Hey, Cavaliers fans and CavFanaics! It’s Austin, checking in with about week remaining before the regular season. What’s happening?Right now, the Cavs are getting ready for opening night. They still have some roster moves to make, and it looks like one of the best competitions in Camp is at the backup point guard between Donald Sloan and Jeremy Pargo.
It’s been very competitive. Both are very aggressive players. Sloan has had a little better Camp, maybe offensively. But they’re both solid backup players.
Again, it shows where the franchise is right now and the direction that it’s heading. We weren’t talking about having two guys at every position to choose from last year. So now you have Pargo and Sloan who are both solid backup players – and you won’t go wrong with either one. It all comes down to who fits in the system better.
It’s been a good Camp for the rookies, but you can tell the game’s still moving a thousand miles an hour for them. It’ll take about half a season for the game to slow down. And the reason why is because you go through every team.
Being a scorer, I had to go through a lot of defenses early, because everyone knew what my forte was, and they were game-planning to stop it. And we weren’t that good of a team back then so they could focus on me. So that was a whole different approach.
These rookies don’t have to worry about that because Kyrie takes on so much of that pressure. So they have an opportunity to play one-on-one ball instead of one-on-five, because the concept we’re running is more of team concept. And Kyrie fits in like a single piece of a puzzle. And the sooner the rookies fit in as pieces of the puzzle, the sooner I think you’ll see good production out of them.
A lot of the focus has been on Dion Waiters. But I think he’s starting to understand the offense right now and how he fits in.
At first, he was hanging around the perimeter, not wanting to get engaged in the offense. But now I think he understands, that 2-guard position is a little different than it was in college. Even if you’re not facing an All-Star, it’s a guy who belongs in this league. And he’s going to take your lunch if you’re not ready to protect it.
Being the fourth player in the Draft – guys are hunting for you, they’re coming after you. And you have to be ready to fight back. And I think he understands that now. He’s starting to get it in his system that you have to bring it every night. There are no nights off.
Like I try to tell some of the young guys: one night I’d play Jerry West, then Oscar Robertson, then Phil Chenier, then Jerry Sloan, then Pete Maravich. There’s no such thing as a night off. You take a night off against those guys and they’ll make it a point to embarrass you. And your off-the-court life has to be geared towards your on-the-floor living.
The game will slow down halfway through when they’ve gone through the league and see how opponents are going to play them. And then you get immersed in the competitive part of the game.
Right now, they’re going through trial-and-error. But they’ll learn the ins and outs of how plays work and what people are like. And they’ll even get to learn opponents emotionally. I knew, when I played against those guys I was talking about, if they were ready that night or a little sluggish. You could tell right away.
Those are little nuances that you learn and that slows the game down. It’ll come to all the young guys.
A big thing fans forget about players is that they’re people, too. Rookies are moving to a new city, with new responsibilities and every thing that goes with it. As a rookie where you have to prioritize. You have to get to the point where some things you just don’t do.
I started out giving out a ton of tickets to my games. But I stopped. I said, ‘If you want tickets, let me know during the summer. But I’m not dealing with it during the season.’ My mother, my father, my brothers and that’s it! But I’m not going to be chasing tickets during the year. It would just distract from what I had to do. If you’re guarding Dave Bing or Phil Chenier, I don’t have time to deal with tickets.
I had to focus on what I had to do and to stick with my routine. After practice, get my rest, get ready, go over my gameplan, get my clothes ready and get on the bus. That’s my religion; that’s how I did it.
Routine should be a rookie’s best friend. Find a routine that fits for you – and stick to it.
In terms of the youth, the key for our team – it’s not just experience. Because a lot of our young guys – Leuer, C.J. Miles, etc. – have played in the league. The key is they’re being depended upon to play major minutes. They’ve never been depended on for that before. That’s why it’s starting from scratch in a way. Your mentality has to change when you’re playing against the best players in the league every night and you have to be productive.
It’s a lot different than coming off the bench. Coming off the bench, you have to be productive, but it can be ‘sometimes’ thing against the second unit. You can’t be a ‘sometimes’ guy in the starting lineup. You have to bring it every night.
Before we get to the opener, I’d like to see this team turn up the defense and start to get in that running mentality. Defending is the key to a running game. We’re a running team, but right now we’re reluctant to run.
I would love to play for a coach like Byron Scott who wants you to run. Man, I’d live on defense! Because when you get a turnover on defense – it’s time to have some fun! So you work harder on the defensive end to get that turnover. I think the team hasn’t yet equated ‘defense’ to ‘fun.’
We don’t have a half-court style team where we can be really successful. We’re not loaded with guys who can just fill it up. We have to do it by committee. And we have to get more fastbreak points. The team, the way it’s constructed now, without an automatic guy like Jamison, they have to average 15 fastbreak points a game. It just takes so much pressure off your halfcourt offense. You have to have that. We have to keep the game ‘open.’ We’re not a grind-it-out kind of team.
But right now we’re on the right track and I’m already getting geared up for the opener.
And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my Notre Dame Fighting Irish , who stayed undefeated after beating BYU on Saturday.
But the game against Oklahoma will be their ‘Come-to-Jesus’ game. You’re going to have to put up or shut up against Oklahoma in Norman.
If they beat them, they have a chance to win the National Championship. I know the Southern Cal game is going to be tough. But if they can beat Oklahoma with their fast style, then they can beat USC with that style of game. This is the pivotal point of the season.
With the regular season bearing down, we don’t have many free Saturdays from this point out. So I’m going to enjoy this one.