Bunker Mentality

Hey, everyone! It’s A.C., checking in. What is happening?

Right now, the Cavaliers are a different team than the one that went to the Finals last spring.

With Andy and Sasha not being part of the mix, I feel like our starting five will be OK. The bench, on the other hand – trying to either take a lead or sustain a lead – that’s going to be a tough road to hoe, at least right now. At least until they get their feet underneath themselves. Hopefully, in these next two exhibition games, the reserves will get themselves squared away because that’s where I see the biggest problem.

I feel very confident in our skill guys. I like Boobie and Larry together in the backcourt together – especially if Boobie can use his penetrating ability to make things happen. I’d like to see him go out there and be a point guard that people are afraid to guard. Like Tony Parker – make people guard you, break down the defense. If he does that, then the first unit is going to be fine.

The second unit, though, is going to be tough – especially with the bigs. Dwayne Jones is going to find out that the regular season is nothing like the preseason. And Donyell is going to have to step up and play more minutes, and I’m not totally sure he’s capable of extended minutes at this stage of his career. He’ll have to be more of a 4 and less of a 3, which somewhat changes the dynamic of his game, because he’s a good three-point shooter. He’ll have to stick closer to the boards, and he’ll have to rely more on the 15-foot shot and less on the three-point shot.

As far as Anderson and Sasha not being here and the team’s mentality – I think at first they were concerned with the situation. But the closer it gets to the exhibition season, they’re starting to realize that they have to go to war with what they have. You have to forget about them now. If they don’t make it by the next two exhibition games, they won’t start the season. And I think the starters are going to have to be ready to log more minutes early in the season.

Hopefully, going what the Cavs went through to get to the Finals – knowing that at certain points of the season, you have to have a sharper focus than others – they have to come out of the blocks with that sharp focus immediately. They’re going to want to be somewhere around .500 when they get back from the long West Coast trip. It has to be a mentality of what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. It has to be. They’ll have a lot of adversity to deal with right off the bat. There’s not going to be any cakewalks. Teams know that we’re the Eastern Conference Champions.

The starters seem to be a lot more sure of themselves now that they’ve incorporated some of their new offense. They want to do the new drive-and-kick. San Antonio is so good at it, and when I watched films of the playoffs, I was really impressed. They bait you in with that first drive and kick it over to the open man. They dare the defense that if you’re going to rush at him, we’re going to break the defense down even more and get a layup or an easy shot. If you don’t rush at him, he can shoot it from right there. They are very good at having patience and waiting. And I’m starting to see that happen with the Cavaliers, but they don’t quite feel comfortable with it yet.

Boobie can really excel in the new offense. He’s got to use his penetration. He proved that he can go to the basket during the playoffs. And he can take a bump, too. He’s got to start looking for penetration first, jump shot second. Like Coach Fitch used to tell us: If you can break your man down every time and play basketball the right way, you don’t have to run a play. If I break this man down and someone comes to help, we could just play until we found the open make to take the shot. Boom! I think that’s what they’re looking for: more fluidity to the offense.

I said earlier that the second unit is going to have a tough road, but it’s not that some of the reserves haven’t been impressive. They have.

Dwayne Jones has surprised me. He goes after it and tries to be a physical presence on the floor. That’s something I really think this team can use. His inexperience will hurt him, but hopefully by the time we go through half the season, he’ll be ready and more comfortable with what’s going on around the basket. But it’s good to have a guy in there that wants to get physical. I’m impressed with him.

Shannon Brown is obviously starting to contribute. The only thing I was a little disappointed with as far as Shannon goes was that his shooting percentage was kind of low. He scored, but he took a ton of shots, and a lot of them were not on balance. It was almost like he was trying to get himself back into the flow of playing again. I know he comes from a very solid background – with Coach Izzo – so he understands good shots from bad shots. He just has to get back into the flow. And I think, with extended minutes, that he’ll do that. Now he can concentrate on taking good shots. Because everything else he pretty much has down. As long as he has the same desire on the defensive end as he does on the offensive end, he’ll be fine.

Now they just have to put all the pieces together. And it’s not going to be easy.

It’s not going to be easy walking into team’s arenas as Eastern Conference Champions. Everyone will be gunning for us. The Cavaliers will have to come out with a focus – they need to have the mentality: We are who we are, and we plan on staying there. We’re here stay. We’re not going anywhere. Can you beat us?