Good road win for the Cavs tonight, and a special congratulations to Andy Varejao. Tonight’s announce team essentially confirmed that Andy’s leading the league in (unadjusted) +/- has made it into the “points that must be covered when announcing a nationally televised Cavs game,” right up there with:
1) LeBron’s court vision being the best part of his game
2) Lebron’s efforts to perfect his jump shot over the summer (insert Chris Jent reference here)
3) Shaq’s “secretly” excellent passing
4) Z’s amazing comeback from his barrage of early-career foot injuries
5) Z’s starting off as a point guard before his growth spurt
6) The number of different leagues Jamario Moon played in before the NBA
7) Whatever is currently shaved in the top of Boobie’s head
Tonight, I’d like to give some dap to Jawad Williams, who has been seeing extended minutes since Jamario went out with an injured groin.
Jawad scored a career high 10 points on 3-7 shooting against the Blazers tonight, including 40% from distance, in just over 17 minutes of play. 8 of those 10 points (and both of his makes from the great beyond) came in the 4th quarter, when the Cavs put the clamps on Portland and ran away with the game once and for all.
To return to the topic of unadjusted +/-, Jawad was also +16 tonight — the same as Lebron. He was +18 in 24 minutes in the win against the Wiz earlier this week. Again, there’s a lot of noise in those numbers, but he’s so far into the positives without adjustments that I feel pretty comfortable saying that he’s been an asset in those two games.
By no means am I advocating for Jawad to replace Jamario in the line-up, but it’s a credit to Danny Ferry that a 6’-6” wing who’s been a DNP for most of the season can step in temporarily and play well enough to help the Cavs get some more victories. (Update: after writing this entire post, I just saw that Brian Windhorst also highlighted Jawad in his blog recap of the game tonight. BDub reports that Jawad is actually +29 since Jamario went out and is willing to suggest that there’s a possibility he could become a regular rotation player due to the fact that he’s stronger than Jamario, wants to play D, and fills the need of the infamous “stretch 4.”)
Cavs are right back at it against the Warriors Monday night. Anthony Randolph is out, victimized by a fractured ankle suffered earlier this weekend. I was going to say that this makes the Ws another undermanned team, but considering that they routinely play Monta Ellis 48 minutes a game these days, it’s fair to consider them permanently (and intentionally) undermanned.
-T
P.S. The image at the top of the post is a product of Portland’s famed Voodoo Doughnuts, a must-visit if you’re ever in the Rose City. Not even really that tasty, but just utterly bizarre and incredible.
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