Upon further review…the call stands!
Posted March 3rd, 2006 by Brian Windhorst
So aside from the shots in the comments section in my previous post, I’ve gotten a load of e-mail about my stating that Flip Murray should, as I quote from below, "never attempt another 3-pointer under any circumstance."
Now hear this, I firmly stand by it.
Despite the fact that he was the hero last night, making a game-winning 3-pointer to beat the Bulls. Having a guy who is a 20 percent 3-point shooter taking that shot down by two points is not a good play. Most of the time, that is not going to work out for the wine and gold. LeBron James was in traffic and he made the smart play at that second. Flip was open and once the ball came to him he had to take it, the Cavs are fortunate that he made it and they won.
The way this team goes, I expect them to run off four or five straight wins now. The major props I give to Flip for last night had nothing to do with the 3, it was the way he wasn’t afraid to attack the basket in the fourth quarter.
Whether it is the double teams or that he’s just tired at the end of games, LeBron is just settling for long jumpers these days. He’s perhaps the greatest player on his generation, but right now that’s a black mark on his game and his team, because it is largely the scheme’s fault. Flip attacked the glass and scored 11 points in the fourth quarter and he scored the Cavs last seven points. He wasn’t being double-teamed like LeBron, so it was easier. But he also showed the nerve to try to make it happen.
As for my other comments:
–I never said Eric Snow was Ben Wallace. I said Snow, like Wallace, can be effective even though he’s usually not a danger to score. Gary Payton circa 1995 isn’t sitting on the bench to come in, people. Eric is the only true point guard the Cavs have and he’s the only perimeter player who truly cares about defense right now, so he must play more down the stretch. I’m not just making this up. I’ve talked to scouts and other league executives not to mention I’ve watched all but one game this season in person. LeBron isn’t a point guard, he shouldn’t be running the point more than a few times a game because it makes it too easy to get the ball out of his hands. And he sure shouldn’t be leading a break, he should be finishing them. Damon Jones has been playing harder, but he’s at his best when playing alongside Snow if you haven’t noticed.
–LeBron went 11-of-13 at the free-throw line last night. He missed his last two at a bad time in the fourth quarter. That is another issue. He’s been on a bad free-throw track of late as have a the Cavs. But last night when he was 11-of-11 they were still in danger of losing. On the list of worries for this team and LeBron, free throws are way down the list.
–I do regret saying the Cavs are in the bottom third of the league defensively. In some stats, such as field goal percentage defense and 3-point defense, they are. The points per game they are in the upper half. So I’ll say that as a whole, they are an average defensive team right now.
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:27 am
1) B I stand by your statement as well. We do not want Flip taking those in the playoffs … however who do we want taking them? He’s got as much of a chance as DJ or DM eh?
2) Right now Free Throws don’t worry me too much … in a month or two they do. And if we make it past the first round I get really scared.
3) Average is perhaps an overstatement. They may not let teams score a ton, but they are letting them score more than they themselves are scoring….
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:54 am
First, that’s a rather unflattering photo of Snow. Couldn’t you find one that doesn’t say, “What you looking at, boy?”
Second, please, please, please. Stop the Vulcan mindmelds with Michael Reghi. More mindmelds with Joe Tait, less mindmelds with Michael Reghi. Listen, I completely understand Mr. Reghi is happily paid to ram the marketing phrase “the wine and gold” down people’s throats. But BW is not getting paid for this marketing purpose. It gets far more than silly when the purported “wine and gold” is often seen in 90% dark blue, and most other times in 90% white. If the Cavaliers are “the wine and gold,” then Zydrunas Ilgauskas is “a lanky African American.”
Third, I completely agree with you about Snow. He’s the very best of the very worst, but as Cleveland point guards go, he’s still the best man for the job. James already has far too much on his plate as it is.
Fourth, “Damon Jones has been playing harder,” is not a sentence that should be written about any NBA player, let alone about Damon Jones. If one has to “play harder,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, as opposed to simply playing hard every night, then you stink and you shouldn’t be on an NBA roster. Instead get yourself a nice cushy desk job as a government employee.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Eric Snow can be effective at times but he usually isn’t. He played well last night, for instance, but 14 pts. and 8 assists should be an average night for a ball distributor on a contending team, not a season highlight.
And in the fourth quarter, when a guy praised as much as Snow is should be stabilizing the team and generating good shots, the Cavs reverted to their hang dog-body language, give-it-to-LeBron-and-watch-him-take-20-foot-fadeaways mode. Luckily, a guy criticized for not being a “pure” shooter showed competitive grit and bailed out the team on an assist from LeBron.
I guess what I’m getting at is that myths like “pure point guard” and “pure shooter” should be reserved for fantasy league enthusiasts and not used as tools of the trade by NBA GMs and beat reporters. More often than not, someone referred to as pure in one area is very limited in other areas. Trying to fit a bunch of specialists together, like Ferry did this off season, never seems to work, at least not until a team has a particular strength to hang its hat on.
In my lifetime, pure point guards like Snow have won very few championships. Guys like Parker and Billups are scorers as much as ball distributors, and teams that have won multiple championships have had backcourts such as Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson, Harper and Jordan, Kenny Smith and Vernon Maxwell. Prototypes Kidd and Stockton never won, though they were much bigger threats to score than Snow is now. Mo Cheeks may have fit the myth, but he could hit open shots pretty consistently and that was twenty-odd years ago.
By all accounts, Snow is a fine man and teammate. But he isn’t an answer to the Cavs problems just because they don’t have anyone else. At this point in his career, Snow’s emblematic of the Cavs’ flawed approach to building a championship roster.
March 3rd, 2006 at 3:15 pm
In Eric Snow’s defense (no pun intended), he wasn’t the maroon that signed Damon Jones’ vagabond franchise-travelin’ twin Kevin Ollie to a 50-year, 3-billion dollar contract. Snow’s contract was necessary to unload Ollie. Snow was a definite upgrade. Sure, just like Ilgauskas and Marshall and Jones and everybody else clogging the salary cap, Snow’s lack of speed and his style of play is a disaster when combined with James. Nobody who hammers Snow will get any argument from me.
With that said, for all the whiners and complainers, you may not have noticed that good point guards don’t grow on trees. Ferry blew the opportunity to get any good point guard through a trade when he threw all that salary cap space down the dumper. Snow is the best alternative. It’s not a good alternative, but it’s the best alternative. Scouts from other teams evidently feel the same way.
Gilbert should have made a very concerted effort and asked Wayne Embry to come back. The good moves he made during his short temporary GM stint in Toronto were consistent with the philosophies spelled out in his autobiography. Embry would have moved Ilgauskas, wouldn’t have signed the other dreck, and would have had a solid strategy for solving the point guard situation during the off-season. Moot point now.
March 3rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Hey, I work on a 13″ screen. What is in that first photo? I hate these weird inkblot Windhorst Rorschach Tests. It makes me very self-conscious and makes me wonder if there is something seriously wrong with my head. I don’t need this kind of sadism inflicted upon me.
Is it part of Ira Newble’s circular driveway? No, it’s an extreme close-up of the left side of Ilgauskas’ bald spot. No, wait a minute, it’s the ceremonial tattoo branded like a cow into Windhorst’s arm when he did three months of undercover reporting inside that black fraternity back in 1999. The awesome price one pays to get a scoop during spring semester at the Daily Kent Stater. No, perhaps it’s…ah, hell, I have absolutely no idea.
March 4th, 2006 at 10:06 am
I wouldn’t use points allowed “per game” as a reasonable stat for defense. Scoring 100 points against Memphis will win you the game. Scoring 100 points against the Suns usually means you lost by 15, because they are such a faster tempo team. You should look at the “points per 100 possessions”. The Cav’s are doing OK there because they are the third best defensive rebounding team in the league. Other teams don’t get as many second chance points against the Cav’s as they do other teams. Unfortuntely, other teamms have good shooting percentages against us, which isn’t how Coach Brown wants the team to play– What ever happened to the “fronting the post” we tried at the beginning of the season?
March 4th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
It’s such a dumb topic. Really. The guys on this team have been in the league for years, and the majority are renowned for being bad defenders. Even if they had the knowledge and the desire, they have neither the capacity nor the skills. Why does the media, including this beat writer, pretend? If Mike Brown wants good defensive players, then he should ask the genius in the front office to acquire them. Like Bill Parcells says a billion times a season, “It is what it is.”
If Mike Brown said he was going to “teach” Brian Windhorst to become seven-feet-tall, would Brian Windhorst have any chance in hell of becoming seven-feet-tall? Just work on getting the most of that Atlas-like 5′2″ frame, and be done with it. It’s idiotic to constantly focus upon matters that can’t be changed. Brown would probably stand around with the microphones stuffed in his face and tell Bob Finnan, “Yes, we have been working very hard. The progress we’ve been making is excellent. Especially in tonight’s second-half, Windhorst’s pituitary gland was vertically rising.”
And I’ll ask again: What is that first photo?
March 4th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
The image is named 3point.jpg.
March 5th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Uh, folks, it’s a 3-point line. The dangerous realm where Cavs shooters go to die.
March 8th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Lebron is exhausted, that’s why he’s not attacking the hoop. He weighs 240, it’s hard to get that body in the air time after time.