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Cutting the fat defensively

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What would be the asking price for Marcin Gortat?

Or is he their "franchise player"? Maybe not worth the price?
 
Speights draws a defender, so overall he has a positive impact. Improving the defense will come from personnel. Zeller and gee should be benched. Livingston is stronger defending big wings, and the cavs need to find a defensive center to replace zeller.
 
Improving the defense will come from personnel.

In the short term, it's going to have to come from personel development. Since the Cavs are still rebuilding, they have the luxury of letting the young guys learn form doing.
 
Not sure how much it would take, but Tony Allen is a guy I would love to get to have the young guys learn from.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/41439632

Draft Ausitn/Oladipo(very hopeful, doubt we can get both), AV comes back and we have the makings of a vastly improved D next year.

Irving-Waiters
Oladipo-Waiters-Ellington
T Allen-Gee
TT-Austin
AV-Zeller
 
Not sure how much it would take, but Tony Allen is a guy I would love to get to have the young guys learn from.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/41439632

Draft Ausitn/Oladipo(very hopeful, doubt we can get both), AV comes back and we have the makings of a vastly improved D next year.

Irving-Waiters
Oladipo-Waiters-Ellington
T Allen-Gee
TT-Austin
AV-Zeller

eww
 
Not sure how much it would take, but Tony Allen is a guy I would love to get to have the young guys learn from.
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/41439632

Draft Ausitn/Oladipo(very hopeful, doubt we can get both), AV comes back and we have the makings of a vastly improved D next year.

Irving-Waiters
Oladipo-Waiters-Ellington
T Allen-Gee
TT-Austin
AV-Zeller

I'm down for Tony Allen coming to shape up this team. He's hilarious like Delonte, but not a total nutjob like Delonte.
 
It would be interesting if noel does fall in the draft due to his injury if the cavs could land oladipo, and Noel. Cavs could potentially come away with potentially the 2 best defender in the draft depending what you think of austin and stein.
 
Zeller has had some good shots blocked and is one of the best in the league in drawing the charge. But is defense something that he has to be taught or something that will improve if he puts on more muscle?
 
Zeller has had some good shots blocked and is one of the best in the league in drawing the charge. But is defense something that he has to be taught or something that will improve if he puts on more muscle?

Size will help him but its not too big a factor to me
 
Cavaliers concentrating on defensive improvement


Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2013


By Bob Finnan
RFinnan@News-Herald.com
@BobCavsinsider

Before the Cavaliers take their next step toward respectability, they must shore up their play on the defensive end.

“It’s a concern,” Cavs general manager Chris Grant said last week. “We know we have to be better defensively to compete and get where we want to be.”

The defensive blunders continue to cost the Cavs games. They stumbled at Miami on Sunday, 109-105, largely because of a late defensive miscue.

The Cavs (18-38) were switching everything on defense in the late going. The Heat led, 103-101, with 24.4 seconds remaining.

LeBron James set a pick on Cavs guard Dion Waiters. Cavs forward Alonzo Gee was supposed to pick up Heat guard Dwyane Wade. Instead, he stayed with James.

Wade turned the corner and found a wide-open path to the basket. He threw down a ferocious dunk for a 105-101 lead.

Game, set and match.

“We had big-time mental mistakes,” Cavs coach Byron Scott said. “The two plays that I was very angry about were when Shane Battier got the 3-point basket in transition and when Dwyane Wade snuck past the defense and got a (dunk).

“These are things we have to learn from, and they can’t happen any more this season. We had an opportunity against the NBA world champion, and we lost the game because of mental mistakes. I don’t know if the mental mistakes we made cost us the game, but they didn’t help us win.”

Scott said lack of communication can be blamed for Wade’s slam.


Gee said he thought the Cavs let the game slip away.

“It was the little mistakes that we made in the end that cost us the game,” he said. “I thought we had the game.”

Cavs forward Luke Walton said the more the Cavs play together, the better the defense will become.

“(We just need) more work, more experience,” Walton said. “We have defensive schemes, which a lot of teams in the NBA have now as far as rotations and the way you guard pick-and-rolls. The really good defensive teams have been together for a couple years, and it’s just one of those things that the more time and the more you do it, the better you’ll get. We feel like we’re getting better. At times we play good defense, but we’re just not doing it consistently enough.”

Coaches talk about a good defense being like five players on a string.

“The defense we’re running is kind of like running an offense where all five people have to be in the right spot,” Walton said. “If one person messes up in the style of defense that we’re playing, someone’s going to get a wide-open shot or an open layup because it’s all about funneling to help side or making the right rotations.

“All it takes is one guy to mess up his rotation or to come late, and it breaks down the whole defense. I think it’s more just the experience of knowing where you’re supposed to be and being alert out on the court all the time that will help us a lot.”

Their defensive numbers are downright ugly: 24th in points allowed, 30th in field-goal percentage and 27th in 3-point percentage.

Yet they’ve won two of their last three games, as well as five of their last nine, heading into the Chicago game at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the United Center. The Bulls are considered one of the top defensive teams in the league.

The Bulls (32-24) haven’t lost to the Cavs since March 19, 2010, a span of 11 games in a row.


“The last month or so, we’ve been playing a lot better,” Walton said. “With being a young team, you’re constantly trying to stay on guys as far as not becoming satisfied or complacent with the way we are playing.

“We’ve come out and laid a couple eggs within that stretch. Just the consistency of playing well every night and just keep working and getting better.”

Link: http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2013/02/26/sports/nh6599013.txt?viewmode=fullstory



 
Heading into the last games of the season the cavaliers remain the 27th ranked defense giving up 109.5 points per hundred possessions. we're bad in about every category except forcing turnovers, and I think that has a lot to do with gambling for steals than playing good defense.

I can't find this year rapm stats, but if you look at last years for our players..

Irving -2.4[bad]
Varejao 2.5 [good if he played]
Thompson -.7
Gee .8
Waiters
Walton -1.6 [bad]
Livingston -.5
Speights -1
Zeller
Ellington -2
Miles -.3

As you can see not much in the way of positive contributors defensively. It would appear much of the team will need to be overhauled in order to improve the defense. Less than a third of the cavs roster is capable of playing decent defense, so I think the biggest step forward for the cavs will be getting players in here who are known for getting it done defensively. We should be close to a top ten offense next year regardless whether we lose some of our role players.

Getting bigger up front to combat the amount of offensive rebounds we give up, and getting a little older by getting AV back should help as well, and may be all we need. Getting bigger in the back court should help as well. Finding that small forward will allow us to slide gee back down to shooting guard where he's able to use his physicality a little more effectively. I think the big push defensively comes by knocking walton, speights, and zeller out of the rotation. Those are your defensive liabilities. When that happens I think we can move up to a top 15 team defensively. I think miles and waiters are a little clueless, but give enough effort where they will be okay defensively. Walton just can't move anymore, speights is just an awful defender, and zeller just doesn't have it yet to be a center. Like the lakers when howard sits with out Av we have no one up front who can defend, we've even seen scott use gimmicks with tristan at center and gee at power forward to stop the bleeding.

Basically I expect us to be like the lakers next season if this year is any guide to how we're going to play. We'll come out firing, and be a surprise team that excites the fans with plenty of 100 point games, but the opposing teams will be scoring 100 themselves. You'll see us with high offensive efficiency but the defense will drag us down and threaten our play off chances. The defensive improvement will be the key to our play off hopes on a going forward basis. I think the players we draft will be able to hang their hat defensively, and i expect our free agent signings will also echo our lust for a defensive stand.
 
The defense is pretty hopeless, we should be talking about that offensive jump. :)

Our team FG% is still crap (28th), but some of the things driving our climb would seem to be: 3pt% (12th), ORB (5th), STL (10th), TOV (13th), and PF (4th).

There is a statistic that accounts for this, isn't there? Like team ORB%? Just wondering if we are actually a good offensive rebounding team, or if we are a good offensive rebounding team because we have so many chances to grab them...
 
There is a statistic that accounts for this, isn't there? Like team ORB%? Just wondering if we are actually a good offensive rebounding team, or if we are a good offensive rebounding team because we have so many chances to grab them...


http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/sort/offReboundRate

The Cavs are 8th in offensive rebound %.

Now there is the argument that a good part of team offensive rebounding is a coaching sending more guys to hit the boards after a shot instead sending guys back in transition defense.

But I think a lot if it comes down to Tristan, Zeller, and Varejao are all well above average offensive rebounders. They have the gift of slipping their man and getting the ball. That's hard to teach. Too bad Zeller and Thompson are not close to Varejao for defensive rebounding, but you can teach competent defensive rebounding to coachable players.
 
Think its time to draft for defense.....if the kid cant play D we shouldnt draft him. This is embarrassing. Our roster should have a good 3-4 new rotational players in it next year. Maybe even 5
 

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