CLEVELAND - Mike Brown is the best coach ever. First he benches Eric Snow for the rookie Daniel Gibson. Then he decides to insert Sasha into the starting lineup in the spot vacated by LeBron James. He then tells the team to pretend they are the Phoenix Suns for one game. And what do you know, it actually all worked. The Golden State Warriors have a way of making coaches look really good - with the exception of their own. A few things that were either learned or reinforced tonight:
Gibson made the most of is starting lineup-debut. Count us as temporarily leaping on the Daniel Gibson bandwagon. Counts us off as soon as he has an off game. We're consistent like that.
LeBron was in a better defensive stance on the bench than he's been in all season. We kid Lebron, we kid.
The Warriors couldn't play defense if their lives depended on it, literally. Reports circulated that Don Nelson threatened his team before tonight's game that they would have to keep the Cavaliers below 120 or they would receive the Uday treatment.
Donyell Marshall must have taken his DeLorean back to the mid 90's. Two dunks on two consecutive possessions, with an actual team of basketball players attempting to protect the basket? That's precisely why they inked him to that $5 million a year...to come up big on January 30th, 2007.
Fred McLeod has some interesting angles. At one point or another, he praised just about every Warriors player as having a "career" year. At 21-24, looks like they can only get worse.
Free throw shooting is still inconsistent, even w/o LeBron! Cavs went 28-39 from the stripe.
Sasha can really play (once in awhile). 24 points on 7/11 from the field. Could there possibly be a better time to trade him?
And finally, ball movement was the best it's been. Look, we know LBJ is a phenomenal talent. We know he put on a show last year in the playoffs. But what's clear to us is that the offense is stagnate with him in the game. We know he's unselfish (for the most part), but he needs to keep the ball moving for Brown's offense to work. He can't just pound the ball into the floor at the top of the key while the defense gets set - that's not good basketball.
photo courtesy of cbssportsline
4 comments:
Wow, you posted this game story faster than I got home to post a comment about it. Impressive. Best site ever. My toe still hurts.
Someone say something about toe?
Hilarious line about uday hussein. That was ridiculous how he would kill his own players. Granted, I would have had them killed also, but not b/c they lost, b/c they played soccer.
Oh man, stop ripping on lebron's defense. I was the one person who voted him to third-team all nba defensive team.
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