DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Cavs Regular Season Continued

looks like the lakers are shopping Bass, Young and Hibbert..

There's no way they move Hibbert.



Question for all, would you swap Love for Dwight Howard? Houston could consider it if they're wanting to start Clint Capela (who I think will be a stud) and they want a stretch 4 like Love. They get Love who's locked up longer as opposed to Dwight who has an opt out option.

if you move love, who plays the 4, i'd do mosgov for dwight

http://www.silverscreenandroll.com/2016/...ass-roy-hibbert

After reading a lot of stories and comments about the Warriors game, I think our problems are about 90% effort related. The Dubs just wanted it more. They sprinted through screens, They pushed and tugged on defense and played the game like it was a playoff game.

I saw someone highlight a play which was interesting. Love set a screen for Lebron, which caused a switch and put Love on the block against a smaller Iguodala. Rather than give an entry pass, Lebron dribbled the ball several more times, moved up about a few feet, even sucked in Iggy to help cover him, and missed a mid-range jumper while Love stood wide-open under the basket. And there were plays like that all night.

So, people can keep pointing back to "coaching" or "scheme", but when players aren't exploiting the mismatches or even trying to run around screens, it doesn't really matter who's coaching. I think the bigger question is: Why was this little effort put in? Is there discontent in the locker-room? Are players worn down? Are they not getting along with the coaches? Or ... Do they ultimately realize that a game in January isn't going to mean a thing in the long run? Maybe they are content with the Warriors running themselves ragged while trying to win 70 games in a season? Maybe they are saving all their ammunition for June? I'm really hoping that's the case.

There's no way we could trade for Dwight without including one of the big 3. He makes way too much salary.

i've said this most of the season, Lebron is an impedence in this offense, he only likes ISO ball and it doesn't work in playoffs. Where coaching comes into it, Blatt doesn't have the balls to yank lebron when he's not playing the way he wants. I've said it before, Blatt wasn't hired to coach this team, he was hired to coach the young Lebron-less team and grow with them. If lebron came back before we hired coach, i think we'd have a proven HC with experience that wouldn't put up with these shenaningans. Funny thing is Love pretty muched called lebron out for being a ball hog, and he was absolutely right. Said that theres alot of things we need to get better at, and it starts with Lebron..lol

I get that,thats why I asked the question. My only thought would be could we find a stretch 4 with the exception?

I've asked this before ... who's out their that's actually going to command the respect of Lebron? Even if Blatt benches Lebron, the first time he loses, the media would have a field day with him.

I agree, Lebron needs to get with the program.

At the same time, some of these comments are starting to lean toward you guys not wanting Lebron here.

Lol

And I'd do a d league scrub for Steph Curry. Doesn't mean it's happening.

oh you mean like Delly

Just move Lebron to PF rest of the season.

I speak for myself, but I want lebron here, but I want him to buy into a system. He's not good enough to beat playoff teams with ISO anymore. He could make this offense amazing if he'd just buy in..there is no way in hell he should be bringing the ball up with Kyrie on the floor..Lebron can barely dribble as it is. Teams like SA and GS have great systems and everyone buys in thats why they work. We have one dude that seems to think he knows better than his coach so refuses, thats why we will get crushed in the playoffs by either SA/GS.

That's the problem, it's LeBron's program.

But man, you watch the selflessness of teams like the Spurs and the Warriors and contrast it with the standing around and ball hoggery of the Cavs ISO game.. and it's night and day.

In a 7 game series, as things stand right now, the Cavs would win 1, maybe 2 games against either of those teams just because LeBron and/or Kyrie are good enough to get hot and will us to victory... but it's not sustainable, it's not consistent

j/c:

A few thoughts:

--Blatt can't really have "the balls" to bench LeBron. LOL....can you imagine the outrage?

--Trading away Love is not going to help us. I think we should temper the trade talks.

--I agree w/Excel about the effort. It's lacking.

--I read where now the Cavs might be willing to trade Moz. I wouldn't do that. We'll need him for the Eastern Conference playoffs. Lot's of bigs in the east.

--Did I mention that I don't think we should be trading players?

--We need LeBron to buy into Blatt's motion offense. I keep hoping how he sees that it works w/teams like GS and SA. If he buys in, they'll all buy in.

--Does anyone remember Bosh's comments about it being hard to play w/LeBron? I thought it was sour grapes at the time, but I'm not so sure now.

I can't help but dream of where this team would be if LeBron played mostly off ball on offense, Kyrie looked to distribute more, and Love was more aggressive on offense when LeBron was on the bench.

If LeBron and Kyrie sacrificed themselves for the team they'd beat GSW handily. Until they are willing to do that I worry LeBron will retire with no rings in Cleveland.

Or if LeBron was willing to be a small ball center.

I said last year he should have been matched up with Draymond Green at center. Have Love defend Iggy who sucks at shooting 3's so he can sag off and cheat. JR Smith match up with Barnes.

The Cavs are between a rock and a hard place. There is no one in the east that can/will beat them, so they don't have to tinker. But there are two teams in the west that are clearly better than them.

'Tiki And Tierney Say Kevin Love Is Soft, Should Be Traded'

http://tikiandtierney.radio.cbssports.co...ould-be-traded/

January 20, 2016 2:37 PM

On Monday night, the Warriors embarrassed the Cavaliers in Cleveland, scoring 70 points in the first half and leading by as many as 43 in the third quarter – the largest deficit of LeBron James’ career. The Cavs lost, 132-98 – their fifth straight loss to the Warriors. Cleveland is now a combined 0-3 this year against Golden State and San Antonio.

After the game, Kevin Love seemingly took a shot at James, saying that the Cavaliers needed a lot of guys to look in the mirror – “and it all starts with our leader over there and dwindles on down.” Asked if the problem offensively was a lack of chemistry or ball movement, Love said simply, “I’m not going to get into that.”

Tiki Barber did not read too much into Love’s postgame comments; Brandon Tierney did.

“Look, they all had an off-night on Monday and these comments by Kevin Love were right after the game,” Barber said on CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney. “But they all had an off-night. So you get asked these questions in the moment, I don’t know. You’re searching for an answer. Obviously in the Finals last year – but for a lot of last year – it was, ‘When things go wrong, LeBron’s going to save us. So we all start looking at LeBron. All right, LeBron, save us. Figure this out for us.’ They clearly weren’t listening to their coach, David Blatt. (There was) speculation he was going to get fired. So when it comes down to crunch situations, they’re turning to LeBron, and when he’s off, then where do you go? I feel like there’s a hierarchy problem. Phil Jackson still had sway over Michael Jordan. The coach is already at the bottom of the totem poll (in Cleveland). It’s confusing. That confusion leads to disjointed play – and that’s what we’ve seen for a lot of the season, especially against the good teams.”

Tierney believes Love deserves a lot of blame for the Cavs’ struggles against elite competition.

“The problem is Kevin Love,” Tierney said. “Kevin Love’s soft. Let’s use Miami as the example. Granted, LeBron was a little younger, a little more able to impose his physical will on games. But there were nights where Chris Bosh would score 30 points. Granted, not with great frequency, but there were nights – if LeBron was tired or LeBron purposely deferred – Chris Bosh stepped up. Kevin Love doesn’t. I don’t know. The way he said, ‘And it all starts with our leader over there’ – it didn’t sound very harmonious to me. . . . I’ll tell you this: I would trade Kevin Love. I would just get rid of him. They’re not going to win with this guy. They’re not.”

Love took just five shots in 21 minutes on Monday, finishing with three points, six rebounds, two assists and one block.

“I don’t think he knows what his role is because it’s not one that he’s used to,” Barber said. “He came from Minnesota. Now it’s creating something new. Remember when Chris Bosh said this? He said to Kevin Love (that) it’s not as easy as it seems to play with LeBron. I think what he was alluding to was you’re going to be put in a role that you’ve never done before and you got to adjust to it and thrive in that new role, which is foreign to you. Kelvin Love is just not adjusting to it like Chris Bosh (did).”

But it would be one thing, Tierney said, if Love didn’t understand his role. Tierney thinks he does. Rather, Tierney thinks Love is simply unsatisfied with it

“I just don’t think he’s happy,” Tierney said. “But there’s something wrong with this team – and I think it’s fatally. I would trade Kevin Love. I really would. I really would.”

I will agree with something he said, what is Loves season high? It seems like he never picks up the scoring slack like Bosh did,

That's the one thing that really irks me about him. I can take the average night from him, but every few games, he should be able to tell the other two guys, "I got this tonight" and drop ~25-30. I don't see that. I see him pass the ball for too often when he has a favorable match-up too. I think it's a confidence issue. I think he'd be more assertive if he wasn't struggling some nights.

I think he's good, but he's not very good. We're paying him to be very good.

I don't know if we'd have been better off with Wiggins, but who could have known Kevin would be playing like this now? I want to say the team figured it out late last season and the offense was fantastic when he, Kyrie and Lebron were on the floor. Getting hurt, missing Kyrie most of this season, and having Lebron play "I only care in the 4th quarter" offense isn't helping.

As much as everyone bashed them for the Warrior game, I think it might have been the best thing for them. If they had lost or won close, they wouldn't have seen there is a problem.

Actually, Kevin had a good night.

17 and 18 on 5-10 shooting

Really hard to get excited about beating a crappy team from the east... in fact all wins against crappy teams is going to seem fairly hollow until they prove they can play with the big boys.

I wish you wouldn't have posted that article. I'm not bashing you, but that article is way off on a couple of points.

First, I think Love's words came out wrong. I do not think he was bashing LeBron. I think he was acknowledging that LBJ is the leader and that everyone on the team needs to step it up.

Secondly, trading Love would be dumb. Who are we going to get for him? Now is NOT the time to trade away players or fire the coach. Instead, I think this team needs to use the All Star break to kind of evaluate what's going on w/the team and make the necessary adjustments to move forward. A change in attitude and style is much more important that changing personnel. The talent isn't lacking on this team. It's the style of play that is a concern.

The comments about Bosh are pretty frustrating to me. Did they not hear what Bosh said about LeBron? Did they not see all the clunkers that Bosh had? Did they not hear how Bosh had lost it? Do they not see that Bosh is putting up better numbers once again now that LBJ is gone?

I hate when guys make things up.

Are we playing the Clippers soon? That should be a good test.

We've owned the Clippers even when we sucked.

Oh wow! We are playing the Clips tonight. I'll be watching closely.

No Blake Griffin for the Clips.

I like Blake, but man, it seems the Clips are playing better w/out him.

They played better when has was out last year too. They can spread out defenses more (Griffin loves to shoot midrange jumpers) and run pick and rolls with Jordan.

Interesting.

This post summarizes my thoughts exactly. When the competition counts, we get embarrassed. Simple as that. Unless we turn things around and pick it up big time, there's no way we'll be advancing much. Who cares we dusted some crap team?

Really disappointed in the game the other night. Was happy to be able to leave for my hockey game at halftime.

A lot of the problems like we ran into the other night, sure you can put some on coach Blatt, but the majority of it go on the two guys who bring the ball down the court, Lebron and Kyrie.

The breakdowns on defense were obviously bad, but a big part of that game the other night got away because of some horrible offensive possessions. You can't rip Kevin Love when he's not the one out there with the ball. That is mostly on Lebron. I really don't think he needs another 2 week hiatus like last year, but when he came back from that, he was the Lebron we all know and love...

As far as Irving goes, he needs to sack up defensively. He doesn't need to turn into an all-defense point guard, but you have to be able to do your job on defending, especially the pick and roll, and other scenarios like that. He's not good enough right now.

Everyone rips iso ball, and at times, sure, but you can play iso ball in big spurts when you are defending at a high level.

The Cavs can do whatever they want the rest of the year and it won't matter. They won't be picked for anything when it comes to the possibility of a rematch with Golden State or a San Antonio finals. Does not matter.

Just think the way Ohio State was treated in 2014 after losing to Virginia Tech. They were basically not given any credit until they beat Alabama, and even then it wasn't full credit. That's how it going to be. You're going to see a lot of "yeah but" anytime the Cavs are mentioned. Between the last 5-7 minutes in San Antonio, and Monday night, it's the worst basketball and the worst time. I just hope they learned.

The good news is you have several months, and I think once you get through those first few playoff rounds, you become a bit more hardened.

Overall though, the Cavs played decent basketball at GS and SA. If they can win when they host the Spurs, then at least they kinda had some good things to look at in 3 of the 4 games. End results are what they are though.

That's a pretty good post w/several good points.

You mentioned Kyrie's defense.......so, as an aside, if any of you play in the daily Fantasy BB leagues, picking the opposing PG is typically very rewarding.

My only problem with that is that standing around on offense creates standing around on defense. It's hard to get into a flow and be aggressive on one end of the court, when you are standing around on the other end.

I do agree that the defense is the problem. You could see it, GS was making everything which led to us pressing on offense, taking bad shots, etc... and you just had the feeling that every time we didn't score, we were going to fall farther behind because we couldn't stop them.

My only thoughts are this: we don't win a championship by going all-out to beat GS in January. We can cruise to the playoffs and probably all the way to the ECFinals. It won't be until then that we really need to dial things up.

Of course, as a fan of Cleveland sports, it sure would make me feel a whole lot better about things if they just stomped GS in the regular season and didn't wait.

???

They lost close to the Spurs and Warriors on the road just before the home loss debacle. They weren't embarrassed in those games. And they also beat OKC in mid-December too (I'd throw in the beating Atl and Tor but they're East teams so they don't count to anyone on here).

And last I saw, the Bulls were run out of Chicago last night worse than us. Like I said twice already, the losses to Denver and Detroit pissed the Warriors off. We played a team that had something to prove, are insanely good, and they were incredibly hot, it happens.

Kyrie owns the Clippers.