I took these; I swear.*
Let’s get this party started. Looks like vodka was on tap.
One down; one to go.
Drew’s wearing that Philadelphia Phillies hat for a reason.
Not peace. 2 – as in empty bottles behind me. Somebody likes Grey Goose.
Ori (left) and Boobie (center) are living it up. Meanwhile, Sasha checks out the 6′6″ girl behind me and wonders what could be.
Those cameras these days are fancy.
This all went down the night before the Knicks game. Explains a lot.
Go Cavs!
*No I didn’t.
We played New Orleans.
We lost.
We suck.
Please check out this website that we are not affiliated with, but does a great job breaking down games and chronicling the illustrious Cavs career of Larry Hughes.
http://heylarryhughespleasestoptakingsomanybadshots.com/
Great name for a website.
I hope.
If you know me at all, you know that I hate Larry Hughes.
There’s only one guy on the Cavs I hate even more….Damon Jones.
Apparently the Cavs are fining Damon Jones for refusing to enter the Miami Heat game during garbage time.
Jones does not realize that he is a garbage player.
I don’t know what we could get for him. The Heat want to get rid of Smush Parker I know, I’m not sure that trade would really help us. But maybe we would do it to get a PG.
Either way, Good riddance to bad rubbish!
I’m pretty excited about tonight’s win. I don’t know if it’s warranted. I don’t feel comfortable being happy about it. I’m not bouncing around the room with adrenaline. I’m not pumping my fist and envisioning our Eastern Conference dominance henceforth.
I’m just… content.
Winning in Dallas is cause enough for celebration. Holding a good team to 81 points means something. We got to the line. We won the battle of the boards. I’m even happy that we played 9 guys. I think they’re the right 9 guys and I think Coach Mike is going to stick with them.
Sure, there were plenty of negatives – it was an ugly game – but I’m not even going to mention them.
You know what got me most excited? Larry Hughes. He looked angry. He took contact. He played in traffic. He was… good. He played his game. He wasn’t “on”. He wasn’t a black hole. He just played, calm but assertive.
Let him fly under the radar. Let’s not talk about it when he does this again next game. Let’s just get back to appreciating Lebron, screaming for Andy and scaring children for Z, while Larry, without scrutiny or expectations, can cruise along putting together a season of games like this.
Ori, feel free to berate me for my defense and applaud the Cavs for theirs. And offer a little more analysis while you’re at it. I’ll just be here basking in this oddly placating, somehow minimized win.
I’m not sure we actually need Mikki Moore on this team, but we could use that type of intensity. He looks certifiably insane. Moore looks likes he auditioning to be in the new Predator movie. You need a guy like that to motivate your team to win. Actually check that, you must have a combination of the following three guys to lead your team to a championship.
1. A guy who can snap and go crazy at any moment. A guy who wants to win so bad he can’t control himself at times (See- Alonzo Mourning, Kevin Garnett, Rasheed Wallace, Dennis Rodman)
2. A white guy cheerleader. His job is to not be very good at basketball but to be an awkward cheerleader from the bench, keeping your guys loose and the other team laughing. (See- Mark Madsen, Scott Pollard, Bostjan Nachbar, Will Perdue)
3. A stone cold Killer. A player who at some point just gets pissed and decides to completely take over the game. This can be a problem if that player is someone like Ricky Davis or Stephon Marbury. But when you have someone truly great (See- Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Myself) you’ve got the most important piece.
State of the Cavs:
1. Our closest thing to crazy guy is Varejao. He plays really hard and gets other guys excited. Sadly he does not have the talent of a ‘Zo, Garnett, or ‘Sheed so his motivation can only do so much. Regardless these are hard players to find so it’s great that we resigned Andy.
2. This is our biggest hole on the team. We have no excitable white guy. Z certainly is goofy, but he is too vital to the team to be asked to cheer and dance from the bench. Sasha could be the guy, but he has the personality of a dry noodle (wet noodles have always been funny to me). Luke Jackson showed some promise while he was here, but his injured back really limited his poppin‘ and lockin‘ routine from the bench. If we do trade Hughes (and I hope we do) it’s crucial that we get a silly white guy in the deal.
3. We have Lebron. He is that good. He just needs a white guy who dances and a crazy who can play.
Look at the Celtics.
1. Crazy/Great player- Garnett (Best Crazy-Great combination in league history)
2. Funny white guy- Brian Scalabrine (Good call by them to hang onto this guy)
3. Killer- Ray Allen (Jawing with Kobe, Never afraid to shoot)
No coincidence that they are the best team in the East now.
We can be better than them though! Just follow my plan Ferry!
Tonight vs. Dirk and the Mavs.
We can beat them.
Obviously. And play over 30 minutes per game. When it happens, we win.
Anecdotally, I point you to yesterday. Hughes starts, plays heavily, Wade struggles, the Cavs win.
I can’t even write much about our strong play, since I don’t want to get myself, or anyone, too excited until we see if this team plans to show up for a repeat performance.
All the bigs played well, Boobie provided the one decent guard we need to win, and Lebron was Lebron. Remember, this was a home game against the worst team in the east, but for now…
Go Cavs!
Oh, and yes, I am kidding about Hughes.
In today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer this little snippet was in the Cavs section:
“Larry Hughes’ time with the Cavaliers might be just about over. According to several league sources, the Cavs have contacted several teams about a deal involving the 6-5 guard.
One source said the Washington Wizards are one of those teams and another source said another team is in the Atlantic Division.
Hughes spent three years with the Wizards before signing a free-agent deal with the Cavs in 2005 worth between $65 million and $70 million.
The trade deadline is Feb. 21.
“Hughes will be gone way before then,” said one source, who did not want to be identified.
The relationship between the Cavs and Hughes has not gone well. Hughes was GM Danny Ferry’s biggest signing, but Hughes’ two-plus seasons have been riddled with injuries.
When healthy, Hughes has not been comfortable in the Cavs‘ offense, which takes away from his strength as a slasher. He’s instead asked to take outside shots, which is not one of his strengths.
Last season, Hughes was moved out of position to point guard. This year, at his insistence, he was moved back to shooting guard but now comes off the bench. He is shooting a career-low 33.8 percent from the field.”
Now back to my thoughts.
What the hell? Have we just started trying to trade him now or is the PD way behind? Have the Cavs just realized now that he doesn’t fit on this team? That he’s not really very good at all? That I hate him??!
The real question is: What could we even get in return for Hughes? A draft pick (2nd rounder I assume)? How much of his salary would we have to take on? Nobody is going to pay Hughes 16 million a year. Do we split it 50/50 just to get rid of him?
Cavs do need to make a move or two, I’m just wondering where this can go.
http://www.nba.com/nba_news/cavaliers_assistant.html
CLEVELAND, Dec. 23 (AP) — Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Hank Egan had bypass surgery Saturday morning, and coach Mike Brown said there is no timetable for Egan’s return to the team.Brown said he has spoken with team doctors about the surgery, which was performed at Fairview Hospital in suburban Cleveland.
“He’s going to be out for a while,” Brown said. “The surgery went well.”
Egan, 70, has been in coaching for nearly 40 years, including the last three as an assistant with the Cavs. Brown played his college ball at the University of San Diego, where Egan was the head coach in the early 1990s.
Egan also was the head coach at the Air Force Academy in the early 1970s. Among his players was San Antonio Spurs head coach Greg Popovich.
“He’s old school,” Brown said. “He’s earned so much respect. When he has something to say, he comes straight at you. He doesn’t beat around the bush.”
Cavaliers forward LeBron James said Egan is in the team’s thoughts.
“He’s been around this game for a long time,” James said. “If you ever need something or you need someone to talk to, you can go to him.”
Egan also has been an assistant at San Antonio and Golden State in the NBA.
I copied and pasted that just to add that I don’t blame the guy for taking the time off right now. I wouldn’t want to be around these guys either. Maybe we can get the same doctor to schedule some heart replacement for the rest of team.
Speedy recovery, Hank.
I hate this team right now.
How can we play with lazy entitlement and still lack pride?
How do we lay such an egg at home?
I just got home – near the end of the 3rd quarter (I’m a bad fan) – and checked out the box score. Without turning on the game, I know our team is a bunch of heartless, lazy fuckers. They’re not always like this – we saw last year that they have some chops when Lebron says so.
But now we’re coming out – at home – getting blown out. Going in at the half with our tail between our legs, and coming back out for another 3rd quarter blowout.
I really can’t form coherent thoughts at this point. My mind turns to what it’s going to take to turn around this team. Is there anybody on the team everybody likes? There’s not. There’s not a unifying force. Obviously Coach Mike isn’t getting through to them. Clearly Lebron hasn’t been the leader of men he was supposed to have morphed into. Nobody else is capable enough to lead by example. Nobody has that infectious personality to rally everybody. If there was that one guy, I’d start a fund to pay off an opposing player to take a swing at him.
Why is Lebron even in right now, down upwards of 20, under 10 minutes to go? Bench him. Throw out Newble, Devin Brown, Andy, Snow… Hell, we don’t even have 5 players I feel like I can count on to TRY, much less succeed.
Consecutive wins would go a long way to win me back, and the next 2 are nationally televised, so I’m optimistic there is pride hidden deep within somewhere.
But right now, I’m disgusted.
Go … somewhere Cavs. Maybe somewhere that you can find a couch to pull out onto the court, eat some fruitcake and watch some real basketball.
My eyes doth decieve.
I watch the Cavs and jump on the crowd mentality of “Hughes is teh suck!” and “Boobie is my baby!” But the numbers looks us all the eye and offer a quick kick to the shin to the contrary.
I was kicking around 82games.com looking at the Cavs stats when I noticed a slight change in the “Roland Rating” hierarchy.
The Roland Rating is a balance of man vs man production and team +/-. It’s roughly calculated by doubling the difference between a player’s productivity and there counterpart’s productivity, then adding his average +/- number and dividing by 3.
Hughes has just barely eclipsed Gibson, by a one tenth of a point, largely on the power of his defense. While his own production, in terms of PER is only 10, 4.5 points lower than Gibson, his opponent only manages 12.6, compared to Gibson’s man’s 21.3. Gibson makes up a lot of ground through his +/-, largely a part of playing more minutes alongside Lebron. (Boobie has played 605 minutes with Lebron, for the 2nd best 2 man +/- on the team. Hughes, only 266.)
I assumed the Roland Rating wasn’t tell much of the story, so I started looking elsewhere – next to my 2nd favorite deep-dig stats site, Knickerblogger.net, where things started to straighten out.
First, Hughes is up 1.5 points per 40. Looking further along the stat line, you can see that that is largely a product of Hughes’s usage rate, a mysterious stat the measures the number of touches a player gets per team possession while he’s on the floor. Hughes is a full 50% higher – his 22.6 trails only Lebron and ball-hoggin, trash-talking, turnover machine Shannon Brown (25.5).
Further look at those in depth “deep” statistics shows that Boobie assists much more than Hughes while turning it over only slightly more commonly. Hughes rebounds slightly better, but Gibson has a vastly superior edge in every shooting metric except for free throw shooting.
What it seems to shake out to is that Mike Brown has found the right formula bringing Hughes off the bench.
Gibson thrives off of being the support player alongside Lebron. His numbers certainly aren’t those of a player who can carry the team for long stretches, but for when space is created for him.
Hughes, on the other hand, offers a change of pace. Dreadful as he looks, he brings some positive numbers. He offers a slightly disruptive force defensively and is able to turn touches into points. Clearly he’s not the caliber player who contributes big numbers, but off the bench he should fill the void while Lebron rests.
I’ll never trust the numbers 100% in basketball. It’s too much of a team game. Still, for all the love we pour onto Boobie, Hughes can’t be that awful to be in the same ballpark numerically.
