Game Thread | 2021-2022 Season | Game #16 | Cavs @ Nets | Nov. 17, 2021

Great to see them compete and get to within 7 points with 4:45 left but the 3-point shooting was frustration. They ended up 11-for-44. IOW, they missed 33 shots from distance and lost by 10 points.

The Nets defend the 3 very well - I think they're 3rd in the NBA in opponents' 3-point percentage. I thought the Cavs should have attacked the rim more instead of jacking up 44 from deep.

Garland missed 10 of them; he was 3-for-13. With Sexton, Allen, and Mobley out we need Garland to step up offensively but he missed 16 shots tonight. Rubio was 3-for-10 and Love 1-for-5.

LeMarcus Aldridge, age 36, scored 24 points in 30 minutes off the bench. He was set up again and again by Harden. The pick-and-pop was working exceptionally well and Aldridge kept knocking down mid-range jumpers after the Cavs doubled Harden in the paint. The Cavs need a better plan to deal with that play on Monday.

Other the Aldridge the rest of the bench scored 4 points. This is not a deep team but their front line players are excellent.

Rubio kept the Cavs in the game with 18 points in the first half and finished with 25. The five turnovers is too many, though.

Durant and Harden combined for 50 points, which is fine. What lost this game, besides the horrific 3-point shooting, was letting Aldridge and Mills score 24 and 21 points. Four Brooklyn players scored all but 14 of their points.

BimboColesHair said:

People asking the coach to start putting a young team in a position to lose and lose big, consistently, for the sake of development are playing with fire.

Guys like Sexton, Garland, Windler, Cedi, and Okoro already have sloppy habits from being thrown into the fire that aren’t conducive to winning basketball games.

The fact that we are getting upset about a coach “focusing on the game in front of them” is so goddamn ridiculous.

This group needs to learn how to play winning basketball consistently m. The development aspect will take care of itself in that kind of system.

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What group? Ed Davis, Denzel Valentine and Dean Wade?


The group that needs to get accustomed to winning is largely not even playing right now.

Okoro, as he is right now, shouldn't even be a part of the damn rotation when the team is fully healthy. That's how bad he's playing currently. THAT needs to be fixed and the current plan isn't doing it.

RchfldCavRaised said:

I would really like to see Okoro given a month with the Charge

There's a part of me 100% sure he would defer to Kyle Guy and Justin James for the first two weeks there so I'm fully prepared to make him stay an entire month and let James and Guy come up so he HAS to be assertive down there.

At this point in time, it's essential to his development.

Give him the ball down there and tell him don't even look at the scoreboard.. just go earn 10 free throw attempts every night.

I don't give a shit about rebounds and assists.

Free throw attempts. Until you can earn 10 of them for 3-4 games in a row, you don't deserve to be up here.

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Yeah, him being a secondary ball handler on the court capable of running some PnR and slashing would really help the team. He has that in him, but defaults away from it. At this point I don't think he would execute that if he forced it.

It's a damn shame he's regressed so much in that area. He's playing stiff and will have to pound it to make himself loose. Doing that with the main squad will probably hurt his confidence with the misses/adjustment pains (edit: and hurt the overall team performance). The three point shooting, I'm not going to worry too much about with the change in form.

Good idea to get some assertiveness out of him with the GLeague route.

I thought he began the season playing okay in his bench role, making some cuts here and some cuts there, but he is capable of more. Still, that's an area he could find some immediate success when the team starts filling in from injury.

With the current state of the roster, I think he ultimately continues playing a good chunk of minutes for the foreseeable future.

For other options in the immediate timeline, I wouldn't mind seeing Nembhard get some run, what do you think?

Rich said:

This type of thinking that gets players run into the ground imo.

They need to try and develop Okoro.

It's not happening sharing the court with Garland and Rubio. Trying to make sure a random game in November against a title contender remains single digits means way, way, way less.

He was at his best last season when he was coming off screens and attacking down hill. Right now he never has the ball in his hands to attempt to do that.

Okoro needs to find some confidence. Rubio doesn't need to find confidence. Garland doesn't need to find confidence.

Mobley and Allen and Sexton aren't gonna be demoralized when they aren't playing.

It's ok to toss a game into the trash can once in a while for the larger goal in an 82 game season.

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I dunno. I’ve never seen a team that’s trying to win throw away a Game in the name of young player development in garbage time. I don’t remember the Spurs or Warriors ever doing it. I remember them resting their best players but never, EVER forcing the ball to underperforming players in the name of development. I think Popovich would keel over with the thought of doing that.

If you want the ball ans the top of the key and 20 shots or whatever it is, you better have earned it in games, in practice, or in the D League.

Cavs are building a culture to play every game to win no matter the circumstance. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Comeback kid said:

Dean wade doesnt like to rotate to the basket on either end of the floor. he just runs 3 pt line to 3 pt line
. Why do clueless people bother to post?

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Dunno, but we appreciate your contributions, we really do

On a serious note, Dean has been fighting hard this season and I thought he had some nice defensive positioning against Durant, who is the toughest player to guard in the NBA IMHO. Nice to see him hit a few shots after struggling early as well. He’s done well from starting out as a two way player and he’s proven to be a serviceable starter. He has a solid attitude and doesn’t get fazed by going from few or no minutes to having to go 36 or so and guarding the likes of Durant. I’m a fan of his.

Comeback kid said:

Dean wade doesnt like to rotate to the basket on either end of the floor. he just runs 3 pt line to 3 pt line
. Why do clueless people bother to post?

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Lmao u right I have no clue about baskeeeetball I just post for the bitches tbh.

InBoobieWeTrust said:

I dunno. I’ve never seen a team that’s trying to win throw away a Game in the name of young player development in garbage time. I don’t remember the Spurs or Warriors ever doing it. I remember them resting their best players but never, EVER forcing the ball to underperforming players in the name of development. I think Popovich would keel over with the thought of doing that.

If you want the ball ans the top of the key and 20 shots or whatever it is, you better have earned it in games, in practice, or in the D League.

Cavs are building a culture to play every game to win no matter the circumstance. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

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The only thing it would have taken is to sit Rubio tonight and to run some plays wherein Okoro is getting ball screens.

I dunno man. Ricky Rubio keeping us in a ton of games is fools gold in the long run.

BimboColesHair said:

People asking the coach to start putting a young team in a position to lose and lose big, consistently, for the sake of development are playing with fire. Not just the fire of creating bad habits, but the fire of losing the groups attention.

Guys like Sexton, Garland, Windler, Cedi, and Okoro already have sloppy habits from being thrown into the fire that aren’t conducive to winning basketball games.

The fact that we are getting upset about a coach “focusing on the game in front of them” is so goddamn ridiculous.

This group needs to learn how to play winning basketball consistently m. The development aspect will take care of itself in that kind of system.

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Yeah I’m not a fan of building a culture that accepts losing or just quitting. It was suggested pregame that we rest or limit Rubio & Garland’s minutes. They scored 49 points.

2 For The Brew said:

Yeah I’m not a fan of building a culture that accepts losing or just quitting. It was suggested pregame that we rest or limit Rubio & Garland’s minutes. They scored 49 points.

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And lost by 10.

And now they play tomorrow night and Garland played 40 minutes.


But I guess this was a moral victory or something.

I know Dean Wade has been my new whipping boy ever since he blew the Celtics game for us but he was +4 tonight so he’s got that going for him and did defend Durant well a handful of times (and poorly a bakers dozen but still!)

“We need to develop our young guys”.

Also, “we can’t play our 21 year old PG starters minutes on back to back nights”.

Isaac Okoro had no impact on tonight's game. The only place he did make an impact was shrinking the floor for Rubio and Garland who took turns initiating high pick n rolls to keep the game a 10 point deficit.

Brooklyn just dusted Aldridge off and made sure he would be ready when called upon in the playoffs if a team tried small ball. They were using this game as a playoff primer to make sure their rotation guys like Aldridge was ready to be a post outlet scorer and James Johnson was ready if called to be a 7th/8th man offensive option.

Durant and Harden probably played this game at about 50% throttle on the second night of a back to back.

Okoro is at a crossroads where he is either going to be developed to one day be less of the SG version of Tristan Thompson or he's going to further sink into a offensive abyss of no factor and floor shrinking play.

He did what he did tonight in the summer league with a fraction of the talent across from him

It's time to send his ass down until he gets his confidence in his ability with the ball back.

He has no bearing on the outcome of the Golden State game if he continues approaching the game like he is... And worse if he continues starting at SF as a 3D playing hot potato for Garland and Rubio the same way he did last year for Garland and Sexton

Rich said:

And lost by 10.

And now they play tomorrow night and Garland played 40 minutes.


But I guess this was a moral victory or something.

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They were within like 6 or 7 with the ball with over half the 4th quarter left. Game was legit winnable.

The Cavs aren't putting Okoro in a position to succeed at all.

He's not going down to the D-league. For a lot of reasons that just won't happen.


He was at his best last year as the secondary ball handler when Garland or Sexton were hurt. Like if you literally go and find all of his best games at the end of the season they were w/o Sexton or Garland.

They let him be aggressive and clearly must have told him to do so. Attacking down hill off of screens. Something we almost never see him do this year.


So yea, I think taking one of these rare opportunities where we had a zero % chance to win the game to try and help him find some of what he found at the end of last year means more for the season than keeping this single game competitive.

Call me crazy.

And don’t come at me with “Ed Davis, Tacko Fall, Denzel Valentine” as if injury replacements are some “got ya” and they’d be seeing any burn outside of garbage time under normal circumstances.

The Cavs are not operating under normal circumstances at the moment. But they’re still building good habits even under those circumstances.

Talk about looking towards the future, this young core learning how to win seems like it would be real fucking important to their future success.