What is Wrong With the Cavs?
Why are the Cleveland Cavaliers on the brink of elimination from the playoffs despite posting the league's best regular season record for two years in a row?My newest CavsNews.com article dispels some myths while taking an in-depth look at that question (6/19/15 edit: the link to CavsNews.com no longer works, so I have posted the original article below):
Entering this
year’s playoffs, the Cleveland Cavaliers seemed to be primed for success while
the aging Boston Celtics had been little better than a .500 team for the
greater portion of the regular season (27-24 in the final 51 games). The Cavs
were nearly unbeatable at home while the Celtics were uncharacteristically
vulnerable in Boston
and displayed a propensity for blowing big leads. All of the trends suggested
that the Cavs should beat the Celtics and TNT’s Charles Barkley even declared that
Cleveland could sweep Boston. I did not predict a sweep
but I expected the Cavs to eliminate Boston
in fewer than seven games, a result that is now impossible in the wake of the
Cavs’ embarrassing 120-88 home loss in game five, the second consecutive time that the Celtics have
routed the Cavs in Quicken Loans Arena. The Celtics deserve credit for playing
some of their best basketball in recent memory, with Rajon Rondo operating at a
very high level and Kevin Garnett looking healthier than he has all year, but
with all due respect to Boston
it is obvious that the Cavs are playing well below their normal standard.
Prior to the
series, I said that the Celtics’ one decisive matchup advantage would be Rondo
versus whoever checked him. I expected LeBron James to have a significant
advantage over Paul Pierce and for Shaquille O’Neal to get various Boston bigs into foul
trouble. Based on how hobbled Garnett looked this season, I thought that
Garnett and Antawn Jamison would be a wash. Ray Allen has an edge over Anthony
Parker but I did not expect that margin to be decisive in the series at this
stage of Allen’s career. Throughout the season, the Cavs had a much more
consistent and productive bench than the Celtics.
After five
games, the reality is that Rondo has been the best player in the series,
confounding the Cavs to the point that they tried so hard to contain him in
game five that they lost track of future Hall of Famers Pierce, Garnett and
Allen. Garnett’s postups have been more consistently effective than Jamison’s
drives to the hoop, though the Cavs could even out that matchup a bit by
providing Jamison with more touches. James is annihilating Pierce overall but
in the pivotal fifth game Pierce clearly got the best of James. O’Neal has shot
a high percentage from the field (.510) and the free throw line (.690, a very
good number for him) and has delivered all that could reasonably be expected
from him in the "Big Bill Cartwright" role. Parker and others have done a credible job
versus Allen, though—like Pierce—Allen did break out in game five.
It is easy to
blame Coach Mike Brown for the Cavs’ problems but I do not think that Brown’s
game plans are defective. When the Cavs have played hard they have beaten the
Celtics but the Celtics dominated when the Cavs played lethargically; NBA
players are highly paid professional athletes, so something is seriously wrong
if the Cavs need “rah, rah” speeches from Brown in order to be motivated.
Brown’s mentor, San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich, mocked that very
concept during his team’s series versus Phoenix; asked if he would remind his
team about some of their earlier playoff successes in order to inspire them
after the Suns took a 2-0 series lead, Popovich could not conceal his disdain
for the reporter’s ignorance and sarcastically said that he might also ask his
team to win one for the Gipper. Providing motivation may be a big deal for high
school and college coaches but in the professional ranks the coach’s primary
responsibility is to devise the correct game plan for each opponent.
No rational
person can reasonably criticize Coach Brown’s capabilities as a game planner; during
his tenure he transformed the Cavs into a defensive-minded team even though
they have always had several players in their rotation who have
limitations/liabilities as individual defenders. Recently, it has become chic
to declare that Coach Brown is poor at making in game adjustments but I have
yet to hear concrete, reasonable suggestions about what he should do
differently. The truth of the matter is that game planning is actually far more
important than the vaunted in game adjustments. Great coaches like Phil Jackson
use their practices to prepare their players for the most likely eventualities
and then those coaches generally sit placidly on the bench during games; most
coaches who you see jumping up and down and ranting and raving during games are
just putting on a show for the TV cameras. If the players are not properly
prepared beforehand then it is doubtful that the coach can make some magical
adjustment that will turn things around in the heat of battle; in fact, the
best “adjustments” are actually moves that were thought of long before the game
began. Hall of Fame football coach Bill Walsh famously “scripted” a certain
number of plays before each game and many fans assumed that this meant that he
ran those plays in a predetermined order regardless of the situation but that
is silly; what Walsh did is prepare several sets of plays for various contingencies
(second and long, third and short, counters to various blitzes, etc.) and then
chose from that list as appropriate. The reason he did this is that he learned
during his time as a Cincinnati assistant coach that when the weather is
freezing and the play clock is running down the circumstances are not ideal to
make in game adjustments: if you have not already prepared something for the
situation at hand then you are in trouble: Walsh compared this to trying to run
a multimillion dollar company by holding an important board meeting outdoors in
freezing cold with severe time constraints.
Anyone who
praises Coach Brown’s game planning but criticizes Coach Brown’s in game
coaching either does not understand how coaching really works at the
professional level or is simply trying to call Brown incompetent without using
that word; if the Cavs are really failing to adjust during games then that
means that either the players are not executing correctly or the game plan is
flawed/incomplete. There are no mystery plays or magic plays; both teams in a
playoff series are very familiar with what the other team runs and they go into
each game with plans to counteract the opponent’s favorite sets but it is up to
the players to execute those plans. For instance, when reporters kept asking
Boston Coach Doc Rivers about the possibility of LeBron James being switched
onto Rajon Rondo at some point, Rivers replied that the Celtics had factored
this into their planning before the series began. If/when the Cavs put James on
Rondo for an extended period of time Rivers will not make an “in game
adjustment”; he will merely remind his players to execute whatever game plan he
put into place before the series. The same is true for Coach Brown regarding
various moves that Rivers might make.
The only
thing that I would criticize about Brown’s coaching this year is the way that
he “rested” players at the end of the regular season. I have never liked that
approach in any sport; it has yet to work for the Indianapolis Colts, who
almost annually race out to the best record in the NFL but won their only Super
Bowl title in the one season in which they did not have the best record and
thus did not “rest” players. The Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen Chicago Bulls
went 72-10 and 69-13 in back to back seasons during their second three-peat,
with those star players logging heavy minutes even in “meaningless” late season
games. The point is that there really are no “meaningless” games—and this was
even more true for the Cavs because they needed to develop chemistry among
various players who had not spent much time on the court together. Back in
March after Shaquille O’Neal got hurt, I wrote that the one
obstacle that could derail Cleveland’s championship quest is that during the
playoffs the Cavs would have to develop on court chemistry on the fly because
key members of their rotation had not played together very much during the
season. The Cavs were so much better than the Chicago Bulls that the talent
disparity made up for any chemistry problems in the first round but playing
against a Boston team whose nucleus won the 2008 NBA title has revealed that
the Cavs are not “on a string” defensively the way that Coach Brown would like
them to be; many times in game five you saw two defenders run at one Celtic
only to leave another Celtic wide open. Those kinds of communication issues are
only solved by practice and repetition and that is why I firmly believe that
the Cavs should have set up their playoff rotation during the final regular
season games. The Orlando Magic took their final games seriously even though
they were “meaningless” in terms of the Eastern Conference standings and it is
no coincidence that they are the hottest team in the playoffs right now.
It is not realistic
to suggest that Coach Brown bench Mo Williams because Williams has difficulty
guarding Rajon Rondo. Guess what—most NBA point guards have trouble defending
Rondo; that is why Rondo is an All-Star. The World Champion L.A. Lakers
sometimes have to crossmatch because starting point guard Derek Fisher cannot
keep up with his counterpart but you don’t see Phil Jackson benching a player
who is a key member of the starting lineup. Williams ranks second on the Cavs
in the Boston
series with 29 assists but he has only committed seven turnovers; James leads
the Cavs with 33 assists but he also has 18 turnovers. There is no question
that the Cavs need for Williams to improve his shooting percentage but taking
him out of his comfort zone as a starter is unlikely to help in that regard.
ESPN analyst/Hall of Fame Coach Dr. Jack Ramsay made a great point during a
recent radio interview: after his 1977 Portland Trail Blazers lost the first
two games of the NBA Finals to the Philadelphia 76ers, his assistant coaches
made all kinds of suggestions about strategy changes and lineup alterations but
Ramsay concluded that if he so drastically altered his approach that he would
be sending the wrong message to the team. Instead, Ramsay told his players that
they had not yet played their best game but that if they executed properly that
they were good enough to beat Philadelphia.
Portland won
four straight games to capture the championship.
Some
observers complain that the Cavs play too slowly on offense, relying too
heavily on postups by Shaquille O’Neal instead of utilizing a smaller, quicker
lineup. Did Mike D’Antoni or Don Nelson win an NBA championship when I was not
looking? NBA championship teams almost always feature a strong post presence.
Even Jordan’s
Chicago Bulls had first Bill Cartwright and later Luc Longley and those teams
generally featured their centers early in the game in order try to draw fouls
and also to force the opposing team to reveal its defensive game plan. Coach
Brown is correct to utilize O’Neal in a similar fashion. It is not like O’Neal
is shooting the ball 20 times a game but even with limited touches he has often
been able to create foul trouble for the opposing team and to get the Cavs in
the bonus early, an important factor that casual fans do not fully appreciate.
Depending on
how the opponent guards O’Neal, the Cavs can then run different actions to free
up cutters and/or three point shooters on the weak side. That is how the Cavs
built an eight point lead in game five. As O’Neal correctly noted after the
game, the Cavs did not lose because of how they played offensively but rather
because of defensive breakdowns.
The most
important thing for a basketball team to do offensively is create penetration
into the painted area; that is how a team generates high percentage shots. That
can be accomplished by posting up, by driving to the hoop or by passing to
cutters. When O’Neal is in the game he is the team’s best postup option; at
other times, the Cavs penetrate into the paint via drives by James, Jamison,
Williams or Delonte West. The Cavs ranked ninth in scoring during the regular
season—ahead of the Lakers and Celtics and right behind the Magic---and they
finished third in field goal percentage, so there is little statistical support
for the contention that Coach Brown’s offensive game plan is inefficient. The
Cavs rank fourth in playoff scoring and third in field goal percentage, so it
is not like their offense has fallen apart in the postseason, either.
So if Coach
Brown is not the problem and playing “small ball” is not the answer then why are
the Cavs facing elimination tonight? The bottom line is simple: even the best
game plan in the world will fail if the team’s best player does not invest his
mind, heart, body and soul in the process of trying to win a championship. If
LeBron James plays at an MVP level and does his part to execute the game plan
then his teammates will follow suit and the Cavs will win this series—but after
seeing the Cavs lose three of the previous four games to the Celtics it seems
increasingly unlikely that James is willing to put his stamp on this series in
that manner. The strangest thing so far in this series—other than the fact that
Cleveland lost two home games—was the Twilight
Zone-like vibe of the postgame press conferences after Cleveland's
game two loss. First, Coach Brown stormed into the room, angrily called out
his team and uttered an expletive during a live NBA TV broadcast; then James
calmly spoke to the media as if he did not have a care in the world, denying
that Brown had said any harsh words to the team in the locker room and joking
that perhaps the Coach does not love the media as much as he loves his players.
I sat there thinking that either Brown and James were playing “good cop, bad
cop” or else there was a serious disconnect between them. It seemed like James’
great game three performance brushed any internal problems under the rug but
the past two games have made it increasingly apparent that while Brown is very
concerned and disappointed by his team’s poor performance and lack of execution
James just does not think that this is a big deal.
Brown is
right to be upset, because he very likely will be fired if the Cavs fail to win
the championship—but James may be deluding himself if he is assuming that he
will definitely have many other opportunities to win a ring. History is
littered with the stories of great players and powerful teams that seemed
destined to win championships but fell short due to injuries and other
unforeseen factors. Dan Marino made it to the Super Bowl after his second
season and then never again appeared in the big game. There is no guarantee
that James will return to the NBA Finals and it is far from certain that he
will ever again play for a team that is as deep, talented and well balanced as
this Cleveland team. If James’ apparent indifference is his way of signaling
that he wants to play for a different coach and/or a different team he may look
back in 10 years and realize that he squandered his best chance to win a ring.
James needs to rouse himself out of whatever mental funk he is in and perform
in games six and seven the way that he did in game three.
Labels: Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron James, Mike Brown
posted by David Friedman @ 2:09 PM
6 Comments:
David - that was the best writing I have seen on this subject. Great, intelligent read - as always!
I wonder what the hell Lebron is thinking. You hinted that he is trying to get rid of his coach - you really think that is the reason for his play and behavior? Could he really be so childish?
Yogi:
LeBron's words and body language directed toward the bench in game five were not positive, to say the least. I cannot say for sure that LeBron is trying to get rid of his coach but there are circumstantial reasons to wonder if this is the case. LeBron would not be the first superstar to try to get rid of a coach--Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan are widely believed to have had major roles in ousting Paul Westhead and Doug Collins respectively--but, needless to say, if that is the message LeBron was trying to send then he picked a horrible time and method to send it.
Do you think it might be a slight distraction to the team during game five to have John Calipari sitting on the baseline near Dan Gilbert and right next to the Cavs' bench? It has been well documented that LeBron and Calipari are closely tied together. Who do you think invited Calipari to have such a good seat? More importantly, what was the motivation to do so?
Roland Lazenby once wrote that Phil Jackson essentially kicked Jerry West out of the Lakers' locker room as a power play--and West was ostensibly Jackson's boss! Do you think that Brown has that kind of juice in Cleveland? Brown is in a no-win situation right now; if LeBron wakes up and leads the Cavs to the title then he will get all of the accolades but if LeBron sleepwalks through game six then Brown will be fired.
David,
I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that but re-watching this series leads me to think that Lebron purposely tanked this series. Don't ask me if I have proof because I don't. I know people want to say that his elbow is really bothering but I saw Lebron dunking hard on Thursday night. If he had a bad elbow, would he able to dunk like that? My guess is losing this series works in his favor much more than winning it. It opens up things for him and gives Lebron James unprecedented power over the Cavs or any other team(except the Lakers). It gets Mike Brown fired(with a credible excuse), gets a lot of players traded, allows lebron to hire his own coach...Think about it, If Lebron won this series and eventually the 'ship, He will be stuck with Mike Brown and the current cast, if he leaves he'll be crucified for it.
Again this is just pure speculation but watching this series I can't let the tanking idea out of my mind. Lebron looked disengaged all series.
Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan or even Kobe bryant would never tank a series just so they could pull a power play.
....continued
David,
John Hollinger already wrote an article saying that Cleveland lost because Lebron didn't received any help. What he failed to mention is that for a team who's always joking around with each other, watching Lebron looked so detached from the series had to have a negative impact on the team.
The interesting part is that the Boston Celtics know that Lebron gave them the series too.
Anonymous:
It is evident that LeBron did not exert maximum effort during this series. Only he knows his true reasons/motivations but his public comments and his body language on the bench strongly suggest that he is not on the same page with Mike Brown. James surely knows that Brown's job is on the line, yet in the postgame press conference after game six he repeatedly praised Doc Rivers' game plans but only offered tepid praise--at best--regarding Coach Brown's game plans.
Jack F:
I don't know what else to say regarding various writers who write things that don't make sense. My best advice to you is stop wasting your time reading garbage and encourage anyone you know who is interested in objective basketball commentary to check out what I am doing here.
Post a Comment
<< Home