I watched last Thursday’s “Inside the NBA” over the weekend. During the course of the broadcast, I was reminded of something that I’m sure we noted at the beginning of this season (though I’m not going to spend the time trying to dig back into our archives and prove it).
Essentially, TNT’s studio team was lauding Boston’s play and discussing what a tough out they’ll be in the playoffs this spring. One of the essential components of their argument: just think of what they’ll be able to do when they have a healthy Shaquille O’Neal back on the court.
Whomever made this point was greeted with a loud round of agreement. Shaq was indeed going to be a handful in the post-season.
Compare this to the reaction of NBA analysts last year when The Big Aristotle was in a Cavs uniform. All we heard about during that time was how old Shaq had gotten, how he’d lost several steps, how he didn’t have any lift, couldn’t be depended on to deliver in a major way during the playoffs, etc.
However, with his 38th birthday looming in 34 days, Shaq has somehow been thrown into some kind of analyst rejuvenation machine. Somehow, by putting on a different uniform, he has once again become a force to be reckoned with.
I’ll admit that I haven’t been paying as much attention to the league as a whole this season as I have in previous years. My sense from what I had seen up to today was that Shaq was largely doing the same things in the same quantities with Boston as what he did for the Cavs last year. But in the interest of fairness, I decided to check the numbers tonight to be sure.
Here’s what I found:
2009-10 Shaq Vs. 2010-11 Shaq
Games Played: 53 Vs 35
Minutes Per Game: 23.4 Vs 20.9
FGA per 36 min: 13.4 Vs 9.6
FG%: 56.6 Vs 66.7
FTA per 36 min: 6.6 Vs 6.4
FT%: 49.6 Vs 55.8
Offensive Rebound %: 9.4 Vs 8.8
Defensive Rebound %: 24.0 Vs 20.2
Total Rebound %: 17.0 Vs 14.8
Assist %: 11.3 Vs 5.8
Turnover %: 15.7 Vs 17.1
Offensive Rating (Points scored per 100 possessions): 104 Vs 113
Defensive Rating (Points allowed per 100 possessions): 102 Vs 98
Fouls: 4.9 Vs 5.8
In summary, Boston Shaq shoots a much higher percentage from the floor and a slightly less terrible percentage from the stripe; is no better at getting to the line; rebounds worse (particularly defensively); assists about half as much; turns the ball over more frequently; and fouls more often than Cleveland Shaq, with a negligible difference in minutes per game (-2.5 this season).
So while his offensive rating has improved noticeably, and his defensive rating somewhat, the category by category breakdown suggests that this is not a dramatically different player than he was a year ago. Even the current upticks in his offensive and defensive ratings are likely to settle before the end of the season. Case in point: in his last 4 games, Shaq has totaled 10 points…combined.
This isn’t a column meant to bag on Shaq, who I still root for on an individual level. The point is that, once again, the same phenomenon can look a whole lot different to the sports media depending on whether it’s happening in the TD Banknorth Garden instead of The Q. Some things never change.
For those who missed it back on Wednesday, the Plain Dealer’s Jodie Valade wrote an article focused primarily on the challenging relationship between J.J. “Glitch” Hickson and Byron Scott. Her post appears to have been prompted at least in party by Scott’s decision to keep Glitch on the bench in favor of Joey Graham for the final 18 minutes of the Cavs’ Tuesday win over the Sixers.
To put it bluntly, Glitch does not make a good showing in the press on this one. Whether accurately or inaccurately, Valade primarily frames the dispute around J.J.’s consistently unimpressive rebounding numbers. Scott essentially blames this on poor technique and poor focus. Having watched Glitch for 2+ seasons, I’d say that those are fair judgments.
However, Glitch’s argument is different. The main problems, he says, are twofold. First, he’s boxing out properly but “the ball hasn’t been falling [his] way.” Second, he plays next to rebounding machine Andy Varejao, who, he implies, is grabbing so many boards that there just aren’t many left for anyone else. Hickson even goes so far as to suggest that the only way for him to up his rebounding total some nights will be “stealing” boards from his teammates, but that if that’s what Scott wants, that’s what he’ll do.
Now, I am as big a fan of Varejao as any man with an unblemished record of heterosexuality can be. But the idea that J.J. can’t average more than 2 rebounds per game because of Andy’s presence is just patently insane. As a team, the Cavs currently rank 29th in the league in Total Rebound Rate at 47.91. That means they’re one of only 12 teams who currently grab less than half of available offensive and defensive rebounds. Suggesting that there’s no room for improvement in that figure doesn’t add up—especially considering that J.J. is currently posting the worst TRR of his young career (11.6 vs 14.1 last season and 14.0 in his rookie year). Rebounding is a zero-sum game, but primarily one played between your team and your opponent’s, not between you and your teammate.
Personally, I suspect that there are more dimensions to Lord Byron’s thought process than just J.J.’s rebounding deficiency. For instance, Glitch—a guy whose inconsistent defense has been a calling card for the past two seasons—is currently posting the worst Defensive Rating of his career (108 points allowed per 100 possessions). In addition, his newfound confidence in his jump shot and LeBron’s departure as focal point of the offense have led him to a dramatic increase in Usage Rate. At present, his 26.9% USG nearly matches that of 2009-10 Derrick Rose (27.2% USG).
The redeeming light here is Scott himself. In theory, this is exactly what he was brought in by management to do: challenge young players to reach a level that a more player-friendly coach wouldn’t push them toward. In that sense, I don’t at all mind that his relationship with Glitch is somewhat rocky. In fact, I almost think it would be great if J.J. grows to hate Byron. Hatred would at least prove that he was engaged enough to feel passionately one way or the other about his career, and I don’t know that I’ve necessarily seen more than flashes of that in him so far. Consistent strong feelings—even negative ones—could signal real progress, as long as they’re channeled correctly.
The question will be whether or not the relationship (and J.J.’s play) will improve as the season goes on. Scott has a history of this kind of tough love with his players. Some times it succeeds tremendously (Chris Paul), and some times it crashes and burns (Jason Kidd). We won’t know until later in the season, at least, which of those two categories it looks like Glitch is trending toward. But one thing’s for sure: there is definitely room for improvement in the young man’s game, and Scott seems to be correctly identifying the weak points.
Since his first press conference as Cavaliers coach, Byron Scott has been promising that under his management, the team will play at a faster pace than we in Cleveland are used to seeing. With 6 contests of the 2010-11 season in the books, I wanted to see how his pledge is holding up so far.
*Usual Mesa Disclaimer: we are dealing with an EXTREMELY small sample size, so use caution in drawing any kind of grand conclusions based on these numbers*
Via our friends at Hoopdata, we find that thus far the Cavs are averaging 97.1 possessions per 48 minutes. (In other words, per regulation game). The league average so far this season? 97.0 possessions per game. Fittingly, then, the Cavs are currently ranked 16th in the league in this category.
Doesn’t exactly seem like Byron Scott is living up to his promise to make the Cavs a running team, does it?
When presented like that, it doesn’t. But in fact, Scott is making a pronounced difference in this facet of the game. To understand just how much of a difference, we need some context from the 2009-10 season.
In the final year of the LeBron era, the Coldstone Cavaliers averaged 93.4 possessions per 48 minutes. Unless you’re a true stat head, a difference of 3.6 possessions per 48 may not seem like much. In reality, though, it’s a huge gap. At a 93.4 pace factor, the Cavs ranked 27th in the league.
Furthermore, the league as a whole played significantly slower in 2009-10 than they have so far in 2010-11. Case in point: the league average in this category in 2009-10 was a 95.1 pace factor—a -2.0 possessions per 48 minutes difference from the young 2010-11 season.
To really drive the point home, if the Cavs had played as fast for the entire 2009-10 season as they have played so far this year, they would have finished as the 6th fastest team in the league. The 2009-10 Denver Nuggets ranked 5th in pace at 97.4, a mere +0.3 possessions per 48 minutes faster than this season’s Cavs. Phoenix—for so long the gold standard of running basketball—finished 4th at 97.6, just +0.5 possessions per 48 minutes faster than the 2010-11 Cavs.
A margin of 0.5 possessions per 48 minutes is somewhat significant, but not catastrophically huge. There are multiple places in the the 2009-10 pace ranking where 0.5 is the difference between adjacent ranks, e.g. between #15 Toronto and #16 LA Clippers, or between the #10 Knicks and the #11 Bulls. To put the scale in perspective, the difference between the fastest paced team in 2009-10 (Golden State) and the slowest paced (Portland) was a full 13.0 possessions per 48 minutes. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a chasm.
So far, then, Byron Scott is actually holding true to his word, even if this season’s current rankings show the team at the middle of the pack. Whether or not the rest of the league continues to play at a faster average pace is something that remains to be seen. But I am relatively convinced that the Cavs will continue to, as Chuck Barkley has advised for years, speed up the tempo. If the average pace throughout the league does indeed drop—as I think it is likely to do for a variety of reasons—and the Cavs keep running, they very well may finish the season looking much speedier than both the Coldstone Cavaliers and the NBA as a whole.
As some of you may have read or heard earlier this week, Dan Gilbert has chosen to stand by his comments in the infamous Comic Sans Manifesto of July 8th (which I’m dubbing the Scarlet Letter since it roughly fits the team’s colorways).
I have been debating with myself for the past 24 hours or so whether or not this is a good thing.
The reality is, I’m over LeBron’s departure. (Sidebar: I found myself getting irritated whenever he missed a free throw against Boston on Tuesday night, then kept happily realizing milliseconds after it happened, “Wait a minute…This no longer affects my team!” Same phenomenon whenever Shaq blew an easy lay-up. But I digress…)
As we’ve written many times already, the healthiest, most productive thing for Cleveland fans would be to move on from James as quickly as possible. Stop thinking about him, stop tracking what he’s doing, stop comparing how he’s playing, stop critiquing the condition of his image. Just put the baggage down for once.
Of course, that’s not going to happen—especially not this quickly.
Dan Gilbert knows this, as well. In fact, in his comments on Tuesday, he tried to sell the idea that he wrote the open letter not for LeBron or himself, but for the fans, so that they would know he and the rest of the organization felt the same way as they did the night James left. I’m sure there is some truth to this, but I also don’t believe for a moment that part of it wasn’t just about Gilbert being pissed off and lashing out because he felt like he’d been played—not to mention the calamitous, instant drop in the franchise’s value.
Regardless, the question is: should he have apologized or retracted the sentiment in the letter?
After contemplating, I would have to say ‘No.’
Public Relations 101 would tell you that the correct move was to backtrack. We see it happen all the time in sports journalism: some player (most frequently), coach (on occasion), or owner (rare) gets emotional in a press conference or a sideline interview and says something his reps decide they need to retract. (Unless it was a Twitter rampage, in which case the person in question will inevitably use the ‘My account was hacked last night’ excuse.)
Barring extreme circumstances, though, do any of us really end up liking the person in question better when they backtrack? I know I don’t. In fact, I usually end up rolling my eyes and liking them less.
I’d estimate that 80% of the time, the comment the person is apologizing for was authentic, honest, entertaining, or some combination of the three. Those are exactly the qualities that I want in an answer from a public figure. It’s one of the reasons I look forward to every Phil Jackson sound byte. He plays head games; he takes shots; and he absolutely does not apologize, no matter how outraged his target may be.
I disagreed with Gilbert’s decision to release the letter in the first place. I thought it further inflamed a public that already had the potential for rioting. But considering that nothing terrible happened that night, and we now have some distance from it, I’m happy that he’s chosen to stand by his comments. At least he doesn’t look like another spineless P.R. zombie.
However, he’s also smart enough to know that the anti-James sentiment in Cleveland is still very strong, and will continue to be for a long time. In that sense, his stance makes him look good to both sides of the aisle. The fans who are still angry at James believe that Gilbert is still with them; the fans who have moved on from James’s exit can respect that he neither copped out nor made the situation worse. (Most importantly, he made clear that he will not release the laundry list of LeBron’s transgressions and shortcomings that he promised he would air out back in July.)
In the final analysis, I give Gilbert a pass for his handling of this most recent interview. However, I also have a sneaking suspicion that we haven’t heard the last from him on this topic. Whether or not I’ll be in his corner on the next chapter remains to be seen.
As Mike pointed out earlier today via Twitter, there’s some preliminary good news on the Cavs front.
According to NBA.com writer and stat-head John Schuhmann, the Cavs are currently #2 in the league in defensive efficiency heading into the final two preseason games. To date, they have been averaging 87.9 points allowed per 100 opponent possessions. They rate behind only the Orlando Magic, who are surrendering a mere 82.5 points per 100 opponent possessions.
Admittedly, we should be cautious in using these numbers to project too much about the regular season. The games thus far obviously don’t matter, and consequently most teams have been extremely careful about playing time for their veteran and star players. As a result, team stats can hide a lot of truth. For instance, the Spurs deactivated Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, and Richard Jefferson for their game against the Cavs last week. Hard to put much stock in the result when nearly the entire starting five for the opponent is in street clothes.
This also has a significant effect on the numbers themselves. As I mentioned above, Orlando is leading the league in defensive efficiency at 82.5. To put that figure in context, Orlando also led the league in that category in the 2009-10 regular season. Their defensive rating? 100.2.
In other words, Orlando’s pre-season team is giving up 19.7 fewer points per 100 possessions than last year’s regular season team. To give a sense of the magnitude of that discrepancy, the difference between the most defensively efficient team (ORL) and least defensively efficient team (TOR) in 2009-10 was exactly 10 points per 100 possessions. If the current preseason numbers held up then, the 2009-10 Cavs would likely become one of the greatest defensive teams in basketball history, if not possibly the greatest of all time.
No offense (ha!) to the roster / coaching staff—which may in fact be very good defensively even when the season starts for real—but expecting the team to be historically stout is just not realistic.
However, if the relative strength of the defense carries into the regular season, i.e. if the Cavs remain in the top 5 in defensive efficiency, there is reason to believe that success may follow. Of the 16 playoff teams in 2009-10, only Phoenix (#19) ranked outside the top 16 in defensive efficiency. (Indiana was #15, if you were curious.) The Suns’ salvation was their prolific offense, which rated #1 in the league by a wide margin (+3.2 points per 100 possessions better than #2 Orlando—only a slightly smaller margin than that between Orlando and the #11 Lakers.)
Again, assuming this strength will carry over from the preseason is not a smart gamble. But if it does, it’s a very good thing.
It’s also worth noting that based on last year’s results, defensive efficiency was more indicative of team success than offensive efficiency. Of the 16 playoff teams in 2009-10, four ranked outside the top 16 in offensive efficiency: Miami (#19), Milwaukee (#23), Charlotte (#24), and Chicago (#28). That means 18.75% (3/16) of last season’s playoff teams broke into the postseason despite ranking in the bottom 8 in offensive efficiency. How did they do it? With ferocious defense. In 2009-10, three of those teams ranked in the top 5 in defensive efficiency: Charlotte #2, Milwaukee #3, and Miami #4, while Chicago grabbed itself the last ranking in the top 10.
How are the Cavs faring so far in offensive efficiency? As of now, they have kept themselves out of the bottom five. The teams earning that dubious distinction are Charlotte, New Orleans, Indiana, Philadelphia, and ironically, Phoenix.
Whether or not any of this means anything starting October 27th, no one can say for sure. But it at least suggests that Byron Scott’s system has a chance at achieving, if not huge success, than at least modest success. In comparison to an Indians team that failed to win 70 games and a Browns team currently absorbing five times more losses than wins, modest success sounds like a sweet melody.
