And while I don’t think he’s a very good coach — who does? — it’s not entirely his fault that the Cavs are struggling. The situation is uncannily similar to that in Phoenix last season: a talent-laden squad with championship expectations bets the farm that Shaq will provide all the answers, but his presence really creates more questions and concerns.

Honestly, when Phoenix traded for Shaq I laughed aloud and thought to myself, “There goes their shot at a title.” Their window was barely cracked open prior to the deal, but that trade slammed it closed for years to come. And I felt the same when Shaq went to Cleveland this off-season.

Both situations are classic examples of GMs who overreacted to what other teams were doing. Phoenix saw first-hand on Christmas 2007 that the Lakers were a different squad with Bynum, a real threat which had held its position atop the Pacific for long enough to show the team was not a fluke. And when Bynum went down, Pau followed soon after, still presenting the Suns with the dilemma of stopping Kobe with a legit 7-footer inside. So they blew up the D’Antoni model and tried to counter size with size, disregarding what that would do to their other players and system. How’d that work out for ya, Steve Kerr?

And Kerr’s fellow Spurs School of Basketball Academy graduate Danny Ferry made the same mistake last season when Dwight Howard killed his Cavs in the post-season. But Ferry’s error was thinking the Cavs’ inability to stop Howard was their weakness; in reality, Cleveland lost because it couldn’t stop the Magic’s shooters because its wing players weren’t adequate on D. Rather than address the real issue, he panicked in the, “We need to show LeBron we’re trying” mindset and went for the Big Band-Aid.

As others noted, Z and Shaq and that kid from “High School Musical” (with a giant fern on his head) aren’t good enough on D to stop anyone because the three of them together lack the foot speed. On offense, Z could at least play pick-and-pop with LeBron, but Shaq doesn’t seem like the right fit there, either.

Bottom line – Mike Brown will be the scapegoat, if not in-season than soon after the Cavs lose in the playoffs. But a good amount of his blood will be on Ferry’s hands, and he’ll soon be out of a job should LeBron skip off for greener pastures next summer.

I think that you hit on the key problem for the Cav this year, defensive foot speed.

First and foremost last years version of the Cavs was a defensive team coached by a defensive coach. In fact, the Cavs had the best defense in the league. Their defense was centered around Big Z (who is slow) however, he was surrounded by swift footed rotators.
Big Z’s lack of foot speed was usually offset by the swift and athletic players around him (a good defense can tolerate one slow mover in this way).

However, when combined with Shaq there is no hope of accomdating two slow rotators. This means that the efficient Cav defense of last year is gone if you play these players together. They will not be able to rotate to shooters in a timely manner.

The Cavs may remedy this by playing Z or Shaq but not both at the same time. However, both will still be vunerable to the P&R like last year. This is why I think getting Shaq will not help them in the long run. He may slightly improve their offense, but they will certainly be worse on defense and that never works if you have a defensive coach.

The question I have for the Cavs is one I haven’t seen anybody address. Hollinger showed in his article today that the Cavs look almost exactly like they did in 2007 and 2008- good D, bad O, which led them to 45-50 wins. This year they are right on track to repeat that.

The outlier was last year when they were actually pretty good on offense. Last year they went out and got Brown an offensive coordinator (John Kuester, now coach of Detroit). Lo and behold, their parts suddenly worked well together. He leaves and they apparently put the offense back in Brown’s hands to the exact same result as previously. Why not give him a new guy to help out? Is it just ego on Brown’s part to pretend there isn’t a problem here? This is inexplicable to me.

Let’s hope that all of our poor 3 point shooting comes together tonight, and we run and gun from the arc.

Go Lakers.

I watched most of that SA game too. I wasn’t surprised at Manu being a step slow. Figured he’d be rusty and need most of the season to get going.

What did surprise me was Duncan. There was a lot of talk of him shedding weight over the summer and being more fit. I had half expected him to do what he did last year before he broke down. Be dominant early and in spurts while letting the extra depth pick up the burden.

But he doesn’t look as good as I thought he’d be. That said, agreed that it’s early and Pop like PJ has the history of letting the team slowly build and come together.

I watched that game last night, and moreso than their lack of shooting big men, the fact that they are just SLOWW was killing them. The Bulls got out and ran every posession and Shaq was barely making it down the floor. Varejao, Z, and Shaq couldn’t keep up with Miller, Noah, and Thomas.

I think this is a good comparison for the Lakers only so we can calm down a bit. As in, it could be worse, we could have lost our close games and been like the Cavs.

The Cavs problems are two-fold. One, they were huge overachievers last year. They went 39-1 in home games they were trying to win. Obviously this couldn’t last. They also won nearly every game vs. under .500 teams last year. Again, this can’t last. As Laker fans know, it’s hard to make your guys give 100% effort in every game and you’re going to occasionally drop one. Last year the Cavs didn’t give away anything. This year, with the addition of Shaq, you can pretty much mark them down for losing 5-10 games off last year’s pace.

Second off, adding Shaq doesn’t help any of their needs. As has been said over and over on the blogosphere, Ilgauskas+Shaq is potentially the slowest and least mobile frontcourt in the modern history of the NBA. Then there’s the matter of where Shaq stands when he doesn’t have the ball, which is the primary area where Lebron drives to get his points. Unfortunately for both of them, they’re stuck with a coach who is too limited to figure out how to get them to work together. They will have at least a 25-30 game adjustment period before they actually start running plays instead of just playing playground ball.

I’m of the opinion that the Cavs will eventually improve and maybe be an ECF team, but they’re clearly behind Boston and they really haven’t solved any of their matchup issues with regards to Orlando. No team is hoping for a Garnett injury more than Cleveland.