Just not true.
The contested shot % went way up, the paint points went way down, the paint fg% went way down. We started getting turnovers, we picked up the ball handler sooner. By every metric and every eye test, the Cavaliers had a great second half from a defensive standpoint.
Yeah he rode LeBron, but he also found a line-up that worked and stuck with it despite changing a lot of his normal substitution patterns.
The team went into half-time down like 26. Adjustments were made, changes were made, and we won the game.
Yes, LeBron lead the charge. His greatness is irreplaceable. It's impossibly to even quantify his value.
But if Lue got a lot of blame for the first half, he also gets a lot of credit for the second half.
Furthermore, when the game got tight in the fourth and we needed good plays coming out of timeouts, he delivered us great looks time and time again. He is one of the best in the league at drawing up plays coming out of timeouts, and that is a fact that is backed up by statistics. Yet i never see you even giving him credit for that kind of stuff. He literally is probably a top 3-5 coach at drawing up stuff out of a timeout. Right up there with Pops/Carlisle statistically on ATO's.
He did a good job riding the hot line-up, and he also did a good job taking well-placed timeouts in the 4th quarter, to kind of "steal" LeBron and the rest of the guys a couple of minutes rest. And he was able to keep them fresh the entire way by doing things that way.
Criticism is fair where it is deserved, but he also deserves some credit. You just are so biased towards the narrative you've created for Lue that you refuse to even consider that the truth is often somewhere in the middle.
