jbk1234 wrote:LivingLegend wrote:jbk1234 wrote:I mean every team is doing that because roster spots are at stake. Plus, Covid scrambled everything and there were a couple of injuries.
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Screw a roster spot lol The Cavs have enough problems with their starting rotation let alone dedicating entire practice games to finding out who they want as their 13th-15th men on the bench
I mean 72 games is a lot of time to figure things. Unless we have a really good second half of the season, I don't think the playoffs are in the cards. I suspect the Cavs may treat the first 20 games or so of this season like preseason. It would not shock me if we only won 5-8 games in those first 20 until they settle into a starting lineup that works. It's pretty hard for a rebuilding team to do that in the preseason anyway because no one else is really playing their regular season starters either. You don't know how much of what you're seeing is going to hold up. Knicks fans are ready to crown Quigley ROY after beating some G League rotations.
We can only do so much with the short pre-season and 4 games, but it was a chance to get a jump on other teams that will be "load managing" their players and playing a lot of mishmash lineups. Maybe this is the year we finally move out the players who would rather get their coach fired than work hard in pre-season?
You're right we do have very basic things to do like sort out our rotations and figure out what works best, but there's still the matter of what's the ceiling on that? On paper some lineups compliment each other better, but until we see it on the floor ... who knows?
I can usually go through our 5-man units from the previous season and at least make some predictions, but there's not much data there and players have changed. For instance, for those who'd like to see Garland sent to the bench, Sexton-Dellavedova-Osman-Love-Thompson was a decent lineup - but Thompson is gone, and it's unclear if Delly is healthy/can be more than an extra coach.
So, given the roster as it is, who can step in and fill the same role in that lineup? Potentially Drummond and Exum, but the data from last season indicates that individually swapping Exum for Delly and Drummond for Thompson was not effective. So, tbd...