MVN - Most Valuable Network

Well Now That’s More Like It: Cavs Rise Up and Make It a Series Again

Boy, it’s an easy game when you make your shots, isn’t it?

Whatever Infection Ben Wallace Has, Everyone Else Needs To Get.

Seriously, everyone on the team should be drinking from his water bottle. Big Ben continued his reign as the Cavaliers’ second-best player during these playoffs, playing great post defense on KG, hitting his rotations hard and getting swats, playing smart on the offensive end, catching and finishing when he had an easy basket and making the right pass when he didn’t, and, most importantly, fighting for each and every rebound or loose ball and getting a good portion of them, snatching 7 offensive boards. The good news? We have one untouchable and one unmovable player, so Ben’s going to be in a Cavs uni for a very long time.

Ray Allen, He Needs To Develop a Consistent Jump Shot this off-season.

Shh…He’s 3-16 on shots outside of the paint this series. Why has nobody made more of the fact:

1. Rajon Rondo is clearly the third-best player on that team this year.

2. He’s shooting a lower TS% as the third banana in Boston than he was doing his I AM AN NBA ALL-STAR AND SHALL BE RESPECTED AS SUCH routine in Seattle.

3. He freaking played LeBron James in a movie in 1999.

Boston Shouldn’t Be That Displeased with their defensive game today.

Yes, the Cavaliers had 29 assists on their 37 baskets and hung 108 points on the Celtics. But most of it came on jumpers, and not wide-open jumpers, but the kind of Plan B jumpers you get when your drives to the hole have been stifled. Joe Smith was 6-7 from the mid-range, and the team was 10-19 from beyond the arc, which won’t continue. Boston would much rather get beat by a team hitting shots and grabbing boards than a team getting drives to the basket and easy transition opportunities.

D-Lonte WEEESSSSSSST!

House. Of. Fire. 4-6 from deep, hitting the mid-rangers, found seams and made some nice drives, and made the right pass and got 7 assists. Absolutely monstrous, and played great ball-hawking defense against the Celtics in the half-court.

LeBron had a great game…Defensively, that is.

Without Paul Pierce going off, this is an average offensive team; KG’s mid-post game comes and goes, and Rondo’s not showing up every night either, and they seem to have no idea how to incorporate Allen. It’s 4 different players running 4 different offenses, and part of the reason their 2nd unit plays so well together is that they have role players who play their roles instead of trying to find them-is there any valid reason why James Posey should be shooting better from 3 than Ray Allen in this series?

Cut off the head of the snake and the body will die, and LeBron James is cutting Paul Pierce off in this series. His easy looks are only coming in transition, and he can’t get the space to get into his spins or get space for his jumper. With that and his normally great off-ball defense, grabbing 4 steals and 3 blocks, two of them being highlight-reel stuffs in transition, LeBron’s playing defense as well as any perimeter player can right now.

There Were Adjustments.

KG’s doing a great job showing and getting back on the LeBron strong-side pick-and-roll, so LeBron and Mike Brown looked for the play on the weak side and managed to get some easy looks for Ben Wallace and Joe Smith on that side. Also, LeBron’s getting far more baseline screens to free up his catches and open up some seams when he catches the ball. Delonte was given more responsibilities, and got aggressive. Even so…

LeBron hasn’t been able to get going.

He was able to get his feet set on a couple of threes and bang them down (he’s a pretty good shooter when he can set his feet), and found a seam once or twice, and did a better job reading the pick-and-roll and finding the open man than in games previous, but he still hasn’t been able to consistently get to the basket or get out in transition. His off-the bounce shooting game remains catastrophic, and his catches aren’t any better than they were in games 1 or two, although the defense wasn’t able to completely load up on him like they had before.

He needs to get the ball in motion or on the blocks-the Cavaliers have yet to get him off an elbow curl or the reverse-motion dribble handoff play that got LeBron in motion to the weak-side that was working pretty well with Delonte in the regular season. ESPN will have you believe that LeBron somehow did everything to help his team win, and the Cavs were definitely much better with him on the floor than off of it, but his offense is yet to come around this series, and his flow just isn’t there yet. And to cap it all off, with a 66% showing from the foul line, the wobbles appear to have returned from there.

That’s all for now. Must-win game 4 on Monday-we’re not beating the Celtics twice at the Garden, but the pressure shifts to the Celtics if we can pull it off.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Cavaliers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.