CLEVELAND – The Cavaliers come into the fifth pre-season game tonight looking for their first victory against the 76ers, a team that has some serious prospects in the Eastern Conference this year courtesy of Andre Iguodala, Andre Miller and Elton Brand, who bolted the Los Angeles Clippers during the off-season for the cold and cash in Philly.
Mike Brown continues the same line that the team is only looking to get better. They’re relaxed, focused and just looking at it as a warm-up. I suspect there will be a change in attitude beginning next week.
Game: Cavaliers (1-4) vs. Philadelphia 76ers (3-2)
Broadcast: WAKR (1590 AM); WTAM (1100 AM), WHBC (1480 AM)
Starters: Cavs: Mo Williams (G); Sasha Pavlovic (G); LeBron James (F); Ben Wallace (F); Zydrunas Ilgauskas (C). Philadelphia: Andre Miller (G); Andre Iguodala (G); Thaddeus Young (F); Marreese Speights (F); Theo Ratliff (C).
Officials: S. Corbin, E. Lewis and E. Roe.
Streaking: Cavaliers have lost four in a row.
What to watch: The 76ers are averaging more than 100 points per game in the preseason. Sasha Pavlovic gets his second start in the preseason in tonight’s game as Mike Brown continues to look for his starter in that role. The Cavs will be without rookie Darnell Jackson who fractured his left wrist at some point during the preseason.
Pregame:
In the coach’s office:
Mike Brown on Jackson’s injury: He’s having a good camp, but now he’s got to try to figure out the other side of it which is how to stay in shape, still learn and still grow and so on and so forth.
Brown said it could affect the next round of cuts.
On Wally Szczerbiak not playing: “If it was a playoff game he’d be out there. Then again with Wally’s age and the number of years he’s been in the league, if guys like that say they’re banged up or a little sore, I’d rather err on the side of being overcautious.”
In the locker room: “Jackson said he didn’t know when the injury took place, but it’s been bothering him for a couple weeks. It began as a pain that didn’t go away. He eventually asked them to check it out and team doctors found the fracture.”
“You’re out there and you’re sweating, your heart’s pumping and you’re constantly moving, you can tweak something but it’s not on your mind,’’ Jackson said. ‘’You’re just focusing on the game and that’s probably what happened.
On why he didn’t seek treatment initially: “That’s just how I am. If it’s not killing me, I don’t care. Tape me up. Duct tape and I’m ready to go.”
Post game analysis: The Cavaliers win 100-93 behind the efforts of the Delonte West-led second unit. As much as I would have liked to see more of the starters go at it in this game, reality dictates that until the regular season starts Coach Mike Brown will be using them cautiously. No arguments here. Besides, offensively at least, they delivered in the limited minutes in which they played. LeBron James had 16 points, 19 rebounds and 4 assists. Zydrunas Ilgauskas dropped in 17 and grabbed 8 rebounds.
What has to be more soothing to Brown, however, is how guard Delonte West manned up to run the team after starter Mo Williams was ejected for a friendly skirmish with Andre Miller. West produced a double-double with 17 points and 10 assists. He moved into the paint crisply, dished off intelligently and what’s becoming evident is West, after having enough time to absorb the system, plays confidently within it.
Brown must also be content with a bench that delivered against the 76ers as well. Anderson Varejao his on 7-of-7 shots and scored a total of 15, Daniel Gibson added 9 points and Wally Szczerbiak 8.
Post-game quotables:
(Coach Mike Brown on Delonte West): Delonte West did a terrific job. He distributed the ball very well and he ran the team very well when he was on the floor and he stepped in and knocked down shots when he was open.”
(Delonte West): “Even though we didn’t have our top guns out there in the fourth quarter, that shouldn’t make a difference. It’s on the five players on the floor at the time to try to win the game. It was big for the confidence of the young guys out there and also for the confidence of the team.”
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
As previously brought to light underneath George’s San Antonio game post, it’s now obvious that Jackson fractured his wrist while fixing Brown’s screen door. Will insurance cover injuries incurred off the court at the coach’s house?
What a disappointment this new blog is turning out to be. The odd font and typeset is only 1/2 of the problem. How the hell am i supposed to read that? I figured after the 1st day or 2 it would be corrected. Guess not. What a joke.
Not that there is anything there worth reading. Nice post last week George, saying something like “there really isn’t interesting going on in the preseason, nothing much to write about”. Hey George, your on the beat for the Cleveland team most likely to win a championship, we have a new point guard, a battle at the 2 guard spot, an international superstar who just happens to be from our city, 2 rookies trying to earn minutes, etc. FIND SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT!!
I have followed Windy to the PD and won’t be back.
What the hell is George SUPPOSED to write about? How wonderful Ilgauskas is? How wonderful Ferry is? How wonderful and bright the practice facility is? How James is “committed” to Cleveland, and that he is God’s gift to Akron? That’s what the former beat writer would now be sticking in his blog, if he now had one. So follow Windy, hoopman. Follow Windy.
But I can’t leave without noting your silly statement that George should be writing about that “battle” at the two spot. Hey, while he’s at it, why doesn’t George write about the legendary glorious Battle of Michaels -vs- Delucci. Or, as Don King might refer to it, the Rumble in the Bungle. That would be blog heaven.
Here’s the reality Hoopman: I like basketball and I intend to do this job to the best of my abilities.
Until three weeks ago, however, I was covering football. Gee, think there’s a difference in the two sports?
One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed in the switch is the way you cover training camp. With the Browns, it’s simple for much of it, the practices are 100 percent open. With the Cavaliers, not so much. I don’t begrudge them that. If that’s how they want to operate so that the can succeed, more power to them. But the reality is it’s difficult to gauge how well players are doing until you see them IN a game for that reason. THAT is why you see gameblogs. On off days, once the regular season starts, there will be blog entries. There are going to be growing pains, sorry if you can’t deal with that reality. But there’s a different mindset when it comes to covering football and basketball and I’ve just about waded my way through it. If you want to read Brian Windhorst exclusively, I couldn’t blame you. He is a helluva a basketball reporter. We were sorry to see him go, but as I wrote in my first post in this blog. We’re different people. You know where to find me and you know where to find him.
This blog is fine. this is pre- season for everybody and I don’t need the writer FINDING something to write about. The story is what it is.
I like the font. Easy for an old guy like me to read it in the AM. I’ll be back
The blog’s fine though I do miss the constant Ferry, Hughes and Snow apologias. Of course two of those bums are gone now but George could do something crazy like give Delonte a clean bill of mental health.
I’m enjoying your coverage. I’m glad the blog is up again after it was down all summer! Free insight from a close-proximity source is always appreciated by those of us no longer in the area.
Looks like I touched a nerve.
George, I respect your comments and understand that you are growing into the job. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. Good luck. I wish you well.
I do need to add that you said you “like” basketball. I want to read the blog of a basketball junkie, somebody who eats and sleeps the stuff, not just somebody who “likes” it. I think your mere “like” is coming through in your writing thus far. Maybe its just me.
Now about those 19 rebounds…
larry, everybody is a bit of a masochist and very occasionally likes to briefly touch their own canker sores inside their own mouths when we have them. You admit it. I admit it. Those excrutiatingly painful Ferry, Hughes, and Snow apologies are rarely missed, but there are those rare instances when I just gotta touch one.
I also like your crazy idea, in more ways than one, of George giving West a clean bill of health. I don’t read Pluto anymore, but somebody should tell Pluto this would serve as the perfect foundation for a three-page faith and religion column on mental health. Regardless, now everytime West does something really silly or woefully incompetent on the court, and many folks are mumbling, “Are you telling me that after four seasons, Ferry still couldn’t find even one good off-guard to pair with James?” we could all instead apologize for that poor kid. In the meantime, while James is enduring the majority of another season playing mostly playing one on five, I’ll be in West’s medicine cabinet taking one 20mg Lexapro a day.
Come to think of it, if Ferry has good sense, he’ll order Gibson, Pavlovic and Szczerbiak to start taking anti-depressants, too. Hell, maybe they should start passing them out to all the folks who, all these years, bought season-tickets to watch incredibly ugly basketball featuring the game’s greatest player. Heck, why limit it to just the season-ticket holders, pass them out to everybody. Anti-Depressant Night. It will just like the Indians’ old 10-Cent Beer Night, but without any of the carnage.
And hoopman, to your point, the problem with some “basketball junkies” is just like any other junkie on the street. The more they take, the less the stuff works. And pretty soon, they’re simply strung out and what results is a whole lot of incessant babble. Yeah, I’d always prefer somebody with deep Woodward and Bernstein sources, and somebody who eats, sleeps and breaths the NBA. Who wouldn’t? But as Windhorst proved time and time and time and time again, Windy seems to have absolutely no concept of what a credible source is. Nor, for that matter, appears to even care. I’ll take George instead of Windhorst any day of the week. Besides, George’s audio from several days ago, a bored as hell sleepy disgusted “thanks” at the 30-second mark after getting some unreal over-the-top BS response from Mike Brown, was, in my mind, a mini-classic. It’s that time of guy who I’d rather read for my Cavs stuff, not some overly ambitious upper 20-something biased local kid who admitted he grew up with a poster of Danny Ferry on his bedroom wall, then stabs his old employer and escapes to the neighboring competition at the very first opportunity, and then is off to ESPN when his LeBron coattail days end in less than two years.
A toast to Big George. L’Chaim!!!
it’s pre-season. george is doing just fine.
hey george , good blog . can the cavs really be this serious about entering this year with this huge hole @ the 2 guard spot ??
Come to think of it, George raised a point, and I wonder if it’s typical with the other franchises. How many of the other 29 teams close their practices? Just about everything under Ferry’s regime has been done under the cover of media darkness, whether it’s closing practices to the media, or phonying up injuries to the media, or leaking bogus information to the media, or taking a top-secret CIA stealth flight down to Brazil to bang on the front door of somebody’s mom and dad.
Are the closed Cavaliers practices an exception in the NBA, or they the general rule? Every season it’s the same closed practice thing for the Cavaliers. Why? What are they trying to hide from the media year after year after year after year, anyway? You’d think Mike Brown was teaching the secret of nuclear fission or how to sneak plastic guns past airport metal detectors, or something.
Come to think of it, George raised a point, and I wonder if it’s typical with the other franchises. How many of the other 29 teams close their practices? Just about everything under Ferry’s regime has been done under the cover of media darkness, whether it’s closing practices to the media, or phonying up injuries to the media, or leaking bogus information to the media, or taking a top-secret CIA stealth flight down to Brazil to bang on the front door of somebody’s mom and dad.
Are the closed Cavaliers practices an exception in the NBA, or they the general rule? Every season it’s the same closed practice thing for the Cavaliers. Why? What are they trying to hide from the media year after year after year after year, anyway? You’d think Mike Brown was teaching the secret of nuclear fission or how to sneak plastic guns past airport metal detectors, or something.
just start delonte at the 2 please i mean he almost got a triple double off the bench while shooting 6-8 fg and 3-3 3pt and i just dropped troy murphy in my fantasy league to sign DW
Sorry for the unintentional duplicate post … i’m using some Internet provider that i’m ashamed to say is one of my neighbors’, who, I have no idea, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, time delays ahoy.
West starting at shooting guard? Give me a break. This isn’t an exhibition game fantasy league, it’s the NBA. Why not just woo Mike Bratz out of retirement, he’d give the Cavs a solid 8 to 10 points a night, too. Still no offense to speak of, Williams is going to have to gun a lot, whether Brown likes it or not. That was a problem in Milwaukee, it’s going to be a necessity in Cleveland.
Comaguy, do you seriously have nothing better to do with your life than be on this blog 24/7? Good lord man, get out of the basement and find a woman, or at least a gerbil.
You easily have over 50% of the posts here and you also have 100% of the ridiculous and annoying posts here. A post at 10:34pm and then again at 3:03am!!!! And exactly the same comments in both posts? I’ve seen double posts before but maybe 5-10 minutes apart. You kept your post alive for over 4 hours refreshing every minute to make sure it showed? And finally just had to post it again. Wow…can anyone, anyone at all, help our poor poor comaguy find a life? Please!
How do those gerbils feel, Rick? I have a lot of free time since losing my job. Show me the ways of love.
By the way, you and your very aliases always seem to have trouble reading. When I lost my job, I dumped Roadrunner to save some cash. The way it’s looking, pretty soon I might be like you, cruising the Red Light District for Japanese businessmen. So now I’m stealing unknown faint signals from space on an unreliable old laptop. Repeat posts go with the territory.
But thanks for the Cavs-related stuff. You continue your four-year record of nothing but alan t. related stuff. I gotta hand it to you, when you set your mind to it, you’re relentless.
1. 18 minutes after I posted. Way to make my point for me comaguy.
2. And, is that the best you came up with? Take everything I say and turn it around and point it back at me? We’re a bit too old for the “I know you are but what am I” mentality. All I’m saying is its time to pick up a new hobby instead of spending every waking moment you have on this blog. You are here at all hours of the day dude, as indicated by your double post at 3am. I wouldn’t have even noticed if you hadn’t gone all drama queen about it in your other posts.
3. You lose your job. You have a coma emergency. You do whatever. Yada yada yada. Your lies, your excuses, its all tiresome. None of us remotely care about your life – why even bother, other than trying to be an attention whore. Seriously dude, get a hobby. Do something with your time. Don’t waste away trying to be the big man on this website. If you spend your time elsewhere, the readers of this blog will really appreciate it, not that you it matters to you. You’re trying too hard as it is to be top dog on this blog. The silly goals we all try to set for ourselves sometimes huh?
4. Aliases. It all in your head comaguy. This conspiracy theory you think that only one person is telling you to stfu. I enjoy reading this blog. Only time I post is to cut you down. The only time a lot of new posters post is to tell you to stfu. People get tired of it and as much as we’d all love to ignore you, you are here ALL the time – every other post is yours. I’m sure a LOT of people hate you in your real world. Just like a lot of people hate you here. This blog makes you feel self-important and you can hide out here, unlike the real world. So be it. We have much of a right to tell you to get lost, whatever – just like you have a right to be an ass. Nobody is an alias on here and for you to think so, you are truly delusional. Maybe psychiatry help is what is truly needed for you. Can you make that your next goal?
Again, a long, long, long, long rant about absolutely nothing having to do with sports. Just about me. Truly amazing, four years of relentless trolling and stalking. Thank God the Internet is just that, the Internet. In the real world, you would have been served with a restraining order. Then, after you were hauled into court for violating the restraining order, that night you would have been prison-swapped in exchange for a pack of cigarettes to a guy named “Leon.”
Regardless, keep it up, douchebag. If the Browns had folks with your laser beam focus, we’d have cheered for four years of Super Bowls.
Is windhorst coming back??? This is a pretty pathetic blog. I can watch the game myself and write this stuff. Is he still sick, or did he leave the beacon journal? I hope he’s doing alright bc he was great and really the only thing the AK Beacon J had going for in sports coverage.
The best thing about reading post season game blogs are the posting wars going on between the trogs.thanks for the laughs fellas!!
cribbs, windhorst is at the peedee now.
Are there more testimonials around the site?
Anyone with experience tell me a timefram for this?