Home early, so here's what I saw. I had pretty good seats opposite the Cavs' bench about 10 rows back.
1) Better movement on offense?
When the game started, I thought the starting unit looked a lot more active than in the past. But Eric Snow f-ed that up with, I think, 3 bad passes early on, and there was a lot of sloppiness. When Marshall and Jones came in, I thought that group did a better job passing toward the basket and getting Larry off some curls. Marshall was surprisingly mobile. Think of him in the playoffs and up it a notch. Overall, I saw flashes of more movement, but it was clearly something they were still working on. They still reverted to the Lebron isolation. Expect lots of turnovers early in the season.
2) Hughes' returning game, especially his outside shot?
Um, he shot 4 of 16 and looked good doing it. A lot of them were just off the rim, to be fair. A few looked like line drives and I wonder if his release is still affected. Bottom line: his outside shot sucked. Maybe an off night. God I hope so.
3) More posting up?
Don't think I saw Lebron do it once. As usual they fed Z too far out. But I hate to say it, he looked slow on offense, though he had a nice defensive game. As usual, Gooden looked best on the post up.
4) "Regular season" rotation?
Here's a shocker: Donyell and Jones came in at 5:45-ish left in the first quarter. Don't think we saw AV and Wesley until the 2nd quarter. I was really p.o.'d that Brown didn't at least try Brown or Pollard, especially because Lue was fast as hell for Snow and the Hawks in general were getting some easy baskets inside. No Pavs, no Gibson.
5) Any attempt by Lebron to play defense?
Shot-blocking, including one incredible one where it seemed from my point of view he came up out of nowhere. Other than that, he just trailed Williams around, at least a step behind.
Random stuff: Snow sucks. When he made a big shot late, I nearly jumped onto the row in front of me. It was the only worthwhile thing he did all night long. Wesley is worse. I agree that we should worried as hell about what this backcourt is going to do.
Tyronne Lue looks like a 12 year-old elf.
I think I saw Scott Pollard get scolded for goofing off during a time-out. Don't quote me on that.
Lebron in general had some moments, but his shot was off, like everyone else's, and he was pretty quiet. A few times he tried driving to the hoop and was just swarmed. Either he wasn't going 100% (likely) or the rest of the league is figuring out that no one else can score, so mob him. Before the tip-off, he had a lengthy exchange with a ref about the towel you step on at the scorer's table. No idea what that was about. And I don't think he was fouled on that air-ball at the buzzer.
AV looked lost. He has no idea what to do on offense and doesn't seem to have that instinct unless he's cutting to the basket.
Marshall looked pretty tight; out of all the bench players, he looked like the only solid guy. He's driving more and getting open under the basket.
Lots of missed mid-range jumpers and bad outlet passes. They've been consistently better at getting Gooden involved more on offense and prodding Marshall to go inside. Z was having trouble early with Zaza but seemed to figure it out; still, he missed plenty easy face-ups that he should have made. It's preseason, so I'm not getting too worked up about any of this. And I was happy to have seen the starters play so much.
Oh, and Ted Ginn Jr. was there, 1 section closer to the corner and about 5 rows closer to the floor. I felt bad for the guy, because once people realized he was down there, he got a lot of attention.
And I think the Cavs girls are hotter this year. There's your scouting report.