“Listen, Woody. If you want, I can just take over the clipboard, and you can go out there…”
The Tyronn Lue Job Preservation Project continues this afternoon in Cleveland, where his Cavaliers prepare to face the Atlanta Hawks (3:00 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports Ohio).
Yes, this is a downtrodden opponent for the Cavaliers, checking in at 1-8 and counting. And yes, if they survive games this week versus Milwaukee and at Houston, the Cavs (4-5, 2-3 at home) will have a chance to fully right their ship with road games at Dallas and New York. But a question is hovering over T-Lue as his team strives to climb out from a below-.500 record. Can Cleveland consistently beat decent teams without their star player, now in his 15th season, posting statlines of 57-11-7-3-2 in 42 minutes?
LeBron James is certainly more than a mere star, and his mastery of the Washington Wizards in a 130-122 road victory last Friday serves as adequate evidence he could be bulldozing fools well into his 50s. While playing and defending upwards of five positions on the floor out of necessity, his blazing 61.0 FG% and 82.6 FT% would blow away his career highs. Further, his 29.1 PPG would be his highest since the fateful 2009-10 season, where he subsequently donned the picnic table cover and declared he would be playing Buddyball down in South Beach.
Buddyball is essentially what James does, otherwise his old Miami dance partner Dwayne Wade would be anywhere other than in The Buckeye State right now. James doesn’t suffer alongside the Malcolm Delaneys and Mike Muscalas of the NBA universe, preferring instead to roll with a cavalcade of washed ex-stars and past-their-prime All-Stars (J.R. Smith, Kyle Korver, Wade, and the minutes-restricted Derrick Rose), heady vets (Jose Calderon, Channing Frye, Jeff Green) and energetic role players (Tristan Thompson, Jae Crowder, Iman Shumpert). That chemistry puts a perpetual hit on owner Dan Gilbert’s salary cap situation, but that’s the price one pays for placating a King.
Gilbert knows he can seat your fifth-grade homeroom teacher in the general manager’s chair, since everyone knows it is LeBron and his off-court team of whisperers who dictate the product on the floor and the presence along the sideline. No matter what gets said about his teams coasting through regular seasons, a LeBron-headlined team has finished first-or-second in the NBA East in each of the past nine seasons. If the up-and-down struggles continue for the three-time defending LeBronference champs, momentarily 10th in the East, James will zone in not on the papier-mâché GM, or his crumbling cast of co-stars, but on the guy who benefitted the last time he zoned in on a head coach in mid-season.
David Griffin fell into a situation where LeBron added himself, and Kevin Love (41.4 FG%), to one previously led by Kyrie Irving. His Cavs went 53-29 in his first season as an NBA head coach, reaching the NBA Finals, and was 30-11 midway through his second season when James decided that wasn’t excellent enough. Following a shocking deposition, it was instead Griffin’s lead assistant, Lue, who has been in the coaches’ throne through the past two NBA Finals.
Now, Lue Hefner must soon fix a defense that has been the worst in the league (111.9 D-rating), the Cavalier opponents sinking a league-high 13.7 threes per game at a league-high 42.1 3FG% clip. He’ll have to figure out a scheme with seven players on Cleveland’s roster, including James, past the age of 30, and two others (Love and Rose) not known for their defensive exploits and hitting age 30 next season.
Isaiah Thomas would be unlikely to be of much help on that end, even once he returns in January after repairing a tear in his hip. Thomas’ absence leaves Crowder as the sole Cav currently on the floor in the wake of the Irving trade. The player most likely to help raise Cleveland’s opponent turnover rate above 12.0 percent (28th in NBA), Shumpert, has been out for over a week with a sore knee. The player best suited to help James and/or Love secure the defensive boards, Thompson, will be out for several weeks due to a calf strain.
Suffice to say, Lue resolving the Cavs’ defensive woes with the current roster components won’t be easy, even against a Hawks squad that is itself shorthanded and struggles to shoot straight (43.1 team FG%, 26th in NBA). Rose (8-for-16 FGs @ WAS on Friday) and Korver (47.7 3FG%) and James filling up buckets is not a problem. The fact that they absolutely must do so on a nightly basis just to keep the Cavs in front is the problem. If the losses and opponent points continue piling up, Lue should not be surprised to find former Hawks coach Larry Drew, who himself understands what a Game of Thrones the pro coaching business is, sliding over into his chair someday soon.
Hawks fans who wanted to see how their team might fare competitively without Delaney and/or Muscala on the floor are about to get their chance. Muskie was left behind for the trip to Cleveland to heal a bum ankle. Delaney’s ankle isn’t much better, but while he is with The Basketball Club, his chances of appearing today are unlikely. Moose and/or Malcolm have been part of Atlanta’s eight worst two-man lineups in terms of net points per 100 possessions (min. 80 minutes played), each of those tandems allowing anywhere from 13 to 24 additional points in their opponents’ favor. Their collective absence should amount to a “win” for the Hawks today from an efficiency perspective alone.
On the downside, missing Muscala along with Ersan Ilyasova and Miles Plumlee will mean Hawks fans will get to endure a lot more of rookie John Collins at the 5-spot, behind Dewayne Dedmon. Or, maybe just a little more of him, if his penchant for hacking-as-defense returns against the bruising James and Love (88.9 FT% so far, also a career-high).
Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer played Collins more at power forward during the Hawks’ 119-104 home loss on Friday night to the Rockets, and he posted one of his better all-around games (8 points, 12 boards, two steals, four blocks) in 28 minutes of action off the bench. He and Dedmon will need Luke Babbitt, Kent Bazemore and Taurean Prince to help keep the Cavs, even without Thompson around, from building up a big rebounding edge.
Fellow rookie Tyler Dorsey (2-for-4 3FGs) and Isaiah Taylor (5-for-9 FGs, five assists in 24 minutes) also found time to shine, particularly late in the game during Atlanta’s blowout loss on Friday, so the young guards should be able to see more playing time in the first half of action today. Atlanta can keep themselves competitive in this game if they avoid getting bowled over by LeBron’s myriad highlight plays, and if execute the offense without getting scatterBazed everytime they have to dribble-drive or spot-up from three-point land.
A team led by Delaney, Ilyasova, Calderon, Muscala, Junior Hardaway, and Mike Dunleavy strolled into Quicken Loans Arena last April and stopped the Cavs from clinching the top seed in the LeBronference. So anything can happen today, particularly if Dennis Schröder can contribute a better two-way effort against Rose than he provided at home on Friday. No matter the outcome, strong offensive play by the Hawks could have LeBron redirecting his glower from his opponents to his teammates, and his head coach.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
