It's more player movement than ball movement. I'm not too worried about the latter. If they continue to move and be active, the ball movement will come as they become familiar with each other and the scemes.

not that it's fatal, I just expected their halfcourt offense to look better and more natural even at this early stage.

Almanac'd

i wouldn't.

not that it's quantifiable or anything but good on court basketball chemistry takes a while to develop. They played probably the toughest defense on the road last night in their second regular season game. I don't know how good the cavs are going to be but their offense should be much better in a few weeks.

yeah man that's real good, thanks for that post mjw..

Why didn't the Cavs try to hold onto Alonzo Gee? He is pretty garbage overall, but he does have a little poor man's Bruce Bowen equity in him if molded in the right way. Seems like a low risk move for them at the league minimum.

One thing is that Blatt was very Popsesque with sitting guys in the preseason. Waiters and Dellavedova were the only rotation guys who got serious minutes, he generally sat at least one of the others each game.

Now, it's only two games, and I'm not worried about the offensive schemes(as mjw's excellent post shows). There's a lack of execution, there's some miscommunications, but the talent and the strategy are there.

I'm legitimately worried about Blatt being Thibs 2.0. He played what was functionally a 7 man rotation in the first game(Miller and Marion combined for 13 minutes), which was the first half of a back-to-back. Then he stuck with the same lineup for the last ~3 minutes of regulation and all of OT in the second game.

In the second half of a back-to-back that goes to overtime, he still only played 9 guys, and Miller and Marion combined for 27 minutes. I realize there's a pretty steep decline in the quality of player on what is ultimately a thin bench, but that's not an encouraging sign.

He had a nonguaranteed contract that they needed to move to sign Lebron/trade for Love

Ah that makes sense. I thought he could have been useful there to take some of the perimeter defensive pressure of Lebron. With so much offensive firepower they could afford to put him in lineups as an on-ball defender. He certainly passes my eye test defensively.

:thumbup:

It's gonna take a lot more than two games for Love/Kyrie/LeBron to understand how each other play. That's why you're seeing AV have so much success and Bron having so many turnovers when passing to non-AV

That little white scrappy dude for the Cavs, what's his deal? Any good?

surprisingly not bad

delly's a surprisingly good defender, both on and off the ball. he's pretty perfect for the lebron-love-irving dynamic because he won't pull a waiters and jack shots like it's still last years roster. can hit threes and handle the ball as well as he needs to

Gonna be so many bad posts about Waiters and Delladova this year. Waiters is significantly better for all imaginable lineups.

Waiters is not chucking at all. He's been at a healthy very low 17.1 usage.

Delladova is attempting 6.7 fga per 100 possessions. That's not playing within the offense, that's being a worse version of Landry Fields and making your team play 4 on 5.

His usage is 5.5% lol. He could literally shoot 100% on threes at that usage and be a huge cancer to their offense.

If you can shoot, it's 4 on 4, not 4 on 5. It's not like a Kyrie-Bron-Love team really needs the shot creation.

Agree that Dion's been mostly fine within the context of the offense. 5 midrange shots/game is too many, but I think that's largely been a scheme issue rather than Waiters freelancing. Once the offense starts flowing more, Dellavedova and Waiters should both get more good looks created for them. Team's 3PAr is too low in general.

I disagree with your assessment that he'll need to be closely guarded as long as he can shoot. That's for guys like Steve Novak who will fire at will when open. Delladova has not shown a willingness to do that. He's certainly not preventing people from helping on D at this point. He could start shooting more and become that but people won't guard you just because you can shoot if you won't

Well Novak is in a special tier of spacer, but Dellavedova (you're missing a syllable in his name, he doesn't deserve that disrespect) shot 4.4 3s/36 last year at 37%. He's at least in the tier that commands attention. I think he's generally pulled his defender away from the paint.

Strongly agree that he and the rest of the Cavs should have a quicker trigger finger with taking decent perimeter looks. Hopefully that improves when the team works out some comfort level with the overall possession share.

Dellavedova's also only played 48 total minutes this year. that super low usage is probably an abberation of SSS (although it's still going to be low, i doubt it stays that low).

i'm not buying the clips as contenders. Just throwing that out there. before taking a nap I had some keen insight as to why, but I can't recall it. But I trust it was correct.

probably cuz outside of their starting 5 (not sold on barnes being a good player) and crawford they suck. hawes sucks. hedo sucks. farmar sucks. CDR is horrible. bullock must suck or doc would play his ass.

they're missing that willie green leadership

Ummm give me a team that you think is a notch below them

They're team is really well balanced and talented and coached well, what else do you want

Waiters should come off the bench while playing starter minutes

Mike miller or Shawn Marion to start depending on opposing matchup and how much u want lebron to go hard or relax on D