How did we lose? An argument for no big changes.

[Kizzle]

guys we really weren't even close to winning that series

I know people are searching for hope anywhere but we got soundly beaten And I see no reason to believe the outcome changes next year short of some major changes (adding melo for scraps, warriors losing BOTH Livingston and igodoula).

I know as time goes on people will try to convince themselves we were a solid bench player away to provide hope

But we really weren't.

im of a similar mindset

I think we need a totally different bench, we need an actual starting center, we need to install an actual offense and we need to basically dump half the team.

I think guys like Tyreke Evans and Lou Williams could do well here

 

[LennoxLewis]

guys we really weren't even close to winning that series

I know people are searching for hope anywhere but we got soundly beaten And I see no reason to believe the outcome changes next year short of some major changes (adding melo for scraps, warriors losing BOTH Livingston and igodoula).

I know as time goes on people will try to convince themselves we were a solid bench player away to provide hope

But we really weren't.

 

[MarkPriceFan]

I'm not convinced Williams was terrible by nature, i'm convinced he didn't know what to do in terms of the system. It seems to be a trend on all LeBron teams. Everyone is reduced to spot-up shooters. Then when they [or LeBron] go cold.. we have no adjustments to fall back on. It's all moody ball.

It would help to make a lot more use of Love in the post when Lebron sits. I have never understood why we don't use that more. It seems last year we tried to get Love and the team started with some early post up plays, but then it would disappear never to return.

Beyond that you are correct, we have Kyrie slashing, and then a team full of spot up 3pt shooters off the bench. Honestly, its become overload with all of them. We need to switch the bench up quite a bit. Maybe we could also work more on getting Derek Williams involved in the offense with the 2nd unit, assuming he stays on board? God knows why Lue went away from that in the playoffs while watching Deron repeatedly give us zero on both sides of the floor. I know Deron had to see some minutes to give Kyrie rest, but Derek could have given Lebron a lot more rest. Makes no sense.

 

[K1rieIrving>AllOtherPG's]

It would help to make a lot more use of Love in the post when Lebron sits. I have never understood why we don't use that more. It seems last year we tried to get Love and the team started with some early post up plays, but then it would disappear never to return.

Beyond that you are correct, we have Kyrie slashing, and then a team full of spot up 3pt shooters off the bench. Honestly, its become overload with all of them. We need to switch the bench up quite a bit. Maybe we could also work more on getting Derek Williams involved in the offense with the 2nd unit, assuming he stays on board? God knows why Lue went away from that in the playoffs while watching Deron repeatedly give us zero on both sides of the floor. I know Deron had to see some minutes to give Kyrie rest, but Derek could have given Lebron a lot more rest. Makes no sense.

Love is not going to score on anybody in the post against the Warriors, They're going to destroy him and hes going to shoot around 20/30% down there, wasted possessions.

 

[Vee-Rex]

It would help to make a lot more use of Love in the post when Lebron sits. I have never understood why we don't use that more. It seems last year we tried to get Love and the team started with some early post up plays, but then it would disappear never to return.

Beyond that you are correct, we have Kyrie slashing, and then a team full of spot up 3pt shooters off the bench. Honestly, its become overload with all of them. We need to switch the bench up quite a bit. Maybe we could also work more on getting Derek Williams involved in the offense with the 2nd unit, assuming he stays on board? God knows why Lue went away from that in the playoffs while watching Deron repeatedly give us zero on both sides of the floor. I know Deron had to see some minutes to give Kyrie rest, but Derek could have given Lebron a lot more rest. Makes no sense.

Problem is Draymond defends Love quite well and gives him no room or leverage. Love can't back him down.

A big part of Love's post game is drawing fouls and when it's the NBA finals and you're in Oracle and you got that clown Draymond guarding you who the referees are intimidated by, it's tough for Love to get going.

Picture this scenario - Love can work HARD to get a basket. He can post, lose the ball and recover it, bump hard into Draymond, put up a tough, contested hook, miss, get the rebound, take a lot of contact, pump fake, get stripped, grab the loose ball, pump fake again, then put up a shot with contact and make it....

....then 3 seconds later the ball is on the other side of the court and Klay/Durant/Steph are drilling a 3-pointer.

Kevin Love is awesome but he's just not the type of player that will shine against this GS team.

 

[TitleTown]

guys we really weren't even close to winning that series

I know people are searching for hope anywhere but we got soundly beaten And I see no reason to believe the outcome changes next year short of some major changes (adding melo for scraps, warriors losing BOTH Livingston and igodoula).

I know as time goes on people will try to convince themselves we were a solid bench player away to provide hope

But we really weren't.

We were 2 minutes of bad play away from tying the series 2-2. That's a fact. Had Korver hit that 3 or had Kyrie hit one of his bad shots, then we would have been tied.

That's the very definition of "close." Do I think we would have won the series if we had tied it up at 2-2? No, I don't think we would have.

But I do think there's room for discussing ALL of our options. And one of our options is keeping the big 3 and putting a defensive minded team around them. It's an option worth considering.

Is it our only option? No. I am open to trading for PG like everyone else. But this is a discussion forum, and this keeping our big 3 is an option worth discussing.

 

[TitleTown]

Problem is Draymond defends Love quite well and gives him no room or leverage. Love can't back him down.

A big part of Love's post game is drawing fouls and when it's the NBA finals and you're in Oracle and you got that clown Draymond guarding you who the referees are intimidated by, it's tough for Love to get going.

Picture this scenario - Love can work HARD to get a basket. He can post, lose the ball and recover it, bump hard into Draymond, put up a tough, contested hook, miss, get the rebound, take a lot of contact, pump fake, get stripped, grab the loose ball, pump fake again, then put up a shot with contact and make it....

....then 3 seconds later the ball is on the other side of the court and Klay/Durant/Steph are drilling a 3-pointer.

Kevin Love is awesome but he's just not the type of player that will shine against this GS team.

Please discuss your position in ALL the other threads devoted to trading Love. This thread is about how we get better IF we keep our big 3. It's a hypothetical discussion.

 

[Adrenochrome]

I don't completely disagree but...

We got our asses handed to us in my opinion. This isn't the 2007 Cavs where losing 4-1 would have a major accomplishment, or 2015 where we could plant our flag on a depleted team taking the Warriors to 6 games. 4-1 and getting blown off the floor in 3 games is a major embarrassment for this team and most likely requires more than tweaks to the bench.

The bench needs to get younger, longer, and more athletic. The team needs to acquire some sort of legitimate C even if just to play 10-15 minutes a night. And they need a big beyond that who can actually play D to come off the bench.

The team as a whole needs to commit to defense across the board. That mentality is how we played them so tough in 2015 and was a large part of our reason for winning in 2016. No one is going to consistently outshoot the Warriors, but even an improvement in D from awful to mediocre would go a long way toward evening the odds.

Where I disagree though is with Love. He has immense value against 28 teams in the league. Unfortunately he's mostly been a non-factor against the 1 team that matters to us for 3 straight years. Given the strange position the Cavs are in, if you can turn him into a player (or two) that will improve the team's ability to compete with Golden State you do it without thinking twice. I think I'd even so far as to say that 2 Jae Crowder types would be far more valuable than 1 Kevin Love to this team.

 

[Kizzle]

Please discuss your position in ALL the other threads devoted to trading Love. This thread is about how we get better IF we keep our big 3. It's a hypothetical discussion.

Hate to say this but we flat out don't get better if we keep the same big 3. Love is our only asset.

If we keep the same big 3 we will basically have the same bench.

Same team

same result against GS unless Lue out of nowhere installs a transcendent level offense and Love magically turns into 26 and 12 Love in the finals

 

[Vee-Rex]

Please discuss your position in ALL the other threads devoted to trading Love. This thread is about how we get better IF we keep our big 3. It's a hypothetical discussion.

We'll likely have all year to discuss this, since it's unlikely we pull in a Paul George or something similar.

But fine, it's your thread so I'll contribute:

We improve by adding better bench pieces (like we thought we did last year).

 

[fan0283]

-In the postseason one could say good coaching and an elite defense increases a team's margin of error.

- When Lebron sits Lue tries to run the exact same type of offense as when he's in. The one where instead of running motion sets we have Love and everyone else spotted up waiting for drive and kicks. Lebron may be the only player in the history of the game that can win with this type of offense. Guys like Deron don't have the ability to make defenses collapse in this system and the guys like Kyrie don't have the vision to make the right pass when they do

-I dont think we were close at all. They buried us with scoring runs whenever we threatened. They went elite mode every time the situation necessitated it and we were beyond ill equipped to handle this.

-Our roster is great at scoring because we stacked it with offense at the cost of defense. Improving the defense without sacrificing some offense is a tall order. Personally I don't mind sacrificing offense.

-it's been mentioned but I don't see this big 3 getting it done. Especially since we're effectively a big 2.5 against GS and even that is only on offense

 

[KilgoreTrout]

There are plenty of threads for making big sweeping changes to this team. I want to offer a thread for discussing an alternative perspective. This thread is for discussing how we fix our team without moving any of our big 3.

We had no problem staying with the Warriors offensively. The problem was getting consistent stops when we needed them and our transition defense.

We were two minutes away from tying the series at 2-2. If we had build our team with defensive players to balance out our offense, would that have brought us even closer? What could we do to not make big moves, and still improve the team? How would having our team set before training camp, and working on defense all season potentially change things for this team?

I don't think the sky is falling. I think we have a good team and a good coach. This tread is for brainstorming how we improve without making big changes.

Well, the biggest upgrade we could MAKE is at coach, but nobody seems willing to do that. And hiring his best friend would make that even MORE unlikely.

 

[ice cream man]

I would love to somehow find a versatile two-way wing player (so obvious that that is what we need) and keep Love.

I was disapponted that:

1. Lue continued to play TT and Love together against GS. Love should start at the 5 against this team.

2. With Tristan's poor play, Lue really never gave Frye a chance against GS.

If we can bring back Deron for cheap, that's a no brainer. He's capable of running an offense which we will desperately need during the regular season to take some of the burden off of the big 3. I also believe Deron would have a significantly better finals performance, but I understand that that is arguable. Of course if the Cavs can get someone like Patrick Beverly, they should jump all over that. I don't expect Deron to get a lot of offers though. We'll see.

If GS loses Iguodala, that would help us a lot. Losing Livingston would hurt GS too, but not as much as losing Iguodala.

When Livingston/Draymond are in with that second unit, we need to put a lineup out there that allows LeBron to guard Livingston. Why?

1. Livingston can't post LeBron up.
2. LeBron can focus on help defense. Livingston can't shoot threes. Draymond wants to shoot a spot up 3, or pass out of the post to a cutter. As long as he can't physically overpower his matchup he is not a threat to score. Put someone other than LeBron on Draymond in this situation.

 

[sleepmaster]

We were 2 minutes of bad play away from tying the series 2-2. That's a fact. Had Korver hit that 3 or had Kyrie hit one of his bad shots, then we would have been tied.

That's the very definition of "close." Do I think we would have won the series if we had tied it up at 2-2? No, I don't think we would have.

But I do think there's room for discussing ALL of our options. And one of our options is keeping the big 3 and putting a defensive minded team around them. It's an option worth considering.

Is it our only option? No. I am open to trading for PG like everyone else. But this is a discussion forum, and this keeping our big 3 is an option worth discussing.

Players follow Lebron's lead and the team won't play defense during the regular season until Lebron stops taking defensive plays off to conserve energy. The coaching staff permits this because Lebron is old and more central to his team than any other star player. So the key is to somehow make it so the offense can run smoothly without Lebron so he doesn't feel he has to play to conserve energy. Slowing the game down and using Love in the post more would be an idea. And give Edy Tavares playing time to develop or find a real rim protector. Love would complement a real rim protector much more than Tristan.

 

[Tornicade]

This is why I think TT is our best trade chip. I'd love to flip him for someone who provides more rim protection and DEFENSIVE rebounding. That would make us immensely better without having to trade our big 3.

1st post -lets talk about why we lost with no major changes.

3rd post -lets make a major change.

Lebron James calls the defense. he sends out defensive assignments and he calls out what the offense is running.

All this is missing when LeBron either doesn't get back on defense timely or takes a seat.

I think the Cavs need to do things a bit differently.on the defensive end.. such as allowing LeBron to call audibles but allow others to get in the practice of setting up the defense

Offenses know LeBron is the general on the court and they are adapting and trying to fool him or the opposing coaches like Kerr have brought in iso guys to limit lebrons effectiveness in this area.