Shorthanded Cavs Own NBA's Best Record
Confounding the predictions and analysis of many "experts," the Cleveland Cavaliers now own the best record in the NBA even though they are currently without the services of two of the main cogs in their rotation, All-Star guard Mo Williams and versatile guard Delonte West (who led the Cavs in minutes played during last year's playoffs).TNT's Charles Barkley constantly lambastes Cleveland's offense and it seems like every beat writer around the league has some trade proposal that will supposedly bolster Cleveland's roster but meanwhile Coach Mike Brown has successfully integrated offseason acquisitions Shaquille O'Neal, Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon into the fold and the Cavs are poised to make a serious run at the 2010 championship.
My newest CavsNews article takes a closer look at Cleveland's recent success (6/19/15 edit: the link to CavsNews.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
Many
“experts” keep speculating about trades that the Cleveland Cavaliers might make
to bolster their supposedly inadequate roster—but in the past few days the Cavs
moved to the top of the NBA standings despite losing two key players from their
rotation! All-Star guard Mo Williams will be out for four to six weeks due to a
left shoulder injury, while Delonte West’s status is uncertain because of a broken
finger, but the deep and talented Cavs continue to find ways to win. This is
hardly a case of addition by subtraction—the Cavs certainly miss the
contributions that West and Williams can make—but it is becoming more and more
difficult for anyone to credibly suggest that LeBron James’ “supporting cast”
is somehow deficient. This is not meant in any way to disparage how well James
is playing; James is once again performing at an MVP level but the point is
that he is in an excellent situation: the Cavs are a defensive-minded team
whose players have well defined roles and that means that in most fourth
quarters the score will be close enough that James can take over down the
stretch if necessary. That is the same formula that Michael Jordan’s Chicago
Bulls used to win six championships in the 1990s and that Kobe Bryant’s L.A.
Lakers used to win last year’s title: limit the burden placed on the superstar
early in most games so that he is fresh enough to be the “closer.”
Last Thursday,
the Cavs—sans Williams--beat the L.A. Lakers to sweep the season series with the reigning NBA champions.
West suffered his injury during that contest and has not played since then but
the Cavs still beat a much improved Oklahoma
City team and a solid Miami Heat squad. Coach Mike
Brown made some nice adjustments in each of those three games. Versus the
Lakers, Brown started West at point guard in place of Williams so that the Cavs
would have another ballhandler on the court in addition to James but in crunch
time Brown shifted West to shooting guard defensively and had him harass
Bryant, a job that West performed much more effectively than starting shooting
guard Anthony Parker did earlier in the game. With neither West nor Williams
available versus Oklahoma City,
Brown started Daniel Gibson at point guard. Gibson is a three point specialist (his
.483 three point field goal percentage leads the league this season) who is not
a great defender or playmaker. Gibson has started for the Cavs before—including
some games in the 2007 NBA Finals—and he is a John Paxson/B.J. Armstrong type,
a point guard who can make some plays for his teammates but is best utilized as
a spot up shooter. Gibson did not have a great shooting performance against the
Thunder (13 points on 5-13 field goal shooting) but he did hit three of his
eight three point attempts, including a huge trey with 8.7 seconds remaining to
put the Cavs up by two points. Gibson also started versus Miami and this time he was even more
productive, contributing 15 points on 5-10 field goal shooting (including 4-6
on three pointers). He only had one assist but he also only had one turnover in
a team-high 41 minutes.
Shaquille
O’Neal has emerged as an important offensive weapon now that the Cavs cannot
rely on dribble penetration by Williams or West. O’Neal scored a season-high 22
points on 8-10 field goal shooting versus the Thunder and he had 19 points on
9-13 field goal shooting against the Heat; during significant stretches of time
during both games the Cavs ran their offense through O’Neal in the post. Every
possession when O’Neal dominates the action is a possession that preserves
James for the stretch run—and a possession that can potentially get the
opposing team in foul trouble. Even though O’Neal is a poor free throw shooter,
the fouls that he draws help the Cavs get into the bonus, which results in more
free throw attempts for James and others.
The Miami
game provides a microcosm of the limitations of basketball statistical
analysis; a “stat guru” can only go by what the numbers say (O’Neal is
averaging just 11.2 ppg this season) but someone who watches basketball with
understanding and evaluates players based on their skill sets is able to more
completely ascertain exactly how effective individual players really are in the
context of their roles on their teams. O’Neal recently referred to
himself—quite correctly—as a “high level role player” (which is just another
way of saying "Big Bill Cartwright") but it is important to understand that on any given
night he still can present a significant matchup problem for the opposing team
(in contrast to other players around the league who may have similar seasonal
statistics but are not capable of shouldering a bigger offensive load if called
upon to do so); the difference between now and three or four years ago is that
O’Neal cannot have that kind of impact every single game or even necessarily
for 40-plus minutes in one particular game.
Labels: Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James
posted by David Friedman @ 4:55 PM
4 Comments:
nice post, here's an article that might be of interest to you:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/gabriele_marcotti/article7000809.ece
it's about statistics in football
ST:
I don't follow football (soccer) that much but the article that you cited is interesting because of the way that it delineates the limitations of statistical analysis.
Take a look at this one:
http://www.emptythebench.com/2010/01/26/lebron-james-fouls/
It's well written and would seem to a casual reader that this guy knows his stuff. However, this is a perfect example of an irresponsible use of numbers. He doesn't mention even watching a single LeBron James play! If he just watches one game and observes James closely, he'd have the answer, instead he compares LeBron's numbers with other players who have different play styles and different defensive schemes.
This guy has absolutely no idea what constitutes a good defense. There is no correlation between number of fouls and defensive ability.
He just looked at the box score and picked some numbers that would confirm a preconceived idea that he probably has read somewhere else.
Z
On that article, as soon as I saw the author, I dismissed it.
This is the same idiot who by going exclusively through stats steadfastly claims that Kobe is vastly overrated and should only be considered a good shooting guard and nothing else.
Same author claims that Pau is the MVP of the Lakers. I think Pau is a fantastic player and integral part of the team but no way is he the MVP of Lakers.
I think advanced stats are a useful tool to shed light in some of the harder to gauge aspects of the sport. But the author commits the classic mistake of using it exclusively. There is no one infallible tool for evaluation. I think the best way is to use all of them, experienced observation, stats, etc.
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