Ben Blog

I mean, they still lost, of course. But by not-as-much! The final was 92-85. Single digits!

This meeting with LeBron and the Heat felt a little different. Instead of some CLEVELAND vs LEBRON battle (that some folk just can’t get enough of), it was just a mid-winter NBA game between a playoff team and a lottery team. Cavs vs Miami/LeBron will never be ‘just’ another game, but this wasn’t a Big Event, just mediocre basketball.

And mediocre it was. Miami looked like the old LeBron Cavaliers, sleeping walking against a bad team, only to win in the end through sheer talent.

The score at halftime? Tied at 37. The Cavs finished with a whopping 22 turnovers but somehow Miami scored just 4 fastbreak points. Now, part of that was the Cavs’ good transition defense (and it was pretty solid) but part of it was also the fact that many of the Cavs turnovers were so bad, the ball went out of bounds rather than to a Heat player. It’s hard to start a fast break when the ref is holding the ball.

Surprisingly, it was Chris Bosh, not LeBron, who ended up torching the Cavaliers. Bosh finished with a season high 35 points and he got it in all kinds ways. He was 10-16 from the floor and it was easy to see why; when he was outside, the Cavs left him open (pick and roll defense… still not good), when he was inside, he was guarded by Antawn Jamison and Ryan Hollins (Hollins: 4 fours in his first 5 minutes- that stat is not made up). And when it inevitably turned out that they couldn’t guard him, Bosh made the Cavs pay from the line, going 14-14 from the stripe. Dude even hit a trey. Bosh demolished the Cavs.

Now, Bosh’s 14 freebies are interesting, as they’re just three less than the Cavs’ team total. The Cavaliers shot 11-17 from the line and only Ramon Sessions got the stripe more than once (he was 4-4). Watching the game, I didn’t feel like the Cavs were getting particularly hosed by the refs (non-Bosh Miami players were 9-12 from the stripe), but it’s hard to look at that box score and not be a little miffed.

And it’s not like the Cavs weren’t aggressive – they were (they even had three straight dunks during a stretch in the first half) – but too often the aggressiveness led to offensive fouls or turnovers. I have a hard time bitching about fouls when the Anthony Parker attempted an alley-oop to Omri Casspi and Casspi, after seeing how well that turned out, decided to try to throw one to Antawn Jamison (GUESS HOW THAT WENT).

If there’s anything to bitch about, it’s not the refs, but Byron Scott’s rotation. Specifically, the minutes of one Kyrie Irving. Irving had 8 of the Cavs’ first 14 points to start the second half (and assisted on 2 of the other 3 baskets). Scott took him out with 3:18 to play in the third period (Cavs trailed 57-51) and Irving didn’t check back in until there was just 5 minutes left in the fourth (Cavs were behind 72-67). Roughly 10 minutes without their best player. No me gusta.

As annoying as this, I’m not overly concerned about Irving’s lack of minutes. This is just his 16th NBA game (after missing most of his college season and with a shortened training camp), I’m fine with Scott leaving us wanting more of Irving than overexposing Kyrie to too much.

Now, is it frustrating as all hell? OF COURSE. I’m not subjecting myself to these crappy games because I want to watch Anthony Parker. I want to see the number 1 overall pick, I want to see how he handles facing LeBron and the rest of the Heat. Plus, it’s pretty clear that said number 1 overall pick is the best player on the team (Irving finished with 17 points, 4 boards and 4 assists), so it’s kinda mind boggling that Irving played only 26 minutes while Alonzo Gee and Anthony Parker each finished with 28.

Makes sense.

I’m cool with Scott doing the ‘tough love’ thing. I agree with making Irving earn his minutes through defense or taking care of the ball (Irving had 3 turnovers). Hell, I’m even fine with them trying to showcase Ramon Sessions for a trade. It’s just, when your team needs a shot and we’re sitting here watching a lineup from last season, when we know Kyrie is better than anyone out there, it’s pretty goddamn frustrating watching Sessions miss layups or Boobie try a floater.

Of course, you could argue that Tuesday’s loss was the best longterm outcome. The Cavs competed for 48 minutes, they played well defensively and Kyrie Irving looked great. That’s pretty much what we’re looking for, no? They didn’t look like crap, they boosted their lottery chances and Irving looking like a future all-star.

I’ll take it!

Random Thoughts

- We saw LeBron go to the post a few times and man, he could not wait to pass that ball. That LeBron (18 points, 8-21 FG, 1-4 FT, 5 boards, 5 assists) didn’t take advantage of Anthony Parker says mores about his lack of trust in his post game than AP’s defense.

- Though I thought AP and Alonzo Gee did a decent job making LeBron work for his points.

- Antawn Jamison: 2-6 FG, 5 points, 2 boards, 4 assists, 0 free throw attempts.  Anthony Parker: 3 points,  2-6 FG, 3 boards, 1 assist, 0 free throw attempts. That’s some veteran leadership right there.

- Omri Casspi looks slow. His shot is slow, his driving is slow… Casspi finished with 6 points, 0 boards, 0 assists and 4 turnovers in 18 minutes. Yikes.

- The only other non-Irving starter who looked like a Real NBA Player was, of course, Anderson Varejao. Andy finished with 11 points and 11 boards in 31 minutes.

- We had a Samardo Samuels sighting and it made you wonder where he’s been hiding. It was nice to see Samardo overcome his addiction to score 15 points (7-10 FG) off the bench.  Assuming he doesn’t fuck up some more, he should be ahead of Ryan Hollins and Semih Erden.

- The Cavs will try to get their first win on the second night of a back-to-back on Wednesday when they host the Knicks at The Q at 7:00pm.

also for Kyrie Irving:

 It’s unclear when or even if Baron Davis plays again this season, but it definitely won’t be as a member of the Cavaliers.

The club released the 32-year-old point guard Wednesday night through the amnesty clause, allowing it to clear $28 million of salary cap space over the next two seasons and put the offense in the hands of rookie Kyrie Irving. The Cavaliers must still pay the sum to Davis, who likely is headed to free agency with a bulging disc in his back.

The move places the Cavaliers roughly $7 million under the $58 million salary cap — assuming they don’t use a trade exception set to expire on Friday. That savings could become significant at the trade deadline, rumored to be March 15.

Expected move is expected.

Not gonna lie, I’m kinda sorta sad to see Davis let go. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the move and hell, I even agree with it. But I like the Cavs and I like watching Baron Davis play basketball. Watching Baron Davis is fun. I enjoy it. But this year’s Cavs need to stink. Davis was too good, too expensive and he plays the same position as #1 overall pick Kyrie Irving. This isn’t the team for Baron Davis, pure and simple.

The only argument I could see for keeping him around was that he at least knows Byron Scott’s offense. With the Cavs having a seven day training camp followed by just two preseason games, the offensive learning curve is going to be pretty steep. It would’ve been nice to have a veteran PG with knowledge of the offense, but all that was moot once it was obvious Davis was going to miss significant time.

So Davis is gone, but Anthony Parker remains. Sweet.

For what it’s worth, with Davis gone, I still don’t think Kyrie Irving opens the season in the starting lineup. I’m betting we’ll see a opening night starting five of Ramon Sessions-AP-Omri Casspi-Antawn Jamison-Anderson Varejao. This will be Irving’s team soon enough, I just doubt Coach Scott gives him the keys right away.

I’ll miss Davis. For how often we focus bad Cleveland trades (Rocky Colavito, Ron Harper, Brian Giles…), Davis was one the town’s best acquisitions. Mo Williams and Jamario Moon for Baron Davis and Kyrie Irving. Not bad.

Plus, he gave us this:

Awesome.

From Sam Amico:

Sources have indicated the Cavs are likely to offer free agent Anthony Parker a two-year deal. Parker, 36, started the majority of games at shooting guard last season. “They want to keep him,” one source said. “They like him as a leader and mentor.”

Scott at WFNY:

Parker, who would have to agree to the multi-year deal, was the team’s player representative during the recent NBA labor impasse.  When a  Twitter follower asked who I thought would be the team’s starting shooting guard roughly one week ago, I said “AP” without hesitation as it has long been a belief that the team would opt to bring back the copacetic vet for his locker room presence and willingness to be a mentor for the younger players.  The addition of Omri Casspi, who shares Maccabi Tel-Aviv ties with Parker, only served to further solidify this belief.

I’m probably not totally rational on this, but this news blows me away. Why why why WHY do you need to give a 36 year old shooting guard a multi-year deal? Leadership?! LEADERSHIP? Well that sure makes sense. Could you imagine last year’s Cavs squad without Parker’s leadership? Man, they could’ve been really awful. The season could’ve been a complete clusterfuck without his leadership.

*Sigh*

This just really kills me. First of all, if you’re making roster moves based on mentoring and leadership, that’s a bad sign (or if a certain small forward fits with a certain segment of Cleveland’s population). I’d rather you make roster moves for actual basketball reasons.

But I’m weird.

Second, I’m not completely opposed to adding players for chemistry reasons. For instance, I just finished Joe Tait’s book (review forthcoming) and at one point he talks about how much the addition of Nate Thurmond helped the team.

The Cavs were a team full of young players fighting for touches as well as playing time. The players weren’t really listening to Coach Bill Fitch. Then Thurmond came on board, acted professional (he didn’t start but played at the end of halves) and everyone began to accept their roles. Sure, he was saying most of the same things Coach Fitch was saying, but it meant more coming from a future Hall of Famer.

Note: Anthony Parker is not a future Hall of Famer. And the Cavs are not a veteran leader away from contention. I’m totally fine with having non-knuckleheads on the team for leadship purposes, it just helps if they can still play or command the respect of the young guys.

I admit, I’m not completely rational regarding AP (and certainly not regarding Antawn Jamison). Parker drove me nuts during his year with LeBron (“oops, stepped out-of-bounds on the corner trey again, my bad guys, not paying attention. Only a 34 year old vet here”) and watching him have to create his own shot last season was somehow even more painful than watching the rest of that shitty team create their own shots.

Parker seems like a nice enough guy, someone who I’d probably like in Real Life, but I see no reason why the Cavs need to resign the 36 year old shooting guard. If he’s so good with the young guys, hire him as a coach. And it’s not like the Cavs didn’t have locker room issues last year (or the fucking longest losing streak in the history of North American goddamn professional sports). Could things have really been that much worse without AP’s leadership?

Remember when the Browns had Ken Dorsey ‘mentoring’ Brady Quinn? How Dorsey was like a coach and a good sideline presence? He knew Rod Chudzinski’s offense! Then when Ken Dorsey was forced to play, it turned out he was absolutely horrid. Good use of a roster spot! Is this all that different?

As for who should start at the 2 for the Cavs… I don’t know. The 2011 free agent class is abysmal (though I might take a flyer on Chris Douglas-Roberts), Christian Eyenga isn’t ready and I’m not particularly enamored with either Joey Graham or Alonzo Gee. But I see no point in this particular Cavs squad starting Parker at this stage in his career.

What’s that you say? He won’t start? HA. Byron Scott loves his vets (or doesn’t like playing young guys). If you don’t think Davis-AP-Casspi-Jamison-Varejao is the opening day starting five, you’re kidding yourself.

This book is fun.

Full stop.

Filled with stories of Cleveland sports history, local media nuggets and a dash of drinking shenanigans, Pass the Nuts was quite simply a bunch of fun to read.

The book’s subtitle is “More Stories About the Most Unusual, Eccentric and Outlandish People I’ve Known is Four Decades as a Sports Journalist” and you really can’t ask for a more apt description. Each chapter is a self contained 3-8 page story on some goofy character or situation related to Coughlin.

I found the book interesting because, as a child of the 80s, many of Coughlin’s stories were before my time (I only know of Coughlin through his his Fox 8 gig, not his Plain Dealer years). Stories of former Browns Gene Hickerson knowing Elvis Presley or Dick Schafrath running 62 miles on a dare were great and the all of the Cleveland media gems were fascinating to me (What? Cleveland papers covered softball?! And people gave a shit?!?).

A few stories stuck out to me, but mainly this nugget on covering high school football with Fox 8′s chopper and Tony Rizzo taking most of the flights:

“That’s because the helicopter and I came to Fox 8 together in 1997,” Rizz rationalized. “I never knew what it was like to be a Beatle, but after the first night in the chopper, I knew. We’d land right next to the stadium and a thousand kids would surround us, trying to touch us. I felt like a rock star. What a rush! Some schools would beg us to fly there”

Cameraman Doug Herrmann’s favorite stadium was Hudson. He pleaded to make it a regular stop on the Friday night tour.

“Because the first time we were there a woman was so wasted that she lifted her shirt and flashed us her headlights – no bra,” Rizz explained. “Dough wanted to come back every week and look for her”

What? Hudson? 1997? Boobs?! I was at every Hudson football game from 1997-2000 (yay marching band!) and I’ll be damned if I remember the Fox 8 chopper coming to a single game (or having a reason to). Not to mention I can’t recall a crowd rowdy enough to have chicks flashing people.

The book is full of little anecdotes like that. Fun accounts of ethic violations of Cleveland State hoops, college pranks (stealing a train) and 40 years in the the sports media. There’s also bits on interviewing LeBron as a freshman (and how LeBron would never use the first names of the Cavs beat reporters), George Steinbrenner, and whole of slew of people I’ve never heard of.

If there’s one complaint about the book it’s that, at times, Coughlin’s familiarity with his subjects made it confusing to read. Many of the stories mentioned the wives or girlfriends of these wackos and Coughlin would simply use their first names (like he was the story to you in person) and every now and then I’d have to go back and double check to make sure I knew who he was talking about.

But that’s really a minor quibble. Coughlin’s casual prose and sardonic wit make Pass the Nuts a fun, quick read. The chapters breeze by, whether they’re about LeBron James or about Dan fighting a whip-wielding bar tender. The language is clean, even though some of the stories aren’t, and again, most are pretty funny.

I haven’t read Coughlin’s first book (2010′s Crazy, with the Papers to Prove It), so I can’t really compare the two, but after enjoying Pass the Nuts, I’m going to pick it up. You probably won’t get much out of either book if you aren’t a Clevelander or at least a fan of their sports teams.

But if that’s the case, why the hell are you reading this?

It’s really a shame (in every sense) what’s going on at Penn State right now. I really like that school. One of my best friends went to that school. Watching Ohio State lose there in 2003(?) was one of the most fun sporting events I ever attended (plus, I mooned an entire Taco Bell full of PSU kids on the walk home. I miss college).

There’s a lot of interesting articles out there about this tragedy that I wanted to share:

College sports can warp values.

An open letter from a Buckeye fan to Penn State fans.

The original district attorney in the Sandusky case has been missing for 6 years.

The predator, Jerry Sandusky wrote an autobiography called “Touched.”

There’s probably going to be most ugliness coming out.

Joe Posnanski has an excellent piece on Joe Paterno.

Jerry Sandusky’s son, Jon, works for the Browns.

I don’t have much to add on the Joe Paterno mess, other than the kids who rioted on Wednesday night were being dumb kids and rallying around their school, rather than, you know, supporting child rape. When you’re young, bored and drunk, you do stupid shit. Plus, after this OSU mess, I completely get the bunker mentality and the “us vs the world” state of mind. Doesn’t make it right, but I get it.

Also, kinda getting sick of OSU fans preening “now THIS is a REAL scandal” bullshit not to mention “how come ESPN took so long to lay into PSU, they went after OSU right away!!” If what you take away from this Paterno mess is that ESPN hates Ohio State, you need to reevaluate some things.

In case you didn’t read the post directly below this, I’ve been writing over at WaitingForNextYear.com all weekend. Some NBA, some Buckeyes, some NFL and some interesting links. Go check it out.