folks desperately want to give him credit. reggie jackson and jr smith both had strong careers as starters and/or important role players for years before lue got them on the rebound from something. it's not like he took lifelong s***bags and turned them into nba players. those guys were good, suffered some injury (jackson) or embarrassment (both, i think), were humbled, and found a nice role with him. again, other coaches would love for people that talented to arrive on their doorstep humbled. and smith's best year as a cav was the year before lue took over. and this is my point.
So in other words he doesn't credit when things actually work out. He gets the most out of players consistently and tweaks lineups that work and in unexpected ways but it's all a credit to circumstances. It's like Phil Jackson wasn't a great coach because he always had Jordan, Kobe, or Shaq. Anyone could win with them
you gave him credit for jr smith and reggie jackson. he doesn't deserve it, imo. if anything, blatt should get smith credit, right? he won a title with lebron. he went the opposite of undefeated without him. did phil go 0-18 ever? i just don't get the fuss about this guy at all.
Lue was the lead assistant for JR first year and JR was a better player the second year with the Cavs IMO (better team defender etc). The reggie jackson assertion is based on nothing? Jackson was considered a ball-stopping malcontent who teams didn't want to burden their coaches with. Got his team above .500 with no Kawhi and less than 1/2 season with Paul George Got to the WCF w/o Kawhii The Lebron title was against a 72 win juggernaut Not sure where the 0-18 came from, Cavs fired him after 6 games. Then promptly lost another 12 lol: definitely Lue's fault <shrug>
it's called the lebron title for a reason. and he had the best version of kyrie and a still good version of kevin love. plus jr smith! who blossomed under head coach david blatt, but lue's getting credit for it because lue (really, it was neither of them and just jr realizing he wasn't a star). numbers don't support growth from one year to the next there. the clippers have an expensive roster and no incentive to tank. you can always compete for 10th with that. they missed the playoffs, just like us. they're 2 games better than us this year and sport the league's 24th-ranked offense.
+1 Thought he had a good game. Hes a NBA average to below average starting PG in the NBA but NBA starter on the minimum is a lot of value
It was very refreshing to see him find other ways to contribute if he's not scoring. I'd like to see more of that. If he wants a payday this summer, that's how you get it.
If that guy could drop 20lbs think how much quicker even. Where’s Kareem … probably crawling into the rack about now after a hard day dunking on bad guys.
Dennis goes through these mini shooting slumps frequently, it reminds me of KCP. Not comparing them as players, Dennis is only 6'1, but they are similar in how their shot comes and goes, inexplicably some times. Hopefully he'll break out of it soon.
I"m a fan of Dennis but he's playing way too many minutes and he's become an "automatic" finishing player. He fights but he's too small of a defender and his jumpshot is too inconsistent to a be threat off ball when you want to go Lebron or AD post-up. This has to change when Reaves comes back - you get another playmaker who is bigger and can is more consistent threat from the perimeter.
he's just not a starter. we have two good 25mpg backup pgs on the roster and no starter. assuming kyrie isn't happening, i'm getting very keen on trying to get fvv.
could have started with the pelicans game...but anyway, yes, i think if we win 2/3 of the remaining games, we're probably challenging for the 6 seed (in part because some of those wins would have to be against teams currently ahead of us). but this would constitute playing better basketball than we have shown yet this year.
I agree. They need to play at a high winning percentage from here on if they want to make the playoffs and leapfrog the playin on the way. Tall order. NO was a game we should have won. Can’t have many more of those.
since the 2-10 start, we're 23-19. if you say the latter is probably who we really are, all things considered, that would predict us winning 15 instead of 19 of the remaining 28. that 15 is probably my prediction, tbh. could miss the play-in with that, depending on what happens with other teams, injuries, and who exactly we beat. again, pels game was brutal in this regard.
I’d say somewhere in between like 17 but we’ll see. Many of those games since the bad start we were missing either AD or Lebron and of course the last month or thereabouts we were absent AR and Walker too. There may still be some more injuries but hopefully we are through the worst of them. We shall see if we make any helpful trades. Rui was a good pick up too.