Let's talk defense!

[Kbiz]

...to add to it, we've HORRIBLY misused Channing Frye by making him TT's backup all year, which is an even worse look for your defense. Dude was brought in to be Love's backup so we can have a stretch 4 on the court at all times.

Our front court consists of 3 power forwards, none of whom can halt penetration or protect the rim.

We just really, really fucked up team construction this year, either through arrogance or stupidity.

Agree with you on the Frye front but anyone that argues that this team's construction is any worse than last year puzzles me. We have much better pieces on paper this year and they should be playing better as a unit.

Our coaching staff continues to let the team down. Player minutes are still all over the place. I get that we are trying to get JR comfortable but that doesn't mean we go completely away from what has worked in the past. Derrick Williams should still be getting minutes.

I've said before that Lue is better suited for the playoffs vs. the regular season and I hope he proves me right this year because watching this team as of late worries me. We have an embarrassment of riches compared to other teams and we are still playing some shit-level basketball.

Luckily, this team is built for the playoffs with all the pieces we have. Lots of interesting lineups we can work with. I just hope Lue is up for the task. I'd be studying how Pop gets the most out of his role players on both ends of the court.

 

[buzzdog]

Everyone from coach Lue to Lebron and the rest of the team put last nights horrific performance on lack of effort and energy. It really looked like for the majority of the game nobody gave a fuck about defending, then for a few spurts here and there they turned it on but never sustained it for more than a few short runs.

Lebron and Lue said it started with individual defense which was lacking. Lebron said guys were just letting their man blow by them expecting help, and they can't play individual defense like they assume the help is going to be there.

i strongly agree with the post saying that Lue needs to figure out which rotations can be brought in to play shut-down defense to stop runs and bleeding. Chances are those groups would end up getting the most minutes when the sledding gets tough, as long as they can also manage to get enough buckets on the offensive end.

The groups that would be the best defensive rotations would probably also be the guys who could run the floor so trying to use fast breaks and early offense might help them wth scoring.

 

[buzzdog]

Frye was killing us last night. He was able to match up with pretty much nobody the Nuggets threw out there.

 

[buzzdog]

I assume Love was still on a minutes restriction that made Frye's minutes go way up until Lue just gave up on the game and it went into garbage time.

But Love did play pretty solid defense, both individually and on help defense. Not perfect but solid. He was late a few times, he got scored over a few times but he played tough and rebounded well.

I could see times where the perimeter defender let his guy blow by so easy that Love just say "fuck it, not going to bother with help".

Lebron let his guy go too many times last night to have any cause to bitch about anyone else.

 

[Kbiz]

i strongly agree with the post saying that Lue needs to figure out which rotations can be brought in to play shut-down defense to stop runs and bleeding. Chances are those groups would end up getting the most minutes when the sledding gets tough, as long as they can also manage to get enough buckets on the offensive end.

It's tough to figure out when defensive effort level is all over the place. You'd think a defensive lineup of D-Will, Smith, Shump/Drick-Will, LBJ, and TT would be able to lock down the other team for extended time but we just haven't seen this team play great defense except for a few instances this season. The Xmas game against GS we played with heightened intensity so it's not like this team can't do it but "chill" mode needs to end already.

Lue has a hard enough task figuring out how to get these pieces working together before the playoffs. Our players owe it to him to show a willingness to play better defense to make his job a bit easier.

This whole "lack of toughness" talk is just a bullshit excuse. You can't confuse toughness with effort. Teams don't come back from 3-1 in the NBA Finals without toughness. This team just needs to take the tampon out of their collective ass and start playing the way they should be.

 

[kookoo]

Frye was killing us last night. He was able to match up with pretty much nobody the Nuggets threw out there.

RJ too. We were within 5 and he got scored on 3 straight times with 0 effort from him.

 

[Chris Parker]

Frye was killing us last night. He was able to match up with pretty much nobody the Nuggets threw out there.

I'm not going to try to explain it because I have no idea, but over the last 6 weeks (part of it is Love's absence, no doubt) Tristan has been a raging tire fire (114.6 pts/100 possessions) while Frye's been great defensively when paired with LeBron.

I get the offense numbers - Frye really spaces, but over the last 6 wks teams done MUCH better forcing midrange instead of 3s when Frye was on floor. For season, nearly half shots are 3s when Frye is on floor, but over last 6 wks that's been lower than 30%. Perhaps it's all the layups, but teams Layup FG% has also improved lately.

Could Frye be working a lot harder than it looks, but he's got the Mozgov dismissal-hate on him from his bad earlier defensive performance? I don't know, because I initially looked expecting Frye to be dogfood defensively.

 

[Omar The Horse]

View: https://twitter.com/espnsteinline/status/844941305914441728

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Marc Stein tweeted an interesting stat. Thru the first 3 months of the season, the Cavs were 14th in defense. Not great, but if we were 14th right now, a lot of the bitching would be somewhat invalid.

So pre "dog-days" of the NBA season, we were much better defensively. This points directly to effort concerns, obviously injuries also hurt us.


One more thing I am wondering...Maybe we should think about dusting off Liggins. Having some tenacity at the point of attack for the D definitely can't hurt. It's not the easiest thing to do with how many guards we have.

Historically, teams in the playoffs, given similar health and personnel, look more similar to their early season sample sizes(Nov-Jan) than the later samples(Feb, March). So that's a positive indicator for us. If we can be an AVERAGE defensive team, and combine that with a playoff effort, I think you will see a similar performance as last year, when we were I think 7th/16 of playoff defenses?

 

[cavsfever]

It's just depressing how often we keep returning to basically the same defensive problems, particularly interior defense. It's a fundamental issue with the team's makeup. I mean, what we are seeing now is very similar to what we saw as soon as Varejao went down in Lebron's first year back.

 

[cavsfever]

View: https://twitter.com/espnsteinline/status/844941305914441728

This makes me think the defensive problems have a lot to do with Love going down, which gives me some hope. Obviously he is back but on minutes restriction and perhaps not 100% defensively yet.

 

[Real Deal]

It's all good now.

Jason Lloyd revealed Cavs will do all the good things defensively in the playoffs.

 

[Chris Parker]

Marc Stein tweeted an interesting stat. Thru the first 3 months of the season, the Cavs were 14th in defense. Not great, but if we were 14th right now, a lot of the bitching would be somewhat invalid.

So pre "dog-days" of the NBA season, we were much better defensively. This points directly to effort concerns, obviously injuries also hurt us.


One more thing I am wondering...Maybe we should think about dusting off Liggins. Having some tenacity at the point of attack for the D definitely can't hurt. It's not the easiest thing to do with how many guards we have.

Historically, teams in the playoffs, given similar health and personnel, look more similar to their early season sample sizes(Nov-Jan) than the later samples(Feb, March). So that's a positive indicator for us. If we can be an AVERAGE defensive team, and combine that with a playoff effort, I think you will see a similar performance as last year, when we were I think 7th/16 of playoff defenses?

By same token I wonder how much of early season success can be attributed to team that finally came into preseason whole & with good chemisty, unlike most teams which experienced something morelikeCavs the prior two years. It takes time for teams to gel. Was that good defense racked up against still figuring it out teams? I have no idea, but wanted to offer a grain of salt interpretation. You may be right, but this is logical too.

 

[buzzdog]

Could Frye be working a lot harder than it looks, but he's got the Mozgov dismissal-hate on him from his bad earlier defensive performance? I don't know, because I initially looked expecting Frye to be dogfood defensively.

Chris, any opinions from me are going to be devoid of statistical data to back anything up and are usually completely dependent on the eye test. I might go so far as to rewind and watch certain plays that stand out to me a few times to understand what happened and last night I did that quite a few times.

My eye test told me that Frye flat out sucked defensively last night. That, and the scoreboard while Channing was on the floor.

I like the guy and I think he has a place on the team but only in certain match-ups, and to me it looked like Denver was just killing it with Frye out there. But there was horrible effort from lots of guys. You pointed out JR in your article and I was WTF-ing him a lot too. And Lebron at times.

 

[Jordan]

I'm not going to try to explain it because I have no idea, but over the last 6 weeks (part of it is Love's absence, no doubt) Tristan has been a raging tire fire (114.6 pts/100 possessions) while Frye's been great defensively when paired with LeBron.

I get the offense numbers - Frye really spaces, but over the last 6 wks teams done MUCH better forcing midrange instead of 3s when Frye was on floor. For season, nearly half shots are 3s when Frye is on floor, but over last 6 wks that's been lower than 30%. Perhaps it's all the layups, but teams Layup FG% has also improved lately.

Could Frye be working a lot harder than it looks, but he's got the Mozgov dismissal-hate on him from his bad earlier defensive performance? I don't know, because I initially looked expecting Frye to be dogfood defensively.

I could be totally wrong, but I don't think this is necessarily because of Frye's defense... I wonder is it because of the offensive boost? I.E., with Frye on the court we make more buckets, and thus our opponents cannot attack in transition.