January 5th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Cleveland - 17-22
Second game of the year, gotta get a win. Tonight we're coming off the back of a night where all five starters scored at least 15 points, Davis had a 34/26 game, and we lost. We are coming back tonight against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the league's worst team, who have a record of 8-31, and possess the league's worst defense. Yes, worse than ours. Yes, significantly worse than ours. Yes, worse than Phoenix. I'm talking 30th in the league, dead last, bottom rung, the worst. They have lost 8 straight, and were blown out in 5 of them. They are trash. We must beat them, and it's not really forgivable if we don't. You never want to lose, but if you lose to Minnesota, you can kinda see why. If you lose to Brooklyn, it's never good but they play hard and are decent this year, you can kinda see why. You cannot see why we should lose to Cleveland, it's just unthinkable if we even have a mediocre game. Let's look at them.
Offensive Rating: 25th
Defensive Rating: 30th
Rebounds per game: 22nd
Assists per game: 30th
Steals per game: 25th
Blocks per game: 30th
2pt percentage: 29th
3pt percentage: 12th
Look at that. Look at those statistics. This team is woeful. The only skill they are decent in is 3pt shooting, and they're not even great at that, just a little above average. Also, consider this: No Kevin Love, no John Henson. Dellevadova, Nwaba, and Zizic all missed their last game, which was yesterday, and so they probably won't play tonight on this, the second night of a back to back.
So what do we worry about? Well, three things:
Our defense: we are not a good defensive team. Sure, Cleveland is worse, but we're still bottom 6. Our offense is fire, and theirs is very much not, but bad offenses can look spectacular when they're playing teams that don't even try to stop them. So we must play defense, and a large part of that is keeping them off the offensive glass: while Cleveland is not a good rebounding team by any measure, Tristan Thompson is currently averaging 5 offensive boards per game and gives them a lot of opportunities that we need to cut off. Thompson is a liability on offense, and he's not great at defending in space, so he can be exploited as long as we neutralise his only real elite skill.
After that, it's just a case of sticking Jrue on whichever guard they try and run through at any given moment. Of course, they don't have an elite guard, but Colin Sexton is fast and is shooting 39% from three for the Cavs, and as much as Jordan Clarkson is a moron, he can have a big game if we allow him to get going. It's going to take a combined team effort on the perimeter to try and keep all of their shooting threats down.
We need this win. The team needs to play like it. I want big games from someone not named Jrue or AD. I'd prefer 20 points and defense out of Randle over 30 points and none. I'd like some bench scoring please: if Miller can hit some shots and Okafor can get some minutes, I'd love that. If we can play even middle of the road defense, along with playing our usual offense and getting a little help from the bench (I'll take 25 points by now, even that will do), we could see Jrue and AD both drop 30 along the way to a blowout victory: and lord knows we need one.
Let's go, #DoItBig.
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Originally Posted by kinglio21093
