Hey, Cavalier fans and CavFanatics – it’s A.C., checking in from the Valley of the Sun! What’s happening?
Well, here we are – in the homestretch of the season – 18 games to play, beginning with this three-game West Coast trip then on to three more tough games at home. It’s not going to be easy. But nothing worthwhile ever is.
The key to this trip is that they have to have that bunker mentality – Us against the World. And this will have to be the final bonding experience for the team, because if they don’t find that bond, they’re going to have a hard time winning.
These next six games are going to be extremely tough, but if we can go .500 or better over this stretch, we can make a postseason run on the other side. A West Coast trip – like we saw back in January – is perfect for bringing your team together.
You HAVE to have that bunker mentality on the road. Without it, it’s tough to get the job done. I just hope they understand that there’s a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. We just have to start winning consecutive games.
It’s also important, at this stage of the season, not too look too far ahead. I know guys are checking the schedule and watching other teams in the standings. That’s natural. But you have to treat each game as its own entity.
If you get too far ahead of yourself and you get into a negative snowball effect, it’s hard to stop. So you have to keep playing it – kind of the way we did in the year before the Miracle year – play each quarter at a time. WIN each quarter. And that’s how we went about it. Before we knew it, we had ourselves a nice situation.
Sometimes young guys don’t quite understand the value of each quarter, the value of each possession. They’re thinking “big picture.” But you have to narrow it down so you can keep your focus. When you’re thinking down the road, it distracts your focus. When you’re locked in to every possession, winning every quarter, it really helps you focus on the task at hand. That’s the way I was taught to do it.
The Cavaliers had a new weapon – Luol Deng – last time we came out West. This time, it’s Spencer Hawes, who’s been playing really well for us. I really like Hawes’ competitive nature. And, of course, he does a great job spreading the floor.
Learning how to use him is going to help Kyrie tremendously, because it gives Kyrie – and really, any cutters like Luol Deng and Dion – so much more space to operate. There’s his shooting, his passing – really, Spencer brings a lot of positives with him. He’s much more competitive on the inside than I thought he was. Offensively, he’ll try to post you up, but he can also pull big man out to the arc – where they really don’t want to be. When he does that, it helps your other bigs on the boards. And he’s really a guy who understands the idea of passing the ball before dribbling the ball.
We’re also scheduled to get CJ Miles back sometime on this trip – although probably not on Tuesday night in Phoenix. Again, he’ll open the floor and open up the middle. And he’s a guy who can catch-and-shoot, so that’s going to help us a lot.
The Cavs just have to get used to their rhythm again, but do so on the fly. We don’t have time to work on it too much in practice. At this point in the season, it’s going to have to be done as we go. Because you have CJ, Hawes, Andy just came back on Saturday and Dion last week. So you have a lot of really nice pieces coming back, you just have to learn how to use them.
Because basketball is such a rhythm game, it’s not as easy as some people think working guys back into a rotation. Just watch both Andy and Hawes with Kyrie. Andy pretty much always rolls to the basket when he’s on the wings. When he’s in the middle, Andy’s going to pop; whereas, Hawes always pops. It took Kyrie a little while to realize Hawes doesn’t make that cut. But he’s used to that now.
It’s a process, but the more weapons you have, the better. And getting them all back is really going to help on this trip.
The entire group hasn’t played long enough together. But it’s something that just has to be done. That’s the only way we’re going to win, is to incorporate our guys back into the game. But we need to incorporate everybody in so we can get a smooth flow. The Suns are going through it right now, bringing Bledsoe back and having to work him in with Dragic.
Our coaching staff has to go through another rotation situation and they’re going to have to do it on the fly. But, with 18 games to go and the playoffs still in sight … it has to be done.