It's one thing to shut down Vince when game plan is centered to just shut down Vince. It's another to shut down Vince when your game plan is centered around shutdown Dwight & Vince & others..... we'll see how it works out. You believe in your team . We believe in our. All we ask is for the respect, but people still like to throw us under the bus like this is still 2007. People still dont want to see us.
That's a valid point, but I don't think anyone here is particularly referring to just the most recent games. The Cavs defense has given Vince fits, no matter if he was the only guy, or when we had to account for Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, and Vince, or Devin Harris and Vince. It was never about shutting down one guy. Also, we never once doubled him.
Trust me, there is no one in Cleveland that fears Vince Carter. If anything else, we were thrilled to hear he was Hedo's replacement in the offense.
Hedo was the one single entity that literally frightened every single one of us, purely because of how your offense fed off of him... He was basically a 6'10" point guard, running the P&R with other 6'10" guys, looking for 3 other guys that could hit the 3 as well.
You guys no longer have that. Sure Vince is a scorer, but the P&R will now be run by Jameer Nelson who, while he's a great player, is an entire foot shorter, and now he has one less 3 point shooter to look for as Bass cannot shoot the 3.
That may not sound like a huge change to you guys, and it might not be, but your team actually now falls prey right into the Cavs stellar "shrink the floor" defense. That didn't work last year, but now it will. We have lost nearly all of our need for double teams against your players, and are now facing a team that can be stopped by our in-house defense.
But like you said, we'll see once we play!
The lakers gave us real BIG match up problems. Bynum, Gasol and Odom/ariza all on the court at once, thats pretty scary. Cleveland is a good team but they don't create huge match up problems for teams except for lebron, there really isn't a team that has someone to match up with him. IMO I thought SVG's defensive strategy in the ECF was genius, by letting lebron do his thing and shutting down the other players. It will be interesting to see how things will pan out this year
That's true, and it's not true at the same time. Even though we played horribly against you guys, our starting lineup actually paced with you guys for most of the series, and we were up big in most games, especially early on.
Our biggest problem was our bench. We got absolutely NOTHING out of them, whereas Pietrus single handedly mopped the floor with them. That problem no longer exists. 3 of our 4 bench players are gone from last year, leaving the only effective one and adding 3 players who have been high caliber starting role players on playoff teams for the past few years.
Our bench in no way reflects what it was last year. In fact, the way our second units will be staggered and structured, they'll actually look more like our starting lineup from last year.
So in that sense, with our improved bench, the loss Hedo, and the addition of Shaq, nearly every matchup advantage you guys had has now either disappeared or leveled out.
Lol, I thought you guys wanted Vince, but just didn't have the pieces to get him? Lol, Since NJ is trying to get LBJ, they didn't want to give CLE any help and your expirings werent enough to convince them...
I mean if they just wanted expirings, we would have just tossed them Anthony Johnson or JJ Redick, but we had to give up a damn good prospect, Courtney Lee, to get him. Lol, Danny Ferry is a failure. He been trying to get Vince for 2 or 3 years now and couldnt get the job done... Otis Smith >>>>
(lol, just givin u guys a hard time, dont take it the wrong way)
No offense taken.
But no, no, no... No educated Cavs fan ever wanted Vince... the vocal minority who were calling for him were the casual fans who still thought he was the Vinsanity of years past.
Granted, if there was nothing else left, I think most of us would have probably been okay with getting him strictly for Wally's expiring, but nothing else. If Ferry really did have any actual interest in him, which I'm skeptical of, I'm sure that was the deal... "We'll take him off your hands for Wally, but that's it." We would not have traded any talent for him.
Long story short... The Cavs and Magic of the '09 playoffs are so not anything at all whatsoever like the Cavs and Magic of 09-10. We're both confident that our teams got better, but the true fact of the matter is, the way we match up against each other is totally and completely different. We'll see come November, right!?
