Asleep at the wheel?

I’ve been known to refer to Tribe manager Eric Wedge as the comatose rabbit due to his astonishing propensity for sitting in the dugout doing nothing other than wiggling his nose. This phenomenon is especially pronounced when the Cliff Lee gets knocked around for five runs on six hits with two walks in two and two-thirds innings and Wedge remains motionless while everyone else is scurrying about with the look of mild panic that usually accompanies people with a vested interest in their team doing well — relative to movement Wedge’s non-movement is heightened to a frustrating degree. But “comatose rabbit” is actually his natural state. Wedge stoicism personified — personified in the form of a burrowing, plant-eating mammal with long ears, long hind legs, a short fluffy tail, and a tendency to hide eggs and foil hunters named Fudd. In times of calm or even joy, like when the Indians are cruising in a game with an insurmountable lead (1) or are walking off the field in the glow of victory, the comatose rabbit routine smacks of determined professionalism and a singular drive. But in other moments it is exceedingly tough to watch cutaways on STO to Wedge in the dugout chewing on what I can only presume are small green leaves.

And then you get something like this and, well, jeez. It makes you wonder if he really is comatose.

It was at that point, in the last month of the 2006 season, that Peralta knew it might be time to pop in some contact lenses.

“I could feel it for myself,” Peralta said Tuesday. “I didn’t see the ball very good and, when I was playing shortstop, I couldn’t see the signs at home plate. I knew I had a problem with my eyes.”

Peralta was right. He had been diagnosed with myopia (near-sightedness) earlier in the year, but he opted not to wear the contacts given to him, because he didn’t like the way they felt in his eyes.

There was a while there in the late 1980s/early 1990s when the movie Major League hit a bit close to home for some Cleveland Indians fans. We knew that the actual Indians didn’t resemble the humorous mix of flotsam and jetsam that was the fictional Indians roster, at least not completely. If anything, the fictional team actually won games, which provided the crucial distance necessary for the humor not to sting so hard. But anytime your team becomes the subject of a comedy about how bad a professional baseball team can be you never feel completely distanced from the subject and the sting of the humor still hurts. It’s the proximity to reality that gets you.

So perhaps the only thing more painful than your team being spoofed in a Hollywood movie is when the actual team out-exaggerates the fictional team; when the distance between real and facsimile turns back on itself and the real supplants the fictional as the site of spoof and humor. Enter: Jhonny Peralta, who after a full season of sucking at the plate is finally willing to sacrifice comfort/style for the betterment of the team. It was his eyesight that caused problems both at the plate and in the field, but he refused to wear contact lenses because they were uncomfortable and, presumably, refused to wear RecSpecs because they were not hip (it’s a testament to the reporting that the obvious question — why not glasses? — goes unanswered). The learning curve for Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn — who, remember was portrayed as a superficial airhead — was just a few weeks. Peralta? And entire season. Incredible. (2)

Which makes you wonder what sort of control Wedge has over the team. Did he know that Peralta was diagnosed as nearsighted? If not, how could he not know such things? Knowing whether or not your short stop can see seems like critical information for a manager. If he did know about Peralta’s eyesight, how could he not get him to do something about it during the season? Baseball is a pretty tough game. I’m sure seeing helps. I mean, you’d think so, right? Hell, some players will even go so far as to wear contacts that are designed to help them pick up the rotation on a 95 mph pitch. It’s no wonder Peralta was striking out so much: if you can’t see the ball you aren’t going to hit the ball. Was Wedge powerless to do anything about this?

The only thing more surprising about this story that the local media haven’t been having a field day with it. I am totally flummoxed.

1: An insurmountable lead being redefined last season whenever the team had to turn to the bullpen; it’s no coincidence that the comatose rabbit became more pronounced last season than is seasons past.

2: If anything, we now have a new standard of vanity against which to measure all other professional athletes.

Give Oden the ball

Billy Packer tends to drive me nuts. Every few seasons he seems to say something inane — calling Allen Iverson a monkey, verbally abusing two Duke students for having the audacity to be both female and working a men’s college basketball game, railing against St. Joseph for being given a #1 seed in the NCAAs, railing against the selection committee for inviting mid-major teams over major conference teams that finish 8-6 in their conference — and what he says usually undercuts any authority he’s earned as a basketball analyst. It seems he just can’t stop himself sometimes and during those times I want to throw my shoe at the television. This isn’t a blowhard being contrarian just to be contrarian. This is a blowhard who thinks he’s right even when he’s blatantly wrong, which is certainly the most undesirable of characteristics to be found in a person with a microphone and a national audience.

That said, strictly as an analyst of on-court matters Packer possesses a degree of insight generally lacking across the profession (I’m looking you at you, Vital. And you, Lundquist. A little razzle dazzle! Kiss it off the glass!). This afternoon during the OSU-Wisconsin game Packer put his finger on something that has slowly become obvious to most OSU fans: the team does not use Greg Oden well. There Oden will be, battling down low for position, momentarily earning that position, and then …. there his teammates will be, dribbling about on the perimeter, not passing him the ball. It’s almost as if they aren’t aware that standing just 12 feet away is a monster of a player who may very well be the first overall selection in the upcoming NBA draft (although I say he’s staying in school). No one on the current team will be in his lifetime a better basketball player than Oden is right now. No one. And yet they all play like a bunch of Larry Hughes’s (6-17 today. Good times!), jacking up jumpers like it’s the end of the world (well, with a few exceptions).

Packer suggested that if the team wants to advance to the Final Four, Oden needs to attempt at least 14 shots per game. I say Oden attempts 25 shots per game. During the Wisconsin game Oden could have scored an easy 20 points if his teammates only found him down low when he had extremely good position. He could have score another 10 points if he’d have been given the ball when he had just adequate position. The fact of the matter is, Oden is a college version of Shaq. He’s big enough that no one can guard him close, but agile enough that he can score when he gets the ball eight feet away either by unleashing one of his low post moves or by getting to the line.

(Anyone else find it strange that Oden is only four points behind LBJ in free throw shooting percentage even though Oden is a student, is taller, is less talented, and has to shoot them with his off hand? Who wouldn’t be in favor of NBA teams fining players who shoot free throws at a percentage lower than Oden? Shouldn’t this be enforced just on principle alone? It could be called The Oden Rule. In addition to being fined there would be a temporary moratorium on looking hard after taking an and-1 because making a layup while being fouled is tough, but bricking a free throw is pathetic, and pathetic overrides tough, at least in my book.)

So far Packer’s insights have been about what you’d expect from anyone familiar with basketball. But then he astutely observed another downfall of misusing Oden in the manner the team does: he gets shot-happy. Every time he gets the ball down low he shoots. Why? Maybe because his touches are so few and so erratic that he wants to get his shots when he can. Can you blame him? Probably not. And this might be the most damning aspect of not giving Oden the ball. Oden is incredibly tall and teams routinely double and triple team him. OSU has a bunch of pretty good shooters and slashing scorers, many of whom are open when Oden has multiple men guarding him. Put those two things together and you get a big man who can facilitate the offense with a deft array of passes. Double team Oden and he’ll pass it out to the slashing man who’ll get an easy layup. Triple team Oden and he’ll find the guy in the corner for an open three. When you force teams to guard Oden like the player that he can be — bid, dominating — you open up passing and driving lanes for everyone else. When Oden is just another player who happens to be big and able — which is essentially how he’s being used right now; kind of like Dials Light — you lose not only the advantage of his individual talent, but also the advantage of a player who forces other teams to play defense in a way they are unaccustomed to. After all, how many teams have to guard a Gred Oden during the regular season? How many teams have a player in practice who can simulate Gred Oden? Four? Five? Two? But Oden can facilitate the offense with deft passes only when he’s getting the ball often enough that he’s not under any pressure to shoot it. Oden should touch the ball on at least 75% of the team’s possessons. Unfortunately, that’s not happening now. Even more worrisome is that however incapable the team is of feeding Oden the ball when he’s being guarded man-to-man, they are more incapable when teams run a zone — which is exactly the sort of defense that should make the OSU offense salivate.

Right now OSU is ranked #1 in the nation and is well on its way to earning a #1 seed in the NCAAs. But unless the Oden situation gets fixed soon, the team will also be the most vulnerable #1 seed in the country and, barring some outstanding play by one of the guards, will be more likely than not of losing before the elite eight than after.

Two things

First: Tails never fails. What to do what that third pick (trade down or draft Joe Thomas!)…

Second: This item from today’s ABJ:

[Trading for Mike Bibby] proved too difficult to get done on short notice, and the Cavs, Kings, Suns and most other teams ended up doing nothing before the NBA’s 3 p.m. trade deadline.

Short notice?!?!

How long have the Cavs known that the biggest hole on the team was at point guard? At least since last year’s draft, if not much earlier (and I really hope the FO was aware of this problem earlier than last June). How long has it been known that the Kings were interested in trading Bibby? A few months, at least. Perhaps even as far back as this summer. How long have the Cavs know that the trading deadline was 3pm Feb 22? A very long time.

I’m not going to fault Ferry for not making the deal happen — from reports it sounds like the Kings were the holdup and Ferry offered everything but the kitchen sink and LBJ to land Bibby. But the “short notice” excuse for why the deal was too difficult to execute is ridiculous. Did everyone go into a coma in January and just wake up three days ago? Short notice, please. Next season, when the Cavs still don’t have a point guard, and the trading deadline passes and the team still doesn’t have a point guard, do you think it will be reported that “The trade for X proved to difficult to get done on such short notice”?

Never again

There was a while there in the second quarter of tonight’s game against the Bulls that Mike Brown was playing without LBJ, Hughes, Gibson, Ilgauskas, Jones or Pavlovic on the court (I realize Pavs, Jones, and Z were unable to play). No, I didn’t think it was possible to play without at least one of those players on the court, either.

But then there it was — the debut of the Bumblefuck Unit. Boy was it glorious. Eric Snow at point guard. Shannon Brown at turnover. David Wesley at small turnover. Donyell Marshall at void. Drew Gooden at space cadet. Scot Pollard at personal foul. Dwayne Jones at power turnover. This was the rotation used at the start of the second quarter, and so it is no surprise that the Cavs went from tied with the Bulls at 22 to down by fourteen points about three minutes later. Not that things improved any. With just about two minutes to go in the quarter the Cavs had scored a whopping five points in the period and were looking to set a record for this season for fewest points scored in the first half, which they narrowly avoided thanks to a late basket by LBJ to push them just over the 29 point mark.

The Cavs were fourteen notches below terrible in the second quarter and nothing Mike Brown did seemed to work.

Which raises an obvious question: How much does Ira Newble actually suck? Clearly more than you or I ever thought, that’s for sure. This might have been the lowest point in his life after being named Ira. How terrible must one’s basketball skills be not to crack the Bumblefuck Unit? I mean, there were three important players out of the lineup, so that immediately bumps everyone up three spots. Then the team goes into an offensive coma. But Mike Brown needs to rest his starters, so he keeps playing Shannon Brown, Eric Snow, and David Wesley together, a site I hope to never witness again, and he sticks with Gooden and Marshall. None of this goes so well. All hope is seemingly lost. The team can’t even get off a jumper. A crisis ensues. So Mike Brown casts his steely gaze down the bench and taps… Dwayne Jones! Dwayne Jones! Seriously!?! Dwayne Jones? The same Dwayne Jones whose only play of note was dorking an easy entrance pass out of bounds, which then led to the classic confused glance at his hands and made you kind of wonder how it is that he’s being paid to play a sport that requires a lot of hand-eye coordination (compromising pictures of Gilbert rubbing Ferry’s bald head?). All the while Ira Newble was parked bench picking up a lovely DNP — Coach’s Decision.

Is there something wrong with Newble that I’m not aware of? Is he injured? Is there a reason other than his suckiness that’s keeping him parked on the bench during a quarter in which the Cavs have more turnovers than field goals? For his sake, I sure hope so. It’s almost hard to think that just a couple of seasons ago he was a starter. Oh how far the mighty lowly have fallen.

As if they needed another reason

Looks like LeCharles Bentley’s playing days may be coming to a close. The AP is reporting Bentley is leaning towards having another surgery to repair the tendon he tore on the first day of training camp last summer. The original injury put Bentley out of service for the 2006 season. A second surgery would put Bentley out for the 2007 season, if not for life.

You think this will push the Browns front office to, you know, address the offensive line in the upcoming months? By, say, drafting linemen and signing them in free agency?

Quick thought

The three game winning streak the Cavs are riding is nice and, after the previous few weeks, a bit surprising. But more surprising is the emergence of Sasha Pavlovic. Prior to late-January one could have strongly argued that Pavlovic was the most unproductive player on the team actually getting minutes. Now he scores 13 points in fourth quarters to preserve wins over top-ranked teams. (1)

So that’s one surprise.

Another surprise is that Eric Snow coming off the bench is more than tolerable. When he first came in yesterday against the Lakers he matched up on Kobe Bryant and immediately shut him down (relatively speaking) just moments after it looked like Kobe was about to heat up. Who did Snow replace? Larry Hughes, defensive maven. (2)

You can probably guess where this is going.

I realize that it’s far too early to anoint Pavlovic the answer to all the Cavs’ problems. He’s on a hot streak right now, which has happened before. Seven games isn’t much of a sample, but it is longer than he’s ever been able to sustain one of his streaks. But for the sake of argument let’s suppose that Pavlovic remains on this level (more or less) for, say, the next thirteen games. Over the last seven games he’s averaging 15 points in about 26 minutes per game. If in a few weeks we can look back and say that Pavlovic has averaged 12-15 points in 25-30 minutes over the last 20 games then the next place to look is at Eric Snow. If over the same period Snow has proven that going to the bench has allowed him hide his flaws and exploit his strengths then here is what I’ll propose:

Start Gibson, Pavlovic, LBJ, Gooden, and Z. This is a much more offensive-minded group that Brown might be comfortable with, but his first substitution will bolster the defense far more than it does now: Snow and Hughes off the bench together for Gibson and Pavlovic. Treat Hughes and Pavlovic like interchangeable parts, giving them both about 24 minutes per night, but make sure that Pavlovic is on the court for the start of the third quarter — when the Cavs’ offense is at its absolute worst.

If this works then trade Hughes as soon as someone makes anything close to a reasonable offer.

1: If this keeps up and Varejao keeps following his current trajectory then the Cavs will have some big decisions to make in the off season. Both Pavlovic and Varejao will be free agents after the season. Both are incredibly young. Prior to the season anyone with any sense would have thought Pavlovic was gone if not during the season then certainly by the summer (this is what I thought). Now I’m not so sure. Fortunately the Cavs have a lot of room under the cap for signing these guys….

2: Snow has always been a really good defender. More than anything this is probably why Brown was so reluctant to remove him from the starting lineup. I have never had a problem with Snow on defense. He can’t stay with quick PGs anymore, but he’s still outstanding against SGs and SFs. SGs and SFs tend to be bigger offensive threats anyway, so not being able to guard short quick guys isn’t that huge of a deal, especially now that Snow is on the bench.

Why no offensive coordinator?

A lot of people are getting upset with Mike Brown, the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. No one is bothered by the defense: Brown seems a more-than-competent defensive strategist. The fury is aimed at the team’s offense, which is practically indistinguishable from a busy sidewalk, especially if all the people on the sidewalk are just coming up from general anesthesia but feel compelled to run really really fast in a small area.

Which makes me wonder: why not treat the Cavs like the Browns and hire an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator? (1)

The Browns dress 53 players each game. The Cavs dress 12. The Browns have 15 coaches (excluding strength coaches). The Cavs have six coaches (excluding strength coaches). If you group football players into general positions (defensive backs, offensive linemen, etc) there are about seven to 10 different groupings depending on how your organize them. There are no more than five for basketball, and could be as few as three (guards, forwards, center). And yet the Browns employ one coach for every 3.5 players while the Cavs employ one coach for every 2.

No one can coach everyone in professional team sports, and I realize that there are offensive and defensive coordinators in football out of necessity. There is no way one person could be in charge of coaching every single player on offense or on defense. With a group of players as disparate as those on a football team you really need a coach to oversee it all. But just because it is a necessity doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable idea. As sports technology and knowledge have become more robust, the prevalence of coaching “specialists” has risen dramatically. Micromanaging is the norm, on increasingly smaller and smaller scales. And yet no one is abandoning the notion that coordinating the efforts of all those specialists isn’t important, which is why offensive and defensive coordinators are valued so highly on the market. It’s also why these are the guys who are hired as head coaches more often than, say, a defensive backs coach.

But this is all besides the point. If you are going to employ six coaches for 12-15 players, why not make make one an offensive coordinator and another a defensive coordinator? Maybe this is happening already and I just don’t realize it. But with so many coaches on staff and with an offense as pathetic as the Cavs’, why is Brown — a defensive specialist — given control over what happens on offense? Seriously? It’s not a knock against him as a coach. No one blames the offensive coordinator on a football team for the defense’s problems. Offense and defense are completely separate (although admittedly more separate in football than in basketball). Mastery of one is tough enough. And yet Brown is in charge of both.

My knowledge of the ins and outs of NBA coaching staffs is limited, but as far as I can tell whenever someone has a problem with an offense or defense in the NBA the first charge is against the head coach. LBJ et al haven’t been complaining publicly about Melvin Hunt’s offense. They’ve been complaining about Mike Brown’s offense. Which is to say that my guess is that Mike Brown is actually in charge of running the offense. So I’ll raise my question again: why?

1: Hold the Carthon jokes.

WWJD?

The best argument in favor of Danny Ferry is “what would you have done instead?” OK. Here we go.

First, I wouldn’t have signed Larry Hughes. Of all the moves Ferry has made, bringing in Hughes with such a lucrative contract was the biggest mistake. Ferry gave Hughes borderline All-Star money even though Hughes is not a borderline All-Star. I’m not sure if Ferry was aware of the sort of career Hughes had had until that point, or that the last season before he signed his new contract was his — gasp! — contract year, but about all that can be said in this regard is that Ferry seemed to think that paying Hughes the money of an All-Star would turn Hughes into an All-Star. Wishful thinking is usually unproductive, but in the case of Hughes it has greatly hindered the team. (1) If Ferry had done more than just glance at a boxscore Hughes’s faults would have become apparent. It doesn’t take any sort of complex statistical analysis to see that Hughes has always been an inefficient scorer and that, outside of defense, he has never really excelled in any area. Even defensively Hughes is a much better ball hawk than shut-down defender. LBJ is a ball hawk. That position was filled. What the team needed was a shut-down defender. Watching Eric Snow guard the Vince Carters of the league last year pretty well demonstrated Hughes’s faults defensively. So move #1 was to not sign Hughes.

Who to sign in his place? Ideally that would have been Joe Johnson, but there was pretty much no chance of that happening. Ray Allen and Michael Redd both opted to stay home. And after that the unrestricted SG free agent list gets pretty slim. But the team could have found a stop-gap SG, such as Raja Bell. (2) Bell ended up signing with the Suns for $24 million over five years. Bell is about as productive as Hughes, but is a better long distance shooter and better lock-down defender, so whatever he lacks in overall productivity he might have been able to make up for in being a better fit for the team. He also would have been $36 million dollars cheaper. Even if the team had to out bid the Suns, it’s hard to believe that the bidding would have climbed to $60 million. And it’s possible that the team could have offered Bell equal money but over a shorter contract — what NBA player wouldn’t want that?? — which would have set the team up for being in a position to make another big signing (or two) right before LBJ’s second contract would expire and would have given them a lot more flexibility along the way to improve the team should there be a tragic injury or something. (3)

Next, I would have signed Donyell Marshall. Of the people Ferry brought in only Marshall has had much of a positive impact. Ferry gave him a lot of money — I don’t remember the circumstances of Marshall’s signing, so that’s all I’ll say about Marshall.

I would not have given Damon Jones $16 million over four years. That’s a lot of money for a journeyman whose best quality is that he can shoot threes. If he could run an offense or play defense, then this would be another story.

As for Ilgauskas: Ferry drove up the price. I think the team signed Z for too much money and part of that is Ferry’s fault. That said, signing Z for a bit less (total contract) or more (per year) but over fewer years that would have been much easier to swallow. The biggest problem for the Cavs right now RE: Z is that he is not being used well by Mike Brown. Not only does this hurt the team right now, but it’s also damaging Z’s trade value.

Of course, this last gripe falls on Mike Brown. I’ll deal with him soon.

1: I am not arguing that signing Hughes was necessarily a bad idea. Granted, Hughes is not the sort of running mate that compliments LBJ — for starters, Hughes can shoot — but if Ferry had been able to sign Hughes for far less than he did I would have had no problems with the signing. It’s not Hughes per say so much as his contract. But Hughes’s play sure does reinforce the extent to which the problem can be placed on his shoulders. And it was probably impossible to sign Hughes to a four year $16 million contract.

2: Hughes did not help the Cavs make the playoffs last season (it’s been said that the team needed to sign Hughes because making the playoffs was important for keeping LBJ). Until Hughes both stays healthy and plays at least average basketball, there is no argument to be made that a stop-gap SG would have hurt the team’s chances of making the playoffs last season, thus putting into jeopardy the chance of resigning LBJ. Flip Murray is a stop-gap SG. The Cavs made the playoffs last season.

3: There was no way for Ferry to foresee LBJ opting for a shorter contract when he re-upped with the team this past summer. But the contract is not radically short. Ferry had to be figuring that 2009-10 would be right around the time that he’d have to make another big push in the market.

Kelly Dwyer

A lot of people have been fond holding up Danny Ferry with a particular sort of ferocity while I’ve been trying to make the point that Ferry hasn’t done much as the Cavs’ GM and what he has done has been if not terrible then at least not good.

Enter: Kelly Dwyer, one of the better basketball writers on the internets. He writes for SI.com. In his column this week he has some thoughts about the Cavs roster, and in particular the possibility of blowing it up and starting over. Here are a few quotes:

Excluding LeBron James, natch, it appears as if the supporting cast that general manager Danny Ferry has assembled is entirely replaceable, but would anyone want these guys?

And:

Larry Hughes is the biggest issue here. His defense is sound, if unspectacular…Numbers like 14.4 points and 3.1 assists seem passable until you realize that Hughes is playing close to 36 minutes a night, and his ability to clean the glass seems to have diminished. Hughes averaged 6.3 rebounds in 38 minutes two years ago, but that mark is down to 3.5 this season.

And:

What’s worse is the idea that Hughes might stand alone as the worst free-agent acquisition of the last few years.

Finally:

Hughes is owed $36.4 million over three seasons after 2006-07, and it’s hard to see him justifying about half of that cash. The idea of pairing LeBron with an older, workingman’s version of himself seemed crazy enough to work when Cleveland brought Hughes on board in 2005, but the chemistry hasn’t been there, and Hughes’ trade value is about as low as trade value gets.

Ok. So the Cavs are struggling to win games even though they have played the 28th easiest schedule in the league. The team will almost certainly not win 50 games this season and the team is on pace to finish out of the top four in the Eastern Conference (the Cavs are currently in 5th). That’s what I would call a step back from last season. With Varejao about to become a free agent, Snow and Marshall aging right before our eyes, Hughes doing what Hughes has pretty much always done, which is not be a productive basketball player, it’s pretty clear that going forward the skies will be no brighter than they are right now and will probably be a whole lot darker.

I do not think it is possible to make a sensible defense of Danny Ferry’s job performance. Seriously. Not possible.

The play’s called ‘Tired From Running Motion’

Branson Wright in today’s PD reporting on LBJ’s views on the Cavs’ offense:

He wants no part of a predictable offensive pattern that calls for dribble, pass, pass, pass and shoot with the shot clock about to expire. James also is tired of holding the ball while his teammates stand like statues.

For those unfamiliar, the DZ broke down this play a couple of months ago.