Living a Dream

The era of Cleveland Cavaliers basketball between LeBron's stints was, at best, tumultuous. There was off-court drama, coaching nightmares (Byron Scott, baby!), and a rotating cast of oddball role players. Most of all, of course, there was LeBron's shadow. How fitting, then, that in the season after he left, the Cavaliers went on an NBA record 26 game losing streak. They were bad. Really bad. For a good time, take a look at their season-recap Basketball-Reference page . Of the 19 players who filled out the roster, one is still playing in the NBA, a mere seven years later (Ramon Sessions). A long afternoon could be spent finding gems within this page. Believe me, I have browsed it at length. And from that browsing I noticed some things. Before the streak even started, the Cavs had a pretty wild trio of losses. Starting November 30th, they lost three straight games by a combined 80 points: a 19 point loss, then a 27 point loss, then a 34 point loss. That's terrible. And y...

As the 2016-2017 Cleveland Cavaliers come down the stretch with one of the deepest teams in NBA history (RIP Andrew Bogut), it's fun to look back at how things used to be. We all know that LeBron James is one of the best players the league has ever seen. We also know that he couldn't get over the hump in Cleveland without any stud teammates. He won titles in Miami with a couple of monsters, dragged the Cavs to back-to-back Finals appearances, and won one for his hometown against the best team to ever play (regular season) basketball. So what wins here? Was it the other-worldly shooting in his second title season in Miami? Was it the Herculean effort in the Eastern Conference Finals to beat the Pistons? Was it playing without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love and damn near taking the 2015 Finals to 7 games? Or was it winning three straight (2 on the road) against the best team to ever play (regular season) basketball? There are lots of options here. So I'm going with the dar...

Everyone wants to be like the Spurs, right? They've been the model of everything for the past 20 years, and only recently has anyone come up with a style of play that San Antonio has had to adjust for, and theoretically, the Warriors can't sustain this for several years. One of the best things San Antonio does is rotate players. Greg Popovich is a master of getting guys minutes, balancing rotations, and creating/finding matchups that work. The Spurs have 35 lineups that average 4 minutes together per game, and frankly it feels like a lot more than that. They rotate their guys early and often, keeping people fresh and keeping starters on the floor at almost all times. What Pop does so well is pull a starter about 5 minutes in and reinsert that starter earlier than his opponents. Imagine if Cleveland tried this. The way they're currently going, LeBron and JR Smith play the whole first quarter, with Kyrie, Love, and whoever's at center often playing about 9 minutes in ...

There's something to be said for a reputation. I know that, and I understand that. Michael Jordan is widely considered to be the best basketball player of all time - a claim which I won't dispute. He is a living god to the city of Chicago, and if you badmouth him in any way, locals will take it worse than if you'd said unkind things about their wives/mothers, etc. In Europe, when someone asks where we're from, Jenna answers Chicago, and if I answer, I say Cleveland via Chicago (or something like that). Invariably, everyone's response will mention one of two names: Barack Obama or Michael Jordan. But Jordan *much* more often than Obama. For the most part, I get it. He was the most dominant player for the better part of a decade. He was the face of the NBA. He starred alongside Bugs Bunny in one of cinema's greatest accomplishments. That's all true and inarguable. But there's a big part that I don't really get. For instance, I have a student of...