefully be a good rebounder as well, but I think TT will have to be constantly defended over his career no matter what happens with him and JV because he will never be a great offensive player and his best plays… Read more »
been watching a lot of UCONN the last three days. Drummond or Lamb would look great in the wine and gold
TT vs. JV: I don’t think we’re going to know anything till next year. This season is so goofy and so rushed, that TT does not have much time to improve his offense or figure out his role in it. That being said, it’s not as if TT vs. JV was the only option: Alec Burks, Kawhi Leonard, Bismack Biyambo (who is as flawed as TT, but probably has more defensive upside), or trading down out of the spot to pick up guys later in a surprisingly deep draft. Would we have been better served getting another pick, or a… Read more »
As for Kyrie’s final possession defense… I didn’t think it was that bad. He got beat, but then he recovered enough to pressure the ball and make Lawson take a tough shot. Lawson had no angles to any other players either. Kyrie actually got to the ball and made Lawson move it to his right hand quicker than he wanted to and shoot a tough running shot up over Kyrie. His recovery was actually kind of impressive.
It’s easy to understand why he wishes we had Jonas instead of TT, since Jonas has already proven that he is a good NBA player. Oh wait, he hasn’t even played a single minute in the NBA yet and nobody knows if he’s actually any good or whether his game will even translate to the NBA? Oh, nevermind then. In that case, it really is annoying.
Kyrie needs to significantly improve his D. If it was only Ty Lawson who blew by him, that would be one thing. But Kyrie has poor D against every PG he plays against (with few exceptions of course). He has decent length an quickness to be play good D, I just don’t think he’s fully committed to that end of the floor yet. I also want Kyrie to play more aggressive and balanced for a full 4 quarters. It seems like he just kind of coast along out there for the first 3.5 quarters and then decides he’ll start to… Read more »
Last night wasn’t a great night for TT. But he’s shown improvement recently against: NY, Bos, NO, and Sac. As Colin pointed out, it’s too early to make up your mind on him. In fact, I saw TT make a couple nice plays last night. He had a break up of an alley-oop to Andersen, and a few nice box-outs on Faried. That’s no easy task. Stuff like that doesn’t show up in the box score, but those are the little things that help a team win.
Obviously our 19 year-old rookie PG who played 10 games in college is not very good at Defense. I am curious if anyone has an example of a 19-year old who was as good as Kyrie is on O but was also a lockdown defender?
Everything indicates Kyrie works hard and is smart. Those two qualities combined with time and experience will make him a better defender, sort of like every other player in the league who eventually learns how o play NBA defense.
I don’t understand the point of criticism with no context.
As most of you know, I’ve been very critical of Kyrie’s D. Last night was really no different. I realize Lawson is one of the fastest guards out there, but he was regularly blowing past Kyrie to score or draw out men in and leave a guy open on the perimeter. He’s really got to get better at the for the future.
That being said, he went blow for blow with Laweson and won. I’ll take it.
James- Kyrie played good, smart defense on Lawson on the last possession. I don’t know what you were watching. Irving was playing with 5 fouls. If he rides up along Lawson (who may be the fastest PG in the league) after he got the corner, he takes a major risk of fouling if Lawson plays it smart and leans into him. Instead Irving gave him space and timed it so that he could recover in time to contest his shot without fouling. It worked and caused him to miss. As for Krolik’s irrational man-love of Valanciunas – it’s just getting… Read more »
I was also extremely impressed by Kyrie’s attitude during his late-game flourish. After every finish at the rim you could see him getting worked up walking back to the bench. It was as if he was pissed off that the Nuggets would leave it up to ONLY Ty Lawson to stop him and, as a result, he had something to prove.
Flashes of Kobe and Isaiah.
As for nicknames, I still like K.I. because, to me, it stands for Killer Instinct. This kid wants to be the one to put the dagger in every time.
Personally I’m with John in thinking Tristan is a bust. Its too bad, he does a few things soo well. But he makes terrible decisions on offense (probably correctable a little) is solid but not dominant on defense (will probably get better) and is flat out terrible at free throws (something that rarely significantly improves – for every Chris Webber there are 10 Ben Wallaces). For a guy who can’t score farther than 3 feet from the basket, and isn’t dwight or shaq, hitting <50% on FTs is a killer. If he does go all chris webber I'll be giddy… Read more »
Personally I’m with John in thinking Tristan is a bust. Its too bad, he does a few things soo well. But he makes terrible decisions on offense (probably correctable a little) is solid but not dominant on defense (will probably get better) and is flat out terrible at free throws (something that rarely significantly improves, for every Chris Webber there are 10 Ben Wallaces). For a guy who can’t score farther than 3 feet from the basket, and isn’t dwight or shaq, hitting 50% on FTs is just not acceptable. If he does go all chris webber I’ll be giddy… Read more »
Disclaimer: I love Kyrie’s game and his potential to be the cornerstone of this franchise.
HOWEVAH, his defense on Ty Lawson with 4 seconds remaining was truly abysmal. He got caught in no man’s land trying to go for the steal (I think, otherwise it was just a total mental breakdown) and gave Lawson a clear path to the basket. He should have maintained a better defensive position and tried to force Lawson to take a contested jump shot.
Having said that, obviously the Cavs lose that game by ten points if he doesn’t take over offensively.
too early to have a definitive opinion on Tristan (Colin wrote a great article to this effect recently) and definately too early to be that hyped on Jonas (has yet to play 1 minute in NBA).
i wanted us to draft jonas too. that said, would you trade our 2012 1st rounder to the raptors for Jonas? Myself, i say no.
I’ve got a man crush on Kyrie. Dude can flat out ball.
John,
Good to see your insights on the blog, but whoa! Strong words about TT / Valanciunas. I’ll save bitterness until Valanciunas is in the NBA and I see him playing deeper into the playoffs than Cleveland.
I really think whoever is was that calling him “swIRIVING” nailed it. He’s Swirving Irving to me.
Last night was a fun game. Seeing some more consistently fired-up games like this would really make me feel more at ease, even if that shot doesn’t always fall. Really, one of the most enjoyable games to watch this season. Glad that losing streak is over, too.
led, not composed
Simplistic fact to make cav fans feel better about not getting a top five pick in next year´s draft:In the last 10 years all championship teams (with the exception of 2006 Miami Heat) were composed by a top five pick (Shaq, Wade, Duncan, Gasol, Garnett, Kidd) and a 8 or later pick (Nowitski, Pierce, Bryant, Parker, Ginobili, whatever the pistons had going on 2004).We already have our top 5 pick. I know basketball doesnt works out that way, but one can dream, right?