DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum NBA and Cavs Discussion III

Turning the game off. I don't think you should be resting people unless they're injured. Just limit the minutes or something.

"Watch the big man THROW THE HAMMER DOWN!" -

I laugh every time he says throw the hammer down.

I turned it off too.

Mr. Cavalier is awesome! The "... AND THROWS THE HAMMER DOWN" quote is by far one of my favorites as' well.

"Got caught with his hands in the cookie jar" is also another one haha.

"Get that weak stuff outta here!"

it took me awhile to get used to fred, but I have to say he and austin have a great rapport and timing. I much rather listen to them than the garbage the national teams spew....mark jackson and van gundy make me want to punch my tv

Fred took a while to grow on me, but he really does a great job. I understand those that may be turned off by AC, and if you're someone that requires deep basketball analysis, you're probably not going to get that on a Cavs broadcast, but I love his passion for the team.

Not that you get great analysis from guys like Van Gundy either. Watch the last 6 minutes of Game 7. Just about everything he says is wrong. Off the top of my head:

- "There's no need to contest Lebron on a 3-pointer" ... Very next shot, Lebron drills a three to go up 2

- "The Cavs need to get into their offense quicker" ... Both teams had dead legs at that point, and they needed every second to catch their breath. The only points scored in the last 4 minutes were after Cavs time-outs.

- "The Cavs don't want to go early (on this final possession with 13 seconds left) ... Kyrie finds an opening and cuts through to hit Lebron for a foul which gets the free throws to ice the game.

- "I don't know if I put Shumpert on Curry here" ... Shump (probably our 2nd best perimeter defender) prevents Curry from getting the ball on the first possession and defends him into a bad shot on the second one.

Yeah, I really don't care too much for color commentating. I've been watching and playing sports my whole life. I understand the situations, and some of the strategies involved.

There are very few guys that do color commentating that offer you really good stuff...

Kirk Herbstreit is very good at his job. I think Todd Blackledge is also pretty good too. The college announcing teams are always better than all the other sports.

Obviously we all know how good Bernie was at providing analysis during preseason games.

Eddie Olczyk is a tremendous color guy who works with NBC on the NHL. He's also the Blackhawks local color commentator for Comcast Chicago. Being a color guy for hockey is pretty hard, because there isn't a whole lot to the game. It's not like football where you have formations, blitz packages, audibles, etc.. There is just so much to break down during a football game.

John Smoltz is awesome doing baseball games as well. He's got a pretty wealthy knowledge of the game, and obviously a crap ton of playoff experience. It's too bad he's teamed up with Joe Schwarber-Buck who is the absolute worst play by play announcer at the national level.

I dislike Van Gundy.

Fred does a great job doing player interviews too. Him and RJ crack me up!

James has played 199 playoff games. At his 2016-17 regular-season average (37.7 mpg), that's equal to an additional 2.7 seasons -- and is more postseason minutes than the combined total of Kevin Durant (3,815), Stephen Curry (2,233) and Draymond Green (2,114).

http://www.espn.com/#

Barkley isnt a commentator. But he is my favorite "crew guy" I dont know what you call it. He is hilarious in his straight shooting. He is very entertaining.

I met Barkley once. I belonged to a country club in the Detroit area and he was there one summer day. There was an all-day closest to the pin thing going on that day and somehow he won it. LOL

Anyway......it was around $2,000 or $3,000. He got the money and handed it over to the first kid he saw.

I talked to him a bit, but mostly watched him interact w/other people. He was very cool. And yeah, he was funny.

That is pretty awesome! He does seem very genuine in his opinions. I always liked him, even from back in the day when he was a player and his mouth was getting him in trouble.

The Cavs are complete garbage.

I met Barkley and actually had a conversation with him at the Jimmy V foundation golf outing benefit dinner the night before golf. He is a pretty nice guy. Stuart Scott was a part of that conversation as well, those two together were great.

yeah they are right now and have been since ASB, Lue has to take some of this blame, his rotations and sets suck..hes got to make these guys play defense. JR needs to be back in the starting lineup, he just doesn't play well from the bench. One day we will learn how to defend the PNR. Our bench, which was supposed to be fixed is costing us..they are just lost, I'm thinking we might need some more practices..but right now there just doesn't seem to be any ball movement...good thing they rested yesterday so they could come out and get beat by the worst team in the NBA who is actually trying to tank. Good thing we won it last year...too much has gone wrong this year(injuries). Not sure if there's enough time to right the ship in 3 weeks. If they lose this game, they better not take another game off the rest of the season...you would think they'd put the effort in tonight since they could clinch with a win

There's about 18 minutes left to eek out a win.

You have to start questioning Lue at this point. Kyrie is an absolute momentum killer. He takes the worst shots at the worst time. The Cavs don't really run an offense. It's all one on one and then try to get a guy a 3. That's coaching. The defense is abysmal. Anyone and everyone can get off against them. Jordan Clarkson might be the worst player in the NBA and he looks like he knows what he's doing against the Cavs.

I imagine every coach that had a roster like this would get 'questioned'. How much of what was accomplished was the coach and how much was just flat out awesome talent?

They don't play with any direction or purpose. They don't play up to their talent. That's coaching.

I'm just going to throw this out there.. but how much of it is Lue not coaching them and how much of it is LeBron and Kyrie refusing to be coached?

If these guys can't hit 3s, they have no chance.

They need to run the offense through Love when he's on the floor. He's the only guy I trust to not do something dumb.

Well said!

Why would you wanna foul Kyrie? He may be a ball hog at times, but he's not gonna miss a lot of free throws.

It's because they're bored with the regular season. They experiment during these games, then flip the switch when they need to win.

Im glad the NFL doesnt have this mentality.

Jimmy Haslam and Randy Lerner would beg to differ.

I bet there are a large percentage of players (vets on bad teams) that get bored.

Then they need to watch this video.

https://youtu.be/g2TBlbceOxs

That came right after the Jets blew a 21-3 lead against The Browns.

That win was the tiebreaker that got us in the playoffs.

I'm not taking sides here, but these stinky NBA games are a result of a schedule that is too demanding. However, the NBA can't afford to cut the number of games due to the outrageous salaries that the players make.

It is what it is. I would hardly ever watch an NBA game if it wasn't for my interest in the league due to Daily Fantasy BB.


Otherwise..........the regular season sucks!!!!

The Cavs mentality is foucsed on the playoffs. They are just going through the motions at this point in the regular season.

Not saying I like it, but I do understand what is going on.

Even if true, it's discouraging to watch a team that is supposed to have a legitimate shot at winning it all play like they do. I see some bad habits that I'm not sure a "flip switch" will solve.

For as gifted as Kyrie is, and IMO his offensive skills are beyond even the professional level...he's that gifted that they should create another classification for him, he's a momentum killer. He loves falling in love with his own performance within a game. Bad shots at bad times and rarely creates for others. The bad shots create momentum for the other team.

Pick and roll defense is abysmal. Defense is putrid in general. Every random schmuck has a big game against the Cavs. While the defense sucked last year, it seems worse this year. Can they flip this switch again? How many times can you go to that well?

I'd never thought I'd say this but Love is kind of the glue that holds this team together, IMO. When he was out, their rebounding was atrocious and teams were killing the Cavs on the glass. Believe it or not, I believe the team is better defensively with Love as well. He is an elite rebounder. The chances of teams getting decond chance points dramatically decreases with him on the floor. He also hustles on the defensive end and works his butt off. Hes not always capable and the result isnt always there, but they play better D with him on the floor.

If Love were to go down again and if lebron needed to pick up any of that slack, is he going to have enough left in the tank. Lue has run lebron into the ground.

I think the problems are a little deeper than regular season boredom...we just suck defensively..we are down in every category from last year.. Lue has run people into the ground, they waited too long to sign a big, backup pg and wing..If they were experimenting they could have been rotating people from dleague to eat some minutes, especially with all the injuries. Just poor roster management. But like i said, Lue to me isn't better than Blatt...the coach is irrelevant it seems with lebron, he's going to drive the bus, what you do without lebron is telling on your ability to coach..take the heat for example, they won more than they lost without lebron, the cavs on the other hand have a sub .200 record..So you take lebron out of the equation, you have a good indicator is coaching and the system is working. So you start adding more pieces, it gets harder and harder and Lue is struggling making it work. Doesn't help that guys like JR and Shump forgot where the rim is when shooting. But I'm still on the fence about Ky-me...one of the best offensive players in our time, but like Rishuz says, he kills momentum, when he runs that second unit we get destroyed, he may score 30, but he'll give up that many too. We have to get stronger on the perimeter, step up quicker in the PNR...most of what I'm seeing is effort, its just not there. I truly hope its just regular season blues, but this is the time you flip the switch so you get ready for playoffs, eeking out a win against the lakers where both Kyrie and lebron once again played 38 minutes...seems like we are chasing our tail

I understand it too but it's creating a bit of a challenge for the league to deal with.

On one hand you have this mentality from the league that this is a business, well you can't run a business where your top performers are waiting for the last 20% of the year to actually start working hard and giving max effort.

This is competing with the players and coaches who, once the season starts, view this as a sport, where the goal is just to compete for the championship by whatever means necessary and if that means you can rest and give less than 100% effort for much of the season, so be it.

But ratings are up and cash is flowing so until that changes, people can complain all they want, it's not going to do any good.

Honestly, you can thank the media, who's made "winning a championship" the be-all-end-all of gauging how great a player is. It's the reason why teams are joining up to form super-teams and why nobody really tries until a Championship is on the line.

Heck, with the way the media puts it, your are better off not making the playoffs, rather than getting all the way to a Championship game and losing it. I mean look at both Lebron and Tom Brady. Idiots in the media want to look down on Lebron because he's 3-3 in Finals matchups and Tom Brady because he's 5-2, where-as Jordan and Montana were perfect. Nevermind those years where they lost in the first round of the playoffs

Emergency braces secure Thompson's front teeth, ironman streak
http://www.thescore.com/news/1259652

And your signature says:

"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth"


Rather ironic.