Preview: Cavaliers at Celtics, May 13th
2010-05-13Well, here we go. It’s a three-game series, and the Cavs are down 0-1. They’re 48 minutes away from tying this series up and going back to Cleveland for the deciding game. It’s not over. At least not yet. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not ready for LeBron’s last game as a Cav.
This game can be won. The Cavs have the talent. They won easily in Boston not that long ago. If they believe they can win this game, they can do it. LeBron says he knows what the stakes are. He needs to play like it, now more than ever. This entire team needs to hit the boards like their pride is on the line. No sloppy turnovers. Every possession could mean everything. Play defense on everyone, for the full 24 seconds, and get the ball if they miss.
Limit transition opportunities. Contest KG’s catches. Try to stop Ray Allen from getting it going. Hope Pierce doesn’t have one last bullet left in the holster.
On offense, play aggressive and confident. LeBron needs to come out early attacking and make the game his. Guys need to shoot when they’re left alone, and know when to reset when they don’t have the looks. Use Shaq to get in the bonus, then play matchup ball. Delonte’s gotta provide a spark. A lot of things need to go right. They can. The Cavs have won 67 games this season. They need two more right now.
A loss will hurt. If the Cavs go down fighting, I can take it. This team needs to play with pride. They need to play like they want another couple weeks of this. I do. I’m sure all of you do as well. This can happen. It is not over. But it needs to start right now. Not next game, not next quarter, not next possession. This is it. Having your back against the wall isn’t an excuse to quit. It’s an opportunity to leave everything out there. Any iota of effort this team doesn’t give will stay with them until their graves. 48 tough minutes, or a lifetime of infamy. It’s their choice.
Regardless of what happens, I love this team. I’ve loved watching them. I’ve loved talking about them. I’ve especially loved writing about them. It’s been a great journey. Let’s keep it going.
I don’t know if it’s the coaches, the players, LeBron–but this series has been one cybernetic failure from everyone on the court.
Hey look, Doc Rivers on a tv timeout again. I really really wonder what Roker is telling the Cavs in the huddles. Must be some top secret stuff to not allow it to be on tv.
No, the Cs will not get stomped by Orlando. Everything Orlando does well the Cs can cover. KG plays well against Lewis, Perkins plays howard 1on1 as well as anyone, and Rondo is going to eat Jameer Nelson alive. So long as Garnett continues to play like this, the Celtics will win that series too.
Haha well out of the previous time out the celtics scored 5 straight points, so now it might be too late… But I don’t think Hickson needs to be warmed up and into the flow of the game to run hard and dunk off feeds from Lebron on the break…
I feel like my bag got punched.
aaaaand with that run, that’s it. celtics +14. good game.
the c’s and the cavs are both just ok teams. once boston wins they’ll get stomped by orlando. bye bye basketball in cleveland
Well, LeBron’s inability to shoot the ball at all the last three games combined with Mike Brown totally missing the boat will be the primary reasons for this disaster.
I feel like a punching bag.
As far as redemption goes, at least Rasheed will get some back after tonight. Good for him!
It’s already to late for that ryo. Hickson needed to already have gotten time. Can’t just throw him out there now and pray.
Aaaaaandddd…. there’s Shaq and Jamison again….
Still plenty of time to go small… With the crowd back into the game and the Cavs needing a run, if Mike Brown comes out of this TO with the wrong lineup it’s all over…
Yea. Already looking forward to a team w/o Mike Brown, even if it is a team w/o LeBron James. Yet again, in the playoffs, Mike Brown fails to make adjustments. Last year leaving LeBron on Rafer Alston, and this year stubbornly refusing to go small and quick.
I actually just saw LeBron spike the ground into the floor with anger. That’s the first time in the past three games he’s showed emotion. Where did that come from?
It is all over.
Phew, good timeout by Doc Rivers. Stopped LeBron from pushing it with a heat checker.
Lol, I agree Kevin. Everyone in the world was saying that the celtics weakness is smaller athletic line-ups. Ferry gave Mike Brown a team that can play any which way, and Brown never really did figure it out all season. I’m still trying to figure out why you need to be big against a team whose center can’t score the ball, and whose backup center shoots threes. Why exactly do we need size against that?
Well then we’re screwed, lol. Never, ever going to win a game on the opponents home court in the playoffs if your star can’t shoot. It probably is the elbow, but this is why people questioned his effort in the last game. He clearly is playing hard in this game, even if he can’t shoot. He needed to do this at home.
Gotta hand Mike Brown credit. If he’s going down with the ship, he does it his way no matter what the end result will be. I imagine he’ll have a nice life after cashing out (not sure what his salary was but it’s gotta be decent).
Jamison can’t buy a bucket to save his life. Where was Moon? After a strong 2Q, I don’t even think we saw him in the third. At least Lebron looks like he’s leaving it on the court tonight. When no one else on the Cavs steps up though, they’re screwed. Williams kept them afloat in the first half, but someone else has to do something on offense, because Lebron obviously can’t shoot from the outside.
Doc Rivers is handing the Cavs a lifeline by taking out Paul Pierce with his fourth foul as he was just starting to feel it.
Well, it is clear Mike Brown didn’t have the stones to do what was necessary, which is go small and run. I blame him immensely for that.
You are a fool if you didn’t think that storm was coming. The Cavs weathered it, lets see if they can fight back one more time.
Really? I’ve seen about 10 teams with worse chemistry issues this year. Pretty sure the entire Atlanta team hates each other.
Rich, I agree that it’s far from an ideal situation and obviously figuring out the best lineups is easier said than done. However, I can’t help but feel that playoff series are won with adjustments. Mike Brown is supposed to be one of the best 30 basketball coaches living, so I feel he should be held at least somewhat accountable for not finding what match-ups work best for the Cavs by game 6 of this series given the various playing styles of the bigs on his roster…
I’ve never seen a team with such apparent chemistry issues. I want the team from late January back.
Well except Shaq and Jamison never got to play together during the regular season at all. hard to figure out which line ups work best in the middle of the playoffs.
I agree with the Shaq/Jamison thing. Considering how many non-scrub bigs the Cavs have I feel like Mike Brown should have figured out by now which combinations work best…
It’s the Shaq/Jamison front line. It creates such a defensive imperfect storm that it turns into a layup line.
At least that time out was only 1 play late instead of 3.
This cavs team has too many holes defensively to survive in the playoffs… In a 7 game series an NBA playoff team will figure out how to expose either Mo or Jamison
Ok, looking at the box score, pretty clearly MB has to go with Varejao over the rest of the bigs the 2nd half. Quite frankly, he should bench Jamison and bring him in for Zs minutes. Mo Williams apparently has decided he doesn’t want this season to end, and LeBron James, from the 5 minutes I watched, is playing with heart. There is difference between what we saw last night and what we see right now. Tuesday night he was just out there, tonight, even though he can’t make a shot, he is playing hard. Again, VAREJAO HAS TO START… Read more »
Jesus. HT show: “LeBron has 24 minutes left as a Cavalier”.
I agree it seems like there may be too much energy and it hurts their execution. I feel like they are very lucky to be this close, but at the same time they could be up by 6 or so if not for some terrible plays. The one where Mo never gave up the ball on the fast break killed me. And Shaq missing from 6 inches again. What worries me is that all of our baskets seem hard and all of theirs seem easy.
And can we just play Mo – AP/West – Moon – LeBron – AV for the rest of the game please Mike Brown!
we are playing okay but not great….we look better on offense than defense just have too many turnovers under the basket thats killing us….we convert half of those we have at least an 8-10 point lead…Lebron hasnt gone off yet and I have a feeling he will…MO is busy doing that now..Andy and Moon were solid…delonte playing retarded…i think we got this but first minutes of 3rd are crucial cant be giving them easy baskets…everything has to be contested and fight for every loose ball and rebound…i think we look better than them but we are still down…also we need… Read more »
At least Mo is playing with some aggression. I don’t care what he’s doing. I’d take anything to playing like Zombies. If Lebron isn’t on (and it’s clear he still can’t make jumpers), then someone else needs to force the issue.
Thank god for Mo stepping up first half.
LeBron still looks like he’s throwing it. Come on dude. If they both get going, and AV contimues to pay hardball, we’ll win this game
But what is Mo doing? He’s purposefully avoiding LeBron on a lot of these possessions. Something to keep an eye on. Does Mo not trust LeBron? Chemistry is fucked.
That was actually a decent half. Only down 2, on the road. Played fairly sloppy, Lebron was average. They got a lot of Celtics to pick up fouls. They played with some energy (perhaps too much at times actually). They could be in a lot worse position than down 2. If I had a choice when the game started, and knew they could be down two right now, I would have taken it. Thank goodness Mo Williams showed up today. If he keeps it up in the second half, good things will happen (provided Lebron picks it up a bit).
Brown did the same thing with Gibson in game 5 at the end of a quarter. Talked about how Gibson didn’t provide enough length on defense and then subs him in on a defensive possession. I’ve given trying to figure out Brown.
What happened to Moon? Time to bring him and Andy back in.
I meant 1st not 4th…
Putting Hickson in at the end of the 4th made NO sense. Sometimes I think MB makes substitutions at random.
What in the hell is going on out there? Mo and LeBron look like they are constantly yelling at each other. What, did LeBron boink Mo’s wife or something?
Shaq cannot guard Garnett. That was a failure. Moon and Varajao have been critical, and we need to see more of them from here on out.
So I turned the game back on to catch the last minute of that quarter, and you did see it. Mike Brown substituted Hickson in for the last 10 seconds to play defense…………………..they didn’t score, but someone out there explain that to me. You use a defensive substitution and play HIckson?? REALLY??
Get Shaq and Jamison out of the game! I can see them being useful against Orlando, but they are killing us out there.
By the way, what is up with these facial expressions LeBron is making? Dude looks like he walked into the wrong church on his wedding day.
Agree Kevin…nice analogy :D
Does anyone else feel weird watching this? It’s like being forced to talk to an ex. This game is awkward and I’m not even focusing on the game play.
So I’ve already turned the channel after seeing the big Mike Brown adjustment. Playing Shaq on Garnett. Defies logic and reason. Goodbye Mike Brown.
“I think we’ve talked quite enough about game 5. Lets talk about the Cavs first. What happened in game 5 was inexplicable.”
(they go on to talk about game 5 for another 10 minutes)
Unbelievable. Lets see some basketball already!
You guys ever notice something. When TV shows timeout huddles, locker room pregame or halftime speeches and what not, you always see Stan Van or Doc motivating the team, talking them up and giving instructions.
Why do we never see Roker on one of those TV shots. Does he not talk? Or are his locker room/timeout comments so absolutely ridiculous that TV doesnt want to embarrass him by airing them?
Kevin…”John, are you going to stop blogging about the Cavs if LeBron leaves?”
Well, people will most likely stop reading and commenting about the Cavs. What kind of interest will there be in a 15-67 team? Not much. I’m guessing most of the Cavs related websites lose hits drastically. Maybe that guy who had made that Larry Hughes sucks website will make a similar one about Lebron.
Game time. I think we know by the end of the first who will win.
Do or die. Tonight we find out what this team is made of. Go Cavs!
Please let this be a W. Let this be an “eff you” game.
Playoff prediction: LBJ > triple double with 50+ points. And both LBJ and Rondo end up bleeding at least once during this game.
@ comrade brad
Dunno about the sports bars, I always find a stream from china to watch the games. :D
@ BradleyH Yeah, you gang have been THE source for insight this season for me. I really enjoyed the honest game breakdowns and the hilarious crap Krolik and Pestak use for pics and links. Highly entertaing and informative, you guys rock! I can’t believe I’m at this point but I’ve watched the Cavs for a decade or so and I honestly cannot stand Lebron James as of this whole series. I will sport number 11 Big Z’s jersey out of love for my Cavs. The lifelong Clevelander in me is out of faith anymore. James’ character, integrity, passion, and loyalty… Read more »
Cavs will be fine. LBJ’s going to force the issue early, the rumblings about rotations have reached the right ears — who bets that we play small ball and run the Celts right out of their building?
I’m also in NYC — Matthew, are there any good sports bars in Manhattan (where I won’t necessarily have to deal with Knicks fans talking smack all night?)
serious stomach butterflies.
John, are you going to stop blogging about the Cavs if LeBron leaves?
Go Cavs. I’ve had a sick feeling in my stomach for the last 44 hours. Get it done and erase the awful stench, Cavs.
I believe they can do it. If my grandpa was still alive he probably would. And I hope to God they do.
You guys are all great guys. Go to dinner with your family. Go play pick-up. Build that model ship you’ve had since Christmas. Work around the house. Be productive, don’t watch this silly game. Celts win and you won’t even have to watch the meltdown.
So here we are. The most important game in this franchise’s history and quite frankly the most important game for the city of Cleveland since Jose Mesa decided to go epic fail. It is also the most important game in LeBron’s career for about 35 different reasons, the least of which is this is the most talented team he has ever had around him and going out in the 2nd round would be a huge black eye on the image that is LeBron. If the cavs lose, the likelyhood that LeBron leaves goes way up. Because of that, we are… Read more »
As a NE Ohio to NYC transplant I am on the edge of my seat for my childhood team and feeling incredibly selfish for LeBron to come to town.
Get it done.
Well said… and mike brown PLEASE know when you need to call a timeout (ie not after Celtics go on a 10-0 run). The true Cavs fans are here to the finish… go Cavs
I am a witness…Believe