David Blatt is a former NBA coach

In his press conference, someone asked about Lopez and small ball in the 4Q. Blatt said he didn't think Lopez hurt them, that he only had around 20 but had been averaging 30 lately.

I don't care about a random game against BKN, they suck.

What concerns me is Blatt's overall tendency to prefer small ball closing lineups in tight games. Could really see it biting us in the ass in the playoffs where the margin for error is much tighter and he has gone to it repeatedly now. MEM the rotations were perfect precisely because he kept big lineups on the floor virtually the entire game (probably because he had to with their size).

We don't need to play small ball or over-think the lineups, use our rim protection with T-Mo. And you NEVER need to use James Jones at PF over Love because Love can stretch the floor just as good and it ain't like James Jones is a plus defender.

Taiter said:

In his press conference, someone asked about Lopez and small ball in the 4Q. Blatt said he didn't think Lopez hurt them, that he only had around 20 but had been averaging 30 lately.

Click to expand...

That might have been his worse answer in his history of post game pressers with the Cavs.

The Cav Sloth said:

Here are ESPN's ranking of the NBA coaches. All I can say is "wow". I guess Windhorst's love of Blatt is contagious at ESPN.

Coach rankings


RankTeamRating
1

San Antonio Spurs
Gregg Popovich9.70
2

Atlanta Hawks
Mike Budenholzer8.78
3

Golden State Warriors
Steve Kerr8.39
4

Dallas Mavericks
Rick Carlisle8.22
5

Chicago Bulls
Tom Thibodeau7.87
6

Miami Heat
Erik Spoelstra7.48
7

Portland Trail Blazers
Terry Stotts7.17
8

Los Angeles Clippers
Doc Rivers7.13
9
(tie)

Boston Celtics
Brad Stevens7.04
9
(tie)

Indiana Pacers
Frank Vogel7.04
11

Memphis Grizzlies
Dave Joerger7.00
12

Milwaukee Bucks
Jason Kidd6.78
13

Toronto Raptors
Dwane Casey6.74
14

Houston Rockets
Kevin McHale6.39
15

Phoenix Suns
Jeff Hornacek6.35
16

Sacramento Kings
George Karl6.22
17

Detroit Pistons
Stan Van Gundy6.17
18

Utah Jazz
Quin Snyder6.00
19

Cleveland Cavaliers
David Blatt5.83
20

Oklahoma City Thunder
Scott Brooks5.52




RELATED CONTENT

Click to expand...

It is honestly getting to the point where if you put 10 nameless articles in front of me, 5 from the onion and 5 from ESPN and told me to pick out the ones from the onion I would really have to think about it. They should make it some sort of game show, or better yet, a drinking game.

ESPN is almost at satire levels. I mean that is just remarkably disrespectful to not only what Blatt has done this season, but to all of his accomplishments as a head coach.

Hopefully when Blatt wins a title he could maybe make a run at a Jason Kidd type coaching legacy. We could only hope.

priceFTW said:

1) Responding in games in which everything doesn't begin perfectly. We're much better now than at the beginning of the season, but we still get caught up into our bad and lazy habits when we don't start of really well. In this game, we were up 13-7 with the ball and we were doing everything well and I think expected to blow blow them out. We stopped contesting shots well, we were looking for easy steals, not boxing out, and stopped making that extra pass. We gave them a little room rather than taking a big lead and then Bogo and Anderson and other ransoms started dropping shots.

Click to expand...

This is a good point. The team doesn't seem to trust itself yet to play the right away unless it goes right from the start. I thought the offense was terrible after they got that early lead. They were getting open looks so they just started coming down and cranking up dumb perimeter shots. I think there were back to back possessions where Shump and then Delly just waltzed down the court and cranked a 3. Lebron was definitely in "New York" mode in the 1st half too, jumping passing lanes to try to get flashy dunks.

gourimoko said:

Agreed, but @DougHeil has a point, we really needed his size out there.

Click to expand...

Tristan was getting mauled by him too. I mean, they even started doubling him at times, which makes absolutely zero sense, when you got a 7 footer that can match up with him.

DougHeil said:

That might have been his worse answer in his history of post game pressers with the Cavs.

Click to expand...

That's terrible, it's not even the points. He had 5 offensive rebounds tonight. This is Brook Lopez, a guy that barely makes an effort to get the ball (although surprisingly he's a pretty good offensive rebounder), and there were times he was clearly using his size, to get the ball that a shorter Tristan and Kevin just couldn't get to.

Even Plumlee is a big body, was able to get some easy offensive rebounds on us.

godfather said:

That's terrible, it's not even the points. He had 5 offensive rebounds tonight. This is Robin Lopez, a guy that barely makes an effort to get the ball (although surprisingly he's a pretty good offensive rebounder), and there were times he was clearly using his size, to get the ball that a shorter Tristan and Kevin just couldn't get to.

Even Plumlee is a big body, was able to get some easy offensive rebounds on us.

Click to expand...

Brook

But I feel you though

Double post?

gourimoko said:

Brooke

Click to expand...

Yeah, Brook, well he looked more like Robin tonight the way he cleaned up on the glass against us.

Lopez had 4 points and 1 rebound in the 4th. Those 4 points came on FTs after being fouled by Love in the post.

And the Nets didn't make a single layup or dunk in the 4th. They were fouled on a few drives to the rim, but everything else was jumpers they were making.

Not mentioned in here is how the Cavs scored 5 points in the first ~6 minutes of the 4th, which is a bigger problem than anything Brook Lopez was doing.

From what I saw during Blatt's Maccabi years, Blatt uses minutes as an educational aid. That is, he punishes players who don't play hard enough even if they are very good, by decreasing their minutes, and gives plenty of minutes to players who may not be as good, but who play hard.

I can't say whether it's a good technique or not, but it is possible that this is why Blatt often restricts Moz or Love in the last quarter.

Evgeni said:

From what I saw during Blatt's Maccabi years, Blatt uses minutes as an educational aid. That is, he punishes players who don't play hard enough even if they are very good, by decreasing their minutes, and gives plenty of minutes to players who may not be as good, but who play hard.

I can't say whether it's a good technique or not, but it is likely that this is why Blatt often restricts Moz or Love in the last quarter.

Click to expand...

I can see where that has its value, for sure. But I do hope he isn't doing that on regular basis here, just because the players we have aren't replaceable. Coaches are though, especially when it's a team with as much talent as ours. Not saying I want a different coach, but I do think ego management is a huge part of the job in the NBA.

Helium filament said:

I can see where that has its value, for sure. But I do hope he isn't doing that on regular basis here, just because the players we have aren't replaceable. Coaches are though, especially when it's a team with as much talent as ours. Not saying I want a different coach, but I do think ego management is a huge part of the job in the NBA.

Click to expand...

Is that the player's ego or Blatt's ego that needs managed?

I wonder what Golden State fans said about Steve Kerr after they lost on the road to Brooklyn 2-3 weeks back?

Still, no argument from me, bad game overall from the players and coach.

If anything, I think what got us out of whack was the 2-3 minute stretch at the end of the 1st and beginning of the second that had Kyrie, Bron, and Love on the bench together. Usually at least one of the three is in the game at all time. I think Blatt was experimenting with that today to see if we could handle it(for future reference if a need came up in the playoffs). That seemed to just mess with the feel of the game and the rotations from that point on. But I'm ok with attempting that in these last 10 games vs a team like Brooklyn rather than not doing it at all and trying it for the first time in the playoffs. So I think it was a bad move by Blatt but I'm ok with him trying it.

Also noticed in the 3rd and forth, Kyrie just had a couple of the layups that usually go in for him rim out. Not anything he did wrong, just some bad bounces. Little momentum killers like that that normally help provide the juice and energy for the whole game.

Not a game I'm going to lose any sleep over.