I really shouldn’t do this to the city of Cleveland. The poor sports fans there have suffered enough, with no major pro sports championships since the Indians won the World Series in 1948. Given my generally poor record of prognostication, should I really interrupt their surprisingly quiet, under-the-radar move toward an NBA title?
I shouldn’t, but I will. While the media focuses on the record-setting Golden State Warriors and anticipates their battle with the San Antonio Spurs, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that come late June it will be the Cleveland Cavaliers pouring champagne.
It’s not often the team with LeBron James gets to be “under the radar”, but that’s what the rise of Golden State has done. It’s the Warriors, whose amazing 73-win season got the deserved media accolades. It’s the Spurs, with their own unreal 67-win year and the coming of Kawhi Leonard, who are the expected foil in the Western Conference Finals.
Just a couple days ago I was asked by a relative if I planned to watch the presumptive Warriors-Spurs matchup (of course the answer is yes). No follow-up question about whether I was looking forward to the winner playing LeBron and the Cavs in the Finals. The implicit assumption was that Golden State-San Antonio is for the championship.
Why? Cleveland had ups and downs during the regular season, which Golden State and San Antonio did not have, but the Cavs also have the far easier path to the playoffs. After sweeping Detroit, they’re currently making mincemeat of Atlanta, having won the first two games. Meanwhile, the Spurs are in a death fight with the Oklahoma City Thunder and while the Warriors are cruising, they are having to play without Steph Curry.
Have we forgotten that the Cavs, without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, played a competitive six-game series with the Warriors just last year in the NBA Finals. Have we assumed that Curry’s brilliant season, sure to be crowned with a second straight MVP year, have made him a more valuable asset than LeBron in a short series?
I understand Curry has had a spectacular season and he should be the MVP on a unanimous vote. But if we’re starting from scratch, I’m still taking the physically imposing player who can do everything on a basketball court ahead of the little short guy, endearing though he may be. And I’m further prepared to assume that the presence of Irving and Love are important enough to think Cleveland could get the two additional wins they lacked the firepower to get last year.
It’s also worth remembering that the Cavs had the Warriors seriously on the ropes after winning two of the first three, before LeBron clearly wore down under the burden of being the only one who could score.
We also have to point out that Cleveland has been playing some of its best basketball in the latter part of the regular season. They seem to have found a chemistry. LeBron has deferred to Kyrie when it comes to shooting. Conversely, LeBron has utilized his brilliant passing skills and become a mix of part point guard and part forward. Love is hitting the boards with abandon—last night for example, even though he shoot poorly, Love got double-digit rebounds. Tristan Thompson is one of the game’s best offensive rebounders.
All of that’s enough to win. Cleveland is a virtual lock to coast into the NBA Finals while their prime rivals tear away at each other. The Cavs are good enough to finish the deal when they get there. That’s why I think they take advantage of this opportunity, where the best player in the world is managing to get mostly overlooked, and win their city a long-sought championship.
The city of Cleveland closed in on its first professional sports championship since the Browns won an NFL title in the pre-Super Bowl era of 1964. On Tuesday night, the Cavaliers concluded an Eastern Conference finals sweep of the Hawks with a 118-88 win.
Conventional reporting of this series is saying it boiled down to Cleveland having LeBron James and Atlanta being a mix of injured and a fraud. The first two are clearly correct, the latter a little harsh, and as always there is more to the story.
Rebounding is what defined these Eastern Conference Finals. The Cavs held a massive 52-39 advantage on the glass as a per-game average. Atlanta’s strength in this series was the presence of Paul Millsap and Al Horford down low, and neither were able to impose their will at any point in the series. Millsap’s 7.8 rebounds per game led Atlanta, while four different Cleveland players had per-game averages of 7.5 or higher.
Atlanta played respectable defense in the series, with Cleveland shooting a hair under 45 percent from the floor and LeBron being at 44 percent. That’s not a dominating defensive display, but it’s good enough to win if you rebound the basketball and play with some efficiency yourselves on the offensive end. But the Hawks didn’t get those misses they were forcing and the Cavs defense was even better, holding Atlanta to 42 percent.
Now we come to LeBron and those Atlanta injuries. James averaged 30 points/11 rebounds/9 assists throughout the series, lifting a team that had Kevin Love out and Kyrie Irving hobbled for two games, and missing two others. LeBron got his help from Tristan Thompson, who also got 11 boards a night, and J.R. Smith, who averaged 18 ppg and hit 16 of the 34 three-point attempts he took in this series.
The question it’s fair to ask is whether Cleveland is actually better without Love. It means additional minutes for Thompson, who attacks the glass and it’s not like the Cavs don’t have three-point shooters. This is an argument I’m open to hearing, but I’d also like to see how Cleveland fares against an opponent of true championship quality.
The sharks are starting to swirl around first-year Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt. With the team at 18-13 after another loss last night to the Atlanta Hawks, the great homecoming that many envisioned for LeBron James isn’t off to a strong start. Cleveland is fifth in the Eastern Conference and the subject of talk shows this week was whether Blatt has the King’s backing. Let’s consider this possibility—could Kentucky head coach John Calipari be in line as Blatt’s successor next season.
We have to break this down into two possibilities. The first, of course, is the Cleveland coaching job actually becoming open, and the second would be any interest on the part of Calipari.
It’s not hard to imagine Blatt being shown the door after the season. In fact, if the team doesn’t advance to at least the conference finals it’s hard to imagine him coming back. Remember, Blatt was hired prior to James’ return. The head coach, with no prior experience in the NBA, was chosen on the assumption that this was going to be a bad team, perhaps capable of squeezing out of a playoff spot in the lousy Eastern Conference, but nothing more. Cutting bait after one year wouldn’t be as dramatic as it looks, because circumstances have so obviously changed. Furthermore, LeBron’s public statements regarding Blatt aren’t exactly ringing with praise. In a much-publicizing quote from this week, he said the following… “Yeah, he’s our coach, I mean, what other coach do we have?” “Listen man, I don’t pay no bills around here. I play.” (when asked if a change should be made)
To be fair, there is a fuller context to all these quotes, which include this much more positive statement… “I’m happy who we have at our helm. He’s our coach. For it to make a feud between me and Blatt or the team and Blatt, it’s just to sell.”
That latter quote is obviously stronger, and if you see that as the quote that’s the foundation for the other two then any rift between the coach and the King is being overblown. But my foundation for seeing these quotes is that LeBron is a very media-savvy person, or has at least become once since the public backlash to “The Decision” of 2010. I can’t be persuaded he didn’t know how the first two quotes listed here would be taken.
If James doesn’t want Blatt as his head coach—and really, if you’re a two-time NBA champion and five-time NBA finalist, why would you want to play for a complete known—than Blatt has no chance of survival. Cleveland doesn’t necessarily have to win the championship for him to survive, but the days of looking way up in the standings at the Toronto Raptors weren’t what anyone had in mind for a homecoming.
So with it established that Blatt’s dismissal—at least at the end of the season—is a strong possibility, let’s ask whether Calipari would be ready to live his dynasty at Kentucky to return to the NBA, a place he failed when coaching the Nets.
I have to think Calipari would be interested. He has a dynasty, but it’s one that takes a lot more maintenance than most other dynasties in college sports. The coach may have mastered the use of the “one-and-dones”, or the “two-and-dones”, but that comes at a cost.
He’s starting completely anew every single year. Every college coach has a certain amount of turnover, but other legends of the sport—Mike Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino, etc., don’t have to flip the roster as rapidly as Calipari does. He does it with the expectation of a national championship every year by the crazed denizens of Big Blue Nation. That has to get tiring.
What it also shows us is that Calipari can function under the burden of expectations and that’s the first criteria—more than X’s and O’s—for any head coach of a team with LeBron James on it.
Calipari has accomplished about everything you can in college basketball. If he takes this year’s Kentucky team to a national championship and goes undefeated in the process, what more is there to prove? And even if they come up short, if you want to talk about challenges, isn’t rectifying the one failure on his resume—the NBA tenure in New Jersey—more pressing than just tacking on another NCAA title run in Lexington?
Unless you know Calipari personally, and of course I don’t, we can only guess what motivates him. Using a lot of the same logic (except the one-and-dones), I thought Nick Saban would leave Alabama a couple years ago to take another shot at the NFL. But Saban is apparently content building his legacy as a college legend. Maybe Calipari would be too.
But I’d have to see it to believe it. And the fact Calipari flirted with the Cavs job last summer, prior to LeBron’s return, adds to the intrigue. As does the fact that Calipari and LeBron are said to not only know each other, but have a good relationship.
I think it would be a great match. And I’ll predict right now, that when a new NBA season opens in late October of 2015, you’ll see John Calipari on the sidelines for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
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ANALYSIS & HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE FROM AROUND THE SPORTS WORLD
The Cleveland Cavaliers had never made the NBA Finals in their history, but hope came in the 2003 draft. With the first pick they grabbed local high school phenom LeBron James and quickly improved. In James’ first season they jumped from 17 wins to 35 and were over .500 at 42-40 a year later.
In the 2006 season the Cavaliers won 50 games, made the playoffs and won a first-round series over Washington. Only a seven-game barnburner against the Detroit Pistons, one of the most respected teams in the East, ended their season, so there was plenty of evidence that the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers were going to get better.
LeBron would average 27 points/7 rebounds/6 assists per game for the 2007 Cavaliers. The supporting cast was far from great, although guard Larry Hughes chipped in 15, while Drew Gooden, Anderson Varajeo and Zydruna Ilgauskas hit the boards and Sasha Pavlovic gave the team a three-point shooter. Still, whatever the merits of these role players, Cleveland would go as far as LeBron took them.
A 7-2 start gave way to a brief stumble prior to Thanksgiving, and the team was still a middling 15-11 at Christmas after an 87-71 home loss to Detroit that seemed to spell out the differences that still existed between the Central Division rivals.
Then Cleveland ripped off eight wins in nine games, including a home win over the respected Western power San Antonio Spurs. A seven-game road trip west that saw four losses cooled the Cavs off and on Super Bowl Sunday they again lost by double digits at home to Detroit, putting the record at 26-20.
The next stretch, taking the fans up to March Madness, was the one that gave Cleveland some separation on other teams in the East besides Detroit. They went 14-4, moved the overall record to 41-25 and were able to mostly hold serve the rest of the way. In the mediocre Eastern Conference, a second straight 50-32 record was good for the #2 seed in the playoffs, trailing only the 53-win Pistons.
Washington was again the first-round opponent, and given the weaknesses of Cleveland after LeBron this might have been a series. The Wizards had an explosive offense led by Gilbert Arenas in the backcourt, Caron Butler on the wing and Antwan Jamison in the post, but Arenas and Butler had been both hurt down the stretch and were unavailable.
Cleveland defended and rebounded well, and even though Jamison played at a high level, the Cavaliers got two wins at home and then LeBron dropped 30-plus in each of the road games in Washington, enabling Cleveland to deliver a series sweep.
Now the playoffs would start for real—even if #3 seed Toronto had been beaten, the Cavs path was still paved with #6 New Jersey, who had the core talent from the team that had made consecutive trips to the Finals just four years earlier, and then presumably Detroit would be next. It was time to find out how far King James had come.
New Jersey came to Cleveland on the first Sunday in May with Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson representing the point guard-forward combo they used to win two straight Eastern Conference titles from 2002-03 and had since added prolific scorer Vince Carter to the backcourt.
But Cleveland, with the underappreciated coaching of Mike Brown, played very good team defense and hit the boards. That’s what Gooden and Ilgauskas did to great effect in Game 1, collecting 14 rebounds apiece, while James knocked in 21 points and Kidd was held to seven. An 81-77 win gave Cleveland the series lead and a similar approach in Game 2 got them another win. Gooden had 14 boards, LeBron went for 36 and dished 12 assists and the Cavs won 102-92.
The Cavs may have been soft for Game 3 back in the Meadowlands, because they were outrebounded and gave up 47 percent shooting from the floor, was the Nets’ core trio all had 23 points apiece. A 96-85 win kept New Jersey alive. The Cavs’ defense came back with a vengeance in Game 4, holding Kidd to 2-of-13 and Jefferson to 3-of-12, and Carter to an atrocious 6-of-23. Cleveland did not have a good offensive game themselves, but LeBron covered a lot of ills in scoring 30 and the team pulled out a clutch 87-85 win.
If the Game 4 win was a sign of a young team announcing its arrival, then the potential clinch game back home two nights later was an announcement of the maturity issues such teams face. The defense was soft, New Jersey shot 48 percent and stole an 83-72 win.
But then in Game 6 at the Meadowlands, the Cavs showed that whatever their flaws, they weren’t going to roll over in the face of taking a punch. They combined some good defense, with a rare display of three-point shooting, connecting on 11-of-27, and they got something winning teams usually do and it’s the unexpected play from a bench player. Donyell Marshall bagged six treys, scored 18 points and helped LeBron, who posted a 23/8/8, lead a decisive 88-72 win that clinched the series in six games.
Cleveland came into the conference finals against Detroit as the underdog. They were the lower seed, it was the farthest this group had advanced, and this was a battle-tested Piston team that had won the NBA title in 2004 and come within one game of repeating a year later.
Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton were a solid backcourt and Tayshaun Prince a double-digit scorer in his own right. Ben Wallace and Chris Webber manned the middle and they all helped the Detroit win the first two games on their home floor, both by the same 79-76 score. Even when LeBron dropped a 32/9/9 in an 88-82 win to make it a series, no one was thinking anything else but that Detroit was going back to the Finals.
Cleveland might have given observers some second thoughts, as James was again clutch in Game 4, at 25/7/11, and the Cavs won 91-87, but they still had to find a way to win at least one game in Detroit.
Which set the stage for the final night in May when James went into Motown and put one of the most electric displays in NBA playoff history. It was his “48 Special”, so named for his final point total and the fact he scored the Cavs’ last 24 pointsby himself. Cleveland won in double overtime, 109-107 and took control of the series.
A pumped city welcomed Cleveland home for Game 6 and there was no letup this time at home. The Cavs destroyed the Pistons on the glass and rookie Daniel Gibson came off the bench to score 31 points. James had 14 rebounds and 8 assists to go with a more pedestrian 20 points and the team coasted to an 98-82 win. The Cleveland Cavaliers were making their first-ever trip to the NBA Finals on the back of LeBron James.
The NBA Finals would be a tough row to hoe for Cleveland. The West was the superior conference, as evidenced by the fact it five teams with 50-plus wins, compared to two in the East. San Antonio’s 58 wins were third-best in the West during the regular season, while being eight games better than Cleveland and five better than Detroit.
The Spurs beat a 61-win team in Phoenix, and while they got a break by the stunning exit of 67-win Dallas and league MVP Dirk Nowitzki in the first round, the Spurs were a decorated team with rings from 1999, 2003 and 2005. The core of the team was the same as it is today, with Tim Duncan in the post, Tony Parker in the backcourt and Manu Ginobli gunning from downtown, then a slew of role players ably mixed in by head coach Gregg Popovich.
Duncan took away Cleveland’s usual rebounding edge and made it his own in Game 1, with a 24/13 night, as solid Spurs’ boardwork keyed an 85-76 win. The Cavs closed off the glass better in Game 2, but the offensive weaponry by San Antonio was too much. The Cleveland guards were being exposed by Parker, who scored 39, while Duncan’s 23/9/8 essentially offset James and his 25/7/6. An 11-point win meant San Antonio held serve at home.
Cleveland came home for the middle games and the defense was tough, as the Spurs averaged 79 ppg over Games 3 & 4. But they got unexpected help in Game 3 from Bruce Bowen, the reserve who hit 4-for-5 from behind the arc, part of ten treys for the team and the 75-72 win ended any doubt over who was getting the ring.
The Spurs closed it in Cleveland two nights later. James had a 24/6/10, but merely being good was not enough against a complete team, as Duncan grabbed 15 rebounds and Parker scored 24. San Antonio survived an exciting 83-82 game and clinched its fourth championship in nine years.
There could still be no doubt about the pride Cleveland fans could take in their team and their young star beating Detroit a year earlier than anyone expected. Surely this Finals trip was the first of many to come—trips that would end with rings.
Of course we know how it worked out—after three years of playoff losses, LeBron got his future NBA Finals trips and rings with the Miami Heat. The city of Cleveland is back in basketball no-mans land, with the 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers remaining the high point in franchise history.
The NBA’s Eastern Conference is marked by a steep drop-off after the top six teams, creating a tight race among mediocre teams for the final two playoff berths. And situated right in between well-publicized Eastern teams in Boston and New York, are small-market hubs in Milwaukee and Cleveland. Each team is coming off a big weekend win, with the Cavs beating the Celtics in the Garden last night, and the Bucks knocking off the Lakers at home on Saturday. Milwaukee and Cleveland are each 8-11 and tied for the 8th spot in the East. Today, TheSportsNotebook takes a closer look at both.
Milwaukee: I’m going through the Bucks first, because they’re the least likely of the two to keep this going. Andrew Bogut, their 7-foot center, is absolutely critical to their success and he’s now out indefinitely with an ankle injury. Bogut is not a superstar, with an 11 points/8 rebounds per game average, but he at least gave the team a low post presence. Now a bench, which wasn’t deep on the frontline to begin with, is going to worn thin. The inside burden will fall to power forward Drew Gooden, who is a poor man’s Bogut, and 24-year old Ersan Ilyasova, who now has the chance to make a name for himself.
Brandon Jennings is the star of the show under any circumstances and the point guard averages 20 ppg. At 23, Jennings is set to become a fixture in the league for a long time and it remains to be seen if the Bucks can get the talent in place to keep him happy and in town. His running mate is Stephen Jackson, a non-descript performer at age 33 who shouldn’t be in the starting lineup of any team with playoff aspirations. Mike Dunleavy Jr. plays the small forward spot and averages 10 a night, but shoots sub-40 percent from the floor.
Ultimately shooting is a big problem for this team. The Bucks have no one whose reliable as a three-point gunner. Jackson and Dunleavy should be fined if they ever launch a three-ball and while Jennings’ 35 percent is acceptable, it’s a real problem when he’s your best option. In fact in general, it’s a basketball truism that your point guard shouldn’t have to be your lead option when it comes to taking shots. Jennings clearly is for Milwaukee, so if that truism is accurate, it’s a big problem for this team. For the record, I’m not sure if I buy into theory completely, but I see the logic behind it, and it certainly applies in a case like this where there’s simply no other good options besides Jennings.
Now that I’ve carved up the Milwaukee personnel let’s take a look at some positives and it starts with the bottom line. They’ve won four of their last six and it’s not because the schedule got easy. In addition to the Lakers, Milwaukee won on the road at improving Houston, they won the road at New York—which admittedly is not a tough game, but it’s a team the Bucks have to beat out if they’re going to make the playoffs—and they won at Miami. The losses were more than respectable, coming to Atlanta and on the road in Chicago.
The reason is defense. Head coach Scott Skiles is doing a terrific job at getting this team to play together defensively, and they’re 4th in the league in defensive efficiency. How much of that can be sustained without Bogut is another question, but give the coaching staff some props and give the players high marks for effort.
Coming up this week, Milwaukee has to show they can take care of business against the dregs of the East, when they play two games against the Pistons, including a home date tonight. They’ve also got considerably tougher home games with Miami and Chicago.
Cleveland: The Cavs are the mirror image of the Bucks. While Milwaukee looks terrible on paper, but puts it together with defense, Cleveland looks pretty decent when you go player-by-player, but they are not getting it done on the defensive end.
Kyrie Irving, the 19-year old point guard from Duke who went first in last June’s draft, has lived up to his press clippings, averaging 18 ppg and being a viable three-point threat. I’d like to see more assists from Irving, but at 5 apg he’s not bad, and as his supporting cast improves, the assist numbers surely will too.
Irving is joined in the backcourt by veteran Anthony Parker, a regular on the best teams this franchise had in the LeBron Years, but at age 36, he’s nursing back problems and hasn’t produced all that much when healthy. Cleveland could use Daniel Gibson or Ramon Sessions to really stand up and claim this job, but so far neither has distinguished themselves.
The forward spots are in steady hands. 35-year old Antwan Jamison can still score, and he has the ability to step out and hit from downtown, giving Irving an added weapon off penetration. Jamison is joined by 6’11” Anderson Varejao, averaging a double-double per night. Where Cleveland is lacking is that no true center draws any significant playing time.
Cleveland’s bounced back well from a tough mid-January stretch where they lost games to Chicago, Atlanta and Miami, and they win at Boston has the chance to be a signature moment for this team. The Celts make a return trip to Cleveland on Tuesday night, an opportunity that will test the Cavs’ maturity. Can they make it two in a row against a team they need to beat? The schedule around the corner doesn’t get easier, with Orlando, Dallas, Miami and the LA Clippers coming up in succession.
In comparing the two teams, I like Milwaukee’s overall profile better because of the defense, but at this point in the season I think Cleveland has much better prospects moving forward. The individual talent suggests the opportunity is there for the team to gel, while the Bucks are already probably playing about as well as they possibly can. Cleveland’s still healthy, while Milwaukee is not.
If either team made the playoffs, it would make for a potential rivalry battle in the first round. Milwaukee could be paired up with Chicago. And I don’t know if the media would notice, but a Cleveland-Miami series would involve LeBron James taking on his former team. Sarcasm aside though, for both teams, just getting into the postseason would constitute a huge win in of itself and even winning a single game there would be even better.
