DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum As the Cavs' World Turns

I'm not a NBA guy, only watch the Cavs - but I see Timberwolves record is pretty horrid.

I'll be watching the game, nothing else to do tonight lol - but how much of a competitor is our opponent tonight so I can attempt to gauge our level of play and etc, for you NBA followers? I'm guessing we'll dust another scrub team.

Thanks!

I think there are a lot of excuses floating around. There was no chemistry in the locker room. The players were out of shape. Blatt was in over his head. The players didn't respect him. All BS!

I think the problems are the following:

--LeBron is not a great leader. Great leaders lead by example, and when you continue to walk back on D, not close out on shots, don't block out, don't play team positional defense, call out your coach, yell at other players for your mistakes, etc.........than you suck!

--Have people forgotten how he quit in past games? San Antonio playoffs his rookie year and when he was w/the Heat. The Boston playoff series. He is mentally weak. He wants his way and he gets it. That doesn't make it right.

--Our intensity on defense is lame. Kyrie is lazy. Love is soft. LBJ doesn't care.

--The heart of this team resides w/our role players. TT always plays hard. Heck, JR is showing more mental toughness than any of our stars. At least he took a GS guy out. Shump plays hard. Delly plays hard. Andy plays hard.

--Our 3 Superstars, on the other hand, think they are entitled to special treatment and are above criticism.

The excuses are being made, but I bet the changes that have been made do not aide the Cavs in winning the championship. I am of the opinion that the team will falter in the playoffs because they lack the intestinal fortitude to be mentally and emotionally tough.

Minnesota is talented, but just so young in their development. The Cavs know how to bully teams like that. Definitely not our issue right now.

The Cavs need to get it together. They're at a low point right now, which a lot of teams would love to have as their low point.

Ok, so if they make it to the finals, will your opinion change, or will you find other ways to still say firing blatt was a mistake.

Mo and Irving on the court together, I dig it...

Blatt was in over his head. He wasn't hired to coach the team we have now and should have been let go in the off season. We got to the finals last year in spite of Blatt, not because of him. This team needs a coach that commands the respect of the big egos ala Phil Jackson or Pat Riley. It's the price you pay when you have all these star players. I don't know if Lue is the answer, but Blatt sure wasn't. Seriously, how did you expect these experienced players to respond to a first year NBA coach that was afraid to call them out?

The Cavs game is on NBA TV out here. How do you guys listen to these announcers?

The play-by-play guy just called Tayshaun Prince an "elite defender."

(I will say that the local Clipper announcers are worse than these two, but these two are still horrible.)

It's like the gas pedal is stuck all the way to the floor. We're running on all eight cylinders here...

They also aren't getting back on defense.

And as soon as I said that, we cooled right off and let them back. I need to shut up.

That Delly steal to alley oop to Moz was nice. The following trip down the floor had a nice crossover by Kyrie.

This one is going to come down to free throws. If I'm the Wolves, I start sending them to the line to close it out.

AC kind of grows on you.

I'm guessing you play the Austin Carr drinking game?

Lol. If I did a shot everytime I heard "Deep in the Q", "Throws the hammer down" and "The big fella", I'd die of alcohol poisoning.

The Spurs need to trade Kawhi if they want to win a title, he is getting exposed by Curry and is a liability. They also need to fire Popovich just to shake things up and let that scrub coach and sabotage the Cavs, because it's their only chance imo.

J/c...

I took my sons up to the game tonight. Had a great time as always. Having said that, and watching the game, the players seemed to get tired and would revert back to ISO ball. Seemed like Lue was subbing Love in and out more often than usual, maybe an attempt to keep him fresh?

Defense struggled. I think it will take the players time to adjust to Lue's plan. Hopefully, it works.

On a side note, one of the Cavs' in the arena contest hosts asked a little kid on the humungotron who his favorite player was on the Cavs and he said, "Johnny Manziel." Haha.

https://twitter.com/SpearsNBAYahoo/status/691864990698049536

I agree. We don't run enough. What Lue has figured out is that the way to beat GS or SA is to throw up 115 points a game. Then you might have a chance. We can't do that playing half court, iso basketball.

It's going to take a little time to get the team conditioned to pushing it upcourt rather than walking it up court.

Just a quick look at the stats. GS averages 115 points a game. We average 101. We have to make up those points somewhere, so unless we start making a lot more 3's, we have to make it up with more trips down court.

Shots fired!

Can you find the quote where I said it was a mistake?

I said I can't root for this team right now. I said that integrity, effort, and honor are more important than wins. I put the blame for the issues on the team on the players rather than on Blatt.


Look, it's probably good news for you guys. The Cavs will probably win the title now that I am no longer rooting for them.

Stating opinions as fact does not make them true.

I thought they had a shot...now I'm seriously wondering...guess I'll wait to see how they are playing in April. But man it doesnt look good to me right now.

I dont know a lot about the game but I did question Blatt's rotations and his ability to have LBJ buy in to what he was doing...but damn Lebron is getting on my nerves..and that video Candy I think it was..posted just confirmed what my eyes was seeing.

I hope before I die 1 freaking Cleveland team can just go dominate 1 yr no drama no guessing...just pure domination and win a damn title for once.

I'd say that, with the exception of having to go through the Bulls, this team making The Finals is almost a foregone conclusion; but that is more because the East is so weak than anything else.

The Cavs will be able to cruise to the Playoffs.... because it's the NBA and getting to the Playoffs is like a participation trophy. Once there, they will beat up on a couple of weak teams in the first two rounds, and then they will likely face Chicago (or someone like them)..... and that's where things will start to get interesting.

The team that they are right now will get run off the floor in the ECF and they most likely won't make The Finals to get their clocks cleaned by Golden State. If they do make it to the Finals, however, they stand no chance of even looking half as good as they did last year.... they'll get abused.

And thus why the change was made. At this point it is easier to stimulate things by changing the coach rather then make a bunch of trades in the hope they work.

I don't see it improving with a token puppet coach in place. The team is still going to do whatever LBJ wants to do... and apparently, that doesn't involve defense. When bad teams are dropping 3-digits on you, you've got issues.

That's not really true.

They Have to play defense, but they have to get use to running the court constantly first. That much running, I the defense is gonna drop off for these next few games.

If we play slow methodical ball, we don't score that much, but neither does the wolves.

We played fast ball, won 114-107.

If we play slow ball, we would've won 94-87.

There's no difference, just the pace. Don't let the numbers blind you.

i think the players are more in need of change than the coach was.

The problem is, we're going to get pennies for the dollar on any trade we make now, even if we can make it ... and as I've (and others) have mentioned, swapping out Mozgov or someone else for a comparable replacement is going to be similar to rotating the deck chairs on the Titanic if Lebron, Kyrie and Love continue to play lazy.

I mean more along the lines that our players are the issue not the coach.. Lebron is a scrub and I have zero respect for him..especially now that heat ownership is coming out and saying he tried to do thing to spo when he first got there...Gilbert and Griff didn't have the balls to tell him to stay in his lane

LOL........so, LeBron not running back on defense and Reach Irving not staying in front of defenders had no outcome on our defensive woes. You make a lot of crap up, Swish.

Sure it does. I said our defense would be better because our slow ball movement on offense keeps our players energized.

Running the floor like that, the players are gonna lay off the defensive intensity to try and conserve energy on offense.

This will take time getting used to. Irving said after the game he did so much running it felt like his chest was gonna explode.

If I'm making crap up in your eyes, all well. You said you're rooting for the Spurs, remember? Why aren't you posting on their board? Why you still here?

I do wonder how much of our "lack of defense" is due to the guys just trying not to wear themselves down until the playoffs. We know they can play at a higher level, they just seem like they are deliberately coasting right now.

Can you live with the bad Defensive effort now if the intensity is stepped up in April, we start rolling over teams and we have fresh legs for a playoff run? I just hope that's the case and it's not that they've developed lazy habits.

A lot of that is being back-tracked on now. The "owner" who made the comments is really just a partial owner with no insider knowledge:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-d...-023947529.html

I never said I was leaving. I said I wasn't rooting for the Cavs anymore. I do hope the Spurs win it all. So freaking what?

So you hopped off the train and became a spurs fan cause the cosch got axed?

We are a lottery team without Lebron.

So you and everybody else who can't stand the guy, hey, that's you're right.

But I prefer to root for a finals team over the past when we had no superstars, and the cavs were practically giving away floor tickets for twenty bucks.

We don't get to talk about playoffs and finals without Lebron on the team.

The players got what they wanted, let's hope they perform. If they win the finals, we know who the problem was: blatt.

If they don't, then Lebron has nobody left to blame except himself.

Kyrie, Love and the rest are not a lottery team.

You think love comes here without Lebron?

What about smith, shumpert, mo Williams, Richard Jefferson and such?

You forget how many moves are effected by Lebron being here.

We traded for Love. He didn't "come here"

And I was speaking more generally that this team without LeBron is not a lottery team..

Hell in the East, Kyrie, Wiggins and the rest cpuld win 35+ and make the playoffs..

I doubt that, as we wasn't making the playoffs prior to him being here.

I also doubt that love gets traded here without Lebron, as we probably would keep Wiggins over love.

Remember, if we trade for love, Wiggins doesn't stay. You're forgetting that. The wolves weren't gonna make that trade without Wiggins being in that deal.

There's also no guarantee that Wiggins develops here like he is in Minnesota.

We will be a lottery team. 8th seed max.

It's fantasy to think otherwise.

We have no idea the makeup of the team had one or two other things not happened.

Is Mosgov here?
Is JR and Shump here?
Is Waiters STILL here?

Who knows..

What i do feel though, is that had LeBron not come back, I think no we could have EVENTUALLY gotten Love without giving up Wiggins. Because it seemed to be only us and GS go I for him, and they most likely weren't going to give up Klay.

I think a big part of what I disagreed with is the term "lottery team"

I dont really consider a team that finishes 9th and misses the playoffs, and has a whatever % chance a "lottery team"

I look at the 6ers and Celtics, as teams TRYING to get the #1 pick. And I dont feel like we would of been that, seeing as we just had 3 of them..