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3 Weeks til the Lottery.

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JonFromVA
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#21 » by JonFromVA » Wed Jun 2, 2021 5:32 pm

Stillwater wrote:I am not defending the past because it was a bust scenario and I have no idea where it came from nor can I find the source now so it was probably untrue, and probably not even worth getting into , but Bennett even if he was picked 20th lacked the motivation to work through the hate associated with him in his rookie season struggles after being thrown in the fire coming off injury and surgery out of shape and lost his shot developed sleep apnea had asthma the list of excuses was endless etc... He never should have been drafted in the top of the draft but in a terribly weak draft where nobody would give up value to go get the Dipos or OPJs of the class the Cavs just took the guy they wanted the most for fit and Bennet was widely considered a top 10 pick with no clear separation on paper between him and others available. It was not only a bad luck pick for them it was by far one of the most unimpressive draft classes outside sleepers like Giannis and Gobert that we have ever seen.
lesson: never pick for need unless there is no clear better player available and make sure you get all the medicals not the cliff notes version before you draft anyone.


You got a lot right here :clap: except the bolded part ... the Cavs had Thompson at PF still at that point, and admitted they took a shot on Bennett after being unable to trade down because they felt he had the highest upside and Dan Gilbert would rather roll the dice for a big win than settle for ok to good.

16 & 8 and 37% on 3pters in just 27mpg as a 19year old was pretty advanced for his age compared to what the other lottery prospects did as freshman.

So, on paper at least, there was some reason for their thinking.

And I know from local coverage that the Wizards were seriously considering taking Bennett at 3.

However, David Griffin (the biggest proponent for Bennett in the organization) would later on admit the main thing they missed was that Bennett could not cope with adversity.

So, that's partially how we ended up drafting a player like Collin who sees any negative comment as a challenge who after losing all but 2 teammates in an NCAA game doesn't raise the white flag but fights his hardest to overcome the odds.

Teams should draft for fit within a given tier, but part of what determines those tiers should definitely include those intangibles that the Cavs missed in Bennett.

Any organization that starts from ground zero will build up list of do's and dont's over time ... and they're pretty much all learned in the most painful way (by direct failure). That we keep restarting from ground zero every 4 years or less, falls on Dan Gilbert.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#22 » by Stillwater » Wed Jun 2, 2021 5:47 pm

JonFromVA wrote:
Stillwater wrote:I am not defending the past because it was a bust scenario and I have no idea where it came from nor can I find the source now so it was probably untrue, and probably not even worth getting into , but Bennett even if he was picked 20th lacked the motivation to work through the hate associated with him in his rookie season struggles after being thrown in the fire coming off injury and surgery out of shape and lost his shot developed sleep apnea had asthma the list of excuses was endless etc... He never should have been drafted in the top of the draft but in a terribly weak draft where nobody would give up value to go get the Dipos or OPJs of the class the Cavs just took the guy they wanted the most for fit and Bennet was widely considered a top 10 pick with no clear separation on paper between him and others available. It was not only a bad luck pick for them it was by far one of the most unimpressive draft classes outside sleepers like Giannis and Gobert that we have ever seen.
lesson: never pick for need unless there is no clear better player available and make sure you get all the medicals not the cliff notes version before you draft anyone.


You got a lot right here :clap: except the bolded part ... the Cavs had Thompson at PF still at that point, and admitted they took a shot on Bennett after being unable to trade down because they felt he had the highest upside and Dan Gilbert would rather roll the dice for a big win than settle for ok to good.

16 & 8 and 37% on 3pters in just 27mpg as a 19year old was pretty advanced for his age compared to what the other lottery prospects did as freshman.

So, on paper at least, there was some reason for their thinking.

And I know from local coverage that the Wizards were seriously considering taking Bennett at 3.

However, David Griffin (the biggest proponent for Bennett in the organization) would later on admit the main thing they missed was that Bennett could not cope with adversity.

So, that's partially how we ended up drafting a player like Collin who sees any negative comment as a challenge who after losing all but 2 teammates in an NCAA game doesn't raise the white flag but fights his hardest to overcome the odds.

Teams should draft for fit within a given tier, but part of what determines those tiers should definitely include those intangibles that the Cavs missed in Bennett.

Any organization that starts from ground zero will build up list of do's and dont's over time ... and they're pretty much all learned in the most painful way (by direct failure). That we keep restarting from ground zero every 4 years or less, falls on Dan Gilbert.

all I remember thinking was why did they force him to play hurt and fat and of course he sucked out of the gate missing every 3 point attempt he took for what seems like forever. Then i remember hearing he was having a really hard time with asthma and sleep apnea given the nba schedule being far more travel etc etc etc
He had a solid game in college against inferior competition sort of like Brandon Clarke did.
whatever the case if they knew he had bad asthma and took him #1 then no wonder the gm lost his job
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#23 » by jbk1234 » Wed Jun 2, 2021 6:12 pm

JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:
Revenged25 wrote:
Actually they had 2 top 4 picks that year and the 4th pick the following year. Not to mention the vets that were expected to contribute were actually healthy and played decently.
I mean we picked Kyrie, TT, Waiters, Zeller, Karasav, and Bennett. Jarrett Jack and CJ Miles were our *good* vets. Bynum played 15 games before getting banned from the facilities. Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark were our scrub vets. You don't have to have a lot of talent to win 33 games. We traded for Deng and Hawes two-thirds through the season and it still didn't save Grant's job. Only two or three guys from that roster are still in the NBA and most of them washed out within a couple years. That's why I think it's worth putting our win total into the equation.


Kyrie wasn't even taken with our own pick. We could have gotten him regardless of our record.

Our lottery luck through that rebuild was not quite as astronomical as it might seem, but it was certainly very high even before the change in the odds.

Other than Bennett, though, our other high picks were all NBA players and if we'd taken Oladipo like some in the organization preferred we would had another.

Do we win anything with a core of Irving, Waiters, Thompson, Zeller, Wiggins, and Oladipo?

I think they'd have some upside and would be in the playoff mix, but minimally Waiters would need to be traded (again). There's just no path to turn that team in to a championship contender without fooling some other team in to overpaying or lucking in to finding a franchise player. Which is what we did, not via the draft; but because LeBron wanted to come home, and we were able to swap Wiggins for Love before we had a chance to wreck his value.

It's necessary for the organization to project a player's future in terms of talent, skill, fit, etc, and as fans we can play along as well; but we're still talking about young men just out of their teens and we need to be very careful keeping our expectations locked to their level of experience.

Personally, I find it pretty easy to want to stick with a player when we see signs of improvement, paths for improvement, and circumstances that are likely holding them back.

The Cavs botch a lot of stuff, but at least they learned one thing coming out of the last rebuild ... something the smart teams know very well ... and that's that talent and pre-NBA accomplishments do not matter that much unless there's also the right attitude, work-ethic, feel for the game, and character to go along with it.

Alas, one thing the Cavs never seem to get right is figuring out how to play to a young player's strengths and hide his weaknesses. This makes it very hard to trade players for equal or better value to adjust our fit. It just blows my mind that Michael Porter Jr is seemingly valued so much higher than Collin Sexton. If we'd drafted Porter Jr and Denver had drafted Sexton, I seriously doubt that's the case (especially with Jamal Murray out right now).
I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J327A using RealGM mobile app
cbosh4mvp wrote:
Jarret Allen isn’t winning you anything. Garland won’t show up in the playoffs. Mobley is a glorified dunk man. Mitchell has some experience but is a liability on defense. To me, the Cavs are a treadmill team.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#24 » by JonFromVA » Wed Jun 2, 2021 6:46 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I mean we picked Kyrie, TT, Waiters, Zeller, Karasav, and Bennett. Jarrett Jack and CJ Miles were our *good* vets. Bynum played 15 games before getting banned from the facilities. Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark were our scrub vets. You don't have to have a lot of talent to win 33 games. We traded for Deng and Hawes two-thirds through the season and it still didn't save Grant's job. Only two or three guys from that roster are still in the NBA and most of them washed out within a couple years. That's why I think it's worth putting our win total into the equation.


Kyrie wasn't even taken with our own pick. We could have gotten him regardless of our record.

Our lottery luck through that rebuild was not quite as astronomical as it might seem, but it was certainly very high even before the change in the odds.

Other than Bennett, though, our other high picks were all NBA players and if we'd taken Oladipo like some in the organization preferred we would had another.

Do we win anything with a core of Irving, Waiters, Thompson, Zeller, Wiggins, and Oladipo?

I think they'd have some upside and would be in the playoff mix, but minimally Waiters would need to be traded (again). There's just no path to turn that team in to a championship contender without fooling some other team in to overpaying or lucking in to finding a franchise player. Which is what we did, not via the draft; but because LeBron wanted to come home, and we were able to swap Wiggins for Love before we had a chance to wreck his value.

It's necessary for the organization to project a player's future in terms of talent, skill, fit, etc, and as fans we can play along as well; but we're still talking about young men just out of their teens and we need to be very careful keeping our expectations locked to their level of experience.

Personally, I find it pretty easy to want to stick with a player when we see signs of improvement, paths for improvement, and circumstances that are likely holding them back.

The Cavs botch a lot of stuff, but at least they learned one thing coming out of the last rebuild ... something the smart teams know very well ... and that's that talent and pre-NBA accomplishments do not matter that much unless there's also the right attitude, work-ethic, feel for the game, and character to go along with it.

Alas, one thing the Cavs never seem to get right is figuring out how to play to a young player's strengths and hide his weaknesses. This makes it very hard to trade players for equal or better value to adjust our fit. It just blows my mind that Michael Porter Jr is seemingly valued so much higher than Collin Sexton. If we'd drafted Porter Jr and Denver had drafted Sexton, I seriously doubt that's the case (especially with Jamal Murray out right now).
I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.


Fact is, we've been stuck in a pandemic the past two shortened seasons and we've struggled to keep a consistent starting lineup on the floor, let alone one that actually makes sense.

If you're willing to make decisions on some 100 minutes of lineups playing together then you should be ready to conclude Dean Wade should be starting at PF over Larry Nance.

If you don't need more than 60 minutes to be convinced, the starting 5 with Love-Allen was better than those.

And hey, if 20 minutes of statistical evidence gets it done ... Love-Drummond was terrific,

I have a hard time grading these guys with anything worse than an incomplete.

Our constant infusion of 19 year olds struggling to learn how to compete as starters from the get go pretty much insured that even if everyone managed to stay healthy.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#25 » by toooskies » Wed Jun 2, 2021 8:59 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I mean we picked Kyrie, TT, Waiters, Zeller, Karasav, and Bennett. Jarrett Jack and CJ Miles were our *good* vets. Bynum played 15 games before getting banned from the facilities. Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark were our scrub vets. You don't have to have a lot of talent to win 33 games. We traded for Deng and Hawes two-thirds through the season and it still didn't save Grant's job. Only two or three guys from that roster are still in the NBA and most of them washed out within a couple years. That's why I think it's worth putting our win total into the equation.


Kyrie wasn't even taken with our own pick. We could have gotten him regardless of our record.

Our lottery luck through that rebuild was not quite as astronomical as it might seem, but it was certainly very high even before the change in the odds.

Other than Bennett, though, our other high picks were all NBA players and if we'd taken Oladipo like some in the organization preferred we would had another.

Do we win anything with a core of Irving, Waiters, Thompson, Zeller, Wiggins, and Oladipo?

I think they'd have some upside and would be in the playoff mix, but minimally Waiters would need to be traded (again). There's just no path to turn that team in to a championship contender without fooling some other team in to overpaying or lucking in to finding a franchise player. Which is what we did, not via the draft; but because LeBron wanted to come home, and we were able to swap Wiggins for Love before we had a chance to wreck his value.

It's necessary for the organization to project a player's future in terms of talent, skill, fit, etc, and as fans we can play along as well; but we're still talking about young men just out of their teens and we need to be very careful keeping our expectations locked to their level of experience.

Personally, I find it pretty easy to want to stick with a player when we see signs of improvement, paths for improvement, and circumstances that are likely holding them back.

The Cavs botch a lot of stuff, but at least they learned one thing coming out of the last rebuild ... something the smart teams know very well ... and that's that talent and pre-NBA accomplishments do not matter that much unless there's also the right attitude, work-ethic, feel for the game, and character to go along with it.

Alas, one thing the Cavs never seem to get right is figuring out how to play to a young player's strengths and hide his weaknesses. This makes it very hard to trade players for equal or better value to adjust our fit. It just blows my mind that Michael Porter Jr is seemingly valued so much higher than Collin Sexton. If we'd drafted Porter Jr and Denver had drafted Sexton, I seriously doubt that's the case (especially with Jamal Murray out right now).
I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J327A using RealGM mobile app

To be fair, in a full 82 game season, we might have put up 25 wins each of the past two years. We only had 46 and 50 losses total, so it's hard to lose badly in 40 of them. Roughly 17 losses within 10 points this year (so 33 bad losses). Roughly 21 losses within 10 last year, so 25 bad losses last year. (Exact numbers may be off, I'm just looking at the season bar charts on basketball-reference.)

But there were a bunch of roster decisions made in the name of development and asset acquisition over winning (starting Okoro, trading Exum without getting a veteran backup guard, starting Allen over Drummond, trading McGee) that's kind of a constant stream of demoralization for anyone who's trying to win. One wonders if there are more coaching decisions there too (i.e. sacrifice team offense to let Sexton develop his play) that weren't winning decisions that might play into future development.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#26 » by jbk1234 » Wed Jun 2, 2021 11:32 pm

JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
Kyrie wasn't even taken with our own pick. We could have gotten him regardless of our record.

Our lottery luck through that rebuild was not quite as astronomical as it might seem, but it was certainly very high even before the change in the odds.

Other than Bennett, though, our other high picks were all NBA players and if we'd taken Oladipo like some in the organization preferred we would had another.

Do we win anything with a core of Irving, Waiters, Thompson, Zeller, Wiggins, and Oladipo?

I think they'd have some upside and would be in the playoff mix, but minimally Waiters would need to be traded (again). There's just no path to turn that team in to a championship contender without fooling some other team in to overpaying or lucking in to finding a franchise player. Which is what we did, not via the draft; but because LeBron wanted to come home, and we were able to swap Wiggins for Love before we had a chance to wreck his value.

It's necessary for the organization to project a player's future in terms of talent, skill, fit, etc, and as fans we can play along as well; but we're still talking about young men just out of their teens and we need to be very careful keeping our expectations locked to their level of experience.

Personally, I find it pretty easy to want to stick with a player when we see signs of improvement, paths for improvement, and circumstances that are likely holding them back.

The Cavs botch a lot of stuff, but at least they learned one thing coming out of the last rebuild ... something the smart teams know very well ... and that's that talent and pre-NBA accomplishments do not matter that much unless there's also the right attitude, work-ethic, feel for the game, and character to go along with it.

Alas, one thing the Cavs never seem to get right is figuring out how to play to a young player's strengths and hide his weaknesses. This makes it very hard to trade players for equal or better value to adjust our fit. It just blows my mind that Michael Porter Jr is seemingly valued so much higher than Collin Sexton. If we'd drafted Porter Jr and Denver had drafted Sexton, I seriously doubt that's the case (especially with Jamal Murray out right now).
I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.


Fact is, we've been stuck in a pandemic the past two shortened seasons and we've struggled to keep a consistent starting lineup on the floor, let alone one that actually makes sense.

If you're willing to make decisions on some 100 minutes of lineups playing together then you should be ready to conclude Dean Wade should be starting at PF over Larry Nance.

If you don't need more than 60 minutes to be convinced, the starting 5 with Love-Allen was better than those.

And hey, if 20 minutes of statistical evidence gets it done ... Love-Drummond was terrific,

I have a hard time grading these guys with anything worse than an incomplete.

Our constant infusion of 19 year olds struggling to learn how to compete as starters from the get go pretty much insured that even if everyone managed to stay healthy.
If Kevin Love can't stay on the court because he's habitually injured, then you have at least one solid data point which is that you can't rely on Love to be available as a starter. But the team played well enough with Nance starting, and we have no other realistic option. Honestly the two of them should split minutes anyway and maybe they'll both be available more often.

But every team had to deal with Covid and injuries this year. That wasn't unique to the Cavs. It's just very clear to me watching the playoffs, particularly some of the Western Conference teams, that they're different caliber teams. The Grizzlies and Suns have plenty of young guys getting significant run. The contrast is pretty striking.

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cbosh4mvp wrote:
Jarret Allen isn’t winning you anything. Garland won’t show up in the playoffs. Mobley is a glorified dunk man. Mitchell has some experience but is a liability on defense. To me, the Cavs are a treadmill team.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#27 » by jbk1234 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 1:40 am

toooskies wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
Kyrie wasn't even taken with our own pick. We could have gotten him regardless of our record.

Our lottery luck through that rebuild was not quite as astronomical as it might seem, but it was certainly very high even before the change in the odds.

Other than Bennett, though, our other high picks were all NBA players and if we'd taken Oladipo like some in the organization preferred we would had another.

Do we win anything with a core of Irving, Waiters, Thompson, Zeller, Wiggins, and Oladipo?

I think they'd have some upside and would be in the playoff mix, but minimally Waiters would need to be traded (again). There's just no path to turn that team in to a championship contender without fooling some other team in to overpaying or lucking in to finding a franchise player. Which is what we did, not via the draft; but because LeBron wanted to come home, and we were able to swap Wiggins for Love before we had a chance to wreck his value.

It's necessary for the organization to project a player's future in terms of talent, skill, fit, etc, and as fans we can play along as well; but we're still talking about young men just out of their teens and we need to be very careful keeping our expectations locked to their level of experience.

Personally, I find it pretty easy to want to stick with a player when we see signs of improvement, paths for improvement, and circumstances that are likely holding them back.

The Cavs botch a lot of stuff, but at least they learned one thing coming out of the last rebuild ... something the smart teams know very well ... and that's that talent and pre-NBA accomplishments do not matter that much unless there's also the right attitude, work-ethic, feel for the game, and character to go along with it.

Alas, one thing the Cavs never seem to get right is figuring out how to play to a young player's strengths and hide his weaknesses. This makes it very hard to trade players for equal or better value to adjust our fit. It just blows my mind that Michael Porter Jr is seemingly valued so much higher than Collin Sexton. If we'd drafted Porter Jr and Denver had drafted Sexton, I seriously doubt that's the case (especially with Jamal Murray out right now).
I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-J327A using RealGM mobile app

To be fair, in a full 82 game season, we might have put up 25 wins each of the past two years. We only had 46 and 50 losses total, so it's hard to lose badly in 40 of them. Roughly 17 losses within 10 points this year (so 33 bad losses). Roughly 21 losses within 10 last year, so 25 bad losses last year. (Exact numbers may be off, I'm just looking at the season bar charts on basketball-reference.)

But there were a bunch of roster decisions made in the name of development and asset acquisition over winning (starting Okoro, trading Exum without getting a veteran backup guard, starting Allen over Drummond, trading McGee) that's kind of a constant stream of demoralization for anyone who's trying to win. One wonders if there are more coaching decisions there too (i.e. sacrifice team offense to let Sexton develop his play) that weren't winning decisions that might play into future development.
I agree that we made some developmental moves. Although given the year Cedi had, I'm not sure how much starting Okoro mattered. Exum managed to be more injury prone than Love and got hurt again before the trade. I also wouldn't include starting Allen over Drummond. We got run out of the gym starting Drummond on that West Coast trip. We didn't bench him until the end of it. By that time it was pretty clear we weren't a good team.

I just really hope the plan for next season isn't to once again rely on Love's health at the PF position. I also hope that they don't hand Sexton the bag of money first and then tell him they want to see more on the defensive end of the floor. That's what Minny did with Wiggins and the results were disastrous. If you can't get a guy to play the right way before you pay him, good luck doing so after. Finally, they need to use the MLE on a backup PG.

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cbosh4mvp wrote:
Jarret Allen isn’t winning you anything. Garland won’t show up in the playoffs. Mobley is a glorified dunk man. Mitchell has some experience but is a liability on defense. To me, the Cavs are a treadmill team.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#28 » by KuruptedCav » Thu Jun 3, 2021 2:01 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.


Fact is, we've been stuck in a pandemic the past two shortened seasons and we've struggled to keep a consistent starting lineup on the floor, let alone one that actually makes sense.

If you're willing to make decisions on some 100 minutes of lineups playing together then you should be ready to conclude Dean Wade should be starting at PF over Larry Nance.

If you don't need more than 60 minutes to be convinced, the starting 5 with Love-Allen was better than those.

And hey, if 20 minutes of statistical evidence gets it done ... Love-Drummond was terrific,

I have a hard time grading these guys with anything worse than an incomplete.

Our constant infusion of 19 year olds struggling to learn how to compete as starters from the get go pretty much insured that even if everyone managed to stay healthy.
If Kevin Love can't stay on the court because he's habitually injured, then you have at least one solid data point which is that you can't rely on Love to be available as a starter. But the team played well enough with Nance starting, and we have no other realistic option. Honestly the two of them should split minutes anyway and maybe they'll both be available more often.

But every team had to deal with Covid and injuries this year. That wasn't unique to the Cavs. It's just very clear to me watching the playoffs, particularly some of the Western Conference teams, that they're different caliber teams. The Grizzlies and Suns have plenty of young guys getting significant run. The contrast is pretty striking.

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To be fair, the Cavs had a level of roster churn that was next level. 25 players logged minutes. The average number for the Celtics, Wizards, Pacers, and Hornets was 19.5.

The Cavs were playing 4 on 5 with no consistency in practice, lineups, etc.

It churned up Hartenstein, and brought in Allen. But it’s not fair to pretend it didn’t come at a continuity cost.


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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#29 » by Revenged25 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 2:15 pm

This next season we shouldn't see massive roster movements throughout, baring injury/covid issues. I think the roster we ended the season with will most likely be what we'll see for next season with the only additions being our hopefully top 5 pick and maybe a better back-up PG that we use the MLE on.

The only reason there might not be consistency with the line-ups, baring injury/covid issues once again, will likely occur to testing our rotations to find the best fit, which will also likely depend on who the pick is. I just don't see a lot of opportunities for the Cavs to use their current assets to make additional changes during the middle of the upcoming season unless it's moving an expiring contract like Prince to a team looking to make a move in '22 FA and sending us a slightly longer contract.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#30 » by JonFromVA » Thu Jun 3, 2021 2:43 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.


Fact is, we've been stuck in a pandemic the past two shortened seasons and we've struggled to keep a consistent starting lineup on the floor, let alone one that actually makes sense.

If you're willing to make decisions on some 100 minutes of lineups playing together then you should be ready to conclude Dean Wade should be starting at PF over Larry Nance.

If you don't need more than 60 minutes to be convinced, the starting 5 with Love-Allen was better than those.

And hey, if 20 minutes of statistical evidence gets it done ... Love-Drummond was terrific,

I have a hard time grading these guys with anything worse than an incomplete.

Our constant infusion of 19 year olds struggling to learn how to compete as starters from the get go pretty much insured that even if everyone managed to stay healthy.
If Kevin Love can't stay on the court because he's habitually injured, then you have at least one solid data point which is that you can't rely on Love to be available as a starter. But the team played well enough with Nance starting, and we have no other realistic option. Honestly the two of them should split minutes anyway and maybe they'll both be available more often.

But every team had to deal with Covid and injuries this year. That wasn't unique to the Cavs. It's just very clear to me watching the playoffs, particularly some of the Western Conference teams, that they're different caliber teams. The Grizzlies and Suns have plenty of young guys getting significant run. The contrast is pretty striking.


Feel free to look at the starting lineups those teams are playing, look at the experience level of the players including years in College, count how many years they've played under the same coach/system, count how many minutes they've played together in the same starting lineup ... and then come back and tell me the Cavs situation is nothing unique.

By all means take a look at how much of a contribution the one and done players drafted after ours have made in the playoffs.

Then consider we don't have a floor raiser (let alone a franchise player), we don't have proper floor spacing, our pieces don't actually fit together all that well ... but yet take away Embiid from the 76'ers, LeBron from the Lakers, Young from the Hawks, Morant from the Griz, and you're left with a team on the level of or worse than our two primary starting 5's.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#31 » by Revenged25 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:01 pm

JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
Fact is, we've been stuck in a pandemic the past two shortened seasons and we've struggled to keep a consistent starting lineup on the floor, let alone one that actually makes sense.

If you're willing to make decisions on some 100 minutes of lineups playing together then you should be ready to conclude Dean Wade should be starting at PF over Larry Nance.

If you don't need more than 60 minutes to be convinced, the starting 5 with Love-Allen was better than those.

And hey, if 20 minutes of statistical evidence gets it done ... Love-Drummond was terrific,

I have a hard time grading these guys with anything worse than an incomplete.

Our constant infusion of 19 year olds struggling to learn how to compete as starters from the get go pretty much insured that even if everyone managed to stay healthy.
If Kevin Love can't stay on the court because he's habitually injured, then you have at least one solid data point which is that you can't rely on Love to be available as a starter. But the team played well enough with Nance starting, and we have no other realistic option. Honestly the two of them should split minutes anyway and maybe they'll both be available more often.

But every team had to deal with Covid and injuries this year. That wasn't unique to the Cavs. It's just very clear to me watching the playoffs, particularly some of the Western Conference teams, that they're different caliber teams. The Grizzlies and Suns have plenty of young guys getting significant run. The contrast is pretty striking.


Feel free to look at the starting lineups those teams are playing, look at the experience level of the players including years in College, count how many years they've played under the same coach/system, count how many minutes they've played together in the same starting lineup ... and then come back and tell me the Cavs situation is nothing unique.

By all means take a look at how much of a contribution the one and done players drafted after ours have made in the playoffs.

Then consider we don't have a floor raiser (let alone a franchise player), we don't have proper floor spacing, our pieces don't actually fit together all that well ... but yet take away Embiid from the 76'ers, LeBron from the Lakers, Young from the Hawks, Morant from the Griz, and you're left with a team on the level of or worse than our two primary starting 5's.


Part of why those teams fall apart after those players are gone is that either the teams are built around them, or there is no one else on the roster that could possibly fill even a small portion of the gap left by them. This also goes towards the fact the Cavs don't play towards their players strengths and instead are trying to force them into a specific system that doesn't really work for their abilities and part of what's causing them to struggle.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#32 » by JonFromVA » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:11 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
toooskies wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I hear all of that, but it's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We've been a 20 win team for three years running. It's not that hard to win 30 games in the NBA. What concerns we is that we're not a 20 win team that's losing 20 close games a season and can make it up by learning how to close better. I haven't gone back and done a deep dive, but I suspect we're about .500 in close games. We're still losing badly at least 40 games a season.

We added Allen and Garland made some pretty big strides this season. The only serious minus was Cedi shooting a full .70 worse from three than the year before. Prince shot .415 from 3 so that offset some of Cedi's season.

There are some fundamental questions the Cavs need to ask and answer as they get ready to enter year four of a rebuild.

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To be fair, in a full 82 game season, we might have put up 25 wins each of the past two years. We only had 46 and 50 losses total, so it's hard to lose badly in 40 of them. Roughly 17 losses within 10 points this year (so 33 bad losses). Roughly 21 losses within 10 last year, so 25 bad losses last year. (Exact numbers may be off, I'm just looking at the season bar charts on basketball-reference.)

But there were a bunch of roster decisions made in the name of development and asset acquisition over winning (starting Okoro, trading Exum without getting a veteran backup guard, starting Allen over Drummond, trading McGee) that's kind of a constant stream of demoralization for anyone who's trying to win. One wonders if there are more coaching decisions there too (i.e. sacrifice team offense to let Sexton develop his play) that weren't winning decisions that might play into future development.
I agree that we made some developmental moves. Although given the year Cedi had, I'm not sure how much starting Okoro mattered. Exum managed to be more injury prone than Love and got hurt again before the trade. I also wouldn't include starting Allen over Drummond. We got run out of the gym starting Drummond on that West Coast trip. We didn't bench him until the end of it. By that time it was pretty clear we weren't a good team.

I just really hope the plan for next season isn't to once again rely on Love's health at the PF position. I also hope that they don't hand Sexton the bag of money first and then tell him they want to see more on the defensive end of the floor. That's what Minny did with Wiggins and the results were disastrous. If you can't get a guy to play the right way before you pay him, good luck doing so after. Finally, they need to use the MLE on a backup PG.


We lost Drummond when we traded for Allen. That was his heads up that he wasn't going to get his big deal from the Cavs, then sent him home. Hartenstein was a bright spot for the season, but it cost us McGee. We had a somewhat interesting second unit with Sexton-Windler-Osman-Wade-McGee for all of 22 minutes, and Sexton-Exum-Osman-Nance-McGee for all of 12.

Continuity is important.

That we were able to incorporate Allen and Hartenstein as well as we did is a testament to their low-maintenance style, but once we started churning G-League players in to key positions of the team, most of this past season became a tosser.

It's not just that none of our starting units played more than 137 minutes together this season, it's also about that none of them played at all before January 15th in a season with only a few practice sessions.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#33 » by jbk1234 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:22 pm

Revenged25 wrote:This next season we shouldn't see massive roster movements throughout, baring injury/covid issues. I think the roster we ended the season with will most likely be what we'll see for next season with the only additions being our hopefully top 5 pick and maybe a better back-up PG that we use the MLE on.

The only reason there might not be consistency with the line-ups, baring injury/covid issues once again, will likely occur to testing our rotations to find the best fit, which will also likely depend on who the pick is. I just don't see a lot of opportunities for the Cavs to use their current assets to make additional changes during the middle of the upcoming season unless it's moving an expiring contract like Prince to a team looking to make a move in '22 FA and sending us a slightly longer contract.
See I think the last part about trading Prince for a longer contract and pick probably has to stop as well. You're never getting a balanced roster if you end every season without cap space. If you think this core plus whoever they draft might be enough, then you don't want to put yourself in a position where Love comes off the books but it doesn't matter because you're an over the cap team and Garland needs a new contract.

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cbosh4mvp wrote:
Jarret Allen isn’t winning you anything. Garland won’t show up in the playoffs. Mobley is a glorified dunk man. Mitchell has some experience but is a liability on defense. To me, the Cavs are a treadmill team.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#34 » by jbk1234 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:29 pm

JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:
toooskies wrote:To be fair, in a full 82 game season, we might have put up 25 wins each of the past two years. We only had 46 and 50 losses total, so it's hard to lose badly in 40 of them. Roughly 17 losses within 10 points this year (so 33 bad losses). Roughly 21 losses within 10 last year, so 25 bad losses last year. (Exact numbers may be off, I'm just looking at the season bar charts on basketball-reference.)

But there were a bunch of roster decisions made in the name of development and asset acquisition over winning (starting Okoro, trading Exum without getting a veteran backup guard, starting Allen over Drummond, trading McGee) that's kind of a constant stream of demoralization for anyone who's trying to win. One wonders if there are more coaching decisions there too (i.e. sacrifice team offense to let Sexton develop his play) that weren't winning decisions that might play into future development.
I agree that we made some developmental moves. Although given the year Cedi had, I'm not sure how much starting Okoro mattered. Exum managed to be more injury prone than Love and got hurt again before the trade. I also wouldn't include starting Allen over Drummond. We got run out of the gym starting Drummond on that West Coast trip. We didn't bench him until the end of it. By that time it was pretty clear we weren't a good team.

I just really hope the plan for next season isn't to once again rely on Love's health at the PF position. I also hope that they don't hand Sexton the bag of money first and then tell him they want to see more on the defensive end of the floor. That's what Minny did with Wiggins and the results were disastrous. If you can't get a guy to play the right way before you pay him, good luck doing so after. Finally, they need to use the MLE on a backup PG.


We lost Drummond when we traded for Allen. That was his heads up that he wasn't going to get his big deal from the Cavs, then sent him home. Hartenstein was a bright spot for the season, but it cost us McGee. We had a somewhat interesting second unit with Sexton-Windler-Osman-Wade-McGee for all of 22 minutes, and Sexton-Exum-Osman-Nance-McGee for all of 12.

Continuity is important.

That we were able to incorporate Allen and Hartenstein as well as we did is a testament to their low-maintenance style, but once we started churning G-League players in to key positions of the team, most of this past season became a tosser.

It's not just that none of our starting units played more than 137 minutes together this season, it's also about that none of them played at all before January 15th in a season with only a few practice sessions.
At a certain point, if you're relying on guys like Love and Exum to stay healthy, it's a shame on you situation. But McGee played all season until the trade deadline and outside of two games, one of which was against the Bulls who were without LaVine, I didn't see any improvement when Love came back.

Continuity is important but again, I don't think that's the biggest issue. You can't be as bad as the Cavs were at defending the three and converting three point attempts and win.

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cbosh4mvp wrote:
Jarret Allen isn’t winning you anything. Garland won’t show up in the playoffs. Mobley is a glorified dunk man. Mitchell has some experience but is a liability on defense. To me, the Cavs are a treadmill team.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#35 » by JonFromVA » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:36 pm

Revenged25 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:If Kevin Love can't stay on the court because he's habitually injured, then you have at least one solid data point which is that you can't rely on Love to be available as a starter. But the team played well enough with Nance starting, and we have no other realistic option. Honestly the two of them should split minutes anyway and maybe they'll both be available more often.

But every team had to deal with Covid and injuries this year. That wasn't unique to the Cavs. It's just very clear to me watching the playoffs, particularly some of the Western Conference teams, that they're different caliber teams. The Grizzlies and Suns have plenty of young guys getting significant run. The contrast is pretty striking.


Feel free to look at the starting lineups those teams are playing, look at the experience level of the players including years in College, count how many years they've played under the same coach/system, count how many minutes they've played together in the same starting lineup ... and then come back and tell me the Cavs situation is nothing unique.

By all means take a look at how much of a contribution the one and done players drafted after ours have made in the playoffs.

Then consider we don't have a floor raiser (let alone a franchise player), we don't have proper floor spacing, our pieces don't actually fit together all that well ... but yet take away Embiid from the 76'ers, LeBron from the Lakers, Young from the Hawks, Morant from the Griz, and you're left with a team on the level of or worse than our two primary starting 5's.


Part of why those teams fall apart after those players are gone is that either the teams are built around them, or there is no one else on the roster that could possibly fill even a small portion of the gap left by them. This also goes towards the fact the Cavs don't play towards their players strengths and instead are trying to force them into a specific system that doesn't really work for their abilities and part of what's causing them to struggle.


The thing is none of Garland, Sexton, or Okoro are far enough along to warrant building a team around their strengths. I've talked about how nice Collin might look playing with a LeBron or a Jokic, but that's not really building around Collin ... lol

Likely part of why Kyrie left ... he fit nicely with LeBron and because of that we could ignore his lousy defense and selfish play, but he was always going to be that guy who complimented LeBron, not the other way around.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#36 » by Revenged25 » Thu Jun 3, 2021 3:36 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
Revenged25 wrote:This next season we shouldn't see massive roster movements throughout, baring injury/covid issues. I think the roster we ended the season with will most likely be what we'll see for next season with the only additions being our hopefully top 5 pick and maybe a better back-up PG that we use the MLE on.

The only reason there might not be consistency with the line-ups, baring injury/covid issues once again, will likely occur to testing our rotations to find the best fit, which will also likely depend on who the pick is. I just don't see a lot of opportunities for the Cavs to use their current assets to make additional changes during the middle of the upcoming season unless it's moving an expiring contract like Prince to a team looking to make a move in '22 FA and sending us a slightly longer contract.
See I think the last part about trading Prince for a longer contract and pick probably has to stop as well. You're never getting a balanced roster if you end every season without cap space. If you think this core plus whoever they draft might be enough, then you don't want to put yourself in a position where Love comes off the books but it doesn't matter because you're an over the cap team and Garland needs a new contract.

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Trust me I agree. I think at most I would look to add a player that ended the same time as Love honestly so it would only add 1 year. Also if all goes as we hope, Prince still wouldn't be a huge cog in the line-up and more of the 10th-12th guy in the rotation. We really need to solidify our top 8-9 guys, which I don't see how Prince really fits into it. I would personally prefer/hope for that to be filled by Windler/Nance/Hartenstein, and Love/Cedi. Constantly going past the top 9 guys each game not only messes with our ability to get a consistent line-up that works on the floor, but lowers the overall talent as well.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#37 » by Stillwater » Thu Jun 3, 2021 6:22 pm

Nobody is being built around anyone if they take the best player available every year...
So did they will they or is it all just assumptions that justify the means...
They could have would have should've etc but in the end the players that have grown each season should be retained at all costs and the ones who are on track still have optimism in their corner but are in fact closer to the door as a result.
I was thinking about it today and I would not be surprised if they traded Okoro despite his hustle and upside , not sure I would yet too soon etc... but they might consider the option based on the need for more spacing if they are getting impatient especially if they are picking in a range where they wont get that spacing in the draft without overpicking etc.
Or maybe they just plan on being in the lottery for the next 3 seasons still who knows
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#38 » by JonFromVA » Thu Jun 3, 2021 7:02 pm

I don't see the Cavs trading Okoro, unless they bring someone new in to make decisions and he just hates everything Altman did in the past and believes Okoro has zero offensive upside. Otherwise, I think he's exactly the kind of player a rebuilding team should be investing in, in hopes that he eventually pays off somewhere down the line when his game is fleshed out.

But of course it depends who was on the table.

I might trade a young Jimmy Butler for a young Bradley Beal, but it's not all that hard to add shooting. Morey quickly added Seth Curry, Danny Green, and George Hill to shore up the Sixer's shooting. He didn't ask his one and done draft pick (Tyrese Maxey) to step-in and fix it. He didn't decide he loved Thybulle's defense and that they could live with his 30% 3pt shooting. He didn't even have to trade either of those young players that he didn't intend to start.

Instead Curry and Green stepped in to the starting lineup leaving Simmons the youngest starter at 24.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#39 » by toooskies » Thu Jun 3, 2021 8:35 pm

jbk1234 wrote:
JonFromVA wrote:
jbk1234 wrote:I agree that we made some developmental moves. Although given the year Cedi had, I'm not sure how much starting Okoro mattered. Exum managed to be more injury prone than Love and got hurt again before the trade. I also wouldn't include starting Allen over Drummond. We got run out of the gym starting Drummond on that West Coast trip. We didn't bench him until the end of it. By that time it was pretty clear we weren't a good team.

I just really hope the plan for next season isn't to once again rely on Love's health at the PF position. I also hope that they don't hand Sexton the bag of money first and then tell him they want to see more on the defensive end of the floor. That's what Minny did with Wiggins and the results were disastrous. If you can't get a guy to play the right way before you pay him, good luck doing so after. Finally, they need to use the MLE on a backup PG.


We lost Drummond when we traded for Allen. That was his heads up that he wasn't going to get his big deal from the Cavs, then sent him home. Hartenstein was a bright spot for the season, but it cost us McGee. We had a somewhat interesting second unit with Sexton-Windler-Osman-Wade-McGee for all of 22 minutes, and Sexton-Exum-Osman-Nance-McGee for all of 12.

Continuity is important.

That we were able to incorporate Allen and Hartenstein as well as we did is a testament to their low-maintenance style, but once we started churning G-League players in to key positions of the team, most of this past season became a tosser.

It's not just that none of our starting units played more than 137 minutes together this season, it's also about that none of them played at all before January 15th in a season with only a few practice sessions.
At a certain point, if you're relying on guys like Love and Exum to stay healthy, it's a shame on you situation. But McGee played all season until the trade deadline and outside of two games, one of which was against the Bulls who were without LaVine, I didn't see any improvement when Love came back.

Continuity is important but again, I don't think that's the biggest issue. You can't be as bad as the Cavs were at defending the three and converting three point attempts and win.

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You can go on and on about 3-point defense, which is highly variable and not terribly reliable as a stat from year to year and is the consequence of a lot of things, including coaching. The Knicks went from 28th to 1st, probably thanks to Thibodeau's coaching more than anything.

So I'm very much of the opinion that the Cavs can turn around their D with coaching. But the team was regularly taking 10+ bad threes a game, just by letting Cedi/Dotson/Okoro shoot it this year.

Here's the list of PGs, SGs, and SFs that shot above 35% from 3 this year: Sexton, Garland, Prince, Quinn Cook. (Throw in Love, Nance, and Wade in this category if we're counting PFs.)
Here's the list of PGs, SGs, and SFs that shot below 35% from 3 this year: Cedi (5.5 shots at 31%), Dotson (3.5 at 29%), Okoro (3.2 at 29%), Windler, Delly, Exum, Martin.

You can't shoot 10 shots a game expecting to make 30%, but the Cavs did it all year long.

Cedi and Windler were shooting reasonably well to start the year; Windler's shot dropped off terribly right before he had surgery, so I take back criticizing him too much earlier, his numbers faltered because he was hurt. Can't see anything that might've affected Cedi, but after an average December/January he fell off badly in February onward. Dotson was a 36% shooter the previous two seasons, so he fell off this year as badly as Cedi (but he started badly, finishing back at his 36% number in April).

So maybe the Cavs get better just by Cedi and Windler getting over their down 2021 year. Maybe we bring Dotson back and his shot returns.

Or maybe it's about not having a coherent plan on offense or defense, which is as much or more on the coaching staff than any of the players. Thibs turned the Knicks from 28th in 3 point defense last year to #1 in the league this year with similar personnel.
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Re: 3 Weeks til the Lottery. 

Post#40 » by Stillwater » Thu Jun 3, 2021 8:40 pm

JonFromVA wrote:I don't see the Cavs trading Okoro, unless they bring someone new in to make decisions and he just hates everything Altman did in the past and believes Okoro has zero offensive upside. Otherwise, I think he's exactly the kind of player a rebuilding team should be investing in, in hopes that he eventually pays off somewhere down the line when his game is fleshed out.

But of course it depends who was on the table.

I might trade a young Jimmy Butler for a young Bradley Beal, but it's not all that hard to add shooting. Morey quickly added Seth Curry, Danny Green, and George Hill to shore up the Sixer's shooting. He didn't ask his one and done draft pick (Tyrese Maxey) to step-in and fix it. He didn't decide he loved Thybulle's defense and that they could live with his 30% 3pt shooting. He didn't even have to trade either of those young players that he didn't intend to start.

Instead Curry and Green stepped in to the starting lineup leaving Simmons the youngest starter at 24.

Sure...Them trading the pick is also an option if they are not happy with whoever is there at 8 or wherever the pick would have to be to force the hand.
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