LeBron's ex-coach takes shot at Cavaliers' ridiculously bad defense
David Blatt may have gotten himself run out of town as Cleveland Cavaliers head coach by LeBron James in 2016, but he’s doing just fine for himself as a coach in the Turkish League All-Star Game.
And in an interview in Istanbul, where Blatt is coaching Team Europe as a reward for his success coaching Darussafaka in both Turkish competition and in Euroleague, he couldn’t resist taking a dig at his former team in the States.
When asked how he hoped his all-star team would perform, Blatt said, “I hope we don’t give up as many points as the Cavaliers gave up last night.”
Blatt was referring to the 148-124 smackdown Cleveland suffered at home Saturday against Oklahoma City in which four Thunder players scored at least 23 points while Russell Westbrook dished 20 assists.
It was a vicious swipe at a team that, despite its 27-18 record, simply isn’t very good this year.
Cleveland has lost nine of its last 12, with six of those nine losses coming by double digits.
Their point differential for the year is only plus-0.2 per game. Considering one point of differential typically works out over a full season to 2.7 wins, this means the Cavs project to a 42-40 team.
And the advanced stats say they’ve got a lot more losses left in them to regress to the mean.
Word out of Cleveland seems to be that James is the de facto GM of the team. If true, he’s not very good at it. The addition of James’ buddy Dwyane Wade — despite the 36-year-old being on the downside of his career — has not sat well with the other Cavs players.
It’s showing on the court. Defense is a team effort, and a surefire sign that players aren’t on the same page is missed rotations leading to open looks for the opponents.
And by that measure, the Cavs are terrible, ranking 29th out of 30 teams in opponents’ Effective Field Goal Percentage, a stat that counts three-pointers as 1.5 makes and which tends to show up as a symptom that defenses aren’t putting in the effort to close out on shooters.
Making matters worse, remember the guys Cleveland received from the Celtics in the Kyrie Irving trade? Well, they’ve been terrible.
Jae Crowder is hitting just 41 percent of his shots and 31.3 percent of his threes this season. Isaiah Thomas has been a straight-up dreadful at 39.6 and 29.2 percent, respectively, on field goals and 3-pointers. And Ante Zizic has only seen action in 12 games and averages 1.1 points a game.
Cleveland also received New Jersey’s first-round pick in this summer’s NBA draft, but if the season ended through games of Jan. 20 and Cleveland didn’t get a lucky bounce of the ping-pong ball, that pick would only get them the seventh or eighth overall pick — which is still in the lottery but won’t net them the likes of Trae Young or Marvin Bagley III.
The Cavaliers are, plain and simple, falling apart at the seams, and Saturday’s drubbing by the Thunder just laid it bare for all to see.
If you think Cleveland still has plenty of time to turn it around, consider the 2015-16 Memphis Grizzlies. They also had problems with point differential. On Jan. 23, 2016, they were 25-19 and fifth in the loaded Western Conference despite a minus-2.4 point differential for the season to that point.
Memphis went 3-14 in the last 17 games of the regular season, finished 42-40 and barely made the playoffs, but bowed out meekly in four games against San Antonio.
Cleveland may be in third place, but they’re just 4.5 games ahead of the ninth-place Pistons, with a four-game stretch next week in which they play the Pacers, Pistons twice, and Heat.
So Blatt is probably glad he can hang out in Istanbul and make jokes at the Cavs’ expense. It’s a lot easier than if he was still with Cleveland and have to come up with a solution for a team with so many problems.
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