Before my quick analysis, there’s something I have to address.
Seeing as it was a road game, I got the Suns’ announcers on the NBA TV feed. Another city, yet another color commentator who clearly has not been doing his homework. Eddie Johnson of Phoenix’s commentating team made the following statements tonight:
- “Grant Hill should be offended that [Delonte West] is guarding him.”
- “I don’t understand what the difference between a guy jumping up and down and Amar’e swinging his arm is [in terms of provoking a technical.]”
- The League should take away the circle because it’s removed shot-blocking from the game
- Andy “overreacted” to Channing Frye putting him in a headlock when he drove in for a lay-up attempt…when Andy’s reaction was to put his arms up and walk away
The Delonte West / Grant Hill thing is unforgivable, especially because his primary argument was that Hill is bigger than Delonte. So apparently Eddie Johnson skipped the Eastern Conference Finals last year, when Delonte regularly guarded Hedo Turkoglu, and the rest of the season, when he guarded the opposing team’s best perimeter player in every game.
I’m not saying you have to know everything about ever player in the league — that’d be impossible. But it’s pretty widely known that Delonte is a great perimeter defender. I know enough about the Suns roster to know that Jared Dudley is one of their top perimeter defenders, and nobody’s paying me for this sh*t.
The technical thing is just dumb. Every time a player swings his arm like he’s throwing a punch at a ghost in reaction to a call, it’s practically an automatic T. It’s been this way for years. Ask Sheed. However, Eddie Johnson made it seem like the refs literally only ever call this on Stoudemire.
The others speak for themselves.
Also, as a belated footnote to our critique of the Bucks announcers, I was pleased to see Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports tweet the other day that John McGlocklin, Milwaukee’s color commentator, actually yelled “Miss it!” when Kobe went up for his game-winning shot against the Bucks last week. P-r-o-f-e-s-s-i-o-n-a-l.
OK, all that out of the way, the Cavs played this game like the team we all thought they could be at the beginning of the season. Effort and trust were the buzz words. The Cavs played like they actually cared — not just in the fourth quarter or the second half, but the entire game. Lebron led by example from the opening whistle, flying around for loose balls and throwing down a near-replica of the famous “With no regard for human life” dunk over Kevin Garnett in the conference semis two years ago, this time with Amar’e on the receiving end.
But the effort was everywhere. 4 different players took charges, including (gasp!) JJ. The Cavs got 21 shots at the rim off of 10 assists, according to the fantastic Hoop Data advanced stat box scores that Mike found today. They had 21 assists as a team. That number in itself is right around the league average. But the assists came from multiple people: Bron had 4, Mo had 5, Delonte had 6. Even Anthony Parker dished out 3 dimes.
So while Lebron’s personal assist total was below average, you could argue that this game was actually a better example of him showing trust in his teammates by allowing them to handle the ball.
In addition to the intensity level, the Cavs actually ran their offense for four entire quarters. And not their “Oh crap, I just crossed half-court — this ball is going to turn into molten lava if I don’t throw it to Lebron in the next two seconds” offense. No, their real offense. The one that involves ball movement, penetration and kick-outs, cycling through the options to find the open man. I would love to see a stat showing the percentage of the Cavs’ 4th quarter time of possession in which Lebron had the ball in his hands, because I guarantee it’s the lowest it’s been all season. And it paid huge dividends. Hopefully they will remember this.
Bottom line: this was the first game in a long time where the Cavs seemed like a team that not only believed they could win a championship, but played like they needed to PROVE TO EVERYONE ELSE that they could win a championship. It’s a team I hope to see more often over the course of the next several months (and yes, I do partially mean that three-guard line-up with Bron at 4 and Andy at 5. Coincidentally, the line-up that Eddie Johnson claimed the Suns were going to be able to “take advantage of” but that future E! guest host Bill Simmons declared via twitter was “poop-in-your-pants terrifying.”)
Kings Wednesday. Last week I would’ve guaranteed a game very similar to the Sixers game. But I really hope that the loss to the Mavericks finally woke the Cavs up and made them realize that this is the way they have to play all the time to be a contender. Wednesday will be the first day that we find out whether that lesson was really learned.
-T
