I felt that this game was a long time coming. We have played poorly before this season, but were difficult to put away like this.
Coming into this game, we had led in the 4th quarter of every game, even the ones that we lost. All of the bad habits that we have seen caught up with the team and culminated in this epic shitfest. Blatt knows it and I am sure he's doing what he can to rectify things as much as possible without a healthy roster. I was also glad to see him show some emotion about the garbage we saw concerning refereeing as Gortat was planted in the lane all night and nothing was called. The sad thing was that this was a crappy Wizards team that has lost 4 in a row by an average of 18 points per game.
1.
Delly must start games until Kyrie is ready to go. Enough is enough with playing Mo at the start which leads to a layup line which leads to deficits. Delly was the second best player out there tonight behind Wall and has been this team's third best player all year. We cannot afford these shitty starts every game and expect to come back all the time, so we should have Delly out there from the get go. I said this during the off-season and I think it is coming to fruition:
When a team trails 10-0 at the 9:22 mark, it has only a 34.8% win probability when taking homecourt advantage out of the equatioon. We chased those 10 points all night long and could never get over the hump. 9-12, 14-14, 16-18, 36-37, never got the lead. Then they broke it open. As the season has progressed, this team looks less and less sure of itself Look at the dominance this team showed after the trades last year:
We led for
87.9% of all minutes played home: on average, the Cavs led for 42 minutes, trailed for 4 minutes, and were tied for 2 minutes at home. In other words, on average, the Cavs were beating every team at home from beginning to end, with the starters, with the backups, with every lineup. The longest they trailed at home was for 13 minutes against the Nets. The next highest total was the Pacers' 9 minutes.
The Cavs were MORE dominant at home after the trades than the GSW were last year. Bolded teams represent home games.
I haven't broken it down completely for this year, but look at where this team is at after first quarters: 24-27 tonight, 17-24 against BKN, up 23-22 against CHA, tied with Toronto 25-25, up 29-27 on Orlando...we're just not playing with leads in games and all the games are close.
2. What a waste of James's effort and energy which of course is also his fault. He turned it over 9 times which is horrific and reminiscent of last year, but he was out there playing hard for long stretches.. The sure fire way of knowing how hard he's going is by how he rebounds. In the playoffs, his offensive rebounding always goes up. He took the ball to the basket quite a bit but didn't get too many calls and his jumper looks broken again.
3. TT played much better defensively than did Moz did and was actually the high + man at +8. He did a very good job getting ORebs (his offensive rebounding has improved since the beginning of the year), but instead of finding open shooters right off the OReb, he put up his ugly 8 footer and it cost the team. Get that rebound, TT, and kick out for an open look.
Then there's Moz. He's fallen off of a cliff since this injury and it has become worrisome. The defense and energy picked up when Andy came in. I wonder how unready Kaun is if he can't get any minutes at all. The Cavs were 10.9 points per 100 possessions better with Moz on court last year and are 8 points per 100 possessions worse with him on court this year.
4. KLove had made 19-31 threes coming into this one and regression to the mean was inevitable. I thought, however, that we should have gone to him in the beginning to see if he could get hot and get us a lead. When Love had 5 shots attempted, JR had 7 or 8 and Mo had 10. That's terrible even though he was awful tonight.
5. JR is competing, but he's taking stupid shots again and he's not making his open threes as he always has. It's still early, but alarming.
6. The defense was terrible for two 7 minute stretches, but that's all it takes to win a game for the opposition. There were about 97 possessions in this game, so the defense grades out decently (DRtg of 100) while the offense was pure trash (ORtg of 87-88).
7. Getting two key cogs back will certainly help, but there are other problems with the defense that might prevent this team from reaching its full potential and that that includes Moz's health.
8. Dudley would be so damn good on this team. I posted about him this summer. The Bucks were 4.5 points per 100 possessions better with him on court and the Wizards this year are nearly 23 points per 100 possessions better with him on court.