NBA Preview - Cleveland Cavs

Cavaliers Roster
2010-11 Roster
NUM PLAYER POS HT WT DOB FROM YRS
8 Christian Eyenga G-F 6-5 210 06/22/1989 Kinshasa, DRC R
1 Daniel Gibson G 6-2 200 02/27/1986 Texas 4
12 Joey Graham F-G 6-7 230 06/11/1982 Oklahoma State 5
6 Manny Harris G 6-5 185 09/21/1989 Michigan R
21 J.J. Hickson F 6-9 242 09/04/1988 North Carolina State 2
5 Ryan Hollins C 7-0 240 10/10/1984 UCLA 4
4 Antawn Jamison F 6-9 235 06/12/1976 North Carolina 12
15 Jamario Moon F 6-8 205 06/13/1980 Meridian CC (MS) 3
18 Anthony Parker G-F 6-6 215 06/19/1975 Bradley 7
44 Leon Powe F 6-8 240 01/22/1984 California 4
24 Samardo Samuels F 6-9 260 01/09/1989 Louisville R
3 Ramon Sessions G 6-3 190 04/11/1986 Nevada-Reno 3
17 Anderson Varejao F-C 6-11 260 09/28/1982 Santa Teresa, Brazil 6
31 Jawad Williams F 6-9 225 02/19/1983 North Carolina 2
2 Mo Williams G 6-1 195 12/19/1982 Alabama 7

HEAD COACH
Byron Scott (College - Arizona State)

ASSISTANT COACH(ES)
Chris Jent (College - Ohio State)
Paul Pressey (College - Tulsa)
Jamahl Mosley (College - Colorado)
Joe Prunty (College - Cal Poly San Luis Obispo)

STRENGTH-AND-CONDITIONING COACH
Stan Kellers (College - Cleveland State)

ATHLETIC TRAINER
Max Benton (College - Colorado)

C - Captain
** - Unsigned Draft Pick
(FA) - Free Agent








Cleveland Cavaliers
An opposing team's scout sizes up the Cavaliers
The Cavs are the worst team in the East. Not having LeBron James means everything to them. I think Mo Williams is going to have to have a huge year, and they'll also need a lot from Antawn Jamison, who has been the best player on a bad team a number of times but may be slowing down now. Even if they get great performances from those two, I don't know how much it will help because nobody else on that team can score.
Williams should be more productive this year because the ball will be in his hands more. He'll be back to playing the same role he had in Milwaukee when he set himself up for his big contract. He'll put up big numbers, but it won't mean much. I hate using the terminology of calling him "not a true point guard" because the league has changed so much that you really can be a scorer and a point guard at the same time. But Williams is somebody who needs to score to be effective. Another description that fits him is "volume shooter." Over the last couple of years LeBron had the ball all of the time and was creating the offense, which put Williams off the ball. Williams can make a shot, he can get to the rim and he's good in the open court. I think he'd be great in a Jamal Crawford-type sixth-man role. Williams isn't as good as Crawford as a scorer, but he's better as a point guard and a defender.
One upgrade over LeBron as a ball-handler is that Williams is better as a pick-and-roll player who can find guys. He's already had two good regular seasons in Cleveland, though they were followed by two bad playoffs. Teams will try to collapse on his drive, but if they collapse too much, he can pull up and make a shot.
The question with Jamison is whether he had so much trouble over the second half of last season with Cleveland because he was declining physically or because he had a hard time fitting in with LeBron. I wonder if a lot of that stuff in Washington hit him and don't know if he ever recovered from the whole Gilbert Arenas gun incident. Guys who know Jamison say the Gilbert stuff really shook him. Then he got to Cleveland and it looked as if he felt the pressure -- he looked like he'd never played basketball before. All of those things maybe got in his head.
This won't be the first time he's been asked to put up a good year with a bad team. If Jamison doesn't respond, the Cavs will really be in trouble. I know he won't mail it in because he's a pro. If he has it, he's going to give it to them.
It's going to be interesting to see what style Byron Scott will wind up playing. I'm guessing he'll go with some of the Princeton offense. Jamison had success playing that style for Eddie Jordan in Washington. Jordan had Jamison diving and flashing inside, and maybe that's another reason why he struggled last year with Cleveland -- they couldn't have him do those things because they needed him to space the floor for LeBron.
I like both Williams and Jamison as leaders. Jamison has been a leader for a long time, and Williams has grown into that role. They have some guys who play hard and that may help them be an overachieving team. But effort can't compensate for lack of talent. None of their other guys are good enough.
Anderson Varejao is among their top three players, but offensively he won't do it for them. In that sense, he's a bit like Ben Wallace during the Pistons' championship days. Defensively, Varejao can be almost that dominant. He will block a shot, though he doesn't change everything like Wallace did, and he doesn't rebound as well. But Varejao's a great one-on-one defender. He takes charges, is a great help defender and plays with enormous effort. Plus, he has great length.
Varejao has improved offensively. He has phenomenal hands, he catches everything. You could pass it to him at his ankles and he's going to get it. But he can't shoot. Even though he's improved his jump shot, it's still ugly. He doesn't have a feel offensively, and he can get pushed off the block pretty easily. You always see guys moving him, and then he can't do anything past five to 10 feet from the basket. He's a bit like Jamison as a diver-cutter because he's pretty good at flashing and catching balls and finishing. The problem for Varejao is, though he can catch, he can't put it on the floor.
Remember last year when it was a big deal that Cleveland didn't want to give up J.J. Hickson in a trade? Now that LeBron is gone, don't expect Hickson to end up carrying the Cavs. The main thing about him is that he's their one developmental guy, which points out the big problem with their roster: They have no one else with upside. When Williams and Jamison are setting a good example, whom are they setting it for? Hickson, and it's not like there is a ton of potential in his game.
Put it this way: I'm sure everybody would like to have Hickson on their team, but he's not a game-changer. The Cavs are going to hope he turns into a guy who can score on the block. But everything else about him is questionable. He's a pretty good rebounder and not a great defender. He's a guy you're going to leave alone when he's away from the block and invite him to shoot it. I'd tell my team to leave him by himself at 15-17 feet.
I remember when Anthony Parker and Jamario Moon were playing the wings for Toronto, and that team didn't go far. Parker especially was a nice pickup when the Cavs had LeBron, but now you can't begin to count on him and Moon to carry your team on the perimeter. Parker is another guy who will come in and work hard. He's above-average defensively and he'll make a three. But he's not good at creating his own shot.
Moon has improved his shooting, but his primary asset is his athleticism. He'll burn you occasionally with the corner three, but for the most part you're going to leave him alone out there. Maybe they should play up-tempo because it fits the style of Moon and so many of their other guys. On the other hand, that's going to be a hard style to keep going because they have an older team.
Leon Powe could be a decent second-unit scorer on the block for them, though he hasn't played regularly for a long time because of his knee injury.
I liked their pickup of Ramon Sessions, who will be one of the better backup point guards in the league. He's more of a true point guard than Williams, and they'll be able to play them together some of the time. Sessions is solid at everything. He can score a little bit, he'll get you into your offense, he defends, he can run. He doesn't do anything tremendously and he makes a bit too much money, but he's reliable.
Every now and then, Daniel Gibson can get hot from the three-point line and surprise you. But he struggled with consistency when he was playing with LeBron, and now consistency is going to be an even bigger issue. He struggles handling the ball, so you can't have him bring it up the floor because everybody pressures him.
Ryan Hollins is an unbelievable athlete for his size, with great length and the ability to block a shot or catch a ball at the rim. But it's all about his athleticism. He doesn't have the skills to do anything else.
Scott is an old-school guy. If the Cavs lose a lot of games early, it's inevitable that things are going to get ugly in the locker room because that's what happens in the NBA. How Scott handles those situations will dictate the course of this season in Cleveland.




NBA Preview
Musings si.com
THE GREAT UNKNOWNS: INJURIES AND TRADES
These two things, especially injuries, make preseason predictions seem almost silly. Two of the Lakers’ five most important players are already dealing with knee injuries. One of those players (Andrew Bynum) played with significant limitations in last year’s postseason — the same postseason that saw Cleveland, Boston, Utah and others deal with season-altering injuries. And we knew that before this Jackie MacMullan piece at ESPNBoston.com this morning revealed Paul Pierce was dealing with turf toe during the playoffs after a season in which his sore knee occasionally squirted out foul “geysers” of fluid.
Injuries are a reality in the NBA. They happen all the time, and they will happen to a key player on at least one title contender in May and June. The Lakers and Celtics seem most susceptible to a potentially crippling injury (remember Kevin Garnett‘s knee in 2009?), but no team is ever immune.
As for trades, I don’t see an obvious one right now that would boost the chances of one of the core contenders. Carmelo Anthony is certainly capable of providing a Pau Gasol-like boost to someone, but no one in the contender group has the assets to get him in anything but an extraordinarily complex and risky deal.

JAMEER NELSON
Kelly Dwyer at Ball Don’t Lie has nailed this before: For all the hand-wringing over Dwight Howard‘s post game and Rashard Lewis‘ contract, Nelson might be the most important player on the Magic, in terms of his ability to swing the team’s ceiling from “possible title contender” to “deserving of co-favorite status.” This is especially so if the Magic are serious about easing Vince Carter‘s pick-and-roll responsibilities and shifting them to Nelson.
Nelson was excellent in 2008-2009, when he shot 50 percent from the floor and 45 percent from three-point range in essentially making himself the most efficient offensive point guard outside the Steve Nash-Deron Williams-Chris Paul trio. He took a step back toward the league average last season, and that won’t be good enough for the Magic to win the title. But the 2008-09 Nelson — or something close to it — is plenty good enough. It’s no coincidence that the two games Orlando won against Boston in the Eastern Conference finals last season were the two in which the Nelson-Howard screen-and-roll was at its most effective.
We know what we’re going to get from Carter and Lewis at this point, and Howard can’t get all that much better on either end. It’s Nelson who can re-raise his game — and his team’s prospects.

GREG ODEN
Oden is an obvious X-factor in some ways, but many fans would dismiss his importance by claiming the Blazers aren’t a true title contender, with or without him. But here’s the thing: Matchups matter in the playoffs, and the Blazers happen to be a team that has matched up quite well with the Lakers over the last few seasons, especially in Portland.
Plus, the Lakers showed they aren’t indestructible in the postseason. They struggled with Oklahoma City and Phoenix last season, and the Rockets took them to seven games in 2009. If Oden is healthy and playing in the spring, the Blazers will be a tough out for anyone.

LUOL DENG
You can scoff at the notion of considering any player on any Eastern team other than Boston, Orlando or Miami an X-factor, but Milwaukee or Chicago could easily scare one of those teams in the playoffs. And a scare can turn into “Holy cow, we’re playing in a decisive seventh game against the sixth seed” pretty easily. Just ask the 2008-09 Celtics.
And if Deng — still just 25, by the way — can return to the near-All-Star form he flashed in 2006-07, the Bulls have the potential to scare one of those three elite teams, either in the first or second round. Deng looked wonderful in the preseason, taking 29 threes in eight games (and hitting 15) and getting to the line a ton. We know Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah will improve. We know what Carlos Boozer is at this point, and we know Tom Thibodeau will make this a tough defensive team. Deng is the one who could transform the Bulls into something special.
Worth noting: Plus/minus stats, both raw and adjusted for quality of teammates and opponents, paint Deng as one of the league’s most productive players last season. So it’s not as if he’s far away from greatness.

A FOURTH OPTION IN SAN ANTONIO
I believe in the Spurs. I may be one of the last people outside of San Antonio to believe in the Spurs, but I still think if enough goes right for this team, it could be playing in the Finals in June. It’s not likely, but it could happen.
And for it to happen, someone outside San Antonio’s Big Three will have to step up as a legitimate offensive option. It could be George Hill. It could be DeJuan Blair. It could even be Richard Jefferson, who looked rejuvenated in the preseason. It could be Tiago Splitter, though that seems unlikely. It could even be the concept of a transition game, something Gregg Popovich is pressing for now — and something that could help Hill and Jefferson, in particular, emerge as more dangerous scoring threats.
But it has to be something, or someone. And they have to become a threat to create offense and not just stand around the perimeter waiting for open looks.

RAJON RONDO’S JUMP SHOT
Breaking news: Boston fans have found video evidence that Rondo may have improved his jump-shooting form in the offseason. Mind you, this comes a year after Rondo spent part of the summer with Mark Price in an attempt to improve his jump shot. It didn’t work, as Rondo’s shooting percentages from outside 15 feet dipped badly last season.
Rondo is probably never going to be an elite jump shooter. That’s OK. He does so many other things well, and he improved his close-range shooting last season. But if he’s not at least serviceable, teams will continue to sag off him as the Lakers did in the Finals last season, a defensive strategy for which the Celtics have never found a consistent answer.

JAMES HARDEN, SERGE IBAKA
The Thunder are receiving almost — almost – as much hype as the Heat, and many experts have OKC as the sole Western Conference team with a real chance to knock off the Lakers in a seven-gamer. To do that, the Thunder will need more interior production on both ends, and that’s where Ibaka, the team’s most athletic big man and best shot-blocker, must take a step forward. They’ll also need a shooting guard who can provide some of the defense Thabo Sefolosha brings while acting as the offensive threat Sefolosha will never be. Harden should be that guy. If he’s not playing crunch-time minutes in late April, I’ll be disappointed.

DALLAS MAVERICKS
If you’re searching for another team that might be able to rise up against the Lakers (assuming everything goes right), you could do worse than the Mavericks. But “everything goes right” encompasses many more things in Dallas than it does in most places. Outside of Dirk Nowitzki and perhaps Brendan Haywood, everyone is a question mark to some degree. Can Jason Kidd keep doing this? Can Jason Terry, at 33, make last season’s decline a temporary blip instead of the start of a downward trend? Can Tyson Chandler stay healthy? Will Caron Butler stop the ball and jack questionable 20-footers or attack and get to the line? How quickly will Roddy Beaubois recover from a broken foot, and when he does, will Rick Carlisle play him as much as he probably needs to when the games count?
That’s a ton of questions, and we haven’t even mentioned Shawn Marion. There is a load of talent here, but I have no clue how it will play out.

DENVER’S FRONTCOURTI think we all know the Carmelo Anthony issue by now, but Denver will not contend — with or without ‘Melo — if Kenyon Martin and Chris Andersen aren’t ready to play big minutes in April. If they are — and if Melo is still around — this team can play with anyone, as it proved in the 2009 Western Conference finals, when Anthony Carter was getting minutes that will now go to Ty Lawson.
If the answers to these questions go the wrong way, Carmelo could be gone and the Nuggets will be in the lottery.
We could continue this last forever. We could mention the chemistry and three-point shooting issues in Miami, the need for someone — anyone — to provide consistent scoring on the wing in Utah, the health of Andrew Bogut and lots of other stuff. Uncertainty is what makes sports fun.



1. The Jerryd Bayless trade. I like the Jerryd Bayless trade. Everybody wins, including the fans. The Hornets get a combo guard who, despite endless criticism of his game, scored nearly 18 points per 36 minutes last season and reduced his turnover rate substantially. That’s the sort of help Chris Paul needs, and Bayless will provide it better than Jannero Pargo ever did.
The Blazers get a first-round pick, with limited protection, in exchange for a player they likely weren’t going to use much this season. Portland will get the pick in 2011 if it’s outside the top seven. If that doesn’t happen, they’ll get the pick in either 2012, 2013 or 2014 if it’s outside the top eight. That’s a nice asset — if an uncertain one, given the variable production level of mid-first-round picks — and one Portland gets to add to an increasingly attractive pile of picks and young players they could use to land a star. Watch out.
And for us? We get another chance to see a player fight the tired stereotype that a “combo guard” usually won’t succeed in the NBA. Bayless is a classic combo guard, and he’s a talented, hard-working one. He should be able to find a consistent role in the NBA.

2. The Magic varying their offense. I like that the Magic are varying their offense, as detailed nicely here by Ben Q. Rock at Orlando Pinstriped Post. Rock crunches the numbers and finds that, in the preseason, we saw more of Rashard Lewis at small forward, more Dwight Howard jumpers (he was 10-of-15!), more Lewis post-ups and lots of other new goodies. Will any of this stick? You would think Stan Van Gundy will keep what works, and whatever that is will make the Magic a more diverse offensive team.

3. Tyreke Evans‘ jump shot. I don’t like Tyreke Evans’ jump shot, which is bad news, because we’re going to see a ton of it this season. Evans loves to flash the mid-range jumper (and, increasingly, the three-pointer), but his form is still inconsistent and the results are iffy. There’s too much leg-kicking and shaky balance, and his shot selection can be poor. There’s enough talent on this team that Evans must be willing to spread things around.

4. Antawn Jamison‘s situation. I don’t like Antawn Jamison’s situation. Doesn’t this story in the Akron Beacon Journal make you sad? Jamison’s championship dreams fell apart in Washington last season, and he handled everything with grace as the team’s sort-of spokesman and trusted veteran. His championship dreams in Cleveland fell apart when the Cavs collapsed against Boston — a collapse, it should be said, in which Jamison played a large role.
And now he’s stuck in a sixth-man role he’s clearly not thrilled about on a team going nowhere. No player “deserves” more than the millions he gets in salary, but it’s always nice that the good guys get a chance to win late in their careers. With more than $28 million due to him over the next two seasons, Jamison may have to wait a while to get that chance.
5. Bizarre lineups in Charlotte. I like the bizarre lineups in Charlotte. I’m with Queen City Hoops: Give me a lineup that includes Tyrus Thomas, Gerald Wallace, Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw and anyone else (Shaun Livingston?) and let the craziness unfold. Diaw and Jackson can both take over ball-handling duties, Wallace will grab every defensive rebound and Thomas will fly around doing Thomas things. They might go entire quarters without attempting a three-point shot.






2010-11 Power Rankings: Preseason
1 (1) Lakers 57-25 The West, even with its usual array of 50-win teams, is starting to feel kinda '80s-like. Which is to say that the Lakers are a Muresan-sized favorite to go back to the Finals no matter how slowly they start because of health issues.
2 (3) Celtics 50-32 The Celts must be feeling even cockier than normal. The East's new darlings in Miami look like the fragile ones and folks leaguewide are asking whether L.A. should copy Boston's laissez-faire approach to the regular season.
3 (4) Magic 59-23 If anything gets me back on the Magic's bandwagon, it won't be those 21 straight preseason wins or that new arena everyone is (justifiably) raving about. It's the possibility they'll make a splash with their trade assets.
4 (2) Heat 47-35 Demoted before they even play a game? A two-slot dip isn't unreasonable after a preseason in which the three SuperFriends shared the court for a whopping 197 seconds and Mike Miller was lost to a major thumb injury.
5 (6) Thunder 50-32 Can the Thunder, shouldering real expectations for the first time, stay as healthy as they did last season? Seemingly impossible. Is Durant as near-perfect as a Face of the Franchise as he seems? Quite possibly.
6 (8) Mavericks 55-27 How much urgency is already bubbling in Big D? The Rangers are just four World Series wins away from leaving the Mavs -- despite those 10 straight 50-win seasons -- as the only franchise in town without a championship.
7 (9) Jazz 53-29 You can turn over much of the roster and expect little dip in the standings with a two-man core of D-Will and Jerry Sloan. And proving it might finally land Sloan that Coach of the Year trophy he insists he can live without.
8 (7) Spurs 50-32 Father Time has wiped out their margin for error, but the Spurs might still be L.A.'s biggest worry out West if A) Parker has the sort of contract year Manu had and B) Splitter and Blair join Duncan as impact players up front.
9 (5) Bulls 41-41 Have to Deng, er, ding the Bulls to some degree after they lost Boozer so early (and so bizarrely) and then took a pounding on the boards for much of the preseason. But none of that will change my Chicago-to-win-Central pick.
10 (10) Bucks 46-36 Latest example that the Bogut-and-Jennings Bucks rank among the league's new darlings now: They've received near-unanimous praise for acquiring Maggette after he was peddled for months by Golden State without success.
11 (11) Trail Blazers 50-32 Even if I ditch the pessimism about its ability to stay healthy, Portland's preseason featured more squawking from B-Roy (who wants the ball more) than Rudy F (who wants to return to Europe). Didn't see that coming.
12 (13) Rockets 42-40 Rockets GM Daryl Morey apparently wasn't too impressed with our comment in the Training Camp Edition of the rankings. Morey via Twitter last week to Bill Simmons: "We don't need a trade, we are going to surprise NBA."
13 (14) Hawks 53-29 The committee goes way back with Larry Drew, so I hope for his sake this is a premature write-off. But I still fear Josh Smith's new commercial that's getting so much run is as good as it gets after a stagnant summer.
14 (15) Nuggets 53-29 October was calmer for the Nuggets than most of us naysayers projected, but common sense says it won't last. The Melo Speculation Machine and the distractions it generates will surely power up once the games start counting.
15 (12) Suns 54-28 Really tried hard not to overreact to the Suns' unsightly preseason ... until I looked at their early schedule. Safe to say that Small Forwards Anonymous, as Professor Hollinger has dubbed them, won't be starting 14-3 again.
16 (20) Grizzlies 40-42 The Griz are about to start their 10th season in Memphis. In other hard-to-fathom Griz news that might or might not tell us a lot: They somehow just went unbeaten in the exhibition season along with Orlando and Utah.
17 (16) Knicks 29-53 The good news: Amare's presence generates playoff hope and puts the Knicks on the radar of stars on Melo's level. The bad news: Here comes another season with as much chatter about players the Knicks don't have.
18 (21) Wizards 26-56 You can revel in the presence of John Wall and the possibility that the Wiz might revert to their Bullets identity ... or you can fret over Arenas' hard-to-trade contract and his disconcerting preseason. We prefer Option 1.
19 (19) Hornets 37-45 For all the understandable interest in CP3's future, let's put the short-term focus on his present, since he can drag the Hornets back to the playoffs almost by himself when healthy but is clearly shaking off injury-related rust.
20 (23) Clippers 29-53 Pretty much everyone has the same two questions when it comes to the Clips: Do we dare believe that the Blake Griffin monster seen in the preseason can stick around all season? And which Baron Davis will we see?
21 (18) Bobcats 44-38 Totally get that MJ's boast about a 100-point game was made in conjunction with promoting the new 2K11 video game, but we still feel compelled to ask why we don't get more proclamations about his Bobcats plans.
22 (17) 76ers 27-55 When Evan Turner followed up a lackluster showing in his first NBA summer league with an equally shaky preseason, Philly said goodbye to the previously popular suggestion that this team is a playoff sleeper in the East.
23 (22) Pacers 32-50 Granger, not surprisingly, insists that the days of playing for ninth in the East are over and that Indy is playoff-bound now that Darren Collison has arrived and Roy Hibbert is blossoming. Our take: Possible but not probable.
24 (27) Cavaliers 61-21 Once more we ask: Does anyone out there dare believe what psychologists would say about Cavs fans needing only 3.5 years -- half as long as their marriage to LeBron James -- to get over LeBron's departure? Us, neither.
25 (24) Warriors 26-56 New coach. New logo. And new owners ... as you might have heard. Questions about rebounding, D and Monta Ellis' long-term future in the Bay Area persist, but I'm irrationally intrigued by the Curry/Lee combo.
26 (30) Timberwolves 15-67 Our snarky side must be kicking in again, because the fear here is that Sota's season might have peaked with that ESPN-televised exhibition victory over the Lakers in London. Hope we're wrong again.
27 (25) Nets 12-70 Coming up near-empty in Mikhail Prokhorov's first free-agent summer is one thing. It's going to be way harder to get over their near-trade for Melo unraveling just as camps were starting. (And what if they never get him?)
28 (29) Kings 25-57 My new non-Casspi-related obsession: If Cousins' big preseason launches him to the ROY trophy, this'll be the first team to field back-to-back ROYs since my Buffalo Braves did it in 1973 (Bob McAdoo) and 1974 (Ernie D).
29 (28) Raptors 40-42 Brace yourself, Canada, for a season's worth of cracks about how the Raps belong more in the Euroleague with a core headlined by Bargnani, Kleiza, Calderon and Barbosa. And many commiserations from this Canada lover.
30 (26) Pistons 27-55 Jonas Jerebko went down early. T-Mac's comeback hasn't even started yet. And the sale of the team is still pending. Add it all up and October ranks as another month that was far too Lions-like for the formerly mighty Pistons.