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#mogotti

Update:

Broussard: Talks on Joe Johnson to Cavs "stagnant"

http://www.netsdaily.com/2015/7/6/890129...9138.1436266684

Probably because his contract is so big. Would rather take Crawford at $5M and have him join Mo Williams off the bench, if we're talking trades.

That's JR for ya. JR is one where Im OK if he stays and OK if he goes...

I feel the same way about him.

I'm surprised to see so many interested in Crawford. The guy is a one trick pony. He's a black hole. Do not expect the ball back once it gets in his hands. That's great on a team like the Clippers who have no scorers on their second unit. I don't think that would be good at all for the Cavs. Not to mention he's not always instant offense. He's a bit streaky too. I would say no thanks to Crawford. Not a good fit here.

I'm torn on Johnson. I really haven't seen him play much over the last several years. I will say that guys have a way of "getting in line" when playing with LeBron and upping their effort and intensity. Taking weaknesses and turning them into solid parts of their game. I could see that happening with Johnson as well.

I think all things being equal I'd just rather have JR back.

Is it just me, or....

I've always been a football guy, not much into basketball (unless Lebron is playing for us), but ever since the NBA Finals? I actually follow the Cavs now!

We obviously didn't win it all, but we have a really good team now, and homie likes that. Looking forward to this coming basketball season!!!

So... is it just me?

No... it definitely isn't just you. I just started to fade away from watching Cavalier basketball, or any bball, after LBJ had departed in the fashion he did.

Now I can say I watched all the games this season and, heck, even bought some Cavs gear! I too am following them more than before.

I've always been into the Cavs and the NBA going back to my days of being a toddler. The classic Lakers-Celtics rivalry games are some of my earliest memories. The NBA is probably my favorite sport/league behind the NFL and college football.

I followed the Cavs when Lebron was gone, but didn't catch the games as much. I didn't want to pay for league pass because I knew we'd be horrible, and the league gave us our one national game aginst the Heat. I relied on a decent illegal stream from one of those sites.

Last year I still had to rely on stream sites for games, but we also had 20+ games on national tv. So it was awesome to be able to watch the Cavs on TV and usually against a good opponent. I expect another 20-25 nationally televised games this year. Although it puts every Cavs fan who isn't in the market in a bad spot because how can you justify paying for the league pass when more than a quarter of the games are national? I love the league but with hockey and everything I can't watch every night...

To your point though, It's totally understandable for fringe NBA fans in Cleveland to be all about the Cavs. It's an awesome story developing, and a really likable team. Although most of my friends and most Cleveland fans I run into are usually into all 3 teams anyway..

That's exactly like me 3rd. The only basketball that I watched this season was the Cavs throughout the playoffs. I think I probably will watch more next year considering my new found appreciation for the NBA.

Looking back, I have no idea why I followed the Cavs as closely as I did the season before and after LeBron left. Smush Parker, Ricky Davis, DeSagana Diop, Jumaine Jones, Luke Harangody, Samardo Samuels, Manny Harris. I'll never get that time back.

I'm able to follow the Cavs only because of Lebron. I don't live in Cleveland so rely on National coverage. Thankfully we get lots of that now. The last time I was able to follow the Cavs was in the Mark Price days.

Not really a shocker, but MJ got me interested in the NBA. However, I always rooted for Cleveland teams.



Is anyone else still kinda in disbelief in this fact- Cavs should steamroll the East and make it to the Finals for the next 2-3 years at least? Are we really this close to ending the curse?

The only team I'm worried about is the Spurs.

The Cavs need to do one single thing every single night. Every single night they need to be workmanlike in their approach with a singular focus that it's championship or bust. Have fun. Enjoy themselves. Whoop it up on the bench from time to time. But be very businesslike. This is where LeBron needs to assert himself.

The Bulls never had this issue with MJ and Pippen. Every year they knew they were playing for one thing and one thing only. They were so focused, so businesslike.

Cavs need to be like this from Game 1. This isn't fun and games anymore. There's too much at stake. As Pippen famously said "Let's get down for our crown."

Yeah, we need to keep our sideline cheerleader Andy. That's important.

/purple font

What Lebron wants, Lebron gets.

Actually, having Andy healthy, on limited minutes and coming off the bench will do wonders, IMO. Health is the key here.

Yeah, I think people forget what an asset he is when he's actually healthy. He was our second best player those 4 years without Lebron (which is why he got the contract he did). He's probably better playing the 4 than the 5, but he was asked to play center for several years. It will be interesting to see how he does this year with reduced minutes and possibly time back at PF.

People probably forgot due to his inability to stay healthy for the last five years. One thing after another.

Limiting his minutes is a good option in hopes to keep him on the court, but for what he's making, is it the wisest?

Trade him, give him a respectable good bye event as he's earned that, and just move on. Best case scenario IMO.

Yeah the key is limited minutes. Really limited minutes and limited games. I don't see why they couldn't sit him every other game or so (or more) in the regular season. Just play him enough to maintain his skill and conditioning and that's about it. Of course, that is so far outside the normal paradigm that it won't happen.

It would be better to have him available deep in the playoffs instead of likely losing him sometime during the regular season.

As I said above though, limiting his minutes the wisest decision for the $ he is to be making?

Wisest in what way? In order to maximize the probability of winning a championship? I think yes.

Of course, Andy and the coaching staff would have to buy in, and you might piss off some fans along the way who want to see the absolute best team on the floor for every regular season game.

The contract itself was pretty bad-- I love the way the guy plays as much as anybody else here but I thought it was an overpay given his injury history. With that said, I would not let contractual status change what I thought was the best way to manage minutes. Once the team is built you do the best with what you have.

Here's the thing though ......

Andy is going to be our 4th big. How much is he going to play anyway? 5-10 minutes/game?

His contract is both an anchor and a potential benefit down the road. He has, at least, some non guaranteed portions of his deal, that may help us in a couple of years.

Also, as was said above, if he is playing 5-10 minutes/game, he could be extremely helpful for us.

It just doesn't seem fitting to pay top dollar for low minutes and risking injury even with those low minutes.

But,I'm just banking on him getting injured. If playing him like we did Miles Austin help him to stay healthy, then I too feel it would be worth it in terms of overall team success.

Just his contract amounts doesn't reflect the production we should expect with that sort of contract.

It's not really top dollar and like Ytown said, some of the money on the back end is not guaranteed although I haven't looked up the exact details on that.

He has played a combined 172 games in the last 5 years, including 65 in '13-'14 and the other four years he had season ending injuries. So if you want to make the case that he shouldn't be making $10mm/year, fine. I agree.

But he probably won't hold up with significant minutes over the course of an entire regular season, let alone the regular season and playoffs that would be expected this coming season. The Cavs might as well just seriously curtail his workload, making sure he's fully recovered for every game and reducing the chance of a freak injury. Implicit in all this is that for a great team in the East like the Cavs, the regular season really doesn't matter that much and it would be much preferable to have him contribute during the playoffs.

Great post. I read YTown's too.

If I knew we could get 5-10 min each game from Andy throughout the season, or even had confidence he'd be able to handle that without hurting himself, I'd not be advocating any trade and would keep him.

Me personally, I don't have a speck of confidence he could fulfill that role, even with lower minutes than the proposed 5-10.

5-10 minutes seems reasonable enough if he gets some off days. That's not a whole lot of playing time as is.

I'm a big fan of Popovich and what he has done for many years in being ahead of the curve in resting players. It seems like the NBA is starting to catch up on that. Also being in the East has its perks as well-- it's not like a one game difference could drop us from the 2nd seed to the 6th seed (this happened to the Spurs this year although that was kind of a freak occurrence.) The Cavs are also not at any serious risk of missing the playoffs altogether ala OKC.

A couple things to note: Some of those Varejao injuries were drawn out a bit because the Cavs were basically trying to tank for a couple of years there.

As far as the money goes, he's only making $10 mill a year. That's the 6th highest on the team. It's not a back-breaker of a contract, but it's still big enough that he's going to be difficult to trade away anyway. If he plays limited minutes through the season and provides the high-energy hustle minutes in the playoffs towards a Championship, then he'll be worth the money.

I would almost be more concerned with Kyrie and Love. They are making substantially more money and also get hurt quite a bit.

But he's the only Cav we've had around since pretty much the beginning of the Lebron era. It would be nice to win one with him on the team. I really don't think we're going to get much in return for him in a trade. Again, that Joe Johnson rumor was pure Windy speculation. Who knows how much truth there actually was to that. I'm not sure many teams will be jumping at the chance get Haywood's 10 million cap clearance, just to take on Andy's $10 million in salary, unless they are dumping a bad contract themselves.

Good point about Kyrie and Love and I agree.

Or look at Lebron and his 2 week hiatus during the regular season-- he finished the playoffs as strong as anyone I've ever seen. Maybe there is something to it.

Not many players will be able to pull that off but Blatt certainly could do a better job of managing minutes and going deeper into the bench during the regular season.

I think Blatt was in a bit of a tight spot this past year. They had just thrown this team together last off-season and then added three major pieces half-way through the year. He needed to get the main guys minutes so they could learn to play together. Even when they went on their big win streak in January, they were still trying to figure things out. I don't think they really came together until the last month or so of the season, and by then they were trying to get the 2nd seed in the playoffs.

Hopefully, he can manage minutes a little bit better this season, as at least the team has sort of figured out their roles and know who plays best with who.

You guys opened my eyes up regarding Andy and in correlation to his paydays.

I'm convinced after reading the above posts that I'm exaggerating that.

I still hold concerns about him being able to stay healthy, regardless of how ya slice up his minutes or how often you rest him.

Good reads though, I appreciate people's comments!

If deandre Jordan goes back to lac I'll lose respect for them

According to Woj, Doc Rivers and the team has flown out to beg DeAndre to come back.

This is funny too:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/07/deandre-jordan-clippers-mavericks-emoji-travel

🚀

Edit:

Yo, Purp! I'm glad we have the board rules back, twitter words great as a source, we can like posts, but we need our emojis! Or else we all end up like Paul Pierce, yo.

yo they clowning on PP right now

They're still available. You can type them in manually if you know the character sequence, or hit the "Switch to Full Reply Screen" button in which you can then access the list to choose from.



... see

Well, UBB emoticons and Emojis are two different thing.

Ahh, I see what you were getting at. Nevermind...