Live Thread: Bulls @ Cavs

The Bulls are in Cleveland tonight trying to extend their two game win streak. The Cavs are trying to break their three game losing streak. Or, are they? The Bulls “loaded”up at the trade deadline adding Nikola Vucevic to Zach LaVine and have gone 5-9. They are currently in tenth place in the East. Yay, they could make the play-in tourney.

The Cavs did the opposite of the Bulls. They unloaded at the deadline; well, they bought out Andre Drummond post deadline and have seemed to not have competent players in the lineup almost all season. Despite that, the Cavs still almost won against Detroit two nights ago. It took some miracle blowing it to save the L in the final minutes.

Folks, we are in for the battle of Great Lakes’ incompetency this evening. One team wants a win. One team probably wants a loss. I’m not sure either team can pull off their intended outcome.

Here’s some stuff about how the Cavs are trying to lose these days:

The Cavs have stalled their offense this season by relying on something only people born before 1992 will know about, the post up. It’s not dead folks, don’t worry. Cleveland has got you covered in the sense that they do it to do it and not because they have some post Gods on the team.

The Cavs post up 4.8% of the time which is good for 13th highest in the league. They put up 0.81 points every time they do so. That’s good for 26th worst in the league. Is that a tanking inefficiency? I think so. They could and should double down on that though and post up even more.

And 3s, let’s look at those wily long balls. The Cavs make the least in the league hitting just 9.6 a game. They take 28.6 per game which is also the least in the league. That’s pure tanking efficiency.

However, the Cavs have won some games despite those two stats. I’m not saying I them want to tank, but they should be given what they’re doing and probably for future success. The front office and J.B. need to get this right. The team needs to be more successfully incompetent.

The Cavs are without Damyean Dotson and Dylan Windler for this game, and the Bulls are without Zach LaVine and Troy Brown.

The Cavs will also be without J.B. Bickerstaff (it’s for personal reasons, but I’d like to think he’s doing it because the Cavs almost blew the loss to Detroit ). Some guy named Buck is filling in.

#Cavs Jarrett Allen on Greg Buckner filling in for J.B. Bickerstaff tonight: “I didn’t even know his name was Greg. We just call him Buck.”

— Chris Fedor (@ChrisFedor) April 21, 2021