Armonty Bryant suspended four games for PEDs
March 4, 2016Boston Creamed Pie: Celtics-Cavs, Behind the Box Score
March 6, 2016Washington Wizards (30-31) 83
Cleveland Cavaliers (43-17) 108
Box Score
The Cleveland Cavaliers were showing off their yellow (or “gold,” whatever) Hardwood Classic uniforms on Friday night to celebrate the 40-year reunion of The Miracle of Richfield team, which refers to not only one of the most un-miraculous applications of the word “miracle” (in that it refers to a basketball player making a layup of average difficulty), but also to one of the fonder moments in Cleveland sports history.1 Here’s a clip of the water-into-Wine-and-Gold moment, with some help from Cavalier broadcasting legend Joe Tait.
Check out that clip! The excitement! The afros! The mustaches! The complete disregard for player safety! ‘Twas a simpler, when you could unironically have guys on your basketball team named Bingo Smith or Campy Russell or Dick Snyder or Foots Walker or Butch Beard or Shaggy Cokenose. (I only made up one of those.) I should have come of age in the 70s … I would have absolutely crushed the blog game back then. Damn the realities of the temporal present!
https://twitter.com/jessaforrester/status/705939447314051072
You wouldn’t have learned much about this heart-warming moment in Cleveland sports history by watching ESPN’s national broadcast of the Cavaliers’ game against the Washington Wizards, because they were busy talking about tweets that could literally be about anything, and specious rumors that are evidence of the RAMPANT DISCORD AND ANARCHY TEARING THE CAVALIERS APART.
Anyway, the Cavaliers won by 25 points and led by as many as 30, avenging their regretful showing in our nation’s capital last Sunday. Let’s go behind the music with the box score and see how the band made a hit album.
19, 13, 7, 3 & 1 – LeBron James may have a … let’s go with “eccentric” leadership style, and do bizarre, inexplicable things from time to time. It just comes with the territory — people just need to come to terms with that. Even though James didn’t have one of his more efficient games (7-of-18, 38.9 percent shooting, 1-of-4 from three), his fingerprints were all over the hatchet the Cavs took to the Wizards’ back on Friday. The offense just works better with James running it. Other people can fly the plane, but James gets it off the ground.
The ball movement was exceptional on Friday, and the offense thrived even if the shooting wasn’t great (46.7 percent overall, but 12-of-27 for 44.4 percent from three). Despite scoring only 19 points (he sat the fourth quarter) James stuffed the stat sheet in other areas, tying a season-high with 13 rebounds starting at power forward,2 adding seven assists, three steals, and one Kendrick Lamar album.
Though the Cavs trailed for only a morsel of time in the first half, it was an uneven, herky-jerky start until James had two steals and two dunks in the span of ten-or-so seconds. The Cavs never looked back after that.
Not reflected in the traditional box score was what LeBron was doing off the ball, where he set as many screens for other players as I can remember him setting. Cavs fans got a glimpse of a terrifying Kyrie-James pick-and-roll combo in which James came to set a screen for Irving, then James slipped the screen or Irving ran away from the screen — they did each once. James’ man (who had instinctively jumped out to slow a driving Irving) was out of position, so that Irving (now with two guys on him) was able to hit a rolling James, who then dished to a wide-ass open Mozgov (whose man had to rotate to stop James) for an easy dunk.
The last two seasons of the Cavs’ offense has been trying to find the alchemy that balances Irving, Love, James on ball, James off ball, and ball movement. They’ve found the right mixture at times, before it combusted and disappeared. If you’re holding onto the faint hope that the Cavs can defeat a team like the Golden State Warriors or San Antonio Spurs in a series, it’s based on the premise that they perfect the recipe of all those elements. With Love sitting out Friday to rest, the Cavs had the balance. They have a few more games in the regular season to tinker with the formula.
8 – Rejoice! Kyrie Irving had eight assists on Friday, one more than the Eastern Conference leader in assists, John Wall. There was a lot of “Irving being Irving,” dribbling aimlessly and forcing shots (something Cavs fans should want some of), but also a lot of passes with purpose. Irving’s done a much better job of looking for the roll man on the pick-and-roll over the last two games, hitting Thompson with pocket passes, throwing the lob to Mozgov, and finding a streaking James who predictably swings the ball to an even more open man. In the midst of averaging a career-low in assists this season with 4.4, Irving has had games of six assists (Monday against the Pacers) and eight assists.
14 – Mozgov was a crucial part of the offense on Friday, scoring 14 points on 7-of-11 shooting. Most of those were open dunks, the metaphorical bone thrown for running the floor and being in the right place. After starting 6-of-6 from the field, he missed a few post-up opportunities. But if he can avoid fumbling the ball when James or someone else throws him a hot potato, Mozgov can build trust and add another dimension to the Cavs offense.
2 – With Love sitting on Friday, coach Tyronn Lue turned to Iman Shumpert to start, beginning the game with a three-guard lineup featuring James at the four and Mozgov at center. Shumpert played so-so defense on All-Star John Wall (allowing 17 points on 8-of-14 shooting while getting caught on every screen), but only scored two points after going 0-of-3 on field goal attempts. Shumpert hasn’t been dependable this season, having the lowest scoring average and effective field goal percentage of his career (over five percent lower than last season).
Shumpert is scoring 4.2 points per game with 28.1 percent shooting and 16.7 percent (!) shooting on threes over his last 15 games. If the Cavs are going to make a deep playoff run, they need some help off the bench to add scoring and help provide potent small-ball lineups that can defend. Shumpert isn’t giving them that right now.
24 – The Cavs had 24 assists on Friday, barely above their season average of 22.3. But it was the attitude more than the totals that embodied the spirit of the game. The Cavaliers had their model possession of the year in the third quarter. After a missed Washington field goal, Irving pushed the ball up the court, found an open Shumpert on the left wing, who swung it to Tristan Thompson on the right side of the court, who ran two handoffs with Matthew Dellavedova, who threw a cross-court pass to Richard Jefferson, who swung it back to Shumpert, who threw it to the right side top to a wide open Irving, who passed up the shot to find an even more wide open Dellavedova (who had retreated back behind the three-point line), who made the shot after what was basically the fourth extra pass. It was a thing of beauty. It should be played on loop on every team plane, bus, meeting, and team promo for the rest of the season. It was such great ball movement, the clip below only shows half the possession.
A million and a half – The number of brain cells I lost listening to the ESPN broadcast on Friday. Sideline reporter Chris Broussard kicked off the festivities with the laundry list of “stories” and “controversies” emanating from the Cavs this week (probably the eighth time in the last two seasons that Broussard has launched into one of these bulleted lists during a broadcast). During gameplay in the second half, the following exchange occurred (paraphrasing).
Play-by-Play Man Dave Pasch: “So, Chris, how about that tweet LeBron made.”
Broussard: “Well, I asked a lot of the Cavalier players today, and no one thought it was a big deal [so on and so forth].”
Pasch: “Well, how about James working out with Dwyane Wade in Miami?”
Broussard: “Well, I asked a lot of the Cavalier players today, and no one thought it was a big deal [etc.].”
Riveting television, fellas! Never mind that news this week came out that Draymond Green of the invincible 55-5 Warriors reportedly told coach Steve Kerr, “[M-Fer], come and make me [sit down],” during last Saturday’s halftime. Holy hell … can you imagine the righteous and indignant howling if LeBron James or Kyrie Irving or Kevin Love had done that during halftime? The screams would have been so piercing and such great energy levels that Voyager I would have had its internal electronics liquefied, and it’s not even in the solar system anymore.
- Actually, depending on whom you listen to, the term “Miracle of Richfield” could refer to the the entire 1975-76 Cleveland Cavaliers team, or the seven-games series victory over the Washington Bullets. [↩]
- Notably, one of the three preceding games in which James had 13 rebounds was against Washington as well. Washington is second to last in the league in rebounds per game. [↩]
7 Comments
Prepare for Jae Crowder to thug foul Lebron on every play and stare in amazement when called for aforementioned fouls tonight.
I only watched the 4th quarter. Still in Key West and all…
The benchwarmers moved the ball better than the almighty starters.
Give me the homers on FSO any day over ESPN. I’m amazed Broussard has a job, considering he’s never right about anything. As for the game, I loved it was a blowout, loved the uniforms, loved the classic songs they kept playing and loved that the team just shut up and played.
While I understand that super committed and wealthy athletes can probably afford to throw as much money at parenting as can help, any parent knows that having a newborn is a lot of work, stress, change, emotion, etc. Shump strikes me as a down-to-earth guy and involved father, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his slump has to do with this change. Here’s hoping he can focus more when the playoffs arrive.
Kevin Love wants a trade!