I’m not sure what to make of this:

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.

Hughes > Boobie ?

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.

It’s official.

1. We need to make a trade. This team needs new life, someone to bring in a different perspective. I’d prefer a PG and Jason Kidd would do the trick immediately, but he likely would not get traded within the East. Andre Miller would be a fine addition to the team although I’m not willing to trade Gooden to get him. At this point, I would welcome Bostjan Nachbar.

2. I officially, officially…. HATE Larry Hughes. I really did try to like him after the past few games. I tried to be positive about him. I don’t care if he averages 40 a game for the rest of the season, I will never like Larry Hughes. Please know this when reading my blog posts from now on.To be fair, I will do my best to not mention Larry Hughes when he goes 24/29 from the field and when he goes 3/19 from the field. This will be my final (I hope) break down of Hughes. I. Hate. Him.

First of all, before we even go into his horrific offense, I’m tired of everyone thinking that this guy (Hughes) is a premier defensive player. He is an average defensive player at best. I’ve been saying it since last year. Yesterday he took on the “challenge” of guarding Vince Carter and was totally annihilated. I know VC is a great player, but that would not have happened against Ron Artest, AK-47, Bruce Bowen, even Lebron James would have done a better job of body-ing him up. Hughes is not physical enough to be a great defender. He has long hands, gets steals and is generally annoying but can easily be pushed around. I don’t even want to talk about his 30% shooting. In 34 minutes Larry Hughes also had one assist and brought down a solid zero rebounds. He is not still growing as a player, he is injury prone, and overall brings down the team more than he helps it when on the court. He did not get to the free throw line once. This is our top shooting guard!!?

Boobie (Matt’s whipping boy), on the other hand, did a great job defending Jason Kidd and hit 75% of his shots. He only took 4 shots, but that’s because Hughes was out there “creating”.

Mike Brown did a horrible job coaching this game. We were purposely fouling Boone with 4 minutes left and down by 4. The last five minutes of the game we were getting completely out hustled. So why not bring our hustle guy (Varejao) off the bench to grab some rebounds and knock some people down?

I’m also convinced that Lebron doesn’t like Coach Brown. Those off-balance three pointers that he was taking at the end of the game were obviously not what the coach drew up. So either Lebron is selfish, or he realizes that his coach is an idiot and that he has to do it by himself. I’ll go with the latter, as it is obvious that Lebron is generally not selfish on the court.

Tonight against the 76’s. We should win this one and get a good look at Andre Miller. Let’s just hope that Hughes doesn’t take the “challenge” of guarding Iguodala.

Least Surprising Cavs Story of the Year

Larry Hughes is hurt.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3114004

It’s pretty bad. Real bad. It’s a bone bruise. Said bruise will keep him out at least 4 weeks and possibly more.

A bone bruise keeps you out for over a month?!?

If this was anyone other than Larry Hughes, I honestly would care more. Lebron James would not miss more than one game with a “bone bruise”. I think this is more of a case of bruised feelings after boo-fest 2007 at the Orlando Magic game. Hughes probably also wasn’t pleased with being benched for the entire 4th quarter and overtime. What he needs to do is realize that he isn’t very good, and should probably be better.

Are the Cavs doing this so as to not expose how bad he has become? Do they still think they can get something for him in a trade?

Larry. Hughes.

~~~~~~EDIT~~~~~~
Side note really: Eric Snow is being activated in his place.