DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Cavs/Finals/NBA thread continued...

I don't know if there's any recreational or degenerate gamblers around here, but I can't remember a time when Vegas was so unsure of a team like they were this year's Cavs. The lines were way off this year. I won a small bundle betting on Mozgov's over line during the Finals alone.

Draft wise, I really want Justin Anderson of Virginia. He shot 45% from 3 and defends very well.

Cavaliers’ J.R. Smith says he’ll probably opt out of contract:

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...partner=ya5nbcs

hopefully, like the article said, it would be for a long term contract.

I like JR. I felt he would've had a better series in the finals than he overall did, but eh. When he has found his rhythm, he's exactly who you want on your team.

I'm not sure how you can even say that.. we have so many more options with those 2 guys on the floor and the role players actually being role players. I'm not saying it's a given, but heck, the fact that LeBron could have been more fresh late in games.. how much is that worth?

Plus... this team was thrown together on the fly, has never had an offseason together.. as pieces were added and changed the dynamic of the team changed and new plans were developed while on 2 days rest... Keeping the core of this team together and having a good offseason to figure out how best to utilize everybody will work wonders...

As for who will beat GSW? OKC could do it now if they were healthy. San Antonio with an addition or two could do it. This team is really good but far from worthy of being put on the pedestal you want to put them on.

We should be.
If we were a healthy team, there's likely little chance that GS would have survived to Game 6. This thing would have been over, and in our favor, a lot sooner.

The Cavs should just have LeBron sit in a room alone and bring his teammates in one by one. He then gives the Roman Coliseum thumbs up or thumbs down to each guy.

I don't dislike J.R. Smith by any stretch of the imagination except for some of the stupid fouls he'll commit here and there, but when he gets into a groove shooting the ball he can be dangerous. As previously mentioned, this entire team had to be suffering from some level of fatigue, not to mention pressure to perform due to all of the injuries. I like the idea of adding another young shooter to the bench. One thing that was extremely obvious was that Golden State was FASTER everywhere too.

Shaun Livingston can MOVE for his age...

How old do you think Livingston is? He's only 29.

Or they could do the animal house scene and LeBron, Blatt, Griffin could sit in a room, put up a picture of each player on the screen and read a brief bio... if they agree they cheer, if not they throw beer cans at the screen.

Why do Blatt and Griffin's opinions matter? Whatever LeBron wants to have happen happens.

So they can hold their beer cans and wait to see what LeBron does, then if he raises his to throw, they can too... then they can report to the media that it was a unanimous decision.

I think Golden State really needs to look themselves in the mirror and realize that they were almost beat by Lebron James and very little else. Certainly the better team, at the time won, but they are not long term viable if they couldn't handle this Cavs team with ease. There's a lot more to the fact that they ran through the playoffs one injured opponent at a time. I realize what they did in the regular season but I don't think that they're going to have long term playoff success as some I've heard today say.

The Cavs need some youth and energy on the bench. My biggest fear is that Lebron is going to demand that he get his buddies from around the league and we're going to end up with what we did this year, a third of the roster spots taken by his friends who can't see the floor. As I recall, that was part of the downfall in his last go around, he kept demanding different players to "win now". This time we already have the win now group with Mozgov, Love, Kyrie and James, at the minimum. We need to add those role players that complement and enhance the guys we have...

I'll be interested to see what the Thunder look like with a real coach. Durant/Westbrook/Ibaka is a great trio and they added Kanter. Add in Adams, McGary, etc. and that's a pretty good group.

Also, if the Clippers can rebuild Lance Stephenson and find a backup big they will be deadly as well (I also expect Pierce to end up there).

Just my final thoughts on the series, and season.....

Congrats to Golden State. They were the better team in the series. Really happy for Steve Kerr. He's a really good coach and overall basketball guy.

I thought they got it right naming Iguodala MVP. The Warriors best players all had their moments of being good, also looking quite bad (including Iggy) but I truly believe without him stepping up, the Cavs win the series. A lot of Blatt's designed sets had them leaving Iguodala open. (Really, juts playing the odds) He stepped up when they needed him to. It broke our backs as a defense. Our bad offense broke our backs as well, so a lot of this series on the Cavs was self-inflicted, but I thought as far as actual value goes, he was deserving. I'm not one for giving series awards to players on losing teams, but Lebron through the first 3 games was making that argument. The last 3 games I thought he had great stats, but his shooting was bad, and there were so many points he left on the floor with layups, putbacks, and free throws.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming him, I'm just saying if you're going to give that award to someone on the losing team, it probably would have to have been a 7 game series with some of the aforementioned mistakes cleaned up.

I've heard talk of David Blatt staying/going today, I just don't understand. I don't think even any of the great coaches could have done much more. And looking forward, who are you replacing him with?

I don't like the negativity with some of the players on our team as well. People are hard on Delly, but the guy is a backup point guard who played good defense most of the series, and made a huge play to win a game in the finals.

JR had a bad series, but I really think he was taken out of his role. He couldn't adjust. He definitely could have been better, but he was living off this team being able to move the ball around, and that goes bye bye when Irving and Love, 2 great passers, go on IR.

Shump was clearly playing hurt, Mozgov was getting screwed by the refs at both ends of the floor. I thought Thompson had a decent series.

Going forward, I hope we can bring most of this team back. I want Kevin Love back. He was playing so good through his first 3 playoff games. I hope to see Shump back. I want Thompson signed.

I'd love to have Dellavedova back if they can find a way to have another PG option so that even if Irving goes down, Delly is still your backup PG. Off the bench, he's what you need. Asking him to start is too much. It's just not who he is.

I don't know if it's possible to have 3 pg's, so Delly may be gone, but I think they'll try like hell to keep this team together.

I feel really good going forward, because we have the right people in place to make these complicated and tough decisions.

I think the thing that hurts the most is if that Shump putback goes in back in the closing seconds of game 1, the Cavs win, and Kyrie never gets hurt. Sure maybe he gets hurt in game 2 or later on, but the entire series gets wiped out from what this was. Sure, you can't just assume we win game 2 because we won game 2, because the Warriors come in off a loss and looking to work harder because of the added pressure, but still. It's stuff you just shouldn't think about, because it'll keep you up for nights.

Kyrie was playing such a great game. He made a play that would have gone down as one of the all time great NBA finals plays when he blocked Curry's layup to secure the possession with 15 seconds or whatever. Lebron or Shump put that in, and Irving becomes a hero.

I don't wanna just assume this team gets back, because that's foolish, but I will say the Cavs are going to have a really good team next year. Hopefully they can build a good bench, manage minutes properly, and get right back to mid-april to gear up for another run.

j/c:

I didn't enjoy LeBron's comments. I ain't going to let it linger and hold them against him because he probably said it in the heat of the moment.

Two things on that:

I don't think it is proper to talk negatively about your teammates even if it was true.

The thing that really bothered me was that he talked about not wanting to dribble for so long....What? Blatt's offensive system is borderline genius. There is a ton of motion and movement of the ball. The reason LeBron pounded nails was because HE wanted to control things.

I was hoping that he would realize after being a part of the series that a team beats an individual.

Golden State got way more open looks than we did because they swing the ball. I was really, really hoping LeBron would change his mindset and let his coach.....coach. But no, he blames his teammates. Sorry, but that bothers me.

I do want to add that JR and Shump missed way too many open shots. Golden State's secondary players shot it much better. It seems to me that JR might be the kind of guy who lights it up when it doesn't matter, but fizzles when he gets on the biggest stage.

I know I am being negative right now and I apologize. It's just another bitter disappointment in a long line of being a life-long Cleveland fan.

The team did well to reach the Finals and win two games in the series.

I am thankful to not having to be reading a ton of stupid posts about how we have to fire Blatt.

I thought JR had some big shots in the Chicago series. Problem was, Golden State had an extra good defender unlike Chicago, so he got more attention. Chicago really didn't have an Iguodala, so Jimmy Butler drew LBJ him quite a bit leaving guys like Dunleavy and Rose to Smith.

A lot of guys on different teams would have struggled if you removed the 2nd and 3rd best players on it. I still like JR. I like that he wants to come back.

There is no way, in any world, I would ever give J.R. Smith a long term contract. If he opts out I would thank him for his services and rejoice that he is now some other team's problem.

There is no way Blatt should be fired. If he is, we all know what happened.

Blatt system is genius when we have two all stars who can hit and create their own shots.

we was missing that,

our guard play was straight up atrocious. they had wide open looks and couldn't hit. thats why lebron had to revert to hero ball. our bigs did ok....but they have oven mitts on half the time. so many dropped passes that turned into TO's from our bigs.

Delly had one good offensive game. our defense was awesome, but we need to score, and we only have one player that consistently do that.

We never used Blatt's system. Ever.

I researched his offense after he got hired. I posted several videos on here before the season started. We never got to see any of that offense. Well, maybe a few glimpses. We saw LeBron dominating the ball all year long.

We didn't run Blatt's offense. We ran LeBron's.

And that is why I said that I was hoping that instead of blaming his teammates for him holding onto the ball too long, that he would have noticed how the last two NBA Champions [San Antonio and Golden State] use an offense that relies on floor spacing and ball movement.

Blatt's offense is similar in many ways to what San Antonio does and all three offenses utilize the spacing and ball movement.

It's too bad the King doesn't want to see it.

I believe he was referring to Blatt's offense before he went to Cleveland. I don't think we saw Blatt's preferred offense the entire year.

Did we really see Blatt's offense with our depleted roster?

Very astute.

And another thing. It really irked me how we didn't value each possession. All those turnovers. And LeBron was as careless w/the ball as anyone.

We had a bunch early, but even in the second half as we were on mini-runs, we would make careless passes or hold the ball too long and then have to jack-up low percentage, contested shots.

LOL............it's a damn good thing I did not post last night.

What?

They ran the pace and space offense in Miami! LeBron knows about it and has been in it. They had Chris Bosh as the center (shooting threes) and Shane Battier as the power forward at times.

One of the reasons LeBron went back to Cleveland is because he can do whatever he wants. He wants to run the iso offense that he ran when he was originally in Cleveland. It works because he is so freaking good.

ahhh gotcha.

Man there is a lot of talk of Blatt not being back next season.

Agreed.

It's like when a new GM is hired and he didn't hire the current coach. That coach is usually a dead man walking. LeBron runs the team, he did not hire the coach.

If the Cavs fire David Blatt it was 100% LeBron's doing. There is no way he deserves to be fired.

Here is a video and an article w/diagrams about Blatt's offense. You can see some aspects, but man, the lack of ball movement because of LBJ's presence is also very notable.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO3bJB9JcTo


and


http://www.mensbasketballhoopscoop.com/david-blatt-maccabi-tel-aviv-euroleague-offense/

You know, we had all the injuries. If anything, it was a band-aid Blatt offense with LeBron improvising.

What's the excuse for the rest of the season?

(To be fair the offense was very good after LeBron came back from his vacation and the midseason trades were made.)

Do you want to start beating another dead horse? They're already doing it in PF about Teddy.

Our funk earlier was players learning to play well together.

My point is that we never, ever really ran Blatt's offense. We had parts of it, but we never utilized the ball movement that was so evident in his prior stops.

To expound on my point, I believe the reason we didn't utilize Blatt's full offense is because of how LeBron likes to dominate the ball by either running Iso's or PNR's.

Again, I was hoping he would see the importance of ball movement. But, it's obvious he has not.

I see where you're going, and I agree.

Could we really have employed any of that in the Finals? We had no horses to run those kind of ideas once Kyrie went down.

Wait, what?

Then why did they immediately get better when new players were brought in? And LeBron was gone for several weeks. How does that build familiarity?

Wasn't it a gradual improvement? I didn't watch much of anything since I live in the boondocks and all.

No. They pretty much flipped a switch over night. People have pointed to the January 13th loss in Phoenix as the turning point.