Tag: marquese chriss

Cavs Need To See Who Is Part Of Future

When the festivities are done in Charlotte this weekend, and the NBA schedule resumes next week, the Cleveland Cavaliers will still have two dozen games to play.

What can we anticipate seeing over the last couple of months?

First, the organization realizes the new draft lottery system in which the bottom three teams pretty much the same odds to get the first pick in late June’s draft.

The wine and gold have the third worst mark, ahead of only the Knicks and Suns, both of whom have won one less game than the Cavs.  Cleveland has a two game lead (?) over Chicago to hold spot #3.

With Atlanta having the fifth worst record at 19 wins, we believe it is safe to say the three worst records in the league will come from New York, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Chicago.

Larry Drew’s squad is already done against Chicago, helping their cause by losing three out of four against the Bulls, and the first game after the break has the Cavs playing the Suns at Quicken Loans Arena.

A week later, Cleveland travels to New York to take on the other team they have a better record than.  And on April 1st, the wine and gold kick off a west coast trip in the Valley of the Sun.

One key factor for the Cavaliers is they are getting healthy, and it also appears GM Koby Altman picked up a couple of hungry players at the trading deadline.

Kevin Love is back, and has played two games in the last week.  A glimpse into how the club will approach his return may have been revealed this past week.

Love played well in the first half of the win over New York on Monday and said he planned to play in the Wednesday contest at The Q against Brooklyn.  However, it was then announced early that day that Love would not play.

Our guess is the team will claim to be very conservative with Love’s toe injury giving him plenty of rest over the last 24 games.

And don’t forget Tristan Thompson is said to be ready to return as well.  The training staff will be very careful to not give Thompson too much of a workload the remainder of the season.

Besides giving those injuries more time to heal, the Cavs have to be wanting to see more of Marquese Chriss, acquired from Houston.

In four games with Cleveland, Chriss has averaged 14 points and six rebounds, while shooting 53.7% from the floor.  Now, we realize his 56.3% mark from three point range is unsustainable, but as of right now, you have to sign him as a restricted free agent this off-season.

We have said this before, he’s just 21 years old and 6’10”.  You simply cannot discard that kind of size and skill.

You also need to see more of Ante Zizic, another big man in an organization that has ignored size for years.  The 6’11” Croatian scored 12.6 points and grabbed 8.2 rebounds per game in January, playing 25.5 minutes a night.

Zizic just turned 22 on January 4th.

If the Cavs get one of the top three choices in the draft, undoubtedly that player will become the centerpiece of what will hopefully be the next Cleveland team to make the post-season.

But both of those big guys could be big contributors as well, and the organization has to find out what they have in Chriss and Zizic.

That’s something to watch in these last 24 games.

MW

 

Cavs Get More Picks, And Gamble On A Young Big Man.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had a busy week before the NBA trading deadline, but some wish they’d have done more.

Yes, they moved their two most tradable commodities in Rodney Hood and Alec Burks, and they did gamble on some young players, but they didn’t make the big splash many hoped for.

Don’t get us wrong, we are happy with what GM Koby Altman did.  He accumulated more assets.  Cleveland added another first round pick in this year’s draft (from Houston) and more second rounders, which can be used to sweeten the pot in some other deals.

We have heard folks be critical of the Hood deal, but the player had approval over where he could have gone, and quite frankly, the way Hood played in the wine and gold didn’t have other GMs beating down the Cavs’ doors.

Hood is 6’8″, athletic, with a decent shooting touch.  He visually looks like he should be a very good NBA player.  However, he disappears when he’s on the floor a lot.  He had an opportunity in Cleveland to be a primary scorer, but never embraced the role.

Perhaps he’d be a better player if he had the attitude of Jordan Clarkson, who comes in and wants to be a scorer.  But that kind of aggressiveness can’t be taught.

Burks was destined to be moved as soon as he arrived, because of his expiring contract.  And really, he was part of the Hood deal, because the two players received for Hood (Nik Stauskas and Wade Baldwin) were sent to Houston in the deal that moved Burks to Sacramento.

In addition to the first round pick acquired in the deal, Altman did want we wanted him to do in picking up a young player who had been a disappointment to his current team in the deal.

He did that in getting Marquese Chriss, a 21 year old, who is 6’10”, something needed for the height challenged Cavaliers.

Chriss was the 8th overall pick in 2016 by Phoenix, and played every game as a rookie, starting 75 of them.  He averaged 9.2 points and 4.2 rebounds on 45% shooting.

Last year, he lost time due to the drafting of Josh Jackson, and started the year coming off the bench.  When he did start (he started 49 games), he averaged 8.6 points and 5.9 rebounds per game on 44% shooting.  He was traded to Houston, with Brandon Knight (familiar?) for Ryan Anderson and De’Anthony Melton.

Is Chriss a future star?  Who knows, but again, he’s only 21 years old.  He should be a senior in college.

The Cavaliers have 28 games to evaluate him.  And he did have 13 points and 8 rebounds in his debut.

Knight, who came to Cleveland in the deal, isn’t a bad get either, and he’s an expiring contract next season, which is a valuable trade piece at the very least.

He was the 8th overall pick the year the Cavs took Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson, and averaged 18 points and five assists in his third year in the league with Milwaukee, who was being coached by Larry Drew.

He was traded three times in his first four years in the league, and we believe mostly because he’s more of a Mike Conley-style point guard than an Irving-style player.

He’s battled injuries throughout his career, but he’s only 27 years old.  Perhaps if he gets healthy, he can carve out a niche in the NBA.

The rest of this season should be about auditions for Chriss, Ante Zizic, Knight, and others to see if they have a place in the Cavs’ future.

However, it is easier to accumulate assets than it is to cash them in.  That’s the challenge for Altman going forward.

MW