Homeward Bound

Hey, everyone! It’s AC, checking in. What’s happening?

The Celtics have definitely done their job in frustrating the Cavaliers and LeBron James. Now, Cleveland finds themselves down 0-2, heading home.

What Boston is doing to LeBron, they’re building the wall – like most teams do. Their wall, though, includes an extra guy from the weakside. So, it winds up being four defenders instead of three. Most teams don’t like to expose or give up that extra guy.

The Cavaliers want to move the ball to the weakside, where that type of defense is exposed. But with a big guy in his face, LeBron is having a hard time throwing the pass back to the weakside over the top of the defense.

Thursday, we got off to a great start, but we let their defensive pressure take us out of our offensive sets. And we never recovered from that.

Right now, some of LeBron’s normal shots just aren’t going in. And that’s frustrating him as a shooter. But he has to continue to shoot the ball – he can’t stop shooting it – and hope that he comes out of this. The key is, Boston is doing exactly what they want to do: force the other guys to produce, which is putting a ton of pressure on LeBron, because he knows that – other than Z – the other guys are spotty.

He’ll never admit it, but this does produce a certain amount of pressure.

The Cavaliers need their other guys to step up. You see what happened in the first quarter when they went to Z.

Ilgauskas – and the team – need to realize that once he starts to make a few shots, he becomes the focal point of Boston’s defense. And Z needs to become a passer as well as a scorer, and move the ball. What’s happening is, once he starts scoring, he won’t give it up. By that time, they swarm him – and it’s becoming a problem.

But these are all simple adjustments. And the Cavaliers have been in this situation before, so they know how to deal with it. It’s not like the Cavs are going to panic. They just need to find a way to get more space for LeBron.

For starters, the first pass has to be quicker. Once LeBron sees that the Celtics defenders are coming to him – get rid of it – and get it back. Once he gets rid of it, he needs to cut to the weakside and get it back.

Keep the defense moving. You have to make the defense move.

As bad as it’s been in the first two games of the series, I expect them to come out ready to play. The homecourt crowd will get them amped up and they’ll come out knowing what they have to do. Because again – the Celtics haven’t won on the road in the playoffs, yet.

That’s an advantage for the Cavaliers, but the key is to come out and jump on them – and stay on them.