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After a long, tortuous summer filled with sunny days and absolutely no NBA news of any importance, the 2013-14 season is set to kick off. This means the leaves will change, the cheeks will redden, and 400-some NBA players will ready those aching knees to play for the right to work all the way to June.
The minds at Ball Don’t Lie – Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine, and Eric Freeman – have your teams covered. All 30 of ‘em, as we countdown to tipoff.
Kelly Dwyer’s Palatable Exercise
The “One Coach Away”-syndrome is as old as the NBA itself, but its persistence doesn’t make it any less unfortunate. Championship teams have relied on types like Phil Jackson or Pat Riley to push them over the edge, while recent switchouts in Chicago have taken the Bulls from mediocre to championship-contending. The Clippers are hoping to recreate the same success story with Doc Rivers in place in Los Angeles, as are the Nets in Brooklyn with Jason Kidd.
The Cavaliers? They just don’t want to be awful. And for the last three seasons, the team has been miserable, piling up just 66 wins in three seasons. That’s the amount of games the LeBron James-led 2008-09 Cavaliers won under former and current coach Mike Brown, the team’s newest hoped-for savior, one looking to clean up the mess that former coach Byron Scott couldn’t develop.
Scott had his caveats. After a pathetic attempt at soldiering on as if James’ move to Miami never happened in 2010-11, the Cavs finally submitted to rebuilding in Scott’s second year. And while guard Kyrie Irving looks and plays like a star, he’s still missed 47 games over his two-year career. Slowly starting over, the Cavs didn’t splurge on any free agent talent until this summer, and even that was a cautious offseason turn. The plan was to start from the bottom and head up, and as the team lucked into two top overall draft picks, the assets have been in place.
This is where Brown steps in, hopefully well-aware that he has quite a bit to learn as head coach after previous stints in Cleveland, and a disastrous turn replacing Phil Jackson in Los Angeles. Few know the game as well as Brown, but it’s the articulation and execution (especially in late game situations) that has been lacking in his teams over the last few years, as frustrated Cleveland LeBron-era fans can attest. Brown does enter the situation with a bit of gravitas on his side, something he couldn’t claim as a rookie coach in 2005-06 with the Cavs or while staring down Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. This is something Scott, despite all those marathon practices, could not wrangle to his benefit.
The onus will be on Irving as well, as he’s the lead man at the top of a defense that has been amongst the league’s worst for the last two seasons. Kyrie has been going at it just about alone, to be fair, but despite his late-game heroics you still get the feeling he could have dragged his team to just a few more wins over the last couple of seasons. Beside him stands Dion Waiters, he of the off-balance jumper and questionable shot selection. Even with the Cavaliers slowly putting things together, both have a lot of growing to do this season.
Jarrett Jack will help. As one of Cleveland’s free agent prizes, the respected veteran combo guard will likely finish games alongside Irving, or at the very least be part of a secondary crew that hopes to actually put teams away in the second and third quarters. The Cavs took a cautious approach with former All-Star center Andrew Bynum, there’s no point in even guessing if he’ll contribute anything to the Cavalier cause this season, making the return to health of celebrated Cavs big man Anderson Varejao all the more wonderful. Second year center Tyler Zeller will probably welcome the reduced role, as he was tossed around quite a bit during his rookie year.
In forwards Tristan Thompson and top overall pick Anthony Bennett, the Cavaliers have two forwards that could possibly clash in terms of minutes and playing style, but the Cavs were right to go for who they felt was the top talent in the draft last year, in spite of possibly being shoe-horned into a small forward position that doesn’t suit him. The “take the best player available” is always the smartest route, but as was the case when the Atlanta Hawks tried the same thing in the 2005 draft, did the Cavalier front office identify the actual best player? In a thin draft, there’s no way of telling.
What Brown brings to the table is another story. It’s true that the Cavaliers will introduce three bankable names in various roles in Bennett, Jack and Bynum, but by and large the front office is still taking its sweet time, still waiting out that impending 2014 cap space, and still pondering what to do with final two years and nearly $19 million that Varejao has left on his contract. Forget LeBron, if the Cavs want to attract any big time free agent next year, they have to make Irving’s team a destination worth seeking out. A slight jump in the standings and more defensive misgivings won’t be enough.
That’s Brown’s gig. For once, he’s not a prospect nor a holdover. He’s a savior.
Is Mike Brown suited to the task of turning a franchise around from the sidelines? The Cavs have 82 games and just eight months to get it right before July hits.
Projected record: 35-47
Tune In, Turn Up with Dan Devine
While only a handful of NBA teams each season harbor serious hope of hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy come late June, all 30 come equipped with at least one reason to keep your television set locked on their games. Dan Devine shares his suggested reasons for the season ahead.
Tune into the Cavaliers for … Kyrie Irving, duh.
I don’t expect extra credit for ingenuity here. That said, this section doesn’t demand a high degree of difficulty; sure, I could go against the grain and suggest tuning in to see if Tyler Zeller avoids becoming forgotten in a now-crowded frontcourt, but that wouldn’t pass the smell test. Plus, the Cavs’ big-picture issue – whether returning head coach Mike Brown can improve a Cleveland defense that’s ranked among the NBA’s five worst for the past three years enough to spark a playoff push – isn’t enticing enough to keep folks from channel-surfing.
Also, Eric called dibs on Andrew Bynum. (Which is fine. I got plenty of opportunities this offseason.)
That leaves me stuck singing hosannas for a guy who’s needed just 110 big-league games to establish himself as one of the league’s 20 or so best, who has led the NBA in “clutch” scoring (defined by 82games.com as points put up in the fourth quarter or overtime, with less than five minutes left and the score within five points) in both of his pro seasons, and whose phenomenal handle leaves defenders on skates, or worse, on a nightly basis. We all have our crosses to bear.
When I wrote about Irving this time last year, I noted the in-context statistical brilliance of his first season -- how only seven other first-year players had matched his per-game scoring/rebounding/assist averages, how that narrowed to just Oscar Robertson when the numbers were adjusted per 36 minutes of floor time, and how he was the only rookie among the 37 players in NBA history to shoot at least 46.9 percent from the field, 39.9 percent from 3-point range and 87.2 percent from the foul line over a full season. His percentages dipped a bit as a sophomore, but remained strong (45.2/39.1/85.5) despite taking more attempts per-36, and those marks still kept him in rarefied air.
Only three players age 22 or younger who took more than 10 total 3s have shot that well in a full season – Irving, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry. Kyrie and Steph have each done it twice; Kyrie, who turns 22 in March, could add a historic third this season. Irving also became one of just four players under age 25 to average at least 23 points, six assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals per 36 minutes over a full season, joining LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Russell Westbrook. Only Irving and James did it before turning 22.
Irving has proven his bona fides as a dynamic penetrator, a creative finisher, a knockdown shooter and a fantastic ball-handler. He must, however, continue to make strides as a facilitator and defender if he’s to join the ranks of the game’s absolute best. While Brown might have his work cut out with Irving on the defensive end, the guard should stand a better chance of advancing as a floor general this season.
For one thing, he reduced his turnover rate nicely from Year 1 to Year 2, which is a nice start. For another, while he assisted on a lower percentage of teammates’ field goals last season than in his rookie campaign, this year’s Cavs – with talented top pick Anthony Bennett, the possibility of healthy interior finishers Bynum and Anderson Varejao, and another year of seasoning for lottery picks Tristan Thompson and Dion Waiters – appear to have more complementary options capable of helping shoulder the scoring load and pushing Cleveland’s offensive efficiency out of the league’s bottom third. That could influence Kyrie to look for his own offense a bit less and look for his teammates a bit more. (The presence of Jarrett Jack, who’s already made clear where he thinks Cavs should set their sights, could also help Irving, who hasn’t had a veteran point guard like Jack consistently in his ear.)
The existing version of Kyrie, who’s capable of doing this:
... was already must-see TV, even on a bad team with regular 7 p.m. League Pass tip-offs. A version better equipped to strike the balance between getting his teammates involved and knowing when to take over could have the Cavs playing in front of much larger audiences much later into the spring. Miss him at your own risk.Honorable mentions: The possible return of Bynum, who’s really good at basketball, I swear; the return of Varejao, who is fun and was arguably a top-five two-way frontcourt player before injury last season; finding out whether Thompson’s hand-switch pays major dividends during the regular season; the increasing chance of Matthew Dellavedova sticking around as Cleveland’s third point guard, because he’s a fun player and seems like a good egg.
Eric Freeman’s Land of Confusion
NBA analysis typically thrives on certainty, a sense that a trained expert sees the truth and points fans towards the key issues and most likely outcomes. Yet, as any seasoned observer of the league knows, events often unfold in unforeseen ways, with players performing against predictions or outside of the realm of presumed possibility altogether. In fact, it may sometimes make sense to dispense with the pretense of predictive genius and instead point towards those issues that as yet provide no simple answer. In Eric Freeman’s Land of Confusion, we investigate one player per team whose future remains vague.
For at least a season, Andrew Bynum has been more punchline than player, a collection of weird hairstyles rather than an All-Star and two-time champion. This is not particularly surprising — fairly or not, Bynum has come across as something of a space cadet in his career up until this point, and his lone season on the roster of the Philadelphia 76ers will likely be forgotten by anyone not expressly interested in NBA trivia.
However, if we look at the basic facts of Bynum’s current predicament, then we see a familiar case. He’s a proven talent coming off a major knee injury with the need to prove not only that he’s fully recovered but also able to succeed with a new team and unfamiliar teammates. At the same time, there are reasons to think this all could work. For the entirety of his tenure with the Lakers, Bynum had to work around established systems: the franchise’s mystique, Phil Jackson’s triangle offense, everything associated with Kobe Bryant, etc. In Cleveland, Bynum will have the chance to build something with a young core and budding star in Kyrie Irving. Bynum is in a difficult situation, but it’s also an opportunity for positive growth largely free of the pressure he experienced in Los Angeles.
That’s not to say that Bynum finds himself in an ideal position, particularly when you consider that he once seemed assured of signing a max-level contract this past summer. But it may be that we look back on Bynum’s lost 2012-13 as something more than a comic diversion. Perhaps it will serve as something more like a rebirth.