L-Boogie!

There is not a picture on the internet to do tonight justice and my photoshop skills are not up to par.

I had to put up something to capture the night.

Really I’m too giddy to type much; I just want to bask in the glow.

Think Lebron liked being able to sit back for a quarter? Think he liked having somebody else with the taste of blood in his mouth, worrying the defense in the 4th quarter?

Think Larry Hughes is fantastic?

I do.

I know. I know what you’re thinking. Fluke, aberration, one good game in 20.

Maybe so. But were we winning tonight without it? On the road, back to back. Gooden starts strong and vanishes. Z doesn’t have his shot but does have his hands full. No Andy, No Boobie. And a quality team staring back at us.

So tonight, with nothing else to save us, Smooth (or L-Boogie, as we should all start calling him) explodes all OVER the Magic in the 2nd half.

Seriously: 23 in the 3rd. Is anybody else on this team capable of that?? Of course Lebron is. He could score 40 in a quarter. But besides him? Just one man.

So no, Lebron doesn’t have his Pippen. He doesn’t have his great #2. It’s always going to be a team effort. One night Z, another Gooden. A lot of the time it’s Boobie, and this year we’ve seen it might be Andy. But of any of them, who’s dangerous like Michael Jackson?

Here’s the list of people who’ve dropped 40 this year:
Lebron (about 20 times)
AI
Carmelo
Linas Kleiza (ok, the Nuggets are dangerous)
Kobe
Pau Gasol
Dwyane Wade
Josh Howard
Chris Paul
Chris Bosh (against the Cavs… bastard… but in a loss… sucker)
Kevin Martin
Amare Stoudemire
Tracy McGrady
Michael Redd
Deron Williams
Antawn Jamison
Al Jefferson
Gerald Wallace
Caron Butler
David West
and LARRY MOTHER F*ING HUGHES!

Who on that list isn’t good? Who doesn’t play 35 minutes for any team in the league?

I’m not saying he’s an all-star, but he can do what not many people in the world can.

Go Cavs! Carry this surge into the break.

What now?

Oh yeah… Let’s add a few other quick points:

• Great free throw shooting, especially from the big guns
• Great start from Gooden. Say what you will about his 2nd through 4th quarters, it’s important to start off right.
• Devin Brown might be the first out of the rotation if Coach Mike just throws Sasha back into the mix. Tonight he fought back. Hard.
• Welcome to the 2007-08 season, Donyell.
• Huge team effort on the boards. Keeping Dwight Howard in single digits is amazing. It happens maybe twice/month, and we did it without Andy.
• Every other team that beats the Magic seems to do it by letting the freak get his, but staying out on Hedo and Rashard. We bounced back after the first by throwing more bodies onto Howard, slowing him down.
• As mentioned, this starting lineup is 5-1. And Newble aside, with a much larger sample size, our record is great with Hughes at the “1″.
• 2 games out of the 3rd seed and climbing…

Go Cavs!

We keep winning….Damn.

Yeah you heard me right….Damn.

I know, I know, It’s crazy to me too. I’m starting to get a bit upset when the Cavs win. It’s almost as if (It’s actually impossible for me to root against them…I was hopping around the house after Lebron hit that jumper in Kobe’s grill yesterday) I want them to lose.

Why in the sweet lord’s name would I, the self-proclaimed greatest Cavs fan of all time, be rooting against my team?!

Because I’ve seen this before. It’s like Groundhogs day and I’m Bill Murray. We did this same last year. Lebron carries us and certain streaky players (Gooden, Hughes, Pavs, etc.) get hot at the right time and we start rattling off a few quality wins against good teams. Then the management, players, and fans are lulled into a false sense of security that our team is really good and that we’re all set. THEN, the trade deadline passes and we do NOTHING because we feel really good about our wins and our chemistry. THEN Larry Hughes remembers that he’s:
1. Not so good
2. Has bones made of pretzel sticks

Luckily for me, Gooden isn’t in on this train yet, but the Cavs did this same thing last year and we got hot and didn’t make a move at the deadline. I know we got to the Finals last year, but that was based on a combination of luck (Washington and NJ in the playoffs), sheer dominance (Lebron v. Pistons) and ultimately led to embarrassment (Swept by San Antonio).

I’m telling you right now…we NEED another significant player, whether it be Mike Bibby, Pau Gasol, Jason Kidd, whoever…we need another guy who can create and score.

You like what Larry Hughes is doing? Good! Trade him now while he is showing a little value to other teams. I’ve seen this guy for a few years now, I’m not impressed! Even when he’s on, he’s nothing special.

(Side: How awesome is it that Matt points out every little flaw (down to a specific shot they took) in the games of Lebron and Boobie Gibson, but trips over himself to compliment Larry Hughes when he looks like a capable NBA player/ not a WNBA player? Note to Matt: Hughes and Lebron make almost the exact same amount of money to play basketball and win games…one guy is producing a little more than the other. Let Lebron shoot his occasional three! Also, thanks for conveniently not pointing out that Lebron was excellent on defense yesterday. If you are going to attack him for shot selection you can at least point out how well he defended Kobe yesterday…especially after your boy Larry got destroyed by Bryant as he just backed him into the lane (from the top of the key) for an uncontested layup in the 2nd quarter)

But I digress…I do love these wins, as long as the Cavs are still urgently seeking to upgrade our roster. If they are becoming copacetic with the current team, we’ll be in trouble again soon.

Damn.

Cavs v. Referee Recap

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.

The Denny Green Treatment

“The Bears are what we thought they were.” I couldn’t do any better than Denny Green if I wanted to describe Larry Hughes.

And I hate all of you for picking Larry Hughes in the latest poll and moreso for calling for his head. You do not buy a cat and then complain when it won’t fetch a ball. I don’t care if you pay $70 million for the best 5 years of that cat’s life, it’s not going to fetch your damned ball.

Larry Hughes IS who we thought he is.

Larry Hughes is injury prone. He hasn’t missed fewer than 10 games since ‘01-’02 and he’s only played 82 games once. Nonetheless, last year he played the most minutes of his career.

Larry Hughes is not a good shooter. In 9 seasons, he has shot worse than last season 3 times and better 5. His career shooting percentage is 1% higher than his ‘06-’07 number. Still, his effective FG% surpassed his career numbers.

Larry Hughes is not a point guard. And yet thrust into the role, last year he posted the 2nd best assist/TO ratio of his career.

Larry Hughes has shown again and again that he is one of our best defenders. For all his deficiencies, would you rather see Eric Snow handling the ball? Is there another perimeter player who is not regularly torched?

Larry Hughes is not a $70 million player. In a vacuum, he never was, and he never will be. The Cavs knowingly overpaid because their demand for a guard to run with Lebron far outweighed the supply of available quality guards. Yes, I would take Michael Redd over Hughes in a second, but Michael Redd said no.

Now we have Larry Hughes, and we’re stuck with Larry Hughes. He is exactly the player we signed. In an uptempo system, he is competent handling the ball. In a controlled environment, he is not a point guard. In chaos, he is long and quick enough to grab some boards. In Mike Brown’s system, so races back to limit transition points. Given 18 shots, he’ll score 22 points. With only 13, he’s good for 15.

How is he going to improve? We can’t snap our fingers and make him a bona fide star. He could get his FT% up from last year, but his career average would’ve netted 0.3 PPG more. Hopefully working with Mark Price with swing the pendulum of his FG% to +1%, edging him up another 0.5 PPG.

Think back to the last time you played a pick up game. Imagine you’re the sort of player who thrives on cuts rather than jumpers. What will make your game better, the guy who makes the quick pass or a ballhandler pounding the ball into the floor?

Larry Hughes is that guy. He is who we thought he is. If his improvement is what’s going to put the Cavs over the top, the change need to come from elsewhere. Drew Gooden is passing quicker and more often than ever. See only takes his jumpers wide open. Which offensive option is the one cracking the floorboards and making his athletic teammates worse?

That’s right, Lebron. Work on your shot all you want. This team’s growth is on you. If that’s all you improve, you’ll always be a one man show. If YOU are who we think you are, you’ll learn how to make your teammates better, and everything will fall into place.