Cavs vs Bulls Behind the Box Score: Things are starting to look up
January 19, 2015Browns interview Mike Martz for offensive coordinator
January 20, 2015Happy Tuesday WFNY!
What a week it has been since last Tuesday. While still riding the high from the Ohio State win over Oregon in the inaugural college football playoff championship last week1, the Cleveland Cavaliers have now won three straight games after dropping ten of their previous twelve. It feels like things are starting to come together for the Cavaliers, and just in time.
The Super Bowl is coming up here in a couple weeks, and after that, it is 100% basketball season2 in Cleveland. The one thing I’ve learned the last four years is that winter seems to last a little longer when the Cavaliers are bad. One of the biggest reasons I was excited about the Cavaliers being relevant again is that it always makes the winters a little more fun when you can watch good basketball.
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And yeah, the Cavaliers are starting to look good again
When the Cavaliers ripped off twelve wins in fifteen games earlier this season, I truly felt like they were on their way. I figured there would still be some bumps in the road, but I never expected to see what actually happened next. I just didn’t think that this team would fall all the way back to something resembling rock bottom.
Injuries surely played a big role in it, but the team also seemed to be struggling to handle adversity. There was immense pressure and noise building all around the team and for a while there, it looked like the Cavaliers were actually suffocating as a team from all of the external nonsense consuming all the air.
A three game win streak isn’t symptomatic of a cure, but it’s a good start. LeBron James is back and playing closer to the level we all expected to see when he announced his return to Cleveland. The Cavaliers made some trades to bolster the size and the depth of the team. The front office supported the head coach and the players seem to be cooling it on their perceived coup. Things are slowly getting better and they should only improve once Iman Shumpert is able to join the team. It was staggering last night watching the Cavaliers empty their bench in garbage time and seeing so many players on the floor who played much larger roles on the team back when they were going through their losing skid.
It serves as a reminder just how fickle basketball is. Things were going great until Anderson Varejao got hurt. The team didn’t respond well to the loss of Andy and the season took a nosedive from there. By the time LeBron James missed a couple weeks, things were downright bleak in Cleveland. But now LeBron is back, the team is getting healthier and deeper, and everyone seems just a little happier. It’s amazing how fast these things can and do change.
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Mike Conley is the best
In my personal pantheon of all time favorite Ohio State basketball players, the top three are, in no particular order, Aaron Craft, Michael Redd, and Mike Conley. When Conley came to Ohio State, he was an afterthought. Some thought he was simply Greg Oden’s buddy, a guy that Ohio State had to take in order to secure Oden’s commitment. Guys like William Buford and even David Lighty seemed to have higher prestige in that class3. But from the first time I watched him play, Conley quickly changed my mind on what kind of player he was.
And that has been Conley’s life. Always doubted, always questioned. And yet he always rises to deliver. Quiet, unassuming, and always in the shadows of other players, it’s often Conley who uses his quiet leadership to get the most out of his teammates. So I was ecstatic when I read this terrific profile of Conley from Ian Thomsen for NBA.com:
Conley, their point guard, leads the Grizzlies with 6.1 assists per game and is second in scoring (17.9 points per game), which compares favorably with the production of Tony Parker last season (14.9 ppg, 4.7 apg) when he was guiding the Spurs to the championship. Conley’s 43.3 percent 3-point shooting has created additional space inside for center Marc Gasol and power forward Zach Randolph, even as Conley has been pushing the tempo over the last two seasons to create easier baskets for everybody.
He is having a career year, and his Grizzlies — in the absence of a dominant team-to-beat this wide-open NBA season — are positioning themselves for a run into June. And yet the ultimate question continues to hover in the silence of his continuing improvement.
Does he have what his teammates need to lead them to the championship?
“All my life I’ve been ranked lower than I thought I should be,” Conley would say quietly as he walked slowly past the enlarged black-and-white photographs that detail the achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King. “And I don’t care anymore.”
In print his words may sound bitter and resentful, but on this day, in his company, their meaning was entirely different. Conley was smiling as if liberated. He sounded grateful.
I don’t know if Memphis is really a good enough team to win a Championship, but I do know that is no fault of Conley’s. He has proven almost all of his doubters wrong his entire life and he continues to be one of my favorite basketball players to watch.
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The return of New Music of the Week?
Well, maybe not. But this is the first really good music release week of 2015, and I thought would share my favorite album this week so far. Sometimes things have to go away for you to really appreciate them. For me, that was the case with Sleater-Kinney. Sure, I listened to their music from time to time, but I wouldn’t say I loved their music.
When the band appeared to be over, or on hiatus, or whatever the case was, I noticed something strange. I kind of missed them. I got into their music more once they were gone than I ever did while they were a band. So when I heard they had a new album coming out, I was overjoyed. And let me say, I was also not disappointed.
“No Cities To Love”, the new album from Sleater-Kinney is an absolute blast. It’s a joyous reminder of everything great about a band that wears so much emotion on their sleeves and does nothing but kick a lot of ass and take a lot of names musically. I highly encourage everyone to check out their new album and have a great rest of your week!
- Can we please come up with a marketing name for this game? The proper name is entirely too long to type out all the time. It’s like referring to the Super Bowl as the NFL playoff championship. It’s too much. We’ll take submissions for the name of this game in the comments below, and the best ones will be passed along to the proper recipients. [↩]
- I know, I know, there’s hockey too. And I do love the sport of hockey. But in terms of the Cleveland sports collective consciousness, it is only basketball. [↩]
- I’m guessing Lighty’s local roots had more to do with that, anecdotally, than his perception did [↩]
5 Comments
Dig Me Out will always be the best Sleater-Kinney album… but the new one ain’t bad!
Dig Me Out and All Hands on the Bad One are still number 1 and 1A for me.
Just wanted to mention that I think the Fox-fire, Kubiak-hire looks extremely dirty (Kubiak refuses to interview for HC jobs until buddy Elway opens one up for him and all the other candidates magically decide they don’t want to even interview in Denver).
That being said, I am thankful that Kubiak is leaving Baltimore. Also, it demonstrates that you don’t necessarily need continuity in OC/DC. They haven’t had continuity there and have done just fine (they even fired an OC in the middle of the season – and won the SB that year). It’s important to have a HC with a consistent message and keeping systems that will match the strength of the players. Hopefully, Pettine and Farmer will do that (we’ll see).
The Super Bowl is coming up here in a couple weeks, and after that, it is 100% basketball season in Cleveland
28 days until pitchers and catchers report!!!
personal pantheon of all time favorite Ohio State basketball players, the top three are
Mike Conley (my favorite Buckeye tournament run ever and he was my favorite guy though Oden’s block in the Tenn game was magnificent)
Jimmy Jackson (who didn’t love Jimmy? he was fantastic though he had this way of making it look like he couldn’t do the things that he did)
Lawrence Funderburke (it helped that I lived in Sacramento when he was with the Kings and wearing my Ohio State stuff would get random yells of THUNDER-BURKE from the NBA-obsessed people there)