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Managing minutes/lineups for this team...

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cavsfever

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With the addition of Marion and Love (plus maybe Ray Allen), this team will be very deep. Beyond a starting five that is almost an all-star team, featuring four top-level offensive threats, we have Delly, Thompson, Miller, Marion, maybe Ray Allen, Joe Harris, Brendan Haywood. And who knows if someone else will come over in the Love trade.

How should we manage regular season minutes? You could theoretically use the depth here to really limit regular season minutes to keep people fresh for the playoffs. Hold most of the starters close to 30 MPG, Varejao to 20-25 MPG with plenty of games off, vets off the bench to 15-20 MPG. Consider the Spurs model. Look at minutes played at the link below -- every single player, even young guns like Kawhi Leonard, was under 30 MPG for the regular season. As if that isn't enough, a lot of the key players also played less than 70 games!

http://stats.nba.com/teamPlayers.html?TeamID=1610612759

This is an entirely different model for how to manage a team. Lebron has always been played like he was Superman and IMO in many regular seasons he got overused. Switching to a very different model could really prolong his career.

If we do limit minutes, how should you do it? Play the starting unit together all the time so they get used to playing with each other, or stagger minutes so you always have one of Irving/Love/Lebron on the court? Definitely seems like Dion should play with the second team as well as the starters as he is instant offense and plays so well with Delly. Delly, Dion, Thompson, Marion would be a very solid core second team unit, and if Love played with them could be very dangerous.
 
The ideal is having one of Irving and James on the court at all times....with Irving as the lead ball handler when both are on the court. You need that ball handler in there at all times. I think both guys can play off Love in a pick and roll type with the other 3 spotting up on the weakside or creating some Princeton backdoor screen action. Waiters, Allen, Marion, Miller are all top notch finishers. Wade's bad wheel really forced LBJ to take the lead 80% of the time over there. With the youth of Irving, as the main ball handler, should allow LBJ to not only play off the ball, but get unprecedented rest on the bench. Irving-Allen-Miller-Marion-Love-Thompson is a possible lineup when LBJ is sitting.....Irving setting up Allen/Miller/Love.......
 
The ideal is having one of Irving and James on the court at all times....with Irving as the lead ball handler when both are on the court. You need that ball handler in there at all times. I think both guys can play off Love in a pick and roll type with the other 3 spotting up on the weakside or creating some Princeton backdoor screen action. Waiters, Allen, Marion, Miller are all top notch finishers. Wade's bad wheel really forced LBJ to take the lead 80% of the time over there. With the youth of Irving, as the main ball handler, should allow LBJ to not only play off the ball, but get unprecedented rest on the bench. Irving-Allen-Miller-Marion-Love-Thompson is a possible lineup when LBJ is sitting.....Irving setting up Allen/Miller/Love.......

Don't know how the refs will feel about us playing that lineup...
 
Kyrie should play 35 mins a game, if not more. Dion can give you 35 mins a game. Love should be 30 plus mins a night. The key, at least in my eyes, is to start limiting LBJs mins this year to 30-32 mins a night. If you want to extend his career than it needs to start happening this year.
The marion pick up is big as he can spell LBJ and Love during the course of a game, giving him 15-20 mins a game. TT/Andy/Haywood? will split theyre mins.
 
Kyrie should play 35 mins a game, if not more. Dion can give you 35 mins a game. Love should be 30 plus mins a night. The key, at least in my eyes, is to start limiting LBJs mins this year to 30-32 mins a night. If you want to extend his career than it needs to start happening this year.
The marion pick up is big as he can spell LBJ and Love during the course of a game, giving him 15-20 mins a game. TT/Andy/Haywood? will split theyre mins.

I just don't see the need to average 35 mins a game for Irving. I think we will see more min in the first 1/3 of the season to get the chemistry, but as he season goes on, I really hope no one is averaging more then 32 mins a game. With the talent this team has, there is no reason we need Irving, LJ, Love to play big mins. I looked at the cavs rosters in 09-10 only 3 players averages over 30 mins a game, LJ (38), Jamison (36) Mo (35). This team will have so much more depth, that we should be able to win 60+ games with our top 3 in the 32 - 33 min average.

I am not sure how to post this as a chart, but here is a link to the 09-10 Cavs min/per game.

http://stats.nba.com/leaguePlayerGe...ason=2009-10&Conf=east&filters=TeamAbbr*E*CLE
 
I was really shocked to see that the Spurs didn't have a single player averaging even 30 MPG this year, even their young guys like Leonard who could clearly handle it. That is a lesson I think. Seems to me Dion and Dellavedova have enough ball handling capacity that you don't necessarily need Kyrie out there all the time -- although Kyrie and Dion should certainly play more minutes than Lebron. But you do want to develop chemistry across a range of different lineups.
 
Here is what Pelton is predicting for the Cavs roster--

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11405809/cleveland-cavaliers-scary-good-offense-2014-nba
Code:
Player              GP  MPG  Min   Offense  Defense
LeBron James        78  36  2808     8.5      0.4
Kyrie Irving        74  36  2664     2.5     -3.2
Kevin Love          69  36  2484     3.6      1.6
Dion Waiters        76  26  1973     1.8     -1.3
Tristan Thompson    78  25  1950    -0.4     -1.2
Anderson Varejao    61  28  1708     0.2      3.5
Shawn Marion        77  20  1540    -2.1      0.6
Matthew Dellavedova 78  16  1248     1.9      0.3
Mike Miller         77  15  1155     1.2     -3.1
Malcolm Thomas      78  10   780    -0.8     -0.1
Brendan Haywood     59  10   590    -3.3      2.5
Joe Harris          78   5   390    -1.7     -2.8
James Jones         78   5   390    -1.2      0.5
 
Err...why is Love only projected to play in 69 games? Is Pelton expecting him to suffer a mild injury?
 
It will take some time for this team to gel together on the defensive end, so saying LeBron will play 30 minutes is very unlikely and they'll need his presence on the court due to the fact that Kyrie and Love aren't good defensive players. As much as i think LeBron needs to play in limited minutes to extend his career, he's not going to do it this year, and he's definitely on a mission to not only win his third ring, but to win his fifth MVP as well. Realistically, he'll play around 34 minutes per game. Seriously, I know some of you guys are overexcited about how the team will perform, but realistically, LeBron is the only legit defender who's in his prime and can play 82 games. AV will do his part, but It's highly unlikely he'll play as many games as LeBron will.

Marion will play defense in spurts, but he's no longer the same player he once was and his presence on the defensive end won't be impactful as LeBron's presence. We can sit here and debate about it all day, but we all know the big question mark will be, How good will the Cavs be on the defensive end? As lazy as LeBron played on the defensive end in the regular season last year, he was still better defensively than anyone on the Cavs roster. I'm willing to bet everything that LeBron will play more than 30 minutes per game.

My predictions

PG-Kyrie(35 minutes)
SG-Dion(32 minutes)
SF-LeBron(35 minutes)
PF-Love(35 minutes)
C- AV(28 minutes)
 
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Err...why is Love only projected to play in 69 games? Is Pelton expecting him to suffer a mild injury?

And Andy to suffer a slightly more severe injury.

Honestly though, it's probably a good estimate for both of them.
 
I can understand some of you saying we should start limiting LeBron's minutes. But 30-32 minutes is just never ever going to happen.
Like I said multiple times, our core guys, James, Love, Iriving, will AT LEAST play 35 minutes a game.
 
Just a first guess at what we might see. Not factoring in for injuries/matchups/foul trouble yet which is why I didn't include Harris and Powell. There will also be a lot of blowouts where Harris/Powell see time and Delly gets more extended 4th quarter runs, but this is just my general guideline. I have an actual color coded graph to show rotations, but waiting on the Upload feature to be sorted out so I can just upload to pic direct from my desktop.

Kyrie - 36
Dion - 28
LeBron - 34
Love - 36
Andy - 22
Marion - 24
Tristan - 20
Miller - 20
Delly - 8
JJ/Ray - 12

240
 
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PG: John Lucas (32) - Matthew Dellavedova (12) - Kyire Irving (4)
SG: Joe Harris (28) - Dion Waiters (10) - Mike Miller (5) - Ray Allen (5)
SF: James Jones (41.5) - LeBron James (6.5)
PF: Dwight Powell (38) - Tristan Thompson (5) - Anderson Varejao (2.75) - Kevin Love (2.25)
C: Alex Kirk (24) - Zydrunas Ilgauskas (24)

Thoughts?
 

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