Surprise, Surprise!
There are a lot of folks around the League that might be a little surprised by the Cavs 2-0 start to the season. I’m not ‘around the League’, and I’m also not surprised. Mind you, they haven’t exactly taken down a pair of giants, but pretty much every team the Cavs beat this year has been picked by most to finish ahead of them. Thing is, this shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. The surprise should have been how bad the Cavs were last season.
Just What the Doctor Ordered
There are a few things I was looking for in my season preview:
- Sexton going 25-5-5
- Garland going 17-6-3
- Nance pulling ahead of Love
- Drummond being a huge plus over Tristan Thompson
- Osman making-or-breaking
Through two games, this is what we got:
- Sexton 27-5-2 & 32-3-2
- Garland 22-6-6 & 21-12-5
- Nance started G1, going 13-8-13, but was mostly a non-factor in G2.
- Drummond 14-4-14 & 23-5-16
- Osman 11-4-2 in 17 minutes & 22-0-4 points in 25 minutes- on 57% from both the field and from deep.
Okoro has had one big game and one invisible game, but even then, he was a +16. JaVale had our early-season highlight with a gliding coast-to-coast dunk. Kevin Love is playing with a level of aggression that was missing last year, and in winning time, Sexton is just not willing to let go. Garland looks infinitely more physical than he did last year, which makes sense coming off a knee injury. Tristan Thompson scoring 37 points efficiently across two games would be two of his best scoring games, rather than a standard output, as with Drummond.
In short, a lot of the progress we’re seeing is exactly the sort of development we should expect to see with an offseason of relative continuity and the growth of a rebuilding core that averages something like 22 years old. Coach Bickerstaff seems to be managing things well, and, at the very least, he’s not actively getting in the way in some of the ways we saw Beilein do on occasions last year.
Storm Clouds on the Horizon
Everything isn’t rainbows and roses, in the #CLE, though. Dylan Windler has been bitten once again by the injury bug, this time a potentially broken ring finger, and is due to miss at least a week.
More seriously, Kevin Porter Jr. has yet to join the team following a string of personal development setbacks that are poised to negatively affect his professional development. When the NBA bubble was deep in the playoffs, Porter Jr. was busy racking up troubling allegations and charges. The charges that had been brought relating to a serious car accident he was in have been dropped, but it seems he needs additional time to work through these issues. It would likely be in the Cavs’ best interest to be very proactive in getting Porter Jr whatever help might be appropriate in order to dump water on these issues right now.
Game 2: Detroit Motor City
The Cavs played a solid game for much of the night before surrendering the lead midway through the fourth quarter. You never want to surrender a lead, but this is a young team that has not played with an expectation of winning either in several years for the veterans or since college for the padawans- these are habits that have to be learned, and basketball is a game of runs in any case. They did a great job rallying in the fourth, and, after coming out flat, they did so again with their backs against the wall, down nine points with two minutes left in OT1.
Going in to the second overtime period, they looked to have had enough. They came out and slammed the door on the Pistons, with Sexton once again leading the way.
I get to go to my first game of the year tomorrow night when they play against the 76’ers, which will likely be the toughest test of this young season. Luckily, they are coming off a back-to-back as well, although they did not require double overtime to dispatch the Knicks.
No matter what, it will be a blast to watch Sexton compete his ass off, and with Garland looking like a strong backcourt mate, this could be an exciting year.