DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum ****Cleveland Cavaliers March Thread Part Duex****

I thought Charles was pretty dead on.

That was my first Cavs game I watched all the way through. How painful!!

Mom and Dad had a great time.

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yeah i think brown has lost some trust in jj. he's out of control, he's turning the ball over, making typical rookie mistakes. the problem is, he's not a rookie anymore, we're almost in april.

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No, he's still a rookie.. on the best team in basketball. How would JJ look on a team like the Wizards? First off he'd probably be getting a lot more playing time and would have settled in that much more... They'd probably think he was playing very well for a rookie... but he's on a great team, therefore every mistake is magnified because there aren't that many mistakes.

Remember too, he's now played about 30 more games than he's ever played in a single season... and he only played 1 season in college...

JJ needs everybody to just be patient.. he'll be fine.

i get you, but the guy still needs to put in some serious offseason work.

we've seen rookies make contributions on playoff teams. right now i think mike brown would be terrified to have him out there in a close contested playoff game.

i don't think the guy is gonna be a super star, he has some potential, but if he pays close attention to what joe smith does on a nightly basis, he may get it.

last night, andy gets a little banged up, he has to leave the floor for a bit, we're undermanned as it is, someone needs to step up... joe smith comes off the bench and gives you 10 points and a couple of tough rebounds before halftime. without that, we may have been down quite a bit more at the break.

but let's be real here, jj's minutes have gone down because joe smith is finally back to being comfortable on this team.

Just an aside.... I recall hearing a comment from an announcer in January or February that said of Hickson: "If he was on the Lakers, LA fans would be making comparisons to a young Karl Malone".


Now, I never put any faith in anything any announcer says, but for them to go THAT far, there's gotta be something there.
With some work and some time, he'll be fine.

wow did anyone see legler's article on the dime today?

Daily Dime

seriously. are these espn guys getting scared or what?

they're doing the whole "ok so the cavs are the best team, yeah, but"

they don't wanna just flat out say this team can play.

the cavs might go down as the worst 65+win team ever, the way people talk about them.

and i love the whole "cleveland absolutely needs homecourt throughout the nba playoffs if they wanna win it all"

the way things are going this year, i think whoever has homecourt is probably winning it all" la, boston, cleveland, whoever ends up with the best record will in fact be favored by vegas, and sin city doesn't play favorites.

just because los angeles beat the cavs twice in the regular season would be jack squat in a playoff series. especially with some of the laker players and their reputations for punking out (i'm looking directly at you, lamar odom)

seriously. this article is hot garbage.

I don't think he was as harsh as you're making it out to be. he was just saying he thought the cavs needed homecourt more than boston. he did give us credit for playing tough defense, good rebounding, and having Lebron to take over down the stretch. he just think's boston has more offensive weapons. it's his opinion, even though I like our team more than boston.

Let's face it though, we're going to have to win a game on the road. I doubt we go undefeated at home in the playoffs. even boston got beat by the pistons. they had to go into detroit and LA to win a game. I do know the east is deep. I would even put atlanta with the big 3(cleveland, boston, orlando). they have the length and athletes to beat anyone. they will be a tough rd 2 opponent.

that rtard thinks cleveland needs to win home court..gmab, the only reason boston has a ring was the home court...had they not had it...they woulndn't have even made it to the ECF. I think boston needs home court more than us

It does not matter who wins the east, the Lakers will be NBA champs the rest of ya are playing for runner up!

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as far as the cavs go, homecourt 30-1 at home, the magic seem to have been a bad matchup, but let's not forget what the cavs are in the playoffs compared to a regular season matchup, your transition chances go down, the defense gets notched up. we'd take orlando in 5-6.

orlando is not a team built for the playoffs.

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I'm glad YOU think so...Cause I don't...

Celt's have one maybe two more chances with the age of that team...After 2009 it's gonna be Cleveland and Orlando...

With Orlando's Inside-Out game and Howard down low they're TOUGH...They could easily POP US THIS YEAR...It might take 7 games but they could do us in...That's a TOP notch team...Don't underestimate them or overestimate our playoff D...

Boston doesn't really scare me...We'd have a much better chance at stealin' one IN Boston than vice versa...

Celt's are only 1 up on Orlando...If they let Orlando take them for the 2 seed...When they meet it's Orlando with Home Court...NOT GOOD...

i said this earlier in the year...orlando would be my sleeper pick for the east..but that was before nelson went down..alston ain't nothing but a wannabe..but if van gundy knew how to coach we'd never beat them. Their inside game is miles ahead of ours and we don't have a single person on the team that can 1 on 1 howard..hell we can't even double team him effectively..the last game they didn't run the offense through him not one time in the 4th..but i think we still take them in a 7 game series becuase i think brown is usually pretty good at adjustments and if we have ben back that gives us a little more ass down low..even though it isn't enough becuase of howards combo of size strength and leaping ability. I see boston and orlando sluggin it out for 7 games and then having to play us after we sweep our matchup in 4

i don't think the magic have the physical or mental toughness to win a 7 game series in the east with us or boston.

they can't get the ball to howard. and they don't have enough in the backcourt.

and their backcourt will get exposed for being horrid defensively, wait til the playoffs...

they're a solid team, but they aren't nearly as good as the cavs or the celtics.

yes, great regular season success against us over the past few seasons.

what has that gotten them in the post-season?

another cavs victory in the books, 8 in a row.

magic number update: 9

i thoroughly enjoyed the matinee today. great reason to head to bars on a non football afternoon

We really did a nice job on defense today... defensive rotations on the perimeter and intensity were very good for the entire first half and most of the second half...

Nice to see Z get in the 10,000 pt club as well

Boobie hit his first two shots today...

DWest's shot has been off the past 2 weeks... I am thinking his back much still be pretty sore from that tumble in PHX...

it just seems like everything is slanting our way (except for chicago not being able to hold on last night against the lakers)

but, no devin harris today.

there is absolutely no reason you don't go in there and smash that team to pieces. the second leg of a back to back isn't an excuse at this point.

for anyone who's not in the cleveland area, if you have nbatv, the game is on.

cavs out to an 11 point lead.

Cavs win their 9th straight game...

Z passes Hot Rod Williams for the most blocked shots in franchise history...

Cavs tie franchise record with 57th win...

Magic number is now 8!

And the ride continues!! We are now 25-12 on the road, WOW...

Tell ya what, the defensive rotations and toughness looked good again.. Now I know some of you will say "oh well it was just the Nets." True, but we aren't giving up too many easy buckets as of late, and that bodes very well for when the mission starts in about a month... Also, keep in mind, Brook Lopez has been very good for a rook....

One more thing, I would try and limit DWests minutes if we can .. I think his back is really buggin him.. His shot looks very flat and he seems a bit hesitant.. I think it is a very realistic possibility that DWest is playin through a lot of pain.. Keep in mind how tough he is and how he already had to miss about 5 weeks earlier in the season, so you know he wants to be out their...

I would try and get Kinsey some serious minutes in these next two homes games vs Nets and Wolves....

i loved watching lbj and wild thing work tonight... lebron seemed to know exactly where andy was... he makes a cut across the middle, easy bucket.

z got off to a great start and that kinda fueled everything, nj made a run but the cavs held them off. how many times have we said that lately? out to a lead, and you fight them off to win the game.

12 games left, 4 on the road. i think the big one comes in 2 weeks at orlando. i would love to see us go in there and slap them around, especially after what van gundy had to say the other night.

Z now with the franchise record for blocks? Great to see! I think he's broken the franchise record for points, rebounds and blocks now. He just needs a title to cap things off now.

Good point about LB and Andy, me and my buddy were talkin bout that during the game tonite...

Those 2 really have some Mojo workin right now. When Andy moves without the ball, LB finds him, period.

Blah ... that's what I meant.

What did Van Gundy say?

Basically along the lines of, "The only reason the Cavs win at home is because the refs help them out".

not only that, but the great teams get those calls at home.

there were some horrible, downright awful calls in game 7 against boston last year. but you never heard those words outta mike brown's mouth.

van gundy is overrated as a coach. yeah, he's got orlando playin well, but they're going to crumble in the playoffs. just watch.

to whine about the refs, and basically downplay the cavs success is laughable. the cavs win at home, because they are one hell of a team. this run is historic.

honestly, van gundy's guys got physically punked out a week ago, maybe he should go and look at the tape.

No doubt. I checked Stein's Power Rankings on ESPN.com...he still had the Lakers as #1. While the Cavs have only lost 2 games since the all star break. It's cool though. They can keep doubting us, it only fuels Lebron more.

And the MVP talk. Lebron's been player of the week 7 times this season, setting and NBA record. Player of the month several times. And let's see Kobe or D Wade get 3 triple doubles in a row.

PER Diem: March 24, 2009LeBron James is having a historically great season, and it's time we all took noticeComment Email Print Share By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
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Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images
LeBron's 2008-09 numbers are even more impressive when put into proper perspective.

31.89.

In terms of the game's hallowed numbers, it doesn't quite resonate like, let's say, 50.4 -- Wilt Chamberlain's historic scoring average in 1961-62 -- or Oscar Robertson's 30-12-11 triple-double that same season.

But it's a big one at Hollinger HQ, anyway. That 31.89 mark is Michael Jordan's PER (player efficiency rating) from the 1987-88 season, the top mark for any season since the league started tracking individual turnovers in 1973-74. (We don't have enough information for seasons prior to that, unfortunately, so we can't properly evaluate Wilt or the Big O.)


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And it's an important figure at the moment because it's under assault this season from LeBron James.

That James is playing well is hardly a secret -- virtually every writer in the country has him either first or second on the MVP ballot heading into the season's final stretch. But the vagaries of the game's stats have made it difficult to appreciate what a historically great season he's having.

James doesn't lead the league in a single individual category, and his scoring and rebounding numbers are both down from a year ago. Yet when one looks at his accomplishments in total, and adjusts for both his minutes and his team's pace, he's having one of the greatest seasons in league history.

On a per-minute basis, he's averaging more points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals than he did last season -- when he already was having a sensational season that included the league's best PER -- and is shooting better from the field, from the line and from 3-point range. Somehow, he's averaging fewer turnovers, too.

Add it all up and James' 31.69 PER through Sunday's games isn't only the best in the league, holding off a stern late charge by Miami's Dwyane Wade -- it's second only to Jordan in the past 35 years, and if James has a strong closing finish, it could end up as the best.

Even if he fails to match Jordan's all-time mark, he's already on hallowed ground. While Jordan's PER exceeded 31.0 on four different occasions, no other player in history had done it until James this season.

Nonetheless, the historic nature of James' campaign hasn't received nearly enough attention. His averages of 28.6 points, 7.6 rebounds and 7.3 assists are impressive, all right, but they don't look all that different from other seasons of recent vintage -- James' 30.0, 7.9 and 7.2 from a season earlier, for instance, or Larry Bird's 28.7, 10.6 and 6.5 in 1984-85, or Kobe Bryant's 35.4 points per game in 2005-06.

And on pure per-game totals, they pale beside Jordan's 32.5, 8.0 and 8.0 in 1988-89 ... let alone the Big O's triple-double in 1961-62.


TOP ALL-TIME PER SEASONS
Player Year PPG RPG APG MPG PER
Michael Jordan 1987-88 35.0 5.5 5.9 40.4 31.89
Michael Jordan 1990-91 31.5 6.0 5.5 37.0 31.79
LeBron James 2008-09 28.6 7.6 7.3 38.6 31.69
Michael Jordan 1989-90 33.6 6.9 6.3 39.0 31.31
Michael Jordan 1988-89 32.5 8.0 8.0 40.2 31.29


But that's one of the reasons I created PER -- it enables us to make comparisons between seasons much more easily than we could do otherwise, because it scales to the same league average each season (15.0) and automatically adjusts for factors like pace, minutes, and whether offense or defense was ascendant at the time.

Unfortunately for James, he plays in one of the slowest-paced eras in the league's history. Though things have picked up a bit the past few seasons, even run-and-gun teams like Golden State and Phoenix would be considered walk-it-up outfits if they played in the 1980s or '90s. Jordan's 1987-88 Bulls, for instance, were the league's slowest-paced team at a pace factor of 98.2 -- one that would rank fourth from the top in 2008-09, just ahead of the fabled Suns.

The comparisons get even more lopsided once you go further back in history -- when Chamberlain averaged his 50.4 points, for instance, the Celtics were the only team to give up fewer than 116 points per game.

Just for fun, then, I decided to convert everyone's numbers into the same terms as Jordan's 1987-88 season, just so we could have an apples-to-apples comparison of some of the league's greatest seasons in the "triple crown' categories of points, rebounds and assists; as a guidepost, I also included each players' minutes per game and PER.


Historic seasons: Per-40-Minute stats at Chicago's 1987-88 Pace
Player Year PPG RPG APG MPG PER
Michael Jordan 1987-88 35.0 5.5 5.9 40.4 31.89
LeBron James 2008-09 32.2 8.6 8.2 38.1 31.69
Shaquille O'Neal 1999-00 30.4 13.9 3.9 40.0 30.62
Kobe Bryant 2005-06 36.3 5.4 4.6 41.0 28.11
Larry Bird 1984-85 27.3 10.0 6.3 39.5 26.54


As the chart shows, putting LeBron's current campaign at the pace of the 1987-88 season and pushing him back up to 40 minutes produces some extraordinary numbers -- on a per-possession basis, he's actually scoring nearly as much as Jordan did, with far superior ancillary numbers.

And if you want to go further back in history, check out what James' numbers would be if he was playing at the pace Robertson did back in 1961-62 -- we don't have exact figures because the NBA didn't keep very detailed numbers back then, but based on the shot data alone it would be in the range of a jaw-dropping 40, 10 and 10, as Neal Paine of Basketball-Reference.com found when he crunched the numbers.

Of course, pace is just one aspect of the comparison. We also have to deal with minutes, and this is one area where James falls short of his peers, believe it or not. Jordan averaged 40.4 minutes per game in 1987-88, and Bird played 39.5 in 1984-85; at the extreme end, Chamberlain played virtually every second of every game in 1961-62 -- because of games going to OT, he actually averaged 48.5 minutes per game that season.



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This is partly because of how many blowout wins James' Cavs have had, but it's mostly a reflection of his era -- James' total, low as it seems in the chart, is actually fifth in the NBA this season. Teams have begun emulating the San Antonio Spurs' style of not overloading their best players with minutes and keeping them fresh for the postseason -- in fact, not one player averages as many as 40 minutes per game, an unthinkable state of affairs as recently as half a decade ago.

Unfortunately for James, it's another area where his numbers take a hit in historical comparisons. A season of 28.6, 7.6 and 7.3 sounds decent. A season of 30.3, 8.1 and 7.7 -- which is what his numbers extrapolate to if he played as many minutes as Jordan did in 1987-88 -- sounds downright amazing. And a season of 32.5, 8.7 and 8.3 -- which is what his numbers extrapolate to at the same pace and the same minutes -- is mind-blowing.

Back to PER for a moment. You can argue about whether James is having the greatest individual season ever -- to seal the deal, presumably it would have to be capped by a title, for starters, and there are a variety of subjective criteria one can add to the discussion that goes far beyond the limits of PER.

What's very clear, however, is that LeBron's campaign belongs on the short list. Few players in history have had a season approaching this one, and as of today only one player has exceeded it.

And James still has a shot at breaking the mark. I'm estimating James will play 270 more minutes this season, based on the Playoff Odds' current guess that Cleveland won't clinch home court throughout the playoffs until the final day of the season. If so, James would need a PER of roughly 33.0 for the remainder of the season to surpass Jordan during the Cavs' final dozen games -- a feat that is difficult but hardly impossible.

So while it may not have the panache of a hitter's chasing .400 or an NFL player's setting a new rushing record, the chase is on.

The conventional wisdom is that James is having a great season, but the reality is much deeper -- he's having what is arguably the greatest individual season in history, and it's time we gave him his due for it.


John Hollinger writes for ESPN Insider. To e-mail him, click here.


I decided to put it in the Cavs thread to avoid clutter, but if the refs thinks its worthy for its own thread then by all means move it.

double post

Let's just hope he keeps it in Cleveland

Countdown to Tip-Off:

1 hour 33 minutes!!

Hell ya Purp!

just an fyi for all you folks following the seeding race in the East: Boston is at Orlando tonite. 8pm EST tip on ESPN...


Go Cavs! Lets take care of bizness at the Q while those clowns beat up on each other fighting for the #2 seed!