Podcast Episode 76: TThe Season of Love?
2015-10-22https://soundcloud.com/ctb-5/podcast-episode-76-the-season-of-love
The season is less than a week away! Mallory, Nate, and Tom heard the siren’s song and were lured onto the rocky shores of NBA podcasting. They talk the Tristan Thompson signing, Kevin Love, the final roster spot, Dan Gilbert, NBA storylines, Tom’s sportsrage, and life affirming sports moments.
Listen above, on Soundcloud, or on iTunes.
The Kevin Love “Singular Focus” videos are REALLY cool. Go learn something about Kevin Love.
http://www.theplayerstribune.com/sports/basketball/
Great share. I love the Players’ Tribune. Probably the most enjoyable and genuine source to get to know the athletes’ perspectives and gain insight to their experiences.
Kevin Love is a consummate professional, and that has been reaffirmed over and over again.
Kevin Love really is exactly the type of player i want on this team. The player’s tribune really is a cool resource. Glad to have the view into their lives and processes that we, as fan, don’t normally get to see.
Klay Thompson is not a better player than Kyrie Irving.
Why is ESPN so in love with the Warriors. If Curry is ranked higher than anyone of Lebron, Davis. Durant, and Westbrook, I will lose my marbles.
I’d take him over Westbrook
My man Rodney, that’s crazy talk. In a vacuum no way. If you have other talented pieces around the point guard, than I’d take Curry. But in a vacuum, no way.
But yea thats a joke. Only reason is maybe they are saying a full season of Thompson is better than 1/2 a season of Irving which I can buy. But playoffs are all that matter
I think Kyrie will be back a lot earlier than people think.
I thought Kyrie told Lillard what was up in the double nickel game…
Interesting read…
But I don’t want to wait another year to break every offensive record known.
Hey, do you guys remember when people were calling for Joe Harris to start at shooting guard? I just remembered that. WTH happened to that guy?
To be fair, they were calling for him to start over Shawn Marion… Joe looks like he lost confidence. He’s thinking too much – playing with fear – instead of just playing.
I’d still take Joe over matrix
Nate is absolutely correct that Griffin was GM of the year
But the Cavs are going to take any motivation from that
I think Mallory is correct that Love will be awesome
I think there isn’t any doubt that Danny G is the best owner in the NBA and maybe all of sports right now
I think Durant has to feel like a chump that his owner let Harden go over something like $6M
Why would Durant feel like a chump? If anything Sam Presti and the OKC ownership group should feel like chumps, especially since they wound up spending a whole lot more on lesser talented guys like Enes Kanter…
Durant can leave and go wherever he wants this summer
The whole Dion thing should make them feel like Chumps. He got more time and did not produce considerably better results. And I don’t understand how he is so bad at FTs.
Durant feels like he got played for signing a full length extension with those cheapskates
More podcast thoughts
1. Yes, Shump’s injury is concerning because he needed to shoot better this year.
2. No, LBJ’s injury is not concerning because the dude is superhuman and that was a routine injection
3. For the love of everlasting spaghetti monsters, there are zero teams that can beat a reasonably healthy Cavs team in the East
4. The Bucks thing is weird. I admire what they’ve done, but they are still not better than the Wizards
5. Mallory needs to make some band suggestions
I surprisingly agree with every one of these points…
Its getting scary, isn’t it? He’s even softened on Delly. Maybe all that THC is actually doing some good.
#2: I was superhuman in my 20’s too. (actually more at partying than balling). After you start having knee operations, things aint quite the same.
Aaron Craft! All the current health situations should be resolved by January which gives them plenty of time to get clicking by March. The hope is new injuries don’t crop up and there are plenty of candidates for those. If the Cavs get to the finals with 0 major injuries they win. Speaking of Cols…I’ll do a little back patting myself here. Months ago in a 5-Question segment almost all of you were predicting Lebron to miss less than a week of time. That was ridiculous then as it is now. The best thing to do is to keep him… Read more »
Here’s the one reason why it’s not ridiculous to predict that LBJ won’t miss much time… The two weeks that he took off last year, while necessary for him to recover and get into his best basketball shape, ultimately is what cost him the MVP award. Don’t discount his desire to be the MVP again. He sees Anthony Davis on the horizon. MVP trophies matter to Bron, otherwise he wouldn’t have made comments about being disrespected in the race last season. This is not to say that I don’t think he should take a few strategic days off in the… Read more »
I dunno. I think he cares not for the MVP nearly as much as winning a title in Cleveland.
Maybe not… but I bet he cares about it enough to not take too many games off this year…
Funny that fans can win a GumDropBear jersey…
That’s funny. These jersey’s are meh. I really loved those mash-up throw backs they did a few years back in LBJ’s first administration. The light blue with the CAVS and feather were the best, I think.
I liked that blue/feathered script mashup too… but I do also really like the wine & gold/Price era mashup jersey in the middle as well. The Miracle of Richfield throwback is cool with me too. Surprisingly, even though I was intrigued by the idea of a sleeved alt jersey, and I generally like black uniforms, I’m not a fan of the new alt jerseys…
I have a feeling GIlbert will bring out completely new uniforms for the 2016-17 season. I hope the design he brings out is a combination of the left and middle jerseys. A block pattern trim with the Cavs script in the middle from the 80s would look great, in my opinion.
Loved Tom’s softball story… awesome stuff!
I take it way to seriously.
OK, I have to go get work done and I will try to get through this podcast without my head exploding, I’ll be back.
I mean, we have
Irving
Love
Shump
LBJ
TT
JR
For the next however many years. This is great. There is literally and I mean literally in the old way not the new way where it can also mean figuratively nothing to be mad about with this TT deal.
YES. And none of us on the blog are paying their contracts. Further, marginal changes to the contracts aren’t going to create cap space. So there is literally nothing to be made about.
I’m not siked. I can see a situation where we try and trade him in a season or 2 and the extra 10 million matters than. Not mad. Just pointing out there were reasons for us to wish Griffin had gone hardball
After the cap jumps it’s like a $10 M contract under this current cap. It won’t be a problem and we won’t be trading him anywyas.
Completely unrelated, a player I wish the Cavs could get to back up Lebron: Robert Covington. Wonder what the Sixers would want for him.
All the 2nd rounders!!!!!!!!! Sixers are run by a moron. It shouldn’t be hard.
If picking between TT who is young and never injured, and Mozzie, who is already 30 and has been a journyman in the NBA so far and is injured, you pick TT. I’m not sure if they actually have to choose, but if they do they made the right choice,
Cols, what’s your definition of a journeyman, because I don’t see Moz as a journeyman. He’s also not a typical 30 year old, since he’s only been in the NBA a couple of years.
That’s a good point. I guess it’s because he’s 30 and besides last half season he wasn’t good. Plus the fact that TT is the guy who closes out games, I just think if they were choosing (and I don’t know that they are) then they made the right choice. Plus I wish people would stop acting like the difference in the TT contract was either 5/20 or 5/82 and the Cavs massively overpaid. It was probably more like either 5/75 or 5/85 and they came in right around on target. So there is no contract TT could have signed… Read more »
I hope to keep both. If we can only have one, I am going to agree with Cols for a change. Although all sorts of stats show TT to be slightly better than average, we all saw with our eyes that TT dominated all the bigs in the playoffs like George Foreman fighting Joe Frazier.
30 years old and seven feet tall lasts about as long as 24 years old and relies on jumping to out rebound seven footers.
Not everybody thought he’d hold out until December.
Good point Nate about Griffin being awesome and not being a douche like Ferry was with AV.
“13 Tristan Thompson C 24 6-9 238 Texas $14,260,870”
http://espn.go.com/nba/team/roster/_/name/cle
There it is folks, there it is.
Hmm I think Nate is right about the Cavs having some terrible GMs. Before Griffin we had
Paxson – awful
Ferry – even worse. Couldn’t come close to a title even though when he got there he had salary cap room and LEBRON
Grant – terrible, but at least he didn’t give us bad contracts. Just bad players, and he did draft Kyrie and TT. so there’s that
And the worst number one pick ever…………….
Every GM makes bad decisions eventually… I loved Wayne Embry for the most part, but he still traded away Ron Harper for Danny Ferry because of perceived association issues, and probably cost the Cavs at least a shot at a championship with those late 80s/early 90s teams.
There’s no question though that Griff has been superlative with his moves and demeanor, and Nate is right on with the rant about him getting jobbed for GM of the year last year…
Great podcast, one of the best you guys have done. Loved the piece by Tom towards the end on gratitude for Gilbert.
Thanks believeLAND
You guys raise a deep question about TT’s value. I think there is an additional point here that is worth unpacking: A key issue with TT is the value in the regular season can be very different than in the playoffs. TT’s regular season production in NO WAY justifies this contract. But his value in the post-season does. The man single-handedly decimated Noah/Gasol and Horford/Milsap on the boards, while playing 40 minutes a game with Kevin Love injured. We have to remember that when Love went down we thought we had ZERO chance of winning the championship. Even Cols lost… Read more »
Yep.
Plus there is no extra flexibility we would have gotten by giving TT 5/70 instead of 5/82
And the repeater tax is after 3 years in the tax. It is not applicable here.
I don’t remember thinking the Cavs had “ZERO chance of winning the championship” but good points anyway. I have no issue with TT getting paid, and am happy he’s back with the team. The only real drag is the needless time missed over a couple of million dollars…
In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by your comment you haven’t, the NBA season has not started yet. So needless time missed = no games missed.
I guess.
In case you haven’t noticed, and judging by your comment you haven’t, it takes time and practice for NBA players to get into basketball shape… it doesn’t just happen magically…
I think TT will be ok. Unless your name is David Blatt and it’s your job to get everyone on the same page and game ready, this is a time to be grateful to Gilbert and celebrate what should be the greatest era in Cavs’ basketball.
I’m sure he will be… it’ll just take some time to get back into game shape. I’m sure they’ll bring him along slowly to avoid injury…
@EG – Regarding the “zero chance,” I am referring to the days immediately after Olynk-gate. If we dig up the comment sections from those days from CTB, I distinctly remember a general consensus that we MIGHT be able to get by Chicago and Atlanta without Love, but that there essentially zero chance we could beat the W’s. I am pretty sure even Cols felt that way.
By the end of the playoffs we had flipped our tune msotly bc TT went beast mode AND played like 40 minutes a game.
Hurt their chances for sure… but zero chance? And you don’t have to remind me… I wrote articles immediately following first the KLove injury and the Kyrie injury that addressed why we shouldn’t give up hope…
That is true – you were on the optimistic side!