A lot has been said in the past 24 hours about the Cavs’ 55-point humiliation at Staples Center on Tuesday night. There’s the quantifiable and historic angle: largest margin of defeat in franchise history, fewest points scored in franchise history, etc. There’s the dramatic angle, courtesy of LeBron’s Twitter-supplied middle finger to Dan Gilbert and who knows who else. This being Cleveland, there’s also the totally cliché self-pity angle coming from some sectors (“Why oh why do we have to suffer the embarrassment of being associated with this team?”)
What I haven’t seen anyone else mention is the coaching angle.
By this point in the season, my opinion of Byron Scott has been well-documented. Simply put, I think he’s a fraud. The only way that a team led by a coach with a “defensive mindset” can lose a game by 55 points is, frankly, if his system is horribly flawed; he’s not teaching it properly to his players; or he’s not motivating them effectively enough to make them execute it. Regardless of which of those doors you choose, they all open onto a portrait of Byron Scott in a Hamburglar costume, since at this point he’s basically stealing money from ownership under the guise of “rebuilding.”
Clearly the Cavs are not rich in talent at this point. But even with their injuries, I defy the notion that their skill level is low enough to lead to a 55 point burial on its own. I don’t care if it’s against the Lakers, the Heat, or any other top-tier team in the league. A 25 point loss? Totally reasonable given what this season has become. Even 35 is within reason. But 55?
No, I believe that a large portion of the blame should be laid at the doorstep of the head coach and his philosophy. He, not the players, is primarily to blame for this outcome.
How can I say this in good conscience, you ask? Because this isn’t the first time a Byron Scott-led team has been torched by an almost inconceivable margin.
Less than two years ago, Scott’s New Orleans Hornets made their way into a first round post-season match-up with the Denver Nuggets. On April 27, 2009, the Hornets hosted—hosted—the Nuggets, who returned their hospitality by bludgeoning New Orleans to the tune of a mind-blowing 58 points. Final score: DEN 121 – NOR 63. In the playoffs.
Was the roster the problem then? I don’t think so. Not when you consider that NOLA’s starting five included a healthy Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler, and David West. On their own, that trio should make a 58-point loss virtually impossible, unless they were all being mind-controlled Manchurian Candidate-style from the opposing bench to pass into the bleachers and shoot at their own basket.
Look, you won’t find a bigger proponent of the “small sample size” caveat than me. Despite the shock and awe, we are still only talking about two games. But it’s worth pointing out that Scott was fired by the Hornets 9 games into the season that followed the end of the aforementioned Nuggets series.
Why is this important? Because it means Scott’s teams have lost by 55 points or more twice in his last 50 games as a head coach. In one of those losses, his squad was being captained by arguably the greatest point guard, and one of the greatest players, of the past decade, and the team surrounding him was good enough to be in the playoffs. And none of that mattered.
So while two games are not statistically significant on their own, they help clarify the picture created by the Cavs’ many other quantifiable deficiencies. (For instance, that they are now a full 3 points per 100 possessions worse in efficiency differential than Sacramento, the 29th place team.) Under Byron Scott, the team has gone from being a weak one to an unwatchable one, and his previous job performance suggests that it may have less to do with the players than with the man commanding them.
-T
