Farewell, Wild Thing
February 18, 2016Tracking Cleveland Indians excitement plus goodbye Anderson Varejao: While We’re Waiting…
February 19, 2016Chicago Bulls (27-26) 95
Cleveland Cavaliers (39-14) 106
Box Score
It was a bittersweet day for Cleveland Cavaliers fans. The Wine and Gold returned to live game action after what felt like an eternity over the All-Star Break. The Cavs entered Thursday having not played since a win over the Lakers the Wednesday of the week prior, which was so long ago that I presume they shot a rock into peach crates. That’s over a week without basketball? What the hell am I supposed to do over that time? Read? Exercise? Work? Speak to my family? Discover myself on a introspective journey to the center of the depths of my soul? Hang out with friends?
So it was great to have basketball back on Thursday. But the sweetness of basketball returning was soured by the news that the Cavs traded Anderson Varejao and a pick to obtain Channing Frye from the Orlando Magic. Perhaps it made basketball sense — and Frye’s shooting in particular could be an asset — but not spiritual sense.
The Cavs won an important momentum game over Eastern Conference rival the Chicago Bulls, but it still hurt more than the most dispiriting of losses. But let us somberly go behind the box score.
591 – Anderson Varejao’s 591 games played are the seventh most in Cleveland Cavaliers history, trailing only Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Danny Ferry, Bingo Smith, LeBron James, Hot Rod Williams (RIP), and Austin Carr. Varejao will forever remain one of my favorite Cleveland athletes for the way he played and the energy he gave the Cavaliers even when they were terrible. Though there were many great things he did on the court (particularly the unstoppable LeBron James-Varejao pocket-pass pick-and-roll), I spent a lot of the time yelling at my TV for what Varejao was doing wrong. But he played with such reckless and infectious energy, the shouts always came from a place of love — like an impossibly cute child you couldn’t stay mad at.
Will wrote a touching goodbye before Thursday’s game, and because I can’t say it any better I’ll quote it here: “Much of what we love about sports has been embodied in the life and times of Anderson Varejao. … It’s not supposed to be like this … he was supposed to be here forever.”
Anderson Varejao’s nickname was Wild Thing. For eleven-plus years, Wild Thing roamed the wood-floorboard pastures of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. On Thursday, Cleveland and Quicken Loans Arena became the place Where the Wild Things Aren’t for the first time since 2004. They will forever be lesser for it.
25, 9, 9 – LeBron James finished within one rebound and one assist of his second triple-double of the season, and his second in the last three games. This was the 38th triple-double near miss of James’ career1 (and fourth of the season) which would nearly double his career triple-double total of 40. If you want to nitpick, James was 4-of-9 outside the paint and missed both of his three-point attempts.
But that would be an extremely myopic take on James’ game, because he was dominant throughout. James scored 25 points on an expedient 19 shots (6-of-7 in the restricted area), played some solid defense, and looked to kill on every transition opportunity. All Cavs and NBA fans know that James goes to another level after the All-Star Break. It was fun to have a glimpse of “restrictor plates are off” LeBron, one of the most gleefully terrifying sights in all of sports, as evidenced by the hellacious alley-oop below. Kevin Harlan with the call: “It’s art … come to life.”
21 to 10 – The Cavaliers outscored the Bulls on points off turnovers 21 to 10. The Cavaliers only forced three more turnovers than the Bulls (13 to 10), but didn’t bleed any blood on those few foibles (well below their season average of 13.5 turnovers). The Cavs thoroughly owned Thursday’s game, outscoring the Bulls in the paint (48 to 40), on second chance points (17 to 13), and fastbreak points (18 to 10), but it was the points off turnovers that really gave the Cavs the edge and never allowed the Bulls to close the gap below six or eight points.
16 & 10, 15 & 15 – The Cavaliers starting frontcourt beat up the Bulls on Thursday. You can hem about the amount of the Tristan Thompson contract. You can even haw about it! But the guy has a special value for the Cavs that doesn’t always show in the box score. It did on Thursday, as Thompson had 16 points (8-of-10 shooting) and 10 rebounds. Thompson also added three steals that contributed to the aforementioned points off turnovers, and even dribbled a few times, which was weird to watch.
Kevin Love — who everyone (particularly reporters) seemed so desperate to trade this week — had a quiet 15/15 game, which sounds preposterous but which he has routinely.2 Love now has 24 double-doubles (tied for 12th in the league), and his eight rebounds in the first quarter set the tone for the game. Love needs to be a more focal part of the offense and get the ball more at the elbow and in the post, but I’m just going to start pasting that in every edition of “Behind the Box Score.”
11 – Timofey Mozgov contributed an effective 25 minutes on Thursday, particularly on the offensive end. He finished with 11 points on 5-of-8 shooting. If he stays confident on offense — look out. Because he can finish when he dunks like an angry person and is always left open flared out on the baseline; because his man needs to close out to defend a penetrating James or Kyrie Irving.
28 to 19 – Derrick Rose outscored Kyrie Irving 28 to 19 on Thursday, playing some of the best basketball he’s played all season. Rose attacked the hoop more than Irving, who took only six shots in the lane and settled for too many mid-rangers (nine), and didn’t facilitate and stopped the ball on many possessions. Accordingly, he finished 6-of-18 (33.3 percent). I was definitely surprised to see Rose outplay Irving (which he did) at home. Irving did clown Taj Gibson though (below), so that should have been worth more than two points.
It was a good win for the Cavs, despite the absence of Wild Thing. The Cavs should dominate a depleted Bull team missing its best player (Jimmy Butler), as well as Joakim Noah and Nikola Mirotic. Coach Fred Hoiberg (who looks like everyone’s brother-in-law), had to rely on Rose, Pau Gasol, and promising rookie Bobby Portis (or as Kevin Harlan called him during the broadcast, Bobby P) for all their scoring. That’s a losing proposition. The Bulls are in a free fall right now without Butler, but if the Cavs play as hard on offense and defense as they did on Thursday, they won’t lose many more games this season.
5 Comments
That is one hell of a good headline. And a fine recap. Maybe they’ll pull the old trade Z, watch Z get cut, wait a month, sign Z thing again with Andy. But doesn’t appear plausible.
Can’t sign Andy for a year. Rule was made in response to Z trade-and-cut.
Derrick Rose always plays so well against the Cavs. Doesn’t matter if he’s washed up against every other team, he will always bring it against Kyrie Irving.
I don’t understand why this is a problem. If a team wants to dump salary, they cut a player. If that player wants to go sign a contract with the team that just traded them, isn’t that their right as a free agent? I can’t think of a situation where a player who actually moved the needle would be traded, cut, and then resign for a small sum of money with the original team.
Sour grapes over the loss of Andy… but seriously.
It does seem pretty stupid. I don’t really understand why anyone has an unfair advantage in that scenario. Talking about sour grapes, I think it was really just that the rest of the teams had some sour grapes over Z coming back to the Cavs after that trade with the Wizards.