Cavs Continue To Amaze Early On.

We cannot say enough how surprised we are by the start for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

While it is still very early, the Cavs are currently in 4th place in the Eastern Conference with a 9-5 record, and have done it battling with players out with COVID (Kevin Love and Lauri Markkanen) and others missing time with injuries, including last year’s leading scorer in Collin Sexton and second year player Isaac Okoro.

The wine and gold have a very tough stretch coming up with a road game vs. Brooklyn on Wednesday, followed by home tilts with Golden State, Brooklyn, and Phoenix heading into Thanksgiving. Hopefully by then, Love and Markkanen will be back on the court.

We have said for a few years now that this organization wouldn’t go anywhere until they emphasized defense, and we will pat ourselves on the back a bit for that one. Cleveland is second in the NBA in least points allowed and 8th in overall defensive rating.

Both figures are the best they’ve ranked in many years.

The Cavaliers have a pretty solid top of the roster right now, but beyond the top eight players, they need to get more help.

While before the season, most would have said Sexton is the best player (not us), now he might rank no higher than fourth. Through these 14 games, rookie Evan Mobley would rank at the top, averaging 14.6 points, 8 boards, 2.5 assists, and 1.6 blocks per contest.

And he was shooting over 50% from the floor before last night’s game, and perhaps more impressive, is a 77% free throw shooter.

Add in third year player Darius Garland and you have a very good (and very young) guard/big man combination for opponents to worry about.

Garland currently leads the team in scoring at 16.8 per night, but has also dished out 6.7 assists and is knocking down three point shots at 40%. The playmaking of Garland and veteran Ricky Rubio have Cleveland ranking 7th in the league in assists, compared to 21st last season, and 24th in 2019-20.

We haven’t talked yet about Jarrett Allen, who we felt was the Cavaliers’ best player when last season ended, and this year has combined with Mobley to create a formidable barrier to scoring that the team has lacked, since who knows when?

Still just 23 years old, Allen is scoring 14.2 points and is grabbing 10.9 caroms a game, and is shooting (or perhaps dunking) 69.4% from the floor.

What is special is both Allen and Mobley are able to guard smaller men out on the floor, and we know from watching Tristan Thompson on the teams that went to the NBA Finals what a valuable ability that is.

Another player who has really helped out is a man many were ready to write off, and that’s Cedi Osman. He’s making 40.6% of his three point attempts, and if that is sustainable, he can be a help off the bench. He’s a solid defender and we still think his strength offensively is as a slasher.

When Love and Markkanen return to action, J.B. Bickerstaff will have nine players who can give him solid minutes. He will then have to figure out who else deserves minutes so he can play ten players.

It could be Dylan Windler, who has hit 9 of 21 from behind the arc, something he has struggled with in his injury plagued career. The wine and gold badly need players who can make shots from outside because it opens things up for Allen and Mobley inside.

The next four games will be measuring stick for how good this team is. However, even if they lose the majority of these contests, this team is fun to watch and the future bodes well.

After the past few seasons, that’s a large step in the right direction.

Cavs Should Use Heat As A Model

As the people of northeast Ohio are well aware, the Cleveland Cavaliers made four straight trips to the NBA Finals from 2015-2018.

However, another team from the Eastern Conference did the same thing in the past ten years. Of course we are talking about the Miami Heat, who were also led by LeBron James. The Heat made four consecutive trips from 2011-2014.

We bring this up because the Heat have recovered post-LeBron and will be in the Eastern Conference finals beginning in a few days against either the Boston Celtics or the defending champion Toronto Raptors.

They accomplished this even though they didn’t bottom out or hope for the top pick in the NBA Draft by getting lucky in the lottery.

Maybe the Cavaliers should take a look at how Miami did it, instead of hoping for the Oklahoma City model of hitting it big in the lottery, something that happened just one time.

The year after James left Miami, the Heat dropped from 54 wins to a 37-45 record. They still had Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, although he played just 44 games. They signed Luol Deng and Danny Granger as free agents, and signed second year big man Hassan Whiteside as a free agent.

At the trading deadline, they made a move with the Suns, dealing Granger, who played in only 30 games for guard Goran Dragic.

In the next draft, they selected Justice Winslow with the 10th overall pick, and signed Amar’e Stoudemire as a free agent. With Bosh returning for 53 games, they won 48 games (#3 seed) and lost in the conference semi-finals to Toronto.

They took a step back in 2016-17, finishing with a .500 record (41-41), missing the playoffs (9th in the East). Wade and Bosh were both gone, and so was Deng. The roster was now centered around Dragic, Whiteside, Tyler Johnson, and James Johnson, signed from Toronto in the off-season.

And they hung their hat on the defensive end, ranking 5th in the NBA on that end of the floor.

They added to that by drafting Bam Adebayo with the 14th pick in 2017 draft, and added another big man, Kelly Olynyk as a free agent.

A 44-38 record was achieved along with the 6th seed in the East, but they lost their first round match up with the 76ers, four games to one.

They missed the playoffs last season with a 39-43 record, but signed Derrick Jones Jr. and Duncan Robinson as free agents, and drafted Tyler Herro with the 13th overall pick in the 2019 draft.

They also signed Kendrick Nunn as a free agent during the summer and added the final piece they needed to contend trading for Jimmy Butler, with the biggest piece being moved being Whiteside, who lost playing time to Adebayo.

There were no 15 win seasons, no 20 win seasons, no falling to the depths of the NBA gutter. The franchise’s worst record was 37-45. They didn’t even use themselves as a destination place for NBA free agents.

One thing they have is a clear identity for the franchise in Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra. There’s a hint for Dan Gilbert.

They also have a defensive mindset. After the first year post-LBJ, Miami hasn’t ranked lower than 11th in defensive rating.

They also have a keen eye for talent. Jones Jr. and Robinson have been key contributors this season, and they were found on the basketball scrapheap.

The point is there are many ways to build a team, you don’t have to bottom out, which always seems to be the plan in Cleveland, and unless you sign LeBron James, it hasn’t worked out.

Hopefully, there is a clear cut plan with Koby Altman and JB Bickerstaff and it can work out like it did for Miami. Nothing but admiration here for the job Riley and Spoelstra have done.

More importantly, the constant change at both the GM spot and the head coach has to end. And that comes from ownership. Hire the right people and let them do their jobs. We understand they won’t have the championship pedigree that Riley has, but there are people out there who are capable of building a solid basketball team.

You have to have complementary players and an organizational mindset of defense and toughness. It’s been awhile since the Cavaliers have had that. The time to start is this off-season.

Cavs’ New Direction Is Hopefully Forward.

When the Cleveland Cavaliers take the floor Friday night, they will have a new coach in J. B. Bickerstaff.

This is will be the third time the soon to be 41 year old has taken over a team in the middle of a season. He took over for Kevin McHale in Houston during the 2015-16 season, guiding the Rockets to a 37-34 record.

He also assumed the reins in Memphis from David Fizdale in 2017-18 and coached through last season, going 48-97 with the Grizzlies.

Here, he takes over what appears to be a mess. And we say that including the front office, John Beilein’s relationship with the roster, and the players themselves.

Let’s start with the front office. Koby Altman was the first GM to receive a second contract under owner Dan Gilbert, but since LeBron James departed via free agency after the franchise’s fourth consecutive Eastern Conference title, the Cavs have a 33-103 record.

Yes, the wine and gold are rebuilding, but they haven’t stripped the roster bare either. Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson, and Larry Nance Jr. all received a lot of minutes on that 2017-18 team, and they are still here.

So is Cedi Osman, who was considered a youngster with talent on that squad.

However, has Altman put his thumbprint on this organization? It seems here like he is collecting talent, which on the surface would appear to be a good thing, but basketball is a different sport. Collecting talent isn’t everything, collecting complementary talent makes for a winning team.

Getting Andre Drummond for pretty much nothing is a good move. But it seems to clash with the team’s leading scorer, Collin Sexton.

Shouldn’t the current roster be playing inside out, with Drummond and Kevin Love getting the ball around the paint and the guards playing off them when they are double teamed? That doesn’t seem like Sexton’s strong point.

We would guess Bickerstaff has a better relationship with the players than Beilein, because they didn’t seem to like the former college coach, and the assistant would typically be the guy the players complain to about the head guy.

But now Bickerstaff is the boss, and he is setting up the rotations and controlling the playing time. Because of his previous experience, maybe he will grab the players’ attention, and get them to buy in to the way he wants the game played.

The players aren’t immune from criticism either. It’s one thing to complain about a coach trying to teach when you are winning, but when you are losing 3/4ths of the time you take the floor, perhaps you should listen.

We have said this before, but two former players who do Cavs’ telecasts, Austin Carr and Brad Daugherty, use this word all the time…accountability. It is lack among this roster and we fear nothing will improve with the Cavaliers until there is some.

And that goes for the young guys and the veterans. Perhaps this was lost when the coaching staff didn’t hold the newbies to an NBA standard from day one. We don’t know that, but it has to be enforced by both the coaches and the veterans starting now.

The defenders say Cleveland is only a year and a half into the post-LeBron era, so the struggles are understandable.

Our problem is we don’t see a lot of progress in performance particularly in the basics of the game. You can play the right way and lose or play the wrong way and lose. We prefer the former.

The next era starts Friday. Hopefully, the internal strife is behind this organization and they can start to pull in the same direction.