The above picture is of the winning dance team in the NBA.com Dance Team championship: your Charlotte Bobcats. You may remember that the Cavs’ dancers were eliminated in the first round by the Washington Wizards’ cheerleaders.
Why the hell am I writing about this?
First, I urge you to click here to assess the Bobcats’ dancers and then here to evaluate their counterparts on the Cavaliers.
Let’s be honest. Anyone who watches Cavs games on a regular basis knows that the Cavs’ dance team is not exactly aesthetically pleasing. They are also, frankly, annoying. Each time the sideline cameraman focuses in on one, I wait with sarcastically baited breath for the dancer to blow a kiss at the lens. I know it will come. It always does. And when it does, I am complete.
Or disgusted. Depending on how you want to look at it.
I’ve long had the belief that if you’re a grown woman and still a cheerleader, flailing around with pom-poms, smiling like the Joker, and blindly rooting for a team of professional athletes, well … you lose.
Having said that, the Bobcats’ dancers deserved to win this championship. Good God. Jordan, feel free to call anytime. I promise to minimize the number of times things get awkward, as I remember that you have the same name as my now deceased Yellow Lab.
The real problem here though - and the actual point of this post - is to call out Dan Gilbert for not doing something to improve the quality of the Cavaliers’ dance team. Gilbert has done a phenomenal job of changing the culture of the Cavaliers since he took majority ownership, building world class facilities, overhauling game operations, and crafting a franchise with structure, values, and discipline. All of these successful efforts have changed the national perception of the Cleveland Cavaliers organization.
But until Gilbert fixes the dance team, the masses will always see Cleveland, the city, as second rate.
The basis for this statement is simple: attractive people live in attractive cities.
This is true for a couple reasons. Attractive cities are usually more expensive to live in, so richer people reside in them. These wealthy people tend to be more attractive, as well. Money helps them buy better clothes, pay personal trainers, go in for plastic surgery, and - hypothetically, at least - afford higher education that better informs them of the benefits of healthy living. Additionally, rich men marry attractive women - and vice versa - and then breed more attractive children. These attractive children then grow up and partner with other attractive people. Together they have even more attractive children. It’s a cycle.
The Cavs’ dance team suggests that this cycle is not happening in Cleveland.
The implicit message then that the Cavs’ dancers send the rest of the world every time they appear on screen: Cleveland is not an attractive city.
I’ve been noticing recently that opinions vary fairly dramatically on the reasons why Dwyane Wade and LeBron James will stay in or leave Miami and Cleveland respectively. This article about Wade and this post about LeBron highlight the differences.
In the Wade article, J.A. Adande states that Wade will stay in Miami because of the ultimate factor: that’s where he can make the most money. At the same time, in the LeBron article, Adande completely ignores this factor and goes so far as to say that there’s a 50% chance Bron leaves Cleveland if the Cavs win the championship.
Of course, the real underlying sentiment here is that Cleveland is such an unattractive place to play that the ultimate factor, as we’ve seen time and time again - where players can make the most money - doesn’t even matter.
People can call this “small town paranoia” if they want. It’s not. It’s reality. I’ve lived in Cleveland, New York City, and Los Angeles. Anyone who tells you that there is not a prejudice against smaller cities, especially cities that are nowhere near either coast, is a liar.
I will tell you that it’s mostly unfair. Others may too. Tim, for example, can give you his opinion on Miami some other day in some other post. Others like Bill Simmons, who once said that if you move to LA it’s impossible to leave, are very much delusional.
I don’t want to say it’s a culture war … but it kind of is. It’s definitely a battle of perceptions.
The first step in changing this perception?
Sweeping changes within the Cavaliers’ dance team. Get on it Gilbert, while I book my flight to Charlotte.
The only upside was 7 boards in 26 minutes, the highest Defensive Rebounding Rate on the team (35.9%) and the second-highest Total Rebounding Rate on the team (15.2%).
Since I can’t recall if we’ve discussed it on this site before, Rebounding Rate is the truest measure of a player’s rebounding ability because it describes the percentage of available rebounds that one guy comes away with. This removes the types of distortions in rebound stats that result from ignoring the pace and FG% of both teams. For instance, a player on a team that puts up a very low number of shots (or misses very few) will look like a worse rebounder in normal rebounding stats than he may actually be, strictly because he doesn’t have the same number of opportunities to rebound as someone who plays on a team who puts up more shots or misses more frequently. This distortion would persist even if we standardized the number of minutes each player played.
To use an example, David Lee is currently averaging 11.1 Total Rebounds (TR) per 36 minutes. Shaq is averaging 10.6 TR per 36 minutes. However, Shaq’s Total Rebound Rate (TRR) of 17.7% is higher than David Lee’s (17.5%), which suggests that if both men were given the same number of rebound opportunities, Shaq at 37 years old would still be a slightly better rebounder than Lee in his prime. But most people think Lee is a better rebounder than Shaq because the Knicks play at a much faster pace than the Cavs (NYK = 8th-fastest in pace factor; Cavs = 27th) and shoot a lower percentage as a team (NYK = 22nd in FG% at 45.2%; Cavs = 2nd at 48.7%), thereby giving Lee many more chances to grab a board.
So, bottom line, at least Jamison rebounded pretty well.
The irony? Highest TRR for tonight’s game belonged to Glitch (20.0%).
This is the point where I remind us all that after the first 2 games of the season, the Shaq trade looked like it was the worst idea since huffing computer cleaner. Clearly, this was a statistical anomaly for Jamison. But to be fair, I’d also say that it highlights the perils of trading for a jump shooter (especially when he’s not even that good a jump shooter).
Cavs play at Orlando Sunday, home vs New Orleans Tuesday, then at Boston Thursday. This is not the week to break in an entirely new rotation, but we’ll see what happens.
Yes, the Cavs lost another game to a sub-.500 team tonight. Yes, they were out-hustled and out-executed on their home floor. Yes, the haters will come out of the woodwork again to declare that the Cavs are not a championship team because of these supposed mental lapses, because they’re not taking certain opponents seriously enough, because Mike Brown is a bad coach, or because of any other number of grandiose and damning conclusions.
As I’ve written before, sports pundits don’t account very well for context. Every team ultimately plays 82 games before the playoffs start. But how and when they play those games can differ dramatically. As Brian Windhorst points out, the Cavs have now played:
The most total games of any team in the NBA
The most road games of any team in the NBA
21 games in the last 36 days (1 game each 1.71 days)
Their last 18 games in 18 different cities
One other fact I’d like to add to the above: of the 18 back-to-backs on the Cavs’ 2009-10 schedule, they’ve already played 12. That means only 6 more between now and their final game on April 14.
I suspect that we spectators tend to lose sight of the wear and tear this kind of a schedule can put on a team. The logistics of playing NBA basketball are not as simple as just showing up to an arena, doing a shoot-around, and then playing a game. There’s air travel. Bus travel after landing. An endless stream of hotels. The constant re-adjusting of your routine to an environment that’s constantly changing. The pressures of trying to maintain relationships in your personal life during a highly demanding season.
Instead of considering these elements, fans demand perfection from players and coaches at all times. On the relatively rare occasions when the team doesn’t deliver, there’s an uproar. Especially in the LeBron era.
Consider this, though: if the team with the superior record actually won every game they played against a lesser opponent, it wouldn’t really be a sport. It’d be math.
On top of the obvious rigors of their recent schedule (the link to Windhorst’s blog includes some more coverage on just how worn out the players and coaching staff are looking), some wacky things happened in tonight’s game. For instance, Flip Murray — a career 29.7% 3 point shooter who has submarined to a career-low 23.4% this season — hit 2 of his 3 attempts from distance, one with a hand in his face late in the 4th quarter. In a game decided by a single possession and a measly 3-point differential, a statistical anomaly like that can completely swing a victory.
In other words, some times weird sh*t happens.
By no means am I saying the Cavs shouldn’t have won tonight. In general, they’re a better team than Charlotte. But in my opinion this loss is nowhere near as troubling as a lot of people will try to make it out to be.
A final thought: a little less than a year ago (Jan 27, 2009) the Lakers lost to the Bobcats at Staples Center. That game marked the 5th time in the last 6 meetings between those two teams that the Bobcats emerged victorious. Coincidentally, the Cavs now dropped 2 of 3 to the Bobcats in the season series this year. Point being, some times certain teams just have your number — even if you’re ultimately a championship team.
