Cavs Trending Up After Two Straight Wins

Panic? Who, me? OK, I might have panicked a little after the first two games of this young Cavs season. My bad. I think it was justified, but what’s more important is that the next two games were much different. The Cavaliers are now 2-2 and sit atop the Central Division, as they should. So what changed?

It has to be said that the game in Minnesota was a lucky draw for the Cavs in terms of timing. Not only are the Timberwolves young and poorly put together, they were also missing Kevin Love through injury and are breaking in a rookie PG. I’ve loved Jonny Flynn since he was a freshman at Syracuse and I think he will become a very good PG in the NBA. But a rookie is a rookie. He hasn’t quite figured out how to set his teammates up yet and was more concerned with scoring. He shot 60% and scored 17, so that’s not too bad. But he made the Wolves one dimensional and much easier to defend.

The Cavs defense was better for long stretches and the offense showed some flashes of what they can do. The starters, especially LeBron and Mo, looked great and getting 35 points off the bench was huge. They also only had 11 turnovers, which seems much more like what they did last year.

That game, however, still felt a bit incomplete. It wasn’t until Saturday that the Cavs finally seemed to put it all together. Again, luck played a role because the Bobcats had squeaked out a double overtime victory over New York the previous night and were clearly gassed. But the real story in this game was the return of Delonte West.

I though he looked very rusty in the first half. But he settled right in after halftime and ended up with a terrific overall performance. Delonte’s stifling perimeter defense helped hold Charlotte to a putrid 13 point output in the third quarter, effectively ending the game. He had 13 points, shot over 71% from the field and generally looked like the old Delonte West. Welcome back, Delonte! You’re our glue guy.

The Cavs as a whole looked more cohesive and more efficient against the Bobcats. They shot 58% from the field, which is ridiculous, and had 9 steals and 9 blocks in the game (also ridiculous). I still think they had too many turnovers and I’m a bit concerned about the poor free throw shooting through 4 games. But this was a game the Cavs should win easily, and they did.

As many people thought in the preseason, Mike Brown is going to have a hard time dividing up minutes with this roster. He has WAY more weapons than he’s had in years past and the return of Delonte makes this even truer. I shudder to think about the confused look Mike Brown will have on display come February when Leon Powe is ready to rumble. As it is, Jamario Moon and Darnell Jackson combined for an insignificant 3 minutes off the bench against Charlotte. The fact that Danny Green is nowhere near the playing surface is an indication of how deep this team is. I expect Mike Brown to continue tinkering with minutes in the first few months of the season and it’s likely that even a player as talented as Moon might be reduced to a “garbage time only” role. That’s no good for Moon, Jackson, and Green, but it means that they guys getting the minutes are being effective, and that’s a good thing for the team and for us. The sooner Mike Brown figures out his rotations, the sooner this team can hit its stride and plow through the incredibly long NBA regular season.

On a similar note, I was very happy to see Mike Brown move away from his patented “SUB EVERYBODY!” tactic at the beginning of the second quarter against Charlotte. This is progress. If LeBron and Shaq need a rest, great! Bring in Z, slide Parker to SF, and put Delonte at SG. Or something similar. But you can’t pull all your starters, throw the entire bench out there and expect the production to stay at a high level. It’s lunacy and Mike Brown has been doing it for, oh I don’t know, basically forever now. If he wants the production on both ends of the floor to stay up to his standards, then he needs to continue to only sub a couple guys at a time, even if it’s at the start of a quarter, rather than the en masse Mike Brown Specials we’ve gotten used to. Again, this is progress.

The Cavs are back in action tonight at The Q against the rival Washington Wizards. If you’re at the game, bring the noise!

Kevin Hignett hawks insurance during the day. He spends the rest of his time being a dad and dreaming of a mid-June parade in downtown Cleveland. You can follow him on Twitter: @KevinHignett