That’s when I’ll be leaving work. Though I could stay here all night thanks to NBA.com audio league pass and the dulcet tones of Joe Tait.
Are we playing well so far? I honestly can’t tell from here.
Boobie has a blocked shot, while only Bogut and Villanueva have been blocked for the Bucks. How did I miss that??
Some Quick observations from yesterday’s game:
Cavs Lose
Referee Wins
So do the Orlando Magic I guess.
A jump ball!? .07 back on the clock? How is Mike Brown not going nuts, I would have preferred to lose that game on 12 straight technicals.
1. Larry Hughes looks even worse in person, than he does on TV. An absolute disaster of a player. I went to the game with my wife and was giving her the scouting report on all of our and their players. When I got to Larry Hughes, I explained to her that he was our biggest free agent signing and that so far he has been a bust. Then I told her, don’t be surprised if you hear him being booed by a few people. At first a few people did boo him, by the 3rd quarter (he rode the bench for the 4th quarter and overtime) he was being booed summarily by about 80% of the audience every time he touched the ball. I’ve never seen a crowd turn so quickly on a player.
Larry Hughes is becoming untradable. Every minute he is on the floor playing basketball he is hurting the Cavs more and more. I’m at an absolute loss as to what to do with this guy.
2. Boobie Gibson didn’t miss…In the first half. After that I’m not sure he even touched the ball again. Boobie was schooling Jameer Nelson in the first half. At halftime, the Magic made adjustments to always have somebody watching him in the corner. Boobie played decent defense, he just gets called for alot of dumb fouls. Jameer never really took it to Gibson, he was just often the end result of great ball rotation and bad defense by us. Bad defense by a defensive team is never good.
3. Z and Gooden are playing great. They did everything you could ask of them. Z was hitting nearly every jumper he took. Gooden was playing well inside and out. Both were grabbing rebounds. They did a decent job on Dwight Howard who did most of his damage against the timid Dwayne Jones.
4. Sasha. I don’t know what to make of him. Sometimes he disappears on the court and sometimes he’s demanding the ball. I will say this for him though, the man can not buy a foul. Game after game Sasha attacks the rim, somehow ends up upside down in the air and gets no call. He either needs work on his acting or stay under better control.
5. Great Halftime Show! I mean really good. There was a time when Cavs halftime shows consisted of pigs being dressed in costumes and pushing each other around in baby carriages. Gone are those dark days! This halftime show had a drummer banging on some paint cans (he was really good) and two kids who were break dancing and body morphing. Yes I said morphing. They were doing things that you only see in cartoons. The crowd was hyped! At one point, one kid placed the other kid on top of his head and started spinning him like a helicopter and running around the court with him just spinning wildly on his head. Reactions from the crowd ranged from:
Guy behind us: “Awwwww Helll Nawh!”
Same guy: “No he didn’t!”
Guy’s friend: “These #$%&% is crazy!”
Little kid in from of us: “This is almost as good as Hannah Montana!”
My wife summed it up with: “These guys should be in Vegas!”
6. Big problems for this team. You have a guy on your team who scores 39 points, gets 14 assists, 13 rebounds, blocks 2 shots and plays great defense, and you STILL lose?! This means you either just played a championship contending team or the other guys on the team are really bad. Orlando is good, but not championship good. This team just doesn’t have the talent. Matt can put it all on Lebron to carry the team, but even Michael Jordan didn’t have to put up stat lines like this one to win. If we need Lebron to put up these kind of numbers for us to stay competitive than you can forget about this team. It isn’t fair to Lebron. He’s a great player. I’m ready to say he is THE best player in the NBA (better than Kobe). But he can’t do this night in and out while he is being triple-teamed. We have to trade for at least one other great player who can hurt teams. Ferry has to be actively looking to do something.
No Marbury though. Lebron hates him. He has hated him for a while after Marbury made some comment about Lebron’s shoes costing the public so much. Lebron responded by saying his shoes were quality unlike the “Starbury’s“. And yesterday this came out: “Although James said he doesn’t know Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, he’s sure of one thing: “I couldn’t have a guy like that on my team,” he said.”
We lost. As I said before, we won’t win 3 out of 4 at home again this year. That’s why the Denver no show upset me so much.
