Wilting In The Heat

first of all, my heart truly goes out to Z. as a parent. i can only think that having something like that happen to me and my wife would be beyond devasating. i question his coming back so soon. i really do. he played without passion yesterday and any of us can understand why. but the rest of the team has a job to do, despite the difficult time Z is going through and i think it might be best of he takes the rest of the year off. i hope i am not coming off to insensitive here, as that is not my intent at all. it is my opinion that Z's heart, understandably, might not be into basketball right now and one must be really into it now as the push towards the playoffs has begun in earnest.

i also think that it seems more likely now that my hunch that Z might retire after this season might come true. he just hasn't looked like a guy who is having fun out there on the court. whatever he decides, i wish him and his family well.

ok, so on to yesterday's game...it was horrible to watch. just like the chicago game. we defended quite well and still lost. hughes continues to play as of he has little or no desire to run the offense. gooden, as i feared, has responed to all the trade rumors by playing awfully. the only people i see on the court who have the talent and drive are LBJ, andy and gibson. donyell has played fairly well too but the rest of the "rotation" is just pitiful. who woulda thought that the cavs would need sasha quite so badly as they do now?

some memes need to die right here and now. the first, and most obvious, one is that "defense wins games." here's how many points the cavs have given up in the first 3 games post all-star break: 85, 84 and 86. futhermore, the cavs held toronto to 42% shooting, chicago to 43% and miami to 43%. fantastic D, no? any team would be thrilled to hold it's opponents to that kind of low FG%. yet, the cavs never shot even 40% in any of those games. so, it seems the better a job the cavs do on defense, the worse they do on offense.

the next meme that needs to die is the "jump shots are bad" theory best articulated by cavs beat reporter brian windhorst of the ABJ. in his latest blog post he says that the cavs were engaged in "3-point chucking basketball." yet, the cavs shot almost 50% from the 3-point like so in actuality, that was the best part of the cavs offensive attack yesterday! even the abc commenter jon barry said a few times yesterday that LBJ made the right play in kicking out the ball to wide-open 3-point shooters! windhorst's dislike of jumpshots and his unwillingness to recognize their place in the game is bordering on the pathalogical at this point. though i will concede that watching hughes chuck up horrible jumper after horrible jumper can make even the most jump-shot loving purist depise that shot!

the last meme that must die is that we don't have a "true" point guard. as i stated before, the recent past shows that the championship-caliber teams rarely have had "true" point guards. look at the best team this year, the mavericks. jason terry is a classic combo guard, as is billups of the pistons. so that is a red herring at best. secondly, one play yesterday showed me that gibson is more than capable of being the PG the cavs need and that was when he blew past the whole heat squad (seemingly) and got to the hoop and then got shaq to commit to him and then dished a beautiful no-look to andy who had a easy dunk/lay-up but got fouled before he could complete the play. it was a thing of beauty and showed me that given the "go-ahead," gibson could lead this team from the PG spot and make plays. but instead you have a coach who plays things sooooooooo close to the vest that he has gibson come up and hand the ball off as soon as possible. it's so silly. you've got a greyhound and you have him be a showdog...ok, bad analogy but still...

one last thing, in both the chicago and miami games, if the game is close in the 4th quater, as they were, and they're games you have to have, then why not, instead of running the same offensive sets that have not been working, have LBJ have the ball out top and run screen and rolls and let him make plays, as we have seen a lot in the last two years? it's not how you want to run the offense all the time, i know but in games like this, it was needed.