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Farewell, Richard Jefferson.

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As long as he can maintain his 3PT% he'll do.

One has to imagine between JJ and him at least one will be connecting on any given night. Between Mo, JR, JJ and RJ, shit, at least one of them is statistically likely to be on absolute fire per game. Pity about that defense though....
 
Kinda shocked that he's actually still able to get that much air under him. He seems surprisingly athletic for a 34 year old.
 
Randolphkeys said:
I've seen this line of thinking a number of times. Guess what? There are going to be spots on the bench for young players. Barring a trade, Joe Harris and Sir'Dom will have a chance to take Jefferson's playing time, they just have to outplay him. Other young players are going to get camp invites and have a chance, just like Delly did two years ago. Championship teams never carry many first or second year players with improbable chances of becoming good. Look at the 76ers last year. You can say, "Sweet, they developed Covington!" Sure. They also gave minutes to a ton of D Leaguers who proved they can't play in the NBA, and they lost a lot of games in the process.

Just faulted logic. No idea why so many people keep bringing it up.
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How many YOUNG guys did we have on the roster last year? That got a lot of playing time? We built the team around LBJ, Irving, and Love with decrepit old players. Miller, Perkins, Marion, Haywood, Jones.

When it came time for people to step up in the playoffs, look who did, one of the couple young guys on the team- Delly. The rest were useless, couldn't put up a fight. It's one thing to get Vets that have some playing left in them, it's another to get a Marion, or a Jefferson, both of which are so far past their prime they give us nothing on the court.

Not sure where the faulty logic is.

Anyone else remember when we grabbed a 38 year old Shaq and thought that was going to put us over the edge? Smh... Cavs have been doing this for a while.
 
Lyst said:
How many YOUNG guys did we have on the roster last year? That got a lot of playing time? We built the team around LBJ, Irving, and Love with decrepit old players. Miller, Perkins, Marion, Haywood, Jones.

When it came time for people to step up in the playoffs, look who did, one of the couple young guys on the team- Delly. The rest were useless, couldn't put up a fight. It's one thing to get Vets that have some playing left in them, it's another to get a Marion, or a Jefferson, both of which are so far past their prime they give us nothing on the court.

Not sure where the faulty logic is.

Anyone else remember when we grabbed a 38 year old Shaq and thought that was going to put us over the edge? Smh... Cavs have been doing this for a while.
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I think you're correct to view Jefferson with skepticism but he could prove to be useful. If he can do roughly what he did last year, that would be a huge help, and there's not really any reason to believe his 3 point shooting should drop below his career average of 38% given that he will be playing with offensive threats like Kyrie and Love and sometimes with LeBron.

That said, we do still have the Haywood contract as a get out of jail free card. Perhaps Griffin will wait til January to see what need is most pressing. Injuries may dictate what we need, but SF does seem like our greatest area of concern ATM.

I do share your frustration that we weren't able to find anyone younger than Jefferson, but there's at least a decent chance that Jefferson will be at least a notch above what James Jones was last year, which wouldn't be bad.
 
Everyone that is bitching about signing Jefferson and how we have old guys like Miller and Jones realizes that everyone's prize FA acquisition, David West, is less than a year younger than Jefferson and Miller, right? That he's OLDER than James Jones, right? What's to say he keeps the fountain of youth going for another year? He's already been in a steady decline but has managed to be effective. Shawn Marion and Mike Miller had pretty good years the in 2013-14 as well. What's to say David West doesn't turn out like them?

Everyone talking about how you can't count on Andy being healthy because of all the games he's missed the last few years realizes that everyone's prize FA acquisition, David West, has missed significant time with back, knee and ankle issues in 4 of the last 5 seasons, right? While his injury history isn't quite Andy's, he's older than Andy and hasn't been a paragon of health throughout his career.

Of course, if we really wanted youthful exuberance we needed to add Joe Johnson. You know, because he's a little over a full year younger than all of these guys and showed he still is in All-Star form with his 14.1 PER, 110 DRtg and season stats below his career averages across the board (particular shooting percentages) while playing on a team that barely made the playoffs in the East. That guy surely would've made the difference!

It's not 2010, guys like David West and Joe Johnson aren't All-Stars any more. They're aging vets trying to hang on for a few more years just like Marion, Miller and Jefferson before them. They can fall off any time too...
 
priceFTW said:
Jefferson isn't the move everyone was hoping for (i.e., the young wing with some upside), but he's a decent addition to the team as the 9th or 10th man in the rotation IF he plays the way he did in Dallas and not Utah.

I think what Griffin is thinking here is that James playing the first 7 minutes of the first and then coming back to play 10+ minutes in the second quarter with the defensive lineups and then with Love and Kyrie back in and then repeating in the second half or playing all the of the third quarter to push for a blowout can get us big enough leads to rest him in the fourth. Jefferson, Mo, and if healthy (sigh), AV can play bench minutes that Miller, Jones, Harris, et. al. played and blew big leads prompting James to stay in longer games or to re-enter games that looked over. If so, James can play 32-34 minutes per game. We'll see.

Griffin is looking for a a player that can truly make an impact in the top 8 of the rotation and for that to happen, that player has to be a plus player and a player such as that is hard to find for a vet min unless David West falls into your lap. A TPE might help us find that player next year and I hope we keep looking because stacking the deck even more in our favor should be a priority no matter how good this team looks.

I think Griffin means it when he says a team that went 33-3 with an SRS (10 teams or so in NBA history can boast this--will post more about it some time later) of nearly 13 is a team you want to maintain. Statistically, that stretch of games was better than any of what James's Heat teams did and better than the Heat's 27 game win streak if you look at opponent strength, MOV, SRS, etc. We may think that a player may improve us, but a team that's 33-3 and invincible at home takes the exact right type of players to improve. It's far more likely the pieces we have with the addition of team chemistry will perform better than a group with a new addition to the top 8 who's barely a plus player.

I know I have posted the below chart before (the numbers changed slightly with the last update of RPM), but we have nearly 8 of 8 plus players at the top of the rotation, with Delly being a plus player the final 30 games of the season, and 5 of those guys are young enough to improve. NO team has had the top 8 in its rotation be plus players although some have had 9th or 10th men be plus players. Not the Spurs these two years nor the Warriors. The Warriors improved by adding nobody, but with Curry (was a plus defender for the first time in his career) and Draymond taking big leaps as well as Barnes rising defensively. IF Kyrie is even a neutral defender, there's a really good change that this team while healthy can win 67+ games. Remember, the GSW's starting lineup had a DRTG of 97 and Cleveland's Kyrie/JR/LBJ/Love/Moz starting lineup had a DRTG of 98 WITH Kyrie being a negative defender and JR being poor in many aspects of defense and Love truly improving defensively for the first or second time in his career. If Shump starts and Kyrie improves defensively and we communicate the way we did at the end of the season, that DRTG can be lowered further. How good this team will ultimately be will not be decided by a 10th or 11th man, but finding players who can play in certain matchups is definitely advantageous. How good this team can ultimately be will depend on how much of a leap TT, Love, and Kyrie make and whether or not James is more efficient next year as this was his 2nd or 3rd least efficient year based on ORTG and WS48 and if lady luck sees us healthy. Griffin knows this and will not change things unless a "sure fire" opportunity arises but there are VERY FEW sure things who will improve 33-3.

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I wish I could like this more than once...
 
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blommen said:
Kinda shocked that he's actually still able to get that much air under him. He seems surprisingly athletic for a 34 year old.
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That still was one of the most amazing things that happened last season.
 
gourimoko said:
Or just show he can not overspend on trades, or actually utilize our picks when we have them.... or know how to trade a player for max value rather than just handing out near-max contracts..

But whatevs..

ok.. now I'm done.
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Ok what deals would you have done that actually could have happened.
What was out there that was missed?
So negative.
I need to stop reading your posts.
 
I know I just mentioned this recently, and it will mostly fall on deaf ears, but, to everybody complaining about the Cavs not upgrading their talent enough: Golden State lost in the first round in 2014, returned their top eight players and added Shaun Livingston and won the title. What the Cavs are hoping to do isn't unprecedented.
 
gourimoko said:
I think it's interesting that Mark Cuban essentially just let him go. He had apparently committed to returning to the Mavs but changed his mind after DeAndre Jordan went back to the Clippers? He asked Cuban if he could go to Cleveland and Cuban essentially said "sure, whatevs?"

At least, that's how I'm reading the story.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/07/21/mavs-cuban-fair-to-let-jefferson-go-to-cavs/
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Currently live down here in Dallas and listened to Cuban's interview recently...does one weekly down here. He said after Jordan changed his mind he went back to all of the free agents that they had committed too including Wesley Matthews go elsewhere if they wanted. (nice gesture but the free agent big money had dried up by that time so he wasn't getting that same contact elsewhere).
While he wouldn't directly say it, but I think the plan was to tank if they didnt get Jordan so its no surprise they let RJ go elsewhere. He was decent here last year...filled a role off the bench and had some nice games.
 
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