Recap: Cavs 91, Denver 98 (or, can’t they just play three quarters?)
2013-01-11
The caption on this picture says "Kosta Koufos, right, fouls Cleveland Cavaliers' Tristan Thompson left, who scored the basket"
Man, another one of these games. Kyrie was sick, but played anyways. After tonight’s final quarter, we are all probably a little ill.
The first quarter displayed the perfect glimpse-of-the-future that we all hope for. Tristan made possibly the two smoothest plays I have witnessed from him; a drive right from thirty feet, finished with a beautiful lefty lay-up, and then his Kyrie impersonation: he received the ball at half-court, dribbled between his legs twice, started right, spun left, and finished with the left hand. It was pretty. In February, I expect to see him takedown rebounds, go coast-to-coast, and thread behind-the-back passes to streaking trailers. One great sequence included two of our favorite defensive foils: Tyler blocked a Nugget transition attempt, but Denver recovered. Of course, Kyrie poked the ball away for a steal, initiated the break and hit a trailing-Tristan for a two-handed SLAM! Later, Dion canned a three, drove and finished, and completed a fast-break and-one off a Thompson steal!! Tristan scored ten!!! Kyrie had eight points, five assists, and two steals!!!! Zeller blocked two shots and also broke up an alley-oop!!!!! The Nuggets made eight field goals while turning it over nine times!!!!!!
The Cavs led 30 – 23. As far as the youngsters all putting it together at one time, this quarter may have exceeded all others this season. It was fun.
The second quarter was an extension of the first, albeit slightly less superb. Waiters scored six points early in the second, and the back-ups maintained the lead. Kyrie entered at the midway point and made things happen, including a sweet little righty drive with a lefty floater finish. The half ended with the Cavs up 56 – 45; Kyrie finished with 12 points, 7 assists, and 0 turnovers; Dion scored 14 on 6 of 9 shooting; Tristan netted 10 on 5 of 8; the team notched nine steals for the half.
The third quarter started reasonably well, before a typical pattern emerged. Tristan hit a righty push-shot and slammed home a follow-up; the Cavs lead 62 – 50. Then, the third quarter blues emerged. Denver started running and beating the Cavs before the defense was set; as Cleveland’s twelve-point lead unravelled, Denver had twelve possessions following a Cavalier miss or turnover – they scored eighteen points. Ty Lawson found Kosta Koufas for two bunnies, Danilo Gallinari was left alone for an open trey and later beat Dion for an and-one; suddenly the lead dropped to one. In a pivotal momentum preserver, on consecutive possessions, Kyrie drilled a three, then tipped a pass to force a turnover, before finding twine on a pull-up…lead regained. Javale McGee missed a few dunks, and Cleveland headed to the fourth with a 76 to 72 lead.
The Cavs started the fourth quarter struggling, so much so that Kyrie actually checked back in with nine minutes remaining. Dani must have been very happy; Kyrie immediately responded by scoring seven points in 1.5 minutes, including a looooong three. Cleveland lead 85 to 80 with seven minutes left. They were outscored 18 to 6 the rest of the way. Gee missed two critical free throws, and twice Tyler ended up guarding Ty Lawson on the perimeter, which ended badly. A-Gee and TT miscommunicated a defensive assignment, leaving Gallinari wide-open for a back-breaking three that gave Denver a 94 to 89 lead with thirty seconds left.
To me, the big story of the final stanza was the team’s continued reliance on the one-man game. Kyrie took and missed four shots in the last several minutes. None was an assisted look. Others were also guilty. A small red-flag went up for me in the first half, when I noticed that Cleveland had 9 assists on 24 made field goals. The second half featured 3 assists on 13 baskets. Not good, and the team needs to institute something that vaguely resembles an offense.
A few bullets:
- Cleveland took the wrong end of the officiating tonight. The Nuggets shot twice as many free throws. Tristan picked up three fouls in the first two minutes of the second half.
- There were a few nice individual efforts. Kyrie finished with 28 points, 7 assists, and 5 steals. His defense has looked appreciably better. Notice that all his assists came in the first half though. Dion was aggressive and scored 18 points on 59% true shooting. Tristan finished with 16 & 7, but despite twelve field goal attempts in the paint, he never shot a free throw.
- Tyler Zeller drew two charges, keeping himself firmly entrenched in the NBA’s top-ten for that stat.
- Alonzo Gee’s defense early against Danilo Gallinari was pretty bad. He also finished with only 2 points and 2 rebounds.
- Three weeks ago on Saturday, I asked for four wins by the end of this weekend. The Cavs obliged, thanks in part to their double-digit wins over Milwaukee and Atlanta.
- Dion has a tendency to start aggressive and if it goes well, then he seems to think “I’ve earned some jumpers”. Tonight, three of his five first quarter shots were at the rim. Zero of his eight field goal attempts after that were (he did get fouled once in the paint and made both freebies). He needs to keep attacking, dribble a little less, and shoot fewer long twos.
- Cleveland was horribly outrebounded: 56 to 35.
- Denver assisted on 24 of their 36 field goals.
- Luke Walton played 23 minutes.
Because he’s still young and is a proven All-Star caliber SF of which we do not currently have. Look, Kyrie is the superstar. Now we just need a star and/or borderline All-Stars and we are contenders. Gay gives us that. With Waiters, TT and maybe even a draft pick (though presumably we would trade our upcoming pick in a Gay trade but we have lots more though not as high, admittedly) or two, that makes us EC contenders…
@KJ why do you want Rudy Gay so badly? I just don’t see it.
Sorry, i’m just a newb with regard to synergy…i assumed you had to pay to get any of their stats until i found out otherwise a few days ago. All I know how to do is go here: http://mysynergysports.com and type in a player’s name. This gives you their game-by-game stats, offensive stats, and defensive stats, and tons of video resources as well. Awesome!
The whole Kyrie doing better in iso situations is just totally weird…I’m not close to having a satisfactory answer for why it’s the case.
Player—Overall—Isolation Irving—–0.98——–1.07 Top 5 scorers Kobe——1.03——–0.97 Carmelo–1.05——–0.92 Durant—-1.12——–0.95 Harden—1.04——–0.86 Lebron—1.06——–1.00 Some high-efficiency point guards Paul—-1.01———-0.96 Curry—0.97———-0.88 Parker–1.02———-0.86 An assortment of other players Wade—1.00———–0.74 Ginobili-0.98———–0.60 Mayo—-0.97———-1.18 <—-leads league K-Mart–1.12———–0.98 Why is Kyrie such a great scorer in iso situations and comparatively poor otherwise? Because a lot of these guys boost their overall number by shooting a lot of spot-up 3's. spot up plays only account for 9.2% of Kyrie's possessions, according to Synergy, among the fewest of all players. This is where Dion comes in. Dion could potentially be a very good distributor as SG's go. Far from being a poor… Read more »
Nice comment, Nathan.
Did you say Synergy is providing data for free now?
Nathan, Looking at the last minute of all quarters this year, Kyrie’s eFG% is 43.2 on 88 shots. In the last 30 seconds it is 48.3% on 59 shots. In the last 15 seconds it is 44% on 43 shots. NBA average eFG% is typically around 50. Also interesting is that when there are more than three minutes left in a quarter, Kyrie is assisted on 38% of his buckets. In the last three minutes, it drops to 13%. Can you sort by situation on Synergy? I mentioned this earlier, but based on your numbers and these results, a reasonable… Read more »
In clutch situations this year (last 5 minutes, game within 5 points), Kyrie has 8 assists and 14 turnovers. He has taken the fourth most field goals in these situations, despite playing the 77th most minutes. Otherwise, he has 1 assist for every three field goal attempts, but in these situation he gets one assist for every six field goal attempts.
I’m not really offering any of this up to disparage Kyrie. It’s just that something needs done differently in crunch time, regardless of his typical spectacular-ness.
Thanks for things on Chandler. I wondered why I hadn’t heard of him for a while…
I keep fantasizing that we can put together a package and get Gay. A core of Kyrie, Dion, TT and Gay is a serious EC contender in 2 years…
David and Nathan, you’re kidding me right? First, it’s still a team game. Second, coddling your star player, treating him with velvets gloves and not holding him accountable for his mistakes really worked well the last time around for the Cavs, didn’t it? I blame this mainly on the coaches and management, but can’t deny that I’m a bit worried about Kyrie’s approach to all this. Having one player constantly playing iso’s is stupid, predictable, ugly basketball and not conductive to team play. As much as I admire Kyrie for a lot of things, he has weaknesses and isn’t beyond… Read more »
I’d like that broken down by quarters, Nathan. KJ: Wilson Chandler’s still recovering from offseason hip injury, and he’s been a sub 400 shooter since returning from China. The risk is too great that he did a sign and retire deal. He still has three years left at around at 6.3, 6.8, and 7.2 million. Wait and see, I say. As for the officiating, it was Bennet Salvatore: the biggest homer in the NBA. You have to know the host team is going to get a lot of calls when he’s officiating. I forgot about my least favorite play of… Read more »
Kyrie ranks 3rd in the league in scoring efficiency in iso plays this year, so he can iso every play for all i care :)
Nathan, How does the efficiency of the best iso-players compare with average players on some other play types? There is no doubt that Kyrie is great at breaking people down off the dribble and scoring. I am 100% fine with this being part of the offense. This season though, in crunch time, when the defenses really buckle down, it is not working. According to basketball-reference, in the final three minutes of fourth quarters and overtime, Kyrie is shooting 20 – 55 from the field and 7 – 28 from three. Take that out, and he is probably the best iso… Read more »
i don’t understand why the commenters feel like they need to rip on Kyrie, the 20 year old singlehandedly keeping them in the game, who has clearly improved defensively. but hey, whatever floats your boat
Kyrie doesn’t trust his teammates down the stretch. That’s pretty evident. Results in ugly basketball that contrasts the team’s playing style for other 95% of the game. Even when he’s successful going ISO it still doesn’t do it for me.
And Kyrie’s defense on P&R remains atrocious as usual. He gets the bigs in foul trouble and the Cavs remain a non factor defensively when Kyrie is on the court… for the most part. Cavs seem perfectly content to trade baskets too much for my liking while Kyrie is on the court.
The idea that many people seem to have that Alonzo Gee is a good defensive player has to stop. He’s so overrated by Cavs fans. That he wasn’t able to get a single offer from another team tells you enough. He has the body, and most of the time the willingness, but simply not the skills nor the basketball IQ to be a good defender. The fact that we haven’t many other passable wing defenders doesn’t make Gee a good one. His offensive game is awful 9 out of 10 games, and his passing is horrible, but apparently Scott likes… Read more »
Kyrie, by his standards, had an ok defensive game, but his “ok” defending the pick and roll isn’t much better than my ok. I understand that he uses his energy for the offensive end, but I have rarely seen a guy jog so frequently when the other team has the ball. It is incredible. Kyrie was just chillin in between on Gallo’s last 3 to basically win the game. This can’t continue. I have never liked Gee. I continue to be horrified by his play. Does TT warm up faster than other guys or something? It feels like he plays… Read more »
Should have added that Luke Walton actually wasn’t the reason we lost this game. I only counted a few times when he was out of defensive position and had some great plays on offense. Our front court was greatly overmatched.
I’d be ok if Gibson doesn’t get another minute all year. We really need to move on from him.
I dont mind Cavs loosing games where they’re clearly overmatched in talent and personel. Like losing to the Knicks, Clippers and Spurs and looking horrible at it, is actually not the worst thing because those teams are supposed to make you look horrible and you are supposed to loose by alot. Its something else entirely, when they play really well against an average or above average team and just squander it away. Like today, they played decently well in the first half. Kind of an extension of the Hawks game. But somehow, they managed to forget at a crucial time… Read more »
In my opinion the Cavs biggest problem is Byron Scott. This roster even without Varejao could win games and more than that could improve, but Scott effectively cuts any such trends. I really don’t understand what he’s trying to establish. The Cavs strategy appears to be to bring new valuable players through the draft. That has been clearly successful. However, Scott’s task to make a team out of them has clearly failed.
Refs were bad especially to TT. If he passed wind; the whistle blew. TT gave them grief and was aggressive. If you remember, Karl put another center in there later in the game. But Hey they were competitive until the last 2 minutes and CHOKE! Kyrie needed to pass more at the end. He was getting fatigued and he shot bad in the final minutes. To who? WHo knows? Bryon scott should have gave Casspi some minutes tonight. We had a couple of inconsistent players that did nothing for us. Do not understand his stubborness not to adjust.
Also, Kyrie did NOT play good defense tonight. Again, compare and contrast the way Kyrie deals with screens and the way Dion does. Yes, Dion is bigger and stronger but Kyrie can just be lazy and switches FAR too often…
Wait, you can “pad stats” early in the game, when it’s still in the balance? Who knew.
I’m a big TT fan and would like to agree with you guys on the official. I just didn’t see it that way. Faried completely outhustled TT in the game. He looked quicker than Thompson, but I’m guessing it was more about TT being passive. I think that the 8 quick points and 4 quick rebounds TT had made Tristan think he had done enough work for the day. Part of the indiscretion of youth?
I feel like I have to stop picking on Gee because he’s just getting worse and worse. Still, we saw our 3 top 5 picks play pretty damn well tonight against a team that has lost 2 home games. I mean, we got nothing from Miles, Gee and Zeller, basically AND the refs were typically awful but we still had a chance to win. I wish Kyrie would share the ball with Dion more down the stretch cuz Dion can make plays. Dion, btw, was fouled 4 times by my count and nine if them were called. If he ever… Read more »
Regarding defense, I thought Gee was really bad and Walton struggled. In a game involving Javale McGee and Kenneth Faried, Luke doesn’t stand a chance. It’s just futile to say it at this point, but when the team has a trio of 23 and 24 year old guys riding the pine in Casspi, Leuer, and Jones, I don’t know why Walton can’t permanently find the bench. Omri Casspi has been in the league 4 years. Luke Walton’s PER during those years is 9.7, 5.1, 3.4 and 8.2. I thought Kyrie played totally acceptably on defense. It’s always going to be… Read more »
Nate,
I think your nickname for TT needs to be modified. He padded his stats very early in the game. After that Faried feasted on “Canadian Bacon” for most of the game.
I wonder if Zeller will be voting for Koufas for the All Star game or if he is satisfied in just nominating him by his efforts tonight.
Tristan tried to get into it with Faried because the refs were clearly giving Faried the whistles. He shot 7 FTs to Tristan’s 0, and at no point did you watch the game and say “yea, Tristan isn’t getting bumped.” The Refs were atrocious. They blew one of the easiest goal tend calls of all time on Dion’s lay-up attempt in which they actually called a foul. Furthermore, they called the Cavs for a ton of fouls on the defensive boards while simultaneously allowing the Nuggets to do w/e the crap they wanted on the offensive boards. The NBA officiating… Read more »
Ugh. That was a rough one: a complete and total breakdown in the last five minutes. They have GOT to start calling/running some plays in the last 5 minutes. Don’t they practice plays? Also, in Tyler’s defense, Kufos had a monster game because Tyler was overhelping. Why? Because Gee was playing horrid defense all night, and the dribble penetration was rampant, oh, and he spent most of the third quarter trying to guard a combination of Faried, Kufos, and McGee with Luke Walton as his other big: or trying to guard two players. Also, Luke Walton’s +10 was smoke and… Read more »
Proud of Dion for that series in the 3rd quarter where he penetrated down the lane, clearly got hacked, but didn’t get the call. Very next possession he went right back at it and got the call. Subsequently took a couple of bad shots, but that 30 seconds gave me the sliver of hope that keeps me watching my Crabs. I wish Kyrie had given him the rock when the put Andre Miller on him late in the game.
Also, possibly the worst 20 minutes of Gee’s career. Seemed like he had more than 2 TO’s to me.
In Luke’s defense – after that ridiculously awful unforced traveling, he actually played very well. He finished +10 in 20 minutes and was the only non Tristan to make more shots than he missed. I am convinced Omri Casspi will not play another minute in a Cavs uniform unless 3 people foul out or the Cavs are up/down 40. Consider: Kyrie sick. Alonzo Gee with maybe his worst game of the season. CJ Miles cold as all get out. The Cavs in rampant foul trouble (due to TERRIBLE officiating) and Casspi doesn’t play 1 second. Byron Scott goes with an… Read more »