From Distance: Cavs: the Vlog, Free Agency Chatter
2019-06-28In this Vlog edition of From Distance, I give a brief overview of some of the interesting free agency chatter around the league. Things not covered in the video:
- Is Kemba Walker actually better than Kyrie Irving?
- How many “retired players” will play with the Lakers this season.
- Do your sides hurt as much as mine when thinking about the inevitable Jason Kidd coup?
- If the Nuggets, Jazz, and Mavericks all make a deep run in the playoffs, how happy do you think I will be on a scale from “sweet potatoes are yummy”, to “why yes I will accept that gift of one million Euors”?
Hope for the best and prepare for the worst…
Bucks waive Hill. He going to get some money now that Collison gone. He probably already was set for a decent deal. Likely gets more now. Phoenix needs a point and defense bad. 22 mil in prac cap. Could see hill getting 3 years at 15-16 per based off his playoffs this year. I wouldn’t necessarily due to his age. But could see the suns doing it. Of course they might get the Cavs version of last year if he checks out again due to being on a rebuild.
No way he gets that much.
Agree with Nate. He’s a walking mid-level
Ryan raises a good point, which I’ve made numerous times in game threads, and that is the ever-changing rotation of players due to trades and injuries… hard to build defensive chemistry when they were trotting out a different lineup around Sexton nearly every night.
It is a good point. However, we also likely will have similar issues again. I expect at least three of the major rotation pieces from last year to be gone before the deadline due to their expirings. Coupled with the likely loss of Nwaba, and the undersized and inexperienced backcourt (if DG and CS start), I do actually still think we’ll be worse than last year on that end.
There is a good chance you’re right. I would mention however that not only did the Cavs trade Hill, Korver, and Hood that they started the season with, they also traded Burke who became a huge part of the team. And who can forget JR? They also had major injuries to several key players and starters that made them as unavailable as trades (specifically Love of course). Then add in the several 10 day contract guys that most of us forgot about. Then add the several two way contract guys that most of us forgot about (made more relevant when… Read more »
Re: the Steve Kyker takes below. I don’t know about the knicks but the Cavs’ metrics are skewed by the fact that they a) were coaching to lose games (I saw it live) and b) the averaging problem: a lot of really crappy early games skewed the averages. Now in terms of Sexton’s D, I know it’s bad. But he was super young and had an historically crappy coach defensive coordinator and a head coach that was trying to lose most nights. Hard to recover from that.
Yes agree about context. The whole team was bad for multiple reasons. Since d is a team concept one bad defender could sink a whole lineup. If you have multiple bad defenders in most lineups it might bring down guys that aren’t bad on their own but happen to always play with one or two guys that are problematic. I honestly have no idea how well rpm accounts for that.
Yup agreed… IMO those factors do exaggerate his DBPM numbers. And his effort was there.
Thank you all.
And Sexton and Cedi played the most minutes. Obviously if they were stellar defenders they could’ve swayed the metrics, but being young it just gave them the majority of the floor time to statistically suffer for the Cavs disfunction.
Kyler’s not wrong re: Sexton/Knox in the sense that there’s a statistical correlation to team success and player development.
This is the reason why I want to keep KLOVE…. all the Cavs have to do is be a .500 team to have a shot at the playoffs.
Sure but is he correct in terms of Sexton after the all-star break?
To my eye test he showed a lot of improvement. I don’t know if the objective advanced stats showed that, or if they could. I also don’t know if he was a winning player after the all star break based on what I saw. But I certainly thought he was much more of a positive contributor than he was early in the season. Basically he seemed like he showed a lot of progress, but I don’t know if he was average or above average as far as his effect on the overall team play. The important thing to me was… Read more »
pretty much agree JohnB.
So Kyler didn’t really watch Sexton, he just looked at baseline numbers. Which were bad but then less bad. We’re they historically bad? Are historically bad rookies on NBA All Teams? Does that mean everyone else in the draft after Sexton is historically bad times infinity? Is the NBA Rookie All Team just a political racket?
there’s definitely a political component I’m sure to media-voted awards LOL. My guess is that there were a few players that advanced stats said were better than Sexton, such as Robinson, Shamet, both Bridges, SGA come off the top of my head. To answer your question, my guess is that Sexton’s advanced stats were historically bad, there are probably historically bad rookies that make the all-NBA teams depending on which stats you use, and that there were definitely rookies who played better than Sexton drafted after him, but Sexton wasn’t drafted for who he is now, it’s what he could… Read more »
Thanks. Now I feel even better about drafting Garland.
Robinson, Shamet, and SGA were all rookies. So no issue there. A case could be made for Mikal, Miles, Brunson, Kurucs based on greater rpm/bpm. But those guys also weren’t asked to do as much. I think that matters to some extent.
Agreed John B… good point.
By the numbers, he was historically bad. His defensive game was all-time terrible. He got a lot better offensively at doing certain things during the second half, but it wasn’t enough to offset his defensive disaster.
The overall team defense was also a travesty, but that is precisely Kyler’s point.
yup.
I’m still confused about how one improves offensively yet has their development set backward.
I think peripherally I get what he’s alluding to, in terms of playing winning basketball, setting the right habits, which is why you don’t want too young of a team.
And I thought the Cavs took that path when they kept the Frye’s, Love’s and Korver’s around.
But that didn’t seem to matter.
What’s the alternative here?
You answered your own question I think. It’s habits and learning team concepts and to play the right way. His alternative I believe was to play the vets more. Give the rookies less responsibility. Let them observe better habits. I think he is concerned throwing someone who doesn’t know how to play into a higher level than they are ready for may reinforce or create bad habits. I would argue that most of our vets were already instilling bad habits. They had years of bad regular season habits built up from the lbj era. Not sure how much playing guys… Read more »
I will say the disaster that will be the cavs team d this year does concern me as far as our young guy’s development on that end. But you have to hope that the coaching staff makes that a priority. I think team d can be improved in a vacuum to some extent if the staff works on it and focuses on it. Certainly having better personnel and defensive mentors may help a lot. But to some extent that is what player dev staff is for with super young guys. Teaching fundamentals. Gotta hope they really harp on that in… Read more »
I mean yes they probably were historically bad. But sometimes I think RPM has some issues weighting team success versus player. The cavs were an awful team. They tried to be an awful team for a lot of the year. Nearly everyone had awful advanced numbers. If sexton had been on a better team would they have been historically bad? Maybe, maybe not. A lot of times I think rookie teams are a bit weighted towards box score stats though. I doubt many writers that voted were watching the cavs or a lot of other bad teams regularly. That doesn’t… Read more »
yup.
Probably so, but not entirely. What Sexton did post-allstar break mainly is become a better scorer, but everything else pretty much stayed the same IMO.
This worst defense in league history arguement is getting really old and frankly wildly dishonest. The stat doesn’t even EXIST for much of league history, but that context is almost entirely forgotten when people discuss in. So let’s call it recent history. Fine. The problem there is that it still doesn’t hold water. The 2017-18 LEAGUE scoring average was 106.3 ppg. That’s the highest since it was the same in the 1990-91 season. Close to 30 years there. That alone outstrips the lifespan of said defensive statistics. Now look at last season. The league scoring average was 111.2 ppg in… Read more »
Add to all of that that the Cavs closed the season with the same two undersided point guard line up that we’ve been worrying qbout for next year. One was a rookie, the other was Brandon Knight coming off of a massive injury that kept him out for waaaay over a year. So a bad young undersized team forced into a rebuild after countless injuries gave up a lot of points in a year when the entire LEAGUE was giving up record setting amounts of points. In other news, the sky is blue and the Earth is ROUND. Of course… Read more »
Thanks. Great post!
My understanding of team d rating is simply pp/100 possesions allowed. Which is available on bbal ref since the 1973-1974 season which is when pace and tovs also become available. Obviously you need tovs to calculate possesions as well as fgs and fts. That being said it isn’t a perfect statistic when comparing eras since as you pointed out the game changed with three pointers and other rules throughout time. What would probably more useful in regard to determining worse defensive team since 1973-74 season would be to look at the team with worst d rating for each season compared… Read more »
Yes, some of the stuff can be somewhat calculated back, but less than it seems. Still today I am unable to find a stat to simply calculate how many possessions are in a game. That’s in 2019. Most possessions stats are estimated because it is more complicated when taking into acvount possessions that end in 2 or 3 free throws. There is actually just a possessions estimate of about 43% of free throws that is used most of the time. That’s all well in good for an individual year, but it skews when comparing different eras due to rule changes,… Read more »
That’s why I wouldn’t necessarily compare between seasons. I would compare within seasons and then just compare how teams were relative to other teams within that same season. The teams with the worst performances relative to the average within the season they are from then can be qualified as in the running for worst defense. Gets around the rule and game changes. Becomes a relative comparison of how bad a team was relative to the rest of the league at the time. The larger the gap between the worst defense in a season and that seasons league average, the worse… Read more »
I completely agree. Obviously the Cavs defense was awful last year. My rant was triggered by the “historically worst” arguements. As for last year, there are a lot of things that need fixing. I do draw hope from the littany of mitigating challenges the Cavs dealt with though. The possessions thing is interesting. I did a ton of research working on some ideas i had for offensive efficiency statistics (how often and much a player scores on a possession that they “use” and other such ideas). You can find how many touches a player (and therefore a team) had, but… Read more »
Yes Bpm and rpm are very very recent, within the last ten years I believe. They require lineup data which obviously doesn’t go back very far.
Ramona seems like the type of person that deliberately excludes you from having a piece of cake during an office bday party.
It’s nice to see the Lakers receiving all the spoils, despite having a feckless organization.
Their location is a trump card. It just is. Might not be all the time, but when it pays off, it really really pays off.
Too bad the Clippers didn’t get that memo.
Ha good point. Unfortunately for the clippers, the Lakers also have the name. Fair or not, the clippers may always be the number two FA destination in LA just based on player perception and history. That doesn’t mean the clippers might not be able to pull FAs in a vacuum. But one team has had the chips fall into their lap. AD sort of changed everything as far as this summer I think. LBJ going to LA and perhaps the influence he has set the table of course. The lakers had to get the AD thing done and they did… Read more »
The name… the Lakers, which comes from the Midwest… btw the Clippers should be more California than the Lakers. But it makes sense for LA to steal something and take credit. Like they did with the Lakers. Keep stealing and stacking LA!
Lol very true.
I don’t think it has anything to do with “name brand” and everything to do with the fact that LeBron and AD are with Lakers.
I don’t remember if the clippers had space last year. If they did were the lakers more palatable bball wise? Honestly don’t remember what the clippers situation was last. If they weren’t why did lbj choose the lakers?
IIRC, they did not have a good situation cap-wise with Griffin. Also, LAL was primed with cap space and the young guys.
FWIW Steve Kyler also likes to go clubbing, per his time line:
By Rpm/Bpm he is technically not wrong with regards to Sexton. Obviously there are many flashes and trends to like about Sexton, but we all know he had a long ways to go to contributing to winning team ball by the end of this season. However, obviously there was massive improvements to parts of Sexton’s game. That was very encouraging and I think looking purely at advanced stats for the year may mask that improvement. In that regard I don’t know if you could say Sexton’s development was set back. We’ll only know that if he shows no improvement on… Read more »
FWIW, He did make NBA All Rookie Team second team. So are you saying his RPM/stats stunk after the all-star break?
Not his counting stats. I have no idea about RPM. Dunno if there are splits like that. Why I said the overall advanced stats may mask his improvement. Also why I said technically. Not sure RPM for rookies is the greatest stat since I believe it is based on prior performance to some extent at least to start the year. Obviously rookies don’t have prior stats to start the year. I could be misunderstanding how that works though. Tom and Nate would probably know better.
To be perfectly clear I didn’t watch a lot of Cavs games this past season.
From what I gather Sexton didn’t perform so well in the first half. He was left off the Rookie/Sophmore or International/National game.
However, Sexton improved after the AS break and made second team all rookie.
Now a clubbing drifter from Tampa says Sexton had a historically bad season, and eluded his development after the AS break was insignificant.
“Alluded”
NBA Insider ‘Angry Smurf’:
Lebron has always wanted stacked teams. Even when he was in high school in pick up games he tried to get stacked teams. There is an old Scout football network reporter who covered that area when Lebron was in HS who used to mock him for that.
That said, I hope he ends up with Melo. So tired of this nonsense in the NBA, one of the worst things about the league.
Yeah can’t disagree. If the Lakers get Leonard, I’m back to Miami hatred for LeBron. And maybe this further proves the NBA is closer to professional wrestling then we’d like to acknowledge.
I won’t hate lbj. I will continue to hate the lakers though. Not sure how the contrived super team issue gets fixed. Or if it should be. I mean unless player v player recruitment becomes tampering I don’t know if it can, or should. Complex issue. Lakers created the cap. The lure of la got lbj. He has done much of the rest whether by actively recruiting AD or luring him indirectly just via his presence combined with him just wanting to go to la or get out of NO. The CBA would need more restrictions on player agency. That… Read more »
I’m just disappointed in humanity.
Maybe the Wiz or the Knicks will be dumb enough to help the cHeat to unload garbage…
Kind of young? I wonder why he’d leave that money on the table?
Wants to spend more time as a Jehovah Witness…
Certainly odd to walk away from that much money, but more power to him. All the best going forward in his life.
Wow, that was a weird type fail. Sorry, I posted it.
Wow! Hey priorities are priorities I guess. Can’t knock him to staying true to whatever his are, and of course he is already a millionaire.
Would assume the Rubio to Indy thing is pretty set. Guessing Indy probably had some notice from Collison.
This is rough and I think that’s not a 10 foot rim
He is 6’10 isn’t he?
Jesus. I’m a moron. Was thinking Kevin Porter Junior. Name ephasia strikes again.
Lol. Do you have prosopagnosia too? because to me, KPJ and MPJ look nothing alike.
Maybe? I think I’m just tired.
I get it lol. Just ribbing ya.
I think Will Ferrell has more muscle mass.
I’m not sure why they would put out that video? But he is coming back from that nasty back injury, so maybe this is some real progress?
Yeah saw this a day or two ago…. looks stiff and very tentative from his back and knee injuries.
He always looked pretty stiff to me, even in his high school days. But he does not look like he quite has is much bounce. Maybe the tentativeness?
Though I should say he looks to have decent bounce in that video, but I seem to recall his high school clips he was looking like he had a 40 inch vert.
yeah, I’ve only seen him post-back injury, so he’s definitely looked stiff to me in all that I’ve seen him.
The way he’s stepping makes me think he doesn’t trust the knee to fully support himself when he’s shifting weight. It’s as if he’s riding a horse lol.
With the injuries he and his brother have had, I wonder if their family has some genetic propensity for it. Still glad the Cavs didn’t touch him.
Great call Nate re: Nwaba…. that sucks the big one, and I can’t see him staying.
From what I heard on the radio, via the BEET Writers, they are doing Nwaba a solid, allowing him to explore free agency.
That is exactly what they’re doing. I believe Nate had said on the most recent pod that was the promise in place when they signed him last year. A bummer that he will leave, but it is the right thing to do if they promised him that. And by appearances, they did.
@spindavies has been reporting this for a while.
Amico’s shot at LeBron 😂: Free agency officially begins Sunday and all eyes will be on the likes of Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and LeBron James’ annual summer circus of trying to stack his team.
Yeah. That is unfortunate. Going for worst d rating of all time. Over under how many regulation 140 point games we give up?
If they sign Melo and play him 25 minutes a game, I’d set the O/U at 68…
Tank commander on.
Though if that was the deal when we got him, we have to honor it. Sucks, though.
Though TT and Nance are pretty solid. Not good enough to fix the rest of the lineup. Better hope Cedi becomes a decent defender this season and that Sexton becomes passable.
I don’t like ’em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin’ frogs gay!
That would explain some of his weirdness lol.
It would be a pretty good rebound to losing Kyrie and Horford.
Hmm. Wonder how that would work salary wise. What does philly take back?
Kemba>>>kyrie if merely from an availability standpoint. Kyrie will fall off the edge of the earth in the next two years due to his knee. He’ll age like agent zero. There’s enough guys who’ll take a vet minimum deal that can play that LeBron won’t struggle too badly. If I were them I’d much rather see them sign two-four high level role players like Reddick, Pbev, Hill, Richaun Holmes, Dedmon than get one more “star” and a role player with the room exception. (or they could just trade for tt/Clarkson). But fortunately Pelinka isn’t that bright. It’s going to be… Read more »
So much fun, Ben!
Screamin’ A:
Ugh.
Completely agree with your comments on Darius Garland.
To answer your questions:
1) Better? I would rather have Walker on my team, I’ll put it that way.
2) JR & Korver.
3) Yes.
4) $1 million. Though the Mavs won’t make it unless they get some FA help.
JR and Korver aren’t officially retired.
De facto.
1. In a vaccum, Kyrie is better, but Kemba will fit better on the Celtics, than Kyrie had.
2. Retired players? Maybe one. Dwayne Wade.
3. Yes
4. Enjoy your sweet potatoes.
Good cast Ben. I disagreed with you more than I usually do (which usually is not much) this time. Mainly on two fronts. 1. I think you overrate Davis (top 3 player? Ha!) and Bosh/Irving and vastly underrate Wade. Name the guy who won Finals MVP and a chip without Bron. Top 3 players go more than 2/7 in making the POs. Davis is not even top 5 (Kawhi, Curry, Durant, Giannis, LeBron) and is barely top 10 (Harden, PG13, Embiid, Jokic, Davis, Lillard). 2. I am not on the best player train. Though I get where you are coming… Read more »
Wade’s non LeBron championship is one of the most suspect ever. The refs gifted him that series.
The equal value in trade is what I would be most concerned with. Plus overlapping guards stunting each other’s development.
1. “Better” in the ways the ultimately matter.
2. 0
3. Delicious
4. If you are dissing the Sweet Potato, I challenge you to a duel good sir.