Frank Reynolds
Co-Owner Paddy's Pub
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This is a great point. LeBron knows the game just as well as Blatt, maybe even in a more intimate way since he's actually out there doing it. I have posted this several times, and LeBron has seemed to acknowledge it of late; When LeBron looks to get his first and imposes himself from the beginning of the game, the whole team gets going. If he defers and passes the ball right off the bat, the defense isn't scared, and then they hone in on James like sharks smelling blood, and finally the whole team collapses. When they stop seeing the ball go through the rim, they stop playing defense. Blatt's job is to get in LeBron's ear to make him perform at a higher level of aggression.
LeBron is the head of the snake, period.
More so than anything, order and timing needs to be right if we're to make it the distance.
The order of the game should be something like this:
1. LeBron imposes his physical dominance right off the bat, draw fouls, posts up, slashes to the cup.
2. LeBron and Love establish the pick and pop game. At this point Kyrie should be playing traditional PG, getting guys the ball in the right spots.
3. After Love and LeBron's two-man game has been established, Irving starts freakin cats, establishing himself as the 3rd option.
4. Ideally we need Andy, Tristan and Matrix to hit garbage around the rim and get us extra possessions through rebounding, steals, drawing charges.
This is a different team than the Miami Heat, we can't copy their formula exactly, we have more dynamic players on this team, and that's a fact. Naturally, this process will take extra time, probably longer than Miami took to acclimate.
I think we could certainly use a big 7-footer with mass. Having a big-body like Noah, Nene, Gortat would reestablish our dominance on the boards. That means a lesser man is going to be battling Love on the glass, it would give Andy more cracks to duck through to finish near the goal. I'm not the biggest fan of Mozgov, I think Asik plays the position better. I don't think we need a pure shot-blocker like Sanders, we need someone with mass in the lower body to root bodies out of the paint, when that happens, we're going to kill it on the boards.
We've been running Shawn Marion pretty hard, he's the mule of this team, we need to reduce his workload by acquiring another lengthy perimeter defender.
Comparing Dion to Delonte, I take West 100/100 times because if nothing else he was scrappy and tough. Would I call West mentally tough? Certainly not, but at least he was going to bring it every night, effort wasn't going to be a problem with him. We need Waiters to fill that role, be a cog to our defense, battle, distribute the ball, finish your jumpers and just do your fuckin job. There's so much extra with Dion, I don't ever envision him being a consistent player/performer on a championship team. He's not Manu Ginobili, some Cleveland fans treat him as such. His primary skill is scoring, and we don't necessarily need that.
We could really use another 6-6 guard to hawk people on the perimeter. That alleviates the front court's burden, and then you further supplement the team by getting a 7 footer down there. Problem solved. If I could get Mozgov and Afflalo for Dion/Haywood and a future 1st (not Memphis) I'd do it in a heartbeat. We have a big-3, most teams would die for this, and they certainly wouldn't let Dion be the deciding factor in patching two major holes that ultimately will cost us. Dion isn't bridging the gap by himself.
