Hey, Cavalier fans and CavFanatics! It’s Austin, back in Cleveland after a couple weeks on the road. What’s happening?Record-wise, it was a bit of a tough trip. There were some positives and some negatives.
Kyrie and Andy are playing excellent basketball. I’d have to say, right now, Kyrie and Andy make up the best guard-big man tandem in the league – as far how well they work together. They’ve become like two peas in a pod. They work so well off each other.
Right now, they’re running some of the offense through Andy. And it gives you another focal point in your offense. I would go through Andy at the top of the key all the time. Kyrie uses that so well with the back-door play. He gets two or three of those a game – just passing to Anderson and going back-door.
Those are two really high basketball IQ guys.
What we need now is a jump shooter to go with those two. It’s going to take almost all five guys to guard Andy and Kyrie. So somebody’s going to be open – you can see it.
And Dion’s that guy. But right now, he has to learn how to play off Kyrie and Anderson. Flow to open areas. Watch film and understand: When they do the pick-and-roll on one side of the floor, where are the open areas, so you can be the recipient of the pass when those guys are being double- or triple-teamed. That’s all it is. That’s Ray Allen all the way. That’s how he made his living.
Move without the ball – get to the open spot.
Right now, Dion’s taking his rookie lumps. Inconsistency is what happens in your rookie year. I went through the same thing. I went through some games where I was in the mid-30s, high-30s and had some games in the teens. You’re going to have that.
First of all, he hasn’t been through all of the league and he came right out the box on a long road trip. And it just takes a while to learn how to get comfortable and become a veteran.
Some people thought he got overconfident after that big game in Los Angeles. But I don’t see, as a scorer, how you get overconfident. You’re always confident. If you’re not confident, you’re not a scorer. Because you’re going to have almost as many bad days as you have good days. The key is: don’t let your bad days be horrible days. So you have to set a regimen and a routine and you play off that routine to keep your consistency.
The key to professional ball is consistency.
That’s why Andy and Kyrie are so good. They bring it every night. And even though they might not shoot the ball well, they bring that style and that energy to the floor every night.
I know Byron wasn’t happy with the defense on the trip. You can’t let a team shoot over 50 percent and expect to win many games as a young team on the road.
A lot of times on this past trip, they broke us down individually. And if you want to be a great defensive team, you have to have great individual defense, too. You have to keep people in front of you.
If a guy’s right-handed, you can’t just let him have his right side. If everybody on the team understood that, it would change a lot. You can’t let a guy have his strong side. You just can’t let him have it.
There are guys like Chris Paul and Kyrie – they can go either way, so it doesn’t make any difference. You just have to try to stay in front of them. But most guys, you can cut off their strong side just by shading your body on that side. And that’ll take a lot of the angst out of the whole process. I just think individually is where we broke down defensively on the road.
The inconsistency is an issue and right now, that’s our biggest problem as far as the bench is concerned. Boobie’s a solid performer, but we need two more guys to go along with him on a consistent basis, now you have 30 points coming off your bench. And that’s huge.
It’ll be a big help to get Tyler Zeller back this weekend.
He contributes by running the floor, defending the basket. And offensively, he gives us at least a threat. He was really starting to pick it up before he got injured and, hopefully, he’ll get back into playing his game. But running the floor and defending is what we need from him. And really, he mixes it up pretty good. Even though he doesn’t have that demeanor about him, he’s pretty competitive.
The bench overall is playing a little tentatively. And it’s sort of an ownership/pride thing. The bench has to take pride in supporting the starters. Give yourselves a nickname or do something well enough where you earn a nickname. “The Bench Brigade” or something like that. You have to take some pride in what you’re doing. It was really frustrating watching those leads disappear on the road.
But that’s the game. You learn from your bumps and bruises and hope you can come back.
It’s only been eight games. We don’t need to make major changes; we need to go out there and understand what our roles are. And go out and perform. Go out there to make a difference – don’t go out there just to fit in.
You’re not going to play long periods of time, so you have to affect the game. That’s the way I looked at it when I started having my injuries and couldn’t play the heavy minutes. You have to look at it as when you come in the game people will KNOW that you’ve been in the game. And you have to have that mindset every night.
This weekend, I want to see the second unit support the first unit. That’s the glaring weakness right now. But if we can do that and get the second team to support the starters, then we’re on our way.
It’s time for guys to put up or shut up. Byron’s already made some of the changes he wants to make. Now guys have to produce – that’s all it comes down to. It’s about production. To lose a 20-something point lead like they did last week, it should eat at you. You let a win fly right out the window. We cannot have that again. We have to get in there and fight.
The bench support the starters moving forward. If the starters get a lead, I want the reserves to hold the lead or perpetuate it. And if the Cavs are down, cut into the lead in a positive way.
If we do that, we can turn this around and start getting some wins.