Cavs' adjustments start on D

David Thorpe: I don't think it's wrong for management to say to the team: "You're our team, this is our coach, and we will figure it out together. But understand that we're going to do this together as a group." You're just supporting your coach, who is an elite coach globally, but no one knows who the hell he is locally. So, I don't know if David Blatt needs it or not, but it's probably not a bad thing to say something supportive as opposed to doing nothing. But again, I don't disagree that fixing things has got to be done in the locker room. We realize it needs to be fixed, but you can't ignore it.

George Karl: My thing is how you show your support. If we think, as a coaching staff, when we're going into that bunker that there's going to be hurdles from the assistant GM to the analytics guy, and we end up with all these opinions that are being heard by players, managers, coaches and trainers, it creates an ugly locker room. The only way you solve it is by winning games. They've just got to win.

What their coaching staff had better be looking at is their defense, because it's atrocious. I don't know what they did in training camp, why they didn't get any better at it. They have bad feet, and they have a bad presence around the basket. I'm putting the bad feet on LeBron James. And who on their bench can plug this hole? And as a coach, I'm thinking about: "How do we go elbow and boxes? How do we keep the ball out of the paint?" And their transition defense is ordinary. The rebounding is ordinary. That has to change.

Amin Elhassan: I'm with Coach 100 percent. I think a lot of these other issues are going to get covered up by winning. But their defense is truly, truly troubling. They're in the bottom five in the league in defensive efficiency. When you watch them, they have horrible technique, they don't pay attention, there doesn't seem to be any consistency in their approach as far as defensive schemes or anything. But to go back to what something Coach Thorpe said -- for me, when I was a lower-level front office guy in Phoenix, I often could hear out people without prejudice. People talk to me without prejudice, because I don't have any power.

So if I were in Cleveland, I would have a conversation -- just me -- with some of the players to say: "Look, you guys have issues, you guys and the coaching staff are all going to work on those. I'm not here to interject on that part. But you cannot sit in front of microphones and cameras and point fingers." There's a time for that, and even Coach Karl did this sometimes; sometimes you have to prod people through the media to get them going. But it can't be a few games into the season when we're all new here. Nobody knows each other. That all needs to stay in-house.

And I think someone had that conversation with them because if you listen to their most recent comments compared to early last week, it's a lot more positive. That's what they need to be saying to the media, and not "these guys have bad habits and I need to lead them out of it." That's toxic-speak to the media.

Thorpe: LeBron is the guy you're going to have that talk with.

Elhassan: And again, that's why it's easy to come from me because I'm not the GM, I'm not the head coach. It's not a reprimand. This is my friendly advice. Someone with a vested interest in all of us doing well. That often happens, more traditionally, from an assistant coach who has a close relationship with the players. But in this case -- because of so much acrimony between the parties -- sometimes it takes a little ol' Amin coming in with friendly advice because they take it at face value and not as a hidden agenda.

Karl: You have to understand that you're approaching the staff right now because it hasn't been together long. Actually, I don't even know how close they are. My feeling was [Cleveland general manager] David Griffin selected this coaching staff.

Thorpe: You're right, Coach, he did.

Karl: And Blatt right now, he has the target on him -- someone might try to blow it up, someone might try to dive in there and divide that organization. I don't know who that may be. Maybe it's someone left over from the old regime who's still in the front office. Look, they're going to win enough games; they're going to become a good enough team to be respected. They're not going to fall on their asses, but if there's all of a sudden a lot of cliques and divisions among the coaching staff, organization and players, all three become disjointed. Then you will have a cancer that will grow and someone will be destroyed.

Thorpe: Also, players have to start caring about each other on the court. I don't care if they're best friends off the court, though it's nice if they are as it doesn't hurt the process. When you have guys who care about one another on one end of the court, it often translates on the other end of the court. So anything management can do to get guys to believe in each other, without stepping on toes, they should do it. No one should be recommending playing time, no one's recommending strategies or systems or schemes that should be employed from management.

But as Amin was saying, everyone in the organization needs to be breathing positive spirits to each other; we have to care about each other when we play. What Coach Karl said is true: There are enough bad teams. The Cavs are going to win plenty of games. But to beat the good teams, they have to start caring about each other, and that'll manifest itself on both sides of the court when they do.

Chad Ford: I'm just wondering why we're all so worked up? We've just started a brand new season, many of the players are young, have never been in a winning situation before, LeBron's trying to get in, he's got a new coach. I look at it like this: A conflict can be negative or it can be positive. I think this is a blessing for the Cavs. Look, we've got some issues to work out here. I think if they start 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, you can immediately be playing bad basketball and say to yourself, "Hey, we're winning, and at the end of the day we're 6-0, who's going to complain?" But the way they started, I think it forces you, like Coach Karl said, to look at the defense and look at what's happening there. I think what Coach Thorpe said is correct: You've got to look at how players are playing with each other. Are they trusting each other?

"

But I think it's great that we're having this discussion about how crappy our defense is...I'd rather have these discussions now than be exposed in the playoffs, because we were able to skate through the season simply with enough talent to beat people every night. And I think this is exposing the flaws in the team, and I think it can be a positive.

"-- Chad Ford

As assistant GM, I'm evaluating my key people. You have Coach Blatt, who I think has gone through adversity before. You have LeBron James, who we know has been through adversity before. Do they understand what's going on? Are they keeping a positive outlook? Are they working? Are they making progress from these things? And how can we support and be helpful before this starts to turn destructive? I'm not sure that it has; I think the media has overblown that a bit. If it starts to turn destructive, then yeah, maybe they get more involved, but not at this early point in the season.

But I think it's great that we're having this discussion about how crappy our defense is. I think it's great that we're discussing how we can win with certain players still playing hero ball. I'd rather have these discussions now than be exposed in the playoffs, because we were able to skate through the season simply with enough talent to beat people every night. And I think this is exposing the flaws in the team, and I think it can be a positive.

Elhassan: Chad, I agree with you. The only thing I'd address are the comments from the players last week and when this process is exposed to the world. That's not for the world to see. That's for us in this locker room, within these walls. We handle it there, but it should not be on display. LeBron can't just blast people, because it erodes whatever little trust is being built. Guys just don't know each other.

Ford: I hear you, Amin, but I'm not sure how much of this is an overreaction on the part of the media, because heaven knows, we never overreact ...

[laughter]

Elhassan: It just sends the wrong vibe out there. LeBron might not have meant it that way, but his comments created the negative vibe the media picked up on. Of course the media picks up on those things and tries to exploit it, but he's the one chumming the water.

Penn: So, let me ask Kevin something. I assume you're going to say the words in big bold letters: SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. Tell us, analytically, what you see. Give us the real facts on what's going on with them.

Kevin Pelton: I would say small sample size on the offensive end, and it's potentially because of the fact that it does seem to relate so much to what we've been talking about in terms of building cohesion and building trust. All the projections said that this was not going to be just a good offensive team but a historically good offensive team. So struggles at this stage are pretty clearly a fluke, but at the defensive end, everything we're seeing is reinforcing what we expected about this team coming into the season, particularly in terms of rim protection.

To go back to what Amin was talking about earlier, they're in the bottom 10 in the league in field-goal percentage when defending at the rim. That's an issue and that's not something that's going away. It might actually get worse because so far they've had Anderson Varejao healthy but can't count on having him for all 82 games, and so that's where I think they do need to be having a discussion right now. They probably should've been having it already. This isn't the final roster.

Thorpe: I think at the end of the day what separates the Spurs from every other team in the league -- I know this might sound trite -- is the culture that exists all the way from the front office and ownership down throughout the entire organization. In Cleveland we've got a young GM, you've got an owner who hasn't been great in building culture in Cleveland. You've got young players who've been in a losing culture, you have a coach coaching for the first time in the NBA. At some point -- and I think this has to happen -- the Cavs must ask themselves: "What's our culture? How are we going to set it?"

Penn: To address something someone mentioned earlier -- should we be talking about potential deals? To me, we're talking internally but you're not making any external calls right now. My opinion on that is, yes, we will be talking internally about potential deals and about tweaks. We will not be making any outbound calls right now because it's not deal time. You've got to wait until at least the bloom is off the rose for everybody else, after about three to four weeks, and then you get to where you can at least start chatting. But right now everybody believes in what they've got, they've been drinking the Kool-Aid on what they have through the whole preseason. And you're just trying to stay calm and relax and move on and let the coach sail the ship.

Once you get to trade season, it'll open up. You'll get conversations, it'll start. But like everything else in the NBA, you need deadline pressure or something to grease the skids to make a deal happen. You just have to wait until someone else is just as motivated to make a move. And perhaps we'll discuss this more when trading time approaches.