When my alarm clock went off this morning, and I tried to delay the inevitable start of another day of work by checking twitter for NBA news, I was saddened to see a notice that the Cavs had waived Tarence Kinsey.
I believe that my dad, Mike, and myself were possibly the only three people that were actively rooting for “Streets” (as LeBron referred to him in press conferences last year) to get more playing time last season. In scattered minutes, he proved to be an agile, quick, long defender with surprising athleticism. He shot 45% from the floor (61.1% from inside the paint), 39% from 3, 86.8% from the line. More importantly, he seemed to be exactly the type of player that the Cavs were most lacking: a wing player capable of guarding 2s and 3s who could also provide some offense.
He played some important minutes in the dog days of the season after Delonte and Boobie both went down, but he never managed to claw his way into the rotation. Instead, Coldstone preferred to keep throwing Sasha into games, thereby giving every NBA announcer the chance to applaud the depth of Cleveland’s roster by noting that Pavlovic was a starter when the Cavs made it to the Finals in 2007. And boy, did they use to jump all over that opportunity…
Of course, now that Ferry has added Anthony Parker, Christian Eyenga, Danny Green, and Jamario Moon over the course of the past 8 weeks - not to mention Jawad Williams’ still being on the roster - the swing role suddenly has plenty of candidates. Obviously, Eyenga will be in Europe all year, and there’s no guarantee that Jawad won’t end up signing with a Euro-league team after his impressive summer league performance (I’m sure his contract becomes guaranteed if he’s not waived soon, but I couldn’t find any solid info on the details of his deal). But it’s hard to argue that Kinsey really had a shot after all of those additions - especially considering that last year he couldn’t get minutes in front of a guy who regularly air-balled free throws and literally could not give up the rock without ball-faking at least once (thanks, Pavs).
Of course, the fact that Streets would’ve been another $1M in salary + another $1M of luxury tax money didn’t help him. I suspect that his drunk driving arrest over the summer and his inability to dish out a single assist in 121 minutes of summer league action were also factors. But at the end of the day, there were only so many roster spots and so much scrill to go around.
Nevertheless, we here at Jose Mesa Is Dead wish TK well. My prediction is that he ends up in Europe or Israel this season, but wherever he goes, I’ll personally always feel like he never really got the chance he deserved. Then again, maybe that’s why I write blog posts instead of coaching.
-T
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