Game Thread | 2021-2022 Season | Game #74 | Bulls @ Cavs | March 26, 2022 | 8:00 p.m.

[buzzdog]

Here’s my thing…Bickerstaff talks about physicality…in what universe did he expect us to be able to compete with the Bulls physically without Allen..he refuses to play our most physical guys like Davis and Brown.

Our bigs were Mobley—who tried but got in foul trouble because Vuc has 60 lbs on him…and then Mark who has been charmin soft as a big for years and Love who doesn’t contest anything and his only displays of physicality are taking charges. On the wing they have DeRozan, LaVine, Dosunmu, Caruso…we have Osman, Okoro, Steven’s., LeVert…Stevens brings physicality but his mental mistakes in big moments hurt us…Okoro brings it occasionally on a game by game basis and tonight he didn’t. He camped the corner all night and got crushed by Vuc over and over on screens, Levert has length but he’s not physical/strong…and Osman is soft and bad.

And Garland is a a finesse guy who competes but he won’t be able to overcome all the physicality we saw and a lot of the time he was going up against big wings like Dosunmu.

So we were never going to win physically. We needed to win mentally. We needed to put maneuver them. We needed to out smart them. Instead JBB just wants a rough and tumble grit and grind grizzlies team and that’s just not what he has at his disposal without Allen. Until Allen comes back. ADJUST!!!! Just ADJUST!!!

Just about every team in the league can play with more physicality than the Cavs. We're just not as strong across the board, one on one, against many of our opponents. A lot of it is just body build, length/weight/muscle ratios. And the book is out, they all know they need to bully us to slow us down, and to take us out of our game. With JA out of the picture it's even worse. We flat out don't have the personnel to out-wrestle opponents. Stevens/Okoro/Love are the closest we have and you stated their issues. The Bulls got inside our shirts all night and we have no answer to that level of intensity. They got inside our player's heads and in turn our guys badly botched a lot of opportunities we normally convert on.

I've always agreed that JB is stubborn, dogmatic, locked in to his beliefs. The question is is he just slow to see things and change, or is he just completely oblivious to seeing what his problems as a head coach are. In-game he can't coach his way out of a paper bag when it comes to moment to moment adjustments. There were clearly some effective halftime adjustments especially on defense, and we beat them in the second half. Does every coach on our staff suck, and is there no-one else who sees the in-game problem? Or are they pointing things out and being over-ruled? Is JB collaborative or is he a tyrant? And if JB is not collaborative then why does the front office tolerate it?

 

[Ohioplayer00]

I feel like we had a real opportunity at the trade deadline with Rubio’s expiring and our first round pick as a basis for a trade. But we might have blown it with Levert. Guys like CJ McCollum were available - he would be exactly what we need on the offensive end, knock down shooter, good passer, creates his own shot. although not a great defender.

McCollum would have been the perfect fit but a lot people were complaining about his age. I agree that player will have to come through the draft. If we don’t get the 6th spot I would rather drop out of the playoffs and get that lottery pick to add a valuable young shooter in the draft.

 

[cavsfever]

My point about the trade deadline was that the Rubio contract and the first round pick gave us the base for a trade to go after a star. Now it will be harder. Maybe NO would have outbid us for McCollum but I don’t think that their including Josh Hart and Tomas Satoransky in that trade meant we couldn’t have competed.

Instead we went for the bargain guy in Levert, hopefully the second half last night is indicative of how he will play in the future, we’ll see. So far he hasn’t been good — the fact that people have to cling so hard to one good half of play tells you something - but it’s early yet and he should improve

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

Here’s my thing…Bickerstaff talks about physicality…in what universe did he expect us to be able to compete with the Bulls physically without Allen..he refuses to play our most physical guys like Davis and Brown.

Our bigs were Mobley—who tried but got in foul trouble because Vuc has 60 lbs on him…and then Mark who has been charmin soft as a big for years and Love who doesn’t contest anything and his only displays of physicality are taking charges. On the wing they have DeRozan, LaVine, Dosunmu, Caruso…we have Osman, Okoro, Steven’s., LeVert…Stevens brings physicality but his mental mistakes in big moments hurt us…Okoro brings it occasionally on a game by game basis and tonight he didn’t. He camped the corner all night and got crushed by Vuc over and over on screens, Levert has length but he’s not physical/strong…and Osman is soft and bad.

And Garland is a a finesse guy who competes but he won’t be able to overcome all the physicality we saw and a lot of the time he was going up against big wings like Dosunmu.

So we were never going to win physically. We needed to win mentally. We needed to put maneuver them. We needed to out smart them. Instead JBB just wants a rough and tumble grit and grind grizzlies team and that’s just not what he has at his disposal without Allen. Until Allen comes back. ADJUST!!!! Just ADJUST!!!

We beat them 59-45 in the second half after Bickerstaff told them at halftime that they were playing soft and getting pushed around.

This game was lost because our three best 3-point shooters (Garland, Love, and Markkanen) went 3-for-20. That's 15%. And we lost by four points.

LeVert missed four free throws in six attempts. He also had an uncontested dunk where he lost the ball. Markkanen missed an uncontested dunk.

The Cavs should have won this game by at least 10 points.

Hopefully they learned that they need to come out in the first quarter and play with physicality.

Brad Daugherty was complaining that the Cavs were not getting the ball inside the free throw line on offense. They were throwing it around behind the 3-point line and then missing 3's. In the fourth quarter Garland and LeVert started forcing their way to the paint and combined for 23 points.

If the Cavs had been that physical in forcing their way into the paint in the first half they would have scored more than 35 points. Instead, they wussed out and kept shooting 3's, going a mind-boggling 1-for-18.

 

[Rich]

The halftime speech isn't what changed the course of the game.

The rotations did.

No more Osman, way less Love, and a lineup in Garland, Stevens and Levert that wanted to probe the defense.

Right now the Love+Mark lineup needs to die. It's bad all the way around.

 

[buzzdog]

The halftime speech isn't what changed the course of the game.

The rotations did.

No more Osman, way less Love, and a lineup in Garland, Stevens and Levert that wanted to probe the defense.

Right now the Love+Mark lineup needs to die. It's bad all the way around.

Our available bigs took a hit when Wade went down. I think JB tries to catch lightning in a bottle hoping both Love and Markk can get hot from behind the arc at the same time. If they did we'd blow opponents out of the water and open up the inside game. I think JB tries to do the same with Cedi and Love. Unfortunately none of them is getting hot or even shooting at their career averages so it fails miserably.

 

[kidduck]

If they move the ball on offense at all, the Cavs seem to
do nothing but move the ball around the perimeter with
little intent. This is asinine since it does nothing to disrupt
the defense.

And when the team is struggling to make anything from
3 land, why is Goodwin, buried on the bench.

JBB appears intent to force his style on the
players, regardless of whether they are effective
at it. Even in a fight for the playoffs, he remains
either stubborn or in over his head.

 

[KilgoreTrout]

The front office really screwed the pooch mid year. JBB extension was asinine. He’s a bottom tier coach and they way overreacted to a really good couple of months. We came out like a sprinter running a marathon and then collapsed along side the road around the all star break and now everybody else is passing us by.

Levert has been disappointing. It wasn’t a horrible move, but in hindsight, we don’t make it. He doesn’t look like somebody we want to keep around at the price he will be looking at getting.

After the top 3, it looks like the rest of the roster can all be replaced. Marrk might be nice as a 7th man or so, but we have to find some legit NBA wings that have dimensions to their game. Good news is, we have the hard part of the build out of the way, but their needs to be quite a bit more roster construction and retooling before we are making any noise in the playoffs.

I love @redscoon’s sobering posts. They cut through all the BS.

This is a team with a lot of problems, still - besides injuries. Rubio covered for a lot of that. Build around Garland, Mobley, and Allen, in the off-season. Use whatever assets you have, to get some two-way wings.

 

[buzzdog]

If they move the ball on offense at all, the Cavs seem to
do nothing but move the ball around the perimeter with
little intent. This is asinine since it does nothing to disrupt
the defense.

And when the team is struggling to make anything from
3 land, why is Goodwin, buried on the bench.

JBB appears intent to force his style on the
players, regardless of whether they are effective
at it. Even in a fight for the playoffs, he remains
either stubborn or in over his head.

100% agree.

 

[Ohioplayer00]

If they move the ball on offense at all, the Cavs seem to
do nothing but move the ball around the perimeter with
little intent. This is asinine since it does nothing to disrupt
the defense.

And when the team is struggling to make anything from
3 land, why is Goodwin, buried on the bench.

JBB appears intent to force his style on the
players, regardless of whether they are effective
at it. Even in a fight for the playoffs, he remains
either stubborn or in over his head.

Yep this perimeter offense out past or at the three point line of hand offs is worthless. Then when we turn it over out there (the worse place on the floor for TOs) it leads to 3-4 on one fast break points!

 

[Heat Check]

Our available bigs took a hit when Wade went down. I think JB tries to catch lightning in a bottle hoping both Love and Markk can get hot from behind the arc at the same time. If they did we'd blow opponents out of the water and open up the inside game. I think JB tries to do the same with Cedi and Love. Unfortunately none of them is getting hot or even shooting at their career averages so it fails miserably.

On the contrary. Going into the Bulls game, Love, Lauri and Okoro had all been shooting WAY over their career averages for a while. Even Cedi, with all his slumping, is still hitting his career average.

Fans tend to overreact to 3pt misses (I'm quilty of that too), but they're just a part of NBA life. A 40% perimeter shooter will clank 6 shots out of 10. That's a lot, particularly when you consider that the other team often gets a fast break off a long rebound. Nevertheless, if you're a guy who shoots a decent percentage, you cannot turn down open shots in this league. No coach will allow that. For all his talk about toughness and going inside, JBB is just like the others in this respect. I guarantee he bristles when Wade, Windler or Okoro swings the ball instead of taking the shot.

Speaking of toughness...

The Bulls are not a physical team. Far from it. They only have a few guys who play hard and embrace contact. The rest (including Vucevic) are finesse guys and/or jump shooters. The biggest factor in the loss was our own horrible 3pt shooting, but on the other side of the ball, we were killed by Chicago's midrange game and DDR's unstoppable 1-on-1 wizardry. Not "toughness".

Sometimes you do have to force the ball near the basket, but dribbling all the way there is often the most inefficient way of doing it, along with a slow post-up against a set defense. With Rondo out and Ricky gone, we don't have anyone who can make good entry passes to guys sealing their defenders under the hoop, and often we don't even see the mismatch. It's a shame, because that's the best way to quickly create an advantage in the post area.

 

[kidduck]

From the Chicago Tribune game story:

The Bulls also were helped by the fact the Cavaliers were entirely out of sorts with the ball in their hands. Cleveland shot 31% from the field in the first half, including 1-for-18 from 3-point range.


The Bulls contributed to the sluggish offense — plucking five steals and forcing eight turnovers — but the Cavaliers spent the first three quarters missing nearly everything, including open shots. It was difficult to determine how much the Bulls contributed to that funk.


“When any NBA team goes 1-for-18, certainly it was not our defense,” Donovan said. “I thought we worked like crazy on our defense, but when that ball goes up in the air, it’s really out of anybody’s control.”

 

[buzzdog]

Looking at the last 10 games Love has actually been decent and fairly consistent, except for last night and the Pacers games. Mediocre against the Lakers and Sixers but above average for the rest. 6 out of 10 games Love did well.

Osman, not so much.

But we really needed "hot" Love last night and we didn't get it.

Love Osman
Bulls- 16% N/A
Raptors- 40% 0%
Lakers- 28% 16%
Pistons- 60% 50%
Denver- 49% DNP
Sixers- 28% DNP
Clippers- 50% N/A
Bulls- 40% 12%
Heat- 50% 40%
Pacers- 16% 0%

 

[Heat Check]

Looking at the last 10 games Love has actually been decent and fairly consistent, except for last night and the Pacers games. Mediocre against the Lakers and Sixers but above average for the rest. 6 out of 10 games Love did well.

Osman, not so much.

But we really needed "hot" Love last night and we didn't get it.

Love Osman
Bulls- 16% N/A
Raptors- 40% 0%
Lakers- 28% 16%
Pistons- 60% 50%
Denver- 49% DNP
Sixers- 28% DNP
Clippers- 50% N/A
Bulls- 40% 12%
Heat- 50% 40%
Pacers- 16% 0%

People talk about all the missing Cavs players, but the truth is that Cedi might as well be missing too. It's really astonishing how he's gone from having a very good season to contributing almost nothing, while still healthy. Some of that is on him, some is on JBB.

Love is still plugging along on offense, but his defense has absolutely cratered.

 

[Cavatt]

It's screening. Garland is getting no separation while teams are aggressively trapping him. Sorry Mobley, slipping the screen is not working right now, guy are ignoring you while hounding the pg.

Okoro and Stevens have to step up for rebounding and screening.

Also agree with the mental mistakes. Cavs have been making them all season, but guys are better at capitalizing now. Guys got turnovers and off rebounds all season, but they defended the basket well still. Not happening anymore.

Biggest growth needed on this team is stopping the mistakes. Need to secure those rebounds, cut down on turnovers and move with purpose and move the ball. They were leading the league in assists, but the discontinuity of the season has totally changed the way they were playing