shoes22
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I think that's the point, though...if the record is still good, it's less likely he'll be fired.
It all depends on how the playoffs go though, ultimately.
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2023-24 Regular Season Thread
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It all depends on how the playoffs go though, ultimately.
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I think the team has been focused on expanding the offense beyond Mitchell. They had to get Strus and Niang hitting Threes and get everybody healthy .. but they are still a team that wins defensively. They choked out the run and gun Hawks and won mostly on Mobley and Mitchell. But the new guys had nice contributions..
We also played with only 3 bigs. (Minivan being the third) .. Wade out and TT did not play.. I think that works against the Hawks, but not against Boston or the Knicks.. in my view, if we add anything at the deadline it will be another power forward type..
We also played with only 3 bigs. (Minivan being the third) .. Wade out and TT did not play.. I think that works against the Hawks, but not against Boston or the Knicks.. in my view, if we add anything at the deadline it will be another power forward type..
shoes22
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I think against Boston and the Knicks, TT will definitely get minutes. He does well against those type of teams.
bigfoot5415
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I could be wrong but it looks like this is made up of 3rd conference games against non- divisional opponents.
bigfoot5415
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Al Horford is in shambles
shoes22
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Correct. Our only options for the extra games were Orlando or Toronto at home, and Miami or Charlotte on the road. We got the tougher matchups unfortunately.
bigfoot5415
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So how did they build this into the schedule while maintaining the 3 games out of division match ups?
shoes22
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Most teams in the same conference you play 4 times. For the teams not moving on in the in-season tournament, the 2 extra games are decided from same conference opponents you would otherwise only play 3 times.
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Hard to believe Philadelphia, Miami, Denver, OKC, Minnesota and Orlando didn't make it to Vegas.
I thought the eight best teams would advance so that if we failed we would pick up a couple of games against easier opponents and it would work to our advantage over 82 games. But Orlando (12-5) at home and Miami (10-8) away? Those are tough opponents.
eChameleon
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The bummer about this tournament for me was the games not all being on fixed dates, so we kinda knew we weren't moving on weeks ago.
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Jason Lloyd had this column in The Athletic (bolded parts mine):
CLEVELAND — Going old school this week. Twenty-four thoughts for Caris LeVert’s 24 3-pointers this season ahead of the Cavaliers’ final group-play game of the In-Season Tournament against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday. …
1. Before we can fairly assess where the Cavs are as this season nears the quarter pole, first they have to stay healthy and log at least a few more games with the right names on the court together.
2. Injuries to Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen at various points have limited the actual starting lineup to just seven games together. The Cavs are 3-4 with that group following a weekend split of home games against the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, but seven games obviously isn’t enough time together to draw any logical conclusions. Now that the key pieces are all relatively healthy and off the injury report, hopefully they can stay that way.
3. The offensive rating for the starters, for instance, is significantly worse (108.9) than last season’s starting unit (121.6) despite Max Strus replacing Isaac Okoro. The defensive rating this year for the starting lineup is similar and even incrementally better than a year ago.
4. With a larger sample size as the season progresses, the offensive numbers should spike considerably. Garland hasn’t played particularly well (his 3-point shooting is down and his turnovers are up) while fighting through nagging injuries. That’s always been the concern with him. He always seems to be fighting something with his health.
5. The numbers I listed are the offensive and defensive ratings when all five starters are on the floor together. That’s different from the team’s overall ratings. I was curious what the starters’ ratings look like together because Strus over Okoro should make a drastic difference, and with enough time it will. Strus has been a terrific addition, particularly on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers, which was such a problem on the wing last season.
6. Strus has attempted 116 catch-and-shoot 3s, third-most in the NBA, and he’s making them at basically a 40 percent clip. He ranked in the top 10 in catch-and-shoot 3-pointers last season, so this is nothing new for him. But it’s exactly what this offense desperately needed out of the wing position. Cedi Osman led the Cavs last year with 95 catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Both Strus and Georges Niang are on pace to top that.
7. I asked J.B. Bickerstaff before the season if he wanted Strus stationed in the corner to space the floor or if he wanted him coming off screens and pindowns. The answer, basically, was both. Early in the shot clock, he wants Strus moving. Once secondary actions start, however, he wants guys to hold their positions so the ball handlers know where the outlets are. It’s clearly working to this point.
8. The Cavs led the league in defensive rating last season, but nearly everyone in the organization would trade a little defense for an extra scoring punch. And more specifically, more shooting. The Cavs’ overall defensive rating as a team is middle of the pack, but it’s early enough yet and the stats are so tightly bunched together that a couple of excellent games could easily vault them back into the top 10. In other words, they really haven’t lost too much defensively to this point with the offensive upside remaining relatively high.
9. I’m not overly surprised that the Cavs’ best lineup from a metrics standpoint has been Mitchell, Strus, Niang, Caris LeVert and Evan Mobley. That unit has outscored opponents by 27 points in only 33 minutes together. I’ve long heard and written how others around the league believe the Cavs are at their best with Mobley at center surrounded by four shooters. That seems to be playing out so far in the data. It just might be a couple of different shooters than you expected.
10. No, Garland is not part of the lineup that has performed the best. But again, he’s struggled a bit with his handle and shot. That part should course correct over time.
11. Mitchell, Strus, LeVert, Niang and Mobley as a unit have played 33 minutes together over 11 games, according to the NBA’s tracking data, and the quintet has a true shooting percentage of 75 percent. Of all the lineups across the NBA that have played at least 30 minutes together, only the Pacers can match five players who have shot it better as a collective unit. It’s still early, but that’s really, really impressive.
12. Niang, like Strus, was a key offseason addition for his shooting. After a miserable start, Niang is shooting 49 percent from 3 over his last eight games.
13. Of course, it’s hard to keep that five on the floor for extended stretches because it leaves Garland on the bench. Sub in Garland for LeVert and the percentage dips considerably, at least for now. Check back in February or March and those numbers will likely look much different.
14. All of those names and numbers also leave Jarrett Allen on the bench. Allen is excellent in the right spots. His awareness to switch onto Gary Trent Jr. for the final possession Sunday night in the win against Toronto, chase him into the corner and smother him into a turnover was a master class in how to use the sideline to a big man’s advantage while guarding a mismatch.
15. He’s such a willing passer that the high pick-and-roll action the Cavs can run with him and a guard can really be a weapon when it gets opposing bigs moving and creates backdoor cuts and easy baskets off lobs for Mobley. Nevertheless, most of the Cavs’ best five-man units, at least in terms of plus/minus and net rating, do not include Allen to this point.
16. One interesting development this year is Dan Gilbert’s growing presence both at games and within the organization. Gilbert has always had final say as chairman, but his role within the organization was drastically reduced while he spent the last few years recovering from a massive stroke in 2019. The way it was described to me is that the team didn’t often hear from Dan, but when they did, his wishes were loud and direct. His son, Grant, took a more prominent role within the Cavs in his place.
17. We wrote a story a couple of years ago on how Grant appeared to be the heir to the throne in part because people around the league weren’t sure Dan could ever really reclaim the position. If the Cavaliers were going to remain in the Gilbert family, it more or less had to be Grant. The fact Dan seems to be resuming the power chair is a medical wonder given how far he has come. He remains in a wheelchair and without use of the left side of his body. But Dan’s recovery nonetheless has been remarkable.
18. All of this is information I’ve gathered over the years from sources with direct knowledge of Gilbert’s recovery. In the weeks and months following the stroke, Gilbert’s wife, Jennifer, essentially took over the care of her husband and cut him off from the outside world. Business and basketball no longer mattered. The focus was on getting him well. Nothing else. She was adamant about it. The Gilberts spent quite a bit of time in Florida. Communication with the franchise was extremely limited.
19. Gradually, as Gilbert’s health improved, so did his access to the rest of the world. Jennifer first allowed him to have a cell phone with only a handful of numbers in it. She chose with whom he had contact. As he regained strength, a few more numbers were added. Slowly, steadily we’ve gotten to the point where he regularly attends games again. His recovery has been great to see.
20. I wanted to be specific with some of the Gilbert stuff because I don’t want this next part to be misconstrued. There is intense pressure on Bickerstaff to win this year and everyone in the organization knows it. The Cavs’ future with Mitchell is dependent on it. It’s easy to correlate Gilbert’s return to a more active role with increased pressure on the coaching staff, but that’s not accurate or fair.
21. It’s true Gilbert has a long history of firing coaches and executives. I wrote about it often for years. It’s also true all of that subsided following his serious health matter. I’ve had members of the organization joke that nobody gets fired anymore, they just keep adding more staff. It’s part of the reason they’ve outgrown their practice facility in Independence. (Although bringing the G-League Charge staff into the building is the main reason.) Bickerstaff and team president Koby Altman even received lengthy extensions during Gilbert’s recovery, which never really occurred previously. But I don’t believe Gilbert’s return to a more prominent role is at all related to the pressure on Bickerstaff to win. The Cavs would be in the same position even if Gilbert remained less active in daily proceedings. The pressure on this franchise is tied directly to Mitchell. Not ownership.
22. That’s why some of their wins this season have been so impressive. Sweeping Golden State, smacking the defending champion Nuggets at home, winning in Philadelphia in an arena where they were dismantled last season. All positive signs of growth. Now that they’re healthy, a hot streak would go a long way in settling everything down. Despite currently sitting eighth in the East, they still have the fourth-best odds of winning the conference, albeit significantly behind the Celtics, Bucks and 76ers.
23. “I think we’re playing really good basketball,” Bickerstaff said over the weekend. “To go on the road and beat a Philly team that we’ve struggled with at their place says a lot about the growth of this team. To beat Denver here at home the way that we did says a lot about the growth of this team, and what it feels like is we’ve kind of seen the picture painted for us. Guys know this is what we have to do in order to be successful. Bringing bodies back always can change the dynamic of things because guys are trying to figure themselves out. Rotations change a little bit, pairings change a little bit. But we should understand systematically what has been working and plug and play guys into what has been working and then go from there.”
24. I don’t know if I like the In-Season Tournament yet. I’m not sure the players and coaches fully grasp or understand it, either. My initial thought was the whole thing is silly, but I’m growing more inclined to give it a chance. I’ll be curious to see what the Las Vegas portion looks like next week. Talk to you soon.
CLEVELAND — Going old school this week. Twenty-four thoughts for Caris LeVert’s 24 3-pointers this season ahead of the Cavaliers’ final group-play game of the In-Season Tournament against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday. …
1. Before we can fairly assess where the Cavs are as this season nears the quarter pole, first they have to stay healthy and log at least a few more games with the right names on the court together.
2. Injuries to Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen at various points have limited the actual starting lineup to just seven games together. The Cavs are 3-4 with that group following a weekend split of home games against the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, but seven games obviously isn’t enough time together to draw any logical conclusions. Now that the key pieces are all relatively healthy and off the injury report, hopefully they can stay that way.
3. The offensive rating for the starters, for instance, is significantly worse (108.9) than last season’s starting unit (121.6) despite Max Strus replacing Isaac Okoro. The defensive rating this year for the starting lineup is similar and even incrementally better than a year ago.
4. With a larger sample size as the season progresses, the offensive numbers should spike considerably. Garland hasn’t played particularly well (his 3-point shooting is down and his turnovers are up) while fighting through nagging injuries. That’s always been the concern with him. He always seems to be fighting something with his health.
5. The numbers I listed are the offensive and defensive ratings when all five starters are on the floor together. That’s different from the team’s overall ratings. I was curious what the starters’ ratings look like together because Strus over Okoro should make a drastic difference, and with enough time it will. Strus has been a terrific addition, particularly on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers, which was such a problem on the wing last season.
6. Strus has attempted 116 catch-and-shoot 3s, third-most in the NBA, and he’s making them at basically a 40 percent clip. He ranked in the top 10 in catch-and-shoot 3-pointers last season, so this is nothing new for him. But it’s exactly what this offense desperately needed out of the wing position. Cedi Osman led the Cavs last year with 95 catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Both Strus and Georges Niang are on pace to top that.
7. I asked J.B. Bickerstaff before the season if he wanted Strus stationed in the corner to space the floor or if he wanted him coming off screens and pindowns. The answer, basically, was both. Early in the shot clock, he wants Strus moving. Once secondary actions start, however, he wants guys to hold their positions so the ball handlers know where the outlets are. It’s clearly working to this point.
8. The Cavs led the league in defensive rating last season, but nearly everyone in the organization would trade a little defense for an extra scoring punch. And more specifically, more shooting. The Cavs’ overall defensive rating as a team is middle of the pack, but it’s early enough yet and the stats are so tightly bunched together that a couple of excellent games could easily vault them back into the top 10. In other words, they really haven’t lost too much defensively to this point with the offensive upside remaining relatively high.
9. I’m not overly surprised that the Cavs’ best lineup from a metrics standpoint has been Mitchell, Strus, Niang, Caris LeVert and Evan Mobley. That unit has outscored opponents by 27 points in only 33 minutes together. I’ve long heard and written how others around the league believe the Cavs are at their best with Mobley at center surrounded by four shooters. That seems to be playing out so far in the data. It just might be a couple of different shooters than you expected.
10. No, Garland is not part of the lineup that has performed the best. But again, he’s struggled a bit with his handle and shot. That part should course correct over time.
11. Mitchell, Strus, LeVert, Niang and Mobley as a unit have played 33 minutes together over 11 games, according to the NBA’s tracking data, and the quintet has a true shooting percentage of 75 percent. Of all the lineups across the NBA that have played at least 30 minutes together, only the Pacers can match five players who have shot it better as a collective unit. It’s still early, but that’s really, really impressive.
12. Niang, like Strus, was a key offseason addition for his shooting. After a miserable start, Niang is shooting 49 percent from 3 over his last eight games.
13. Of course, it’s hard to keep that five on the floor for extended stretches because it leaves Garland on the bench. Sub in Garland for LeVert and the percentage dips considerably, at least for now. Check back in February or March and those numbers will likely look much different.
14. All of those names and numbers also leave Jarrett Allen on the bench. Allen is excellent in the right spots. His awareness to switch onto Gary Trent Jr. for the final possession Sunday night in the win against Toronto, chase him into the corner and smother him into a turnover was a master class in how to use the sideline to a big man’s advantage while guarding a mismatch.
15. He’s such a willing passer that the high pick-and-roll action the Cavs can run with him and a guard can really be a weapon when it gets opposing bigs moving and creates backdoor cuts and easy baskets off lobs for Mobley. Nevertheless, most of the Cavs’ best five-man units, at least in terms of plus/minus and net rating, do not include Allen to this point.
16. One interesting development this year is Dan Gilbert’s growing presence both at games and within the organization. Gilbert has always had final say as chairman, but his role within the organization was drastically reduced while he spent the last few years recovering from a massive stroke in 2019. The way it was described to me is that the team didn’t often hear from Dan, but when they did, his wishes were loud and direct. His son, Grant, took a more prominent role within the Cavs in his place.
17. We wrote a story a couple of years ago on how Grant appeared to be the heir to the throne in part because people around the league weren’t sure Dan could ever really reclaim the position. If the Cavaliers were going to remain in the Gilbert family, it more or less had to be Grant. The fact Dan seems to be resuming the power chair is a medical wonder given how far he has come. He remains in a wheelchair and without use of the left side of his body. But Dan’s recovery nonetheless has been remarkable.
18. All of this is information I’ve gathered over the years from sources with direct knowledge of Gilbert’s recovery. In the weeks and months following the stroke, Gilbert’s wife, Jennifer, essentially took over the care of her husband and cut him off from the outside world. Business and basketball no longer mattered. The focus was on getting him well. Nothing else. She was adamant about it. The Gilberts spent quite a bit of time in Florida. Communication with the franchise was extremely limited.
19. Gradually, as Gilbert’s health improved, so did his access to the rest of the world. Jennifer first allowed him to have a cell phone with only a handful of numbers in it. She chose with whom he had contact. As he regained strength, a few more numbers were added. Slowly, steadily we’ve gotten to the point where he regularly attends games again. His recovery has been great to see.
20. I wanted to be specific with some of the Gilbert stuff because I don’t want this next part to be misconstrued. There is intense pressure on Bickerstaff to win this year and everyone in the organization knows it. The Cavs’ future with Mitchell is dependent on it. It’s easy to correlate Gilbert’s return to a more active role with increased pressure on the coaching staff, but that’s not accurate or fair.
21. It’s true Gilbert has a long history of firing coaches and executives. I wrote about it often for years. It’s also true all of that subsided following his serious health matter. I’ve had members of the organization joke that nobody gets fired anymore, they just keep adding more staff. It’s part of the reason they’ve outgrown their practice facility in Independence. (Although bringing the G-League Charge staff into the building is the main reason.) Bickerstaff and team president Koby Altman even received lengthy extensions during Gilbert’s recovery, which never really occurred previously. But I don’t believe Gilbert’s return to a more prominent role is at all related to the pressure on Bickerstaff to win. The Cavs would be in the same position even if Gilbert remained less active in daily proceedings. The pressure on this franchise is tied directly to Mitchell. Not ownership.
22. That’s why some of their wins this season have been so impressive. Sweeping Golden State, smacking the defending champion Nuggets at home, winning in Philadelphia in an arena where they were dismantled last season. All positive signs of growth. Now that they’re healthy, a hot streak would go a long way in settling everything down. Despite currently sitting eighth in the East, they still have the fourth-best odds of winning the conference, albeit significantly behind the Celtics, Bucks and 76ers.
23. “I think we’re playing really good basketball,” Bickerstaff said over the weekend. “To go on the road and beat a Philly team that we’ve struggled with at their place says a lot about the growth of this team. To beat Denver here at home the way that we did says a lot about the growth of this team, and what it feels like is we’ve kind of seen the picture painted for us. Guys know this is what we have to do in order to be successful. Bringing bodies back always can change the dynamic of things because guys are trying to figure themselves out. Rotations change a little bit, pairings change a little bit. But we should understand systematically what has been working and plug and play guys into what has been working and then go from there.”
24. I don’t know if I like the In-Season Tournament yet. I’m not sure the players and coaches fully grasp or understand it, either. My initial thought was the whole thing is silly, but I’m growing more inclined to give it a chance. I’ll be curious to see what the Las Vegas portion looks like next week. Talk to you soon.
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Now that we know the opponents after the Cavs failed to make the in-season tournament playoffs, it's evident the Cavs will face a real test starting next week. After two easy games against 5-12 Portland at home and 2-15 Detroit away the Cavs have three days off to prepare for a five-game gauntlet that will tell us a lot about where they stand in relation to the league's best teams.
Starting next Wednesday they play Orlando at home, Miami and Orlando on the road, and two games against Boston on the road. Boston is 14-4, Orlando 12-5, and Miami 10-8, including a beatdown of the Cavs in Cleveland last week.
With the Cavs healthy for the moment and likely to have both Wade and Jerome back by Dec. 6, they just need to get through these next two games against Portland and Detroit with no injuries to head into the gauntlet fully healthy and with three days off to fine tune. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do in those five games, two of which are on the road against the team with the best record and point differential in the league.
Edit: The real test will be the last three games where they play Orlando away, fly to Boston to play the Celtics the next night, then get a day off before playing the Celtics in Boston again. Three games in four days with a back-to-back with travel. Brutal.
Starting next Wednesday they play Orlando at home, Miami and Orlando on the road, and two games against Boston on the road. Boston is 14-4, Orlando 12-5, and Miami 10-8, including a beatdown of the Cavs in Cleveland last week.
With the Cavs healthy for the moment and likely to have both Wade and Jerome back by Dec. 6, they just need to get through these next two games against Portland and Detroit with no injuries to head into the gauntlet fully healthy and with three days off to fine tune. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do in those five games, two of which are on the road against the team with the best record and point differential in the league.
Edit: The real test will be the last three games where they play Orlando away, fly to Boston to play the Celtics the next night, then get a day off before playing the Celtics in Boston again. Three games in four days with a back-to-back with travel. Brutal.
shoes22
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Can't speak to Wade, but Jerome absolutely will not be back by December 6th. He's not close.
Lee
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Not doubting you one bit, just curious how you know?
And does Jerome get minutes with the emergence of CPJ?
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