LyXo
Gold Star Member
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2005
- Messages
- 2,916
- Reaction score
- 921
- Points
- 113
This guy is a lot more cut than I thought
Good as Newble (Almost)
by Joe Gabriele
cavs.com
December 9 -- Even casual Cavalier fans know that rookie head coach Mike Brown is all about three things: defense, defense and more defense.
Seventeen games into the 2005-06 season, the Cavaliers’ D hasn’t been quite as tenacious as Brown would prefer – the players are still learning his system and he is still without his best knuckle-down defender, Ira Newble. But both are right on the horizon.
The Cavaliers can score. With more weapons than they’ve had during the LeBron James Era, Cleveland is second in the NBA in scoring – trailing only the high-octane Suns. Between James, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall and Damon Jones, the Wine and Gold can fill it up from everywhere on the floor.
Hughes is a member of the league’s All-Defensive First Team and LeBron finished third in steals last season. Drew Gooden is a monster on the glass. But none of these players can make an opponent completely miserable for 96 feet like Newble, the six-year veteran from U. of Miami (Ohio).
Newble, who started 138 games for the Cavaliers over the past two seasons, isn’t about statistics. Last year’s starting shooting guard has averaged just under six points and just over three boards per game over that span. But neither category reflects his value to the club. The NBA doesn’t have a category for what Newble does on the hardwood.
This year, Newble hasn’t suited up for a single game, suffering from the ill-effects of right foot plantar fasciitis – or, in layman’s terms, a heel spur. Newble had no idea how serious the injury was when he first noticed that something wasn’t right.
“It was sore, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was a slow bruise and then it got worse after the second day of training camp,” said Newble. “I never really gave it the rest it needed.”
On Thursday afternoon, Newble worked out with his teammates and could be ready to rejoin them during the Cavaliers’ pseudo-homestand over the next couple of weeks. He didn’t go through full scrimmages, but did run through some shooting and defensive drills.
“Any time you bring a guy that has that (defensive) mindset and with (Newble)’s athleticism and strength, it can only benefit you on that end of the floor,” said Coach Brown.
Many readers who have not seen the former CBA cager might wonder how a player who has averaged six points and three boards per game could have an impact on a talent-laden team like Cleveland. But if those same readers have watched a single game this year, they’d know that Newble brings an intangible that – despite the 11-6 mark – has been missing.
For the next few days, Newble will undergo a painful process in Pittsburgh through the Cleveland Clinic called high wave shock therapy. It’s something that he’s had done before. It was a medical procedure originally designed for dissipating kidney stones.
“I feel better, but I just want to get some practices in before I’m ready to go full-court,” Newble said after practice on Thursday.
By this time next week, Newble could be back in action off Mike Brown’s bench, ready to doggedly defend an opposing two or three. Newble gets in his adversary’s jersey from jump street. Hughes may be All-Defensive, but he’s more of a disrupter. Newble disrupts opponents by knocking them on their backsides. (Again, there’s no statistical category for planting point guards who get a little too daring around the rim.)
The Cavaliers defense (hopefully) isn’t what it will be come crunch time. Cleveland currently ranks 20th in the NBA in opponents’ scoring. That’s a number that Mike Brown, who cut his teeth with Greg Popovich and Rick Carlisle, finds unacceptable. But with Newble’s dogged on-ball defense and Anderson Varejao’s intrinsic rebounding about to enter the equation, look for that stat to improve exponentially.
Neither Sasha Pavlovic nor Luke Jackson brings the type of defense and toughness off the bench that Newble will bring when he returns to the Cavaliers lineup. With the Eastern Conference’s best rolling into The Q this month, both of those elements will be at a premium for the Wine and Gold.
“I’m going to come out and do what I do first and that’s play tough defense until I get comfortable and get the system right,” said Newble. “And as long as I go hard, any mistakes I make won’t matter as much.”
That came out wrong :chuckles: