Moohead Radio

Give him Drew and Larry. 4th quarter comeback. give him 2 NBDL guys. 4th quarter comeback. Give him a bunch of guys who have never played together. 4th quarter comeback. No Z? No problem. 4th quarter comeback. No Boobie…Sasha? 4th quarter comeback. Down 8 with 7 minutes left? 4th quarter comeback.

A slam dunk that beats Dwight Howard’s “cape dunk”? You bet your ass. Guys were trying to stop him and the game was on the line. Better than ANY Jordan dunk? Ask Barkley.

Give him amputees, guys with rickets, old men in colostomy bags, down syndrome kids, post menopausal women, even Luscious Harris. 4th quarter comeback.

He is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s like he scripts this shit. People become powerless to stop him.

Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretsky, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Al Oerter.

LeBron James.

Starting 5:

West PG, Pavs SG, LeBron, Wallace, Z- Without exception your starting 5

End of Game: West, Boobie, Z, LeBron, AV (scoring lineup)- Your best FT group with speed
West, LeBron, Boobie, AV, Smith (defensive stoppers)- If Z is tired or in foul trouble, go with Smith, not Ben

First bench rotation: LeBron, Smith, AV, Boobie, Wally- Let LeBron space the floor so Wally doesn’t have to dribble

Second Rotation: Wally, Smith, Wallace, Devin, Damon- Damon brings it up with leBron out of the game. Devin slashes

Keys to remember: NEVER play AV and Ben in the same rotation. NEVER put Wally in a rotation where he is the go to scorer. Always finish with your most rugged guys on the floor, who are least turnover prone.

Problems: We still have no true PG, and no backup PG. Our bench will be big up front, but light in the back court. You can’t play Ben at crunch time due to FT weakness. Z needs to rest each game in quarters 2 and 3 to allow him to be a 4th quarter presence. Joe Smith needs to be on the floor more.

Wally 38 minutes 5-18 28% 2-9 22% 3’s 4 Boards 13 points

OK. He’s in there to score. But 18 shots? 9 threes? One trip to the FT line and that was to shoot a “T”? Wally looked like a guy who couldn’t wait to shoot. Pressing WAY too hard.

Coach Brown might want to play him fewer minutes and “Damon Jones” him to death: make Wally play a little D before he gets to hoist all these shots. Earn your way into the rotation. We are not a West Coast team with no future.

BTW, Joe Smith took 11 shots and made 5. Lebron took 24 and made 16. No one else took more than 8. If this continues, Boobie will never see a shot again.

Not to mention…Wally’s shot appears awfully flat to me (LARRY HUGHESLoud coughing noise). Excuse me.

Well…Wally’s not a go to guy. Except in his mind.

On the bright side, the officials unzipped Mo and Redd and sucked their cocks repeatedly. 37 free throws to our 14, and we were the ones going to the rim?

Every bounce, every break, every call, lucky final shot. And they barely beat us thanks to free throws.

NBA….Our refs are fixed.

Starters Min FG 3Pt FT +/- Off Reb Ast TO Stl BS BA PF Pts
J. Johnson G 40:54 5-12 4-7 3-4 -10 2 5 5 6 1 0 0 0 17
M. Bibby G 36:11 1-11 0-5 0-2 -8 1 5 5 4 1 0 2 2 2 (1 for 11…2points)
A. Horford C 28:41 5-11 0-0 2-2 -15 6 13 0 1 2 0 2 1 12
J. Smith F 34:51 2-12 0-1 2-2 -2 2 13 4 8 3 1 0 4 6
M. Williams F 30:45 2-9 0-0 0-0 -17 1 6 1 0 2 1 2 1 4

They lost…again. 89-74. Chicago lost again. Drew scored 17 and had 8 boards. But no defense down low. We get our turn tonight!

I can’t imagine Chicago selling its fans on this trade. They lost a disinterested power player and a solid professional, and got a 17 foot happy brain cramped forward, and a #2 guard to join 4 others on the roster. Not to mention ANOTHER #2 in Shannon Brown.

If Sunday was any indication, Ben Wallace can get 10-12 boards every night, run the high flash, and finish at the rim. That’s more than Drew could do. Plus, Delonte West wasn’t shooting, but he still dished out 6 dimes, and played tenacious defense on the ball. That’s as much as Hughes did. Joe Smith gave us 14 points with shooting economy, something Drew didn’t do. And none of these guys knows our system.

Meanwhile, the Bulls were jacking up 24 footers and watching T-Mac bury them. They looked like pygmies in the rain forest.

The final blow to Chicago fans will be watching Big Ben grabbing 11 boards a night, and causing precious turnovers. It will convince them that their boos shouldn’t be directed at the players, but at the system that has converted Michael Jordan’s team into team marshmallow. We’ll see how long it takes for Larry and Drew to get boo-ed. Or how long before the fans mug John Paxson in the parking lot after a game.

There will be tough nights ahead for the Cavs. But the difference I saw in one night was amazing. The guys didn’t always know where they were going, but they went there HARD. They came out with energy. By the time the fumes wore out, the new starting 5 picked it back up with defense in the 4th quarter. No silly drizzling gestures, or Larry smug smirks. Just a bunch of guys with a job to do. Amen.

Despite a guarantee from depraved gambler and functional illiterate Charles Barkley, the Cavs grinded out a win in Miami tonight. More depressing than Barkley’s traditional anti Cavs pick, was the play of Shaq Mommy. Shaq is a shell of his former self, and looked stiff and slow.

My favorite moment? AV running a fast break with Z on the receiving end of an AV assist. Dunk city. My second favorite moment? Watching Pat Riley fail with Ricky Davis at his side. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Let’s forget the insulting comments about individual players, and look at this objectively.

Our starting 5 rarely provides a first quarter separation from the opponent. They play good defense for the most part, but are scoring challenged. This same group routinely buries us in the third quarter with poor offensive execution and eventual defensive futility. The realities?

1) A point guard and SG who shoot 20-30% night after night cannot be relied upon to hit open looks. No matter how good their defense is, 40% of our starters cannot shoot straight. We may stay close in the opening quarter, but those results will virtually NEVER give us a fast start out of the gate…at home or on the road.

2) I’ve read about Drew’s performance since AV came back. But what to make of Z and his lack of touches and minutes? Oddly, a usually reliable 15 foot shooter is now being shut out from looks. Even stranger, he’s no longer even on the floor when the team needs to make up point deficits. Why have we gone away from a career 16 a night guy?

3) The LeBron at PG strategy only works with Boobie and DJ in the game. This hinders us on the defensive end. Without reliable shooters to kick out to, LBJ must do it by himself. In essence, Larry, Sasha and Z are bench ridden at crunch time in close games, so LeBron can operate more freely.

The solution is less simple to diagnose. If you get nothing for Hughes, Sasha and Drew, then you are so shorthanded you can’t field a team. And no one is biting hard on these guys as bait. The Cavs have a defensive team, and a scoring team. Good teams do both. Rotations always leave us short a nickel or dime.

Get Mike Bibby? Well….I don’t think that really helps. He’s not a defensive guy, and has played open court ball in the West. Hardly Mike Brown’s philosophy. Plus, he replaces Larry at point. But if we give up Drew, we still have either Larry or Sasha to bog down our offense. Larry at the 2 guard? Larry has no lift. I don’t think he can create space for himself on the floor with bad legs. He cannot consistently shoot anymore, and doesn’t appear motivated to improve.

Move Drew? Fine. Start AV? Then you have Simmons or Dwayne next in the rotation. Bench death.

I’ve been over and over this. The team is in a corner and there’s no easy way out. I see no way to fix what’s broken without breaking this year completely. This is Danny Ferry’s puzzle. He started it, and now it’s his to finish.

The Seattle Sonics were horrible last night. They don’t pass well, they turn the ball over incessantly, and they are painfully slow for a West Coast team. Their coach lost his zeal after Latrell Sprewell choked him years ago, and they don’t play defense. Oh…their guards can’t shoot and they have no bench.

People in Oklahoma City cannot agree to pay more taxes for this ragtag outfit. I’d lower Seattle taxes so they’d leave.

My sniffer has again been ruined after getting a whiff of the Sonics and their selfish, dribbling offense.

Here’s all you need to hear from Josh Smith of the Atlanta Hawks:

“He’s a great finisher around the rim, so we sagged off of him a little bit and tried to make him shoot jumpers or get rid of the ball, and he made us pay,” Smith said.

He’s talking about LeBron….who was held to 4 points on perfectly executed team defense. So What happened? Atlanta changed its strategy in the third quarter and backed off because James became more aggressive in going to the basket. That provided space for James to shoot without hesitation.

Let me see here….Cavs score 39 in the first half….59 in the second half. LeBron scores 4 in the first half…32 in the second half. Why in God’s name would you change your defense in the second half? Because Mike Woodson is the coach. YES…THAT Mike Woodson. He of the 84-191 career record. Mr 13-69 in his first year. Mr “Never won more than 30 in a season”.

Well…now he has better players, but he still gave a game away. An important game that his team could have won. And he sat and watched LeBron beat him without so much as a double team down the stretch. How can you watch a man score 32 in the half, and NOT double him like you did in the first half? It’s called stupidity. It’s called lousy strategy. It’s Randy Wittman-esque. You NEVER see elite coaches fuck this stuff up. But there’s a second fraternity in the NBA. The losing coach fraternity. Guys who can’t get it done, but continue to get head coaching jobs. Many of them become assistant coaches and wait until the main guy gets fired. Guys like Bernie Bickerstaff….well liked in the league, but rarely able to keep a job.

Ol’ Bernie actually got the post Lenny Wilkens Sonics to the playoffs back in 1987, 88 and 89. After that, Bernie got swept in his 2 other playoff appearances (the .500 Washington Wizards), and finished his mighty career running the Bobcats into the ground. But he had a 20 year career. And Bernie is the Dean of the loser’s fraternity because he made the playoffs. Look at randy Wittman:

78-159 career. Never more than 30 wins in a season. Currently 4-27. He’s a fucking zucchini. He’s been in the league 16 years.

Now, Mike Woodson has no excuses. He has good young players who are easily good enough to make the playoffs. But if they do, he’ll be thrown out of his favorite coaching fraternity.