What to Watch For - Cavs v. Bobcats
Posted January 7th, 2009 by Michael Curry
What to watch for tonight as the suddenly dangerous Charlotte Bobcats come into Cleveland to threaten the Cavaliers’ home unbeaten streak.
1. Can the Bobcats beat the Celtics and the Cavaliers on consecutive nights? That’s an amazing question, and if you would have asked it yesterday you would have been the object of much ridicule. But the Bobcats come to Cleveland having just pulled off an impressive 114-106 overtime victory last night against Boston, outscoring the supposedly super-clutch Celtics 18-10 in the extra period. Charlotte has won 5 out of their last 7 games, and has been a significantly improved team since the Bobcats added Boris Diaw and Raja Bell in a trade with the Phoenix Suns for Jason Richardson.
While the victory last night certainly has the Bobcats feeling positive, it also means they are coming into Cleveland a little worn down, as four Charlotte starters played over 40 minutes last night. If the Cavaliers make the Bobcats work throughout the night, by the end of the game Charlotte should be running on fumes, and the chances of a miracle back-to-back will be washed away.
2. Will the Cavaliers rebound? I was pretty passionate about my disappointment in the Cavaliers’ rebounding efforts on Sunday, and with good reason. The Cavs were outrebounded 52-35 in that game, and allowed the Wizards to gobble up 19 offensive rebounds, completely neutralizing what was otherwise a good defensive effort from the Wine and Gold. Tonight they face a Bobcat team short on size but long on hustle, and Diaw (7.3 rpg as a Bobcat), Emeka Okafor (11.2 rpg) and Gerald Wallace (7.7 rpg) will actively crash the offensive glass if the Cavaliers don’t box them out.
While Zydrunas Ilgaukas gets more of his rebounds due to size, not tenacity, he is pretty reliable in grabbing the easy ones. While Anderson Varejao is a good rebounder, his help defense often leaves him out of ideal rebounding position, something that opposing bigs are exploiting whenever Andy comes over to challenge a shot or draw a charge. That means the far-side defender has to get into position and put a body on those bigs, and so far LeBron James and Delonte West (among others) haven’t done a great job of doing that. The Cavs might have to bring the help defense a little less often while Z is out, to avoid wasting their good defensive efforts by giving up easy put-back baskets.
3. What about the new jerseys? I showed the layout yesterday, a throwback to a never-was color scheme, something I thought only happened to expansion teams like the Colorado Rockies or Memphis Grizzlies. The “swingman” version is available now at NBAStore.com here, and that nifty new WordPress plugin should allow you to see it just by hovering over the link (stole that one from Mark Cuban of all people). The red piping still looks bad, but without it the jerseys become Golden State Warriors throwbacks, and we can’t have that. You would think that since this isn’t a “real” throwback, the design team could have added a few extra flourishes to make it unique, rather than resorting to the red. But those complaints aside, I like the addition of any interesting aesthetic changes, especially this kind of one-time thing.
Though I reserve the right to change my mind when I see them in action tonight.
Go Cavs.
