Hello, Cavalier fans and CavFanatics. It’s Austin – gearing up for one more home game before a long early-season trip. What’s happening?The Cavs came out of the gate strong on Tuesday night. I loved their edge and their energy. They’ll need to bring that same juice to Friday’s game against a tough Bulls team – even without Derrick Rose.
A lot of guys made an impact in Tuesday’s win.
I was really impressed with the rookie, Dion Waiters. It looks like he just has an extra gear come game time.
I’ve heard people say that maybe he’s one of those players that’s just better in the games than in practice. I believe there is such a thing, but I don’t think that’s the case with Dion. Byron wouldn’t allow him not to practice hard. But it seems like he’s keener, he’s a little more focused when game time comes.
You could tell that he wanted to prove something to Bradley Beal. When stole that ball and dunked it, you could tell. I hadn’t seen that much emotion before Tuesday night. I didn’t know he had that in him.
Dion is a tough dude with an edge – and I like that! (As long as he controls it and doesn’t take it overboard.) He’ll learn that what he did to Washington’s bench – that kind of stuff you don’t do. You just come back down the floor and do your thing. You want to pound your chest, come back to your side and pound it. But not at the bench. That has a way of coming back at you. All that stuff – that’s part of his learning curve.
But I love to see the fire in him. He’s a competitor – you can tell. And he played good defense; he played both ends of the floor.
And what I like about our offense with him out there is when they overload to Kyrie, if we swing the ball quickly and get it to him – like we did several times – there’s nobody there but him and one guy to beat. And he can beat that guy. And we score from the other side of the floor.
In the past, teams would do that to Kyrie, he’d swing it to the weakside and the ball would stall. Defenses would just cut the floor in half. The defense had a chance to recover. But now, when we swing the ball, they don’t have a chance to recover. You catch them halfway – which he did a few times – and got something out of it, either a good pass to a teammate or he got in there for a score.
Another great thing about Tuesday was the way our big man played and distributed the ball because of the way the defense was being played.
Once Kyrie saw that that was working, he kept going to the well. He realized that off the pick-and-roll, when they double-teamed him, he just waited for Andy to get into position, made the pass and let Andy facilitate. Those three dunks from Tristan were all the same play: off a pick-and-roll, instead of diving to the basket, Andy flared out to the free throw line, hit Tristan, and it was two-on-one.
They did that three straight times – and it broke the game open.
Andy does so many things well, including passing. Having big men who can distribute is huge. Because, first of all, it takes a big body away from the rim. Plus, Andy can go by most big men. He’s a triple threat. When Andy pulls the ball away from the basket, Kyrie’s getting easy back-doors, Dion’s getting back-doors, Tristan’s getting dunks. All that stuff opens up without the big guy in there.
Anderson is critical to this team. We saw what happened last year. We were building momentum and building confidence when he went down. And I really think we’d have had a chance at that 8th spot if he had stayed healthy. You can see what he means to the team.
He’s an intangible, you can’t put your finger on it, but he has a value to our team that you can’t define. He makes the whole system go. And what you’re finding now is everyone’s role is being defined. Now, everybody understands who’s being relied on for what. So now when you go into a game, you know what to focus on. And you make sure you do your job to help your team win instead of going out there hit-or-miss. Everybody’s starting to understand where they fit in.
Tristan looked good. He’s not trying to hit a bunch of 15-foot shots. He’s doing everything right around that lane, and the opportunities are coming because now you have two guys – Dion and Kyrie – that can beat you off the dribble. And that opens up a lot on the inside.
The best way to play this game is by “reading.” And by that I mean: If you can beat a guy off the dribble, somebody has to help. As soon as he helps, then you play the game of basketball. You get it to the open man and he makes the decision – ‘do I get it to this man or do I take the shot?’
To me, with good basketball, you never have to run a play if you can beat a guy off the dribble and play the game. You don’t need to run plays. When you dribble down into the frontcourt, you may call a play to get the motion going. But once you beat one man, then it’s a sequence of what can and should happen. The closer you get to that, the more efficient you’ll be and the better your team will function.
It’s almost impossible to set up a defensive plan against a team that “reads” well.
A guy who can almost speed-read a defense is Kyrie Irving. It looks like he’s taken it to another level already.
When the Cavs lost the lead and he came back in the game, he closed it right out. And what I like about it, it wasn’t all just him scoring. He was setting things up for his teammates. That, to me, is showing where he is starting to develop as a player. Because he sees the game now in a total picture instead of an isolated picture.
One area of a little concern was the bench. That’s where we have to get some consistency.
They may have to tweak it a little bit, but I thought Boobie played well. Now we have to get Miles involved. And if we can get one of the big people off that bench to get some positive minutes, we’ll be alright. But you have to have three or four guys off our bench to produce. I feel that we need at least 15 fast break points per game and 25 bench points. If we can get that, we can compete with anybody.
Before the Cavs head out for their first big road trip, they’ve got a tough Bulls team coming to town. And like everybody, I’m looking forward to the matchup between Joakim Noah and Anderson. It’s going to be a great matchup. Noah is like Andy’s alter-ego.
After that, it comes down to the other areas. For example, you can’t let Boozer go crazy. But, basically, we just have to play our game. Run off of defensive mistakes. The better we get at forcing turnovers, the better we’ll be, because that’ll allow us to run more. For about five or six minutes every quarter, we have to play OUR style of game – up-tempo on the defensive end, run n the offensive end. You don’t want to set up in the halfcourt against Chicago. Defensively, they’re too good.
After Friday night’s game, we’re off on the road.
A game like tomorrow is good – Friday at home against a tough Division opponent. It can get you off to a good start going on the road.
If we can pull a win out, our confidence is rolling. But the young guys are still going to have to get used to the travel and how to govern yourself as far as practice, game-time habits, pregame habits. All that stuff is going to be on their minds as well trying to go out and compete. (And competing against good Western Conference teams.) It’s going to be interesting.
Put it this way, the guys will get their first test of “us-against-the-world.” And they have a core of guys who have gone through it before to help the other guys. But telling a guy what it’s about doesn’t get it done. He has to experience it for himself: playing in the enemy’s gym and executing the gameplan, taking the crowd out of it. It’s stuff that you have to go through to know how to deal with it next time.
And again: rest is the most important thing. I know Coach Scott and his staff – that’s the one thing they’re going to preach. You have to get your rest. You cannot function if you can’t play four good quarters a night.
But if you do manage your time right on the road – get your rest, minimize distractions and stick to your routine – there’s no reason this young team can’t have an extremely successful road trip to start the season.