 |
Dominate Second Half Helps Bucks Beat Cavs
October 10, 2012 By Nick Broulis
|
The Cleveland Cavaliers drove South to the Canton Civic Center as they hosted Central divion rival the Milwaukee Bucks. From the get go I could tell that Byron Scott has this team running up and down. Cleveland came out looking good with sone nice passes from Kyrie Irving and free-agent signing C.J. Miles who I thought was a great edition to the team.
C.J. Miles led all players with 18 points. Kyrie had 16 but what impressed me the most was how well he continues to play with Varejao and his good chemistry with Miles as well. I thought his passes were nice and smooth. Last year him and Andy played so well together with the pick and roll and the back door passes worked great as well.
How about Zeller, Varejao and Thompson running the floor and finishing good at the rom most of the time. With and offense like what Scott wants to run, you must have big athletic men that can run and be athletic especially with Irving running the fast break or possible Waiters or Miles.
Now I have to talk about Two things that bothered me even though its only preaeason so let me start out with the First thing.
Both are on defense. I noticed that we had a problem with the back door plays with Jennings and Dalembert. It seems like we have some work to do when it comes to moving bodies around to prevent that play from happening because some teams love running that play and it plays a big part in their offense.
My other big issue is our transition defense. We didn't get back on defense fast enough at times and this allowed Milwaukee to get easy fast break point. Imagine how much teams that are really explosive on offense will want to get out and run on us.
Now as for our bench. We've got a lot of work to do but how about Jon Leuer. he went 4-9 from the field with 8 point. This 6-10 230 pounder can run the floor and bang below the rim. I liked what I seen out of him and hope he has a chance to make the team.
Game stats were as follows. Milwaukee defeated Cleveland 97-80. The stats were actually even for the most part but in the paint Cleveland was dominated 48-28 and obviously the biggest lead goes to the Bucks who led by 19 compared to just a 4 point lead for Cleveland.
Overall I liked what I seen out of Miles and Zeller. I'm sure your wondering what my thoughts were on First round pick Waiters. His jump shot isn't falling as much as I would like to see but this guy really likes to go to the rim and show off how athletic he is. I am very patient with most rookies and i want to see how much he can improve as the season goes on.
Cleveland definitely had a major problem with the outside shooting in the Second quarter when the Bucks really busted the game wide open scoring 27 points in that quarter alone. The key to stopping outside shooting is having a fast rotation on defense because you are having people run out on a shooter and you take the chance that they swing the ball around so you have to have constant movement.
Cleveland's next opponent is yet another central foe by the name of the Chicago Bulls on Friday at 8. I look to see Cleveland improve on their perimeter defense and not allowing Derrick Rose to get dribble penetration. All I ask is that we come out of this game healthy.
