Cleveland Buck wrote:
Wow, is this thread ridiculous.
1. The regular season means precisely nothing to this team. Getting upset over losses is just as foolish as getting excited over wins. The big games give you the best idea of what kind of team they have, but even they don't mean anything, so you can't read too much into it. They're pretty much playing out the string, and they are not going to bring it every night like they should. The Lakers and Celtics are doing the same. Maybe Orlando is too, although they made some big changes and may need to prove to themselves that they are the same team as last year.
2. I have been a fan of Mike Brown since the defensive performance I saw out of the Cavaliers in games 3-7 of the 2006 Eastern Semis against Detroit. After that I knew we would have a championship quality defense under Brown in the playoffs, which is really the only time it matters. Brown is not a good offensive coach. He needs a guy to come in and run the offense. Last year, we had as much success as we did because Kuester did a great job with the offense for the most part. I would like to see Brown get another guy in there, but I would not want to see him fired. He is a great defensive coach.
3. The Cavs lost to the Magic because:
- We had nobody who could guard Dwight Howard one-on-one at all, no one who could even slow him down. This means we had to double him and scramble to their shooters with short guys.
- Our perimeter defenders were too short to effectively contest their jumpers off of the pick and roll and when scrambling off of a double.
- Mo Williams choked and no one else contributed offensively except Delonte on occasion.
Match ups were exactly the reason we lost to Orlando. Does that mean they were better? I suppose, but that has nothing to do with how the Cavs would have done against the Lakers.
As far as Brown making adjustments, I don't really know what adjustments he could have made. If they didn't double Howard, he would have scored 50 a game and Z would have fouled out of every game. I guess the only thing they could try was using every guy on the bench to play and foul Howard every time he touched it. That seems a bit ridiculous though.
SO losing that Magic series had NOTHING to do with losing momentum from game one, where we blew a 15 point halftime lead by trying to just "sit" on the lead instead of build upon it? Mike Browns gameplan would be ideal in football, but not basketball, where basket's are scored by teams on 40%+ possessions, and the shot clock only lasts 24 seconds. Did the other factors contribute, certainly, but i still maintain that playing piss poor in the second half, made up largely of us slowing the game down WAY too much to try and milk the clock beat us, not Orlando making its season average number of three pointers, and not Dwight Howard being unguardable.