The Cavs have had to deal with a couple of transitions since the trade deadline. The Antawn Jamison for Zydrunas Ilgauskus swap is the most obvious one, but the return of Mo Williams and Delonte West in the backcourt is almost as meaningful.
Before their return, the Cavs rotation was heavy on forwards. Mike Brown would often go to a lineup of Daniel Gibson, Lebron, Jawad Williams, Anderson Varejao, and Shaq or Z at center. Heavy on forwards, this lineup provides extraordinary length on the perimeter and really strong rebounding. Delonte and Mo coming back takes away from that length. Jamison instead of Z in the rotation is also a minus in length.
I hate to say it, but I think playing Mo less would help. Mike Brown tried to play Delonte West at shooting guard last year, even having him guard Hedo Turkoglu in the east finals, and it didn't work. I think Delonte is an excellent defensive point guard, which he showed with two key blocks tonight, but he is not a very good shooting guard defender. He just isn't tall enough to hang with most NBA 2 guards. The more Mo Williams plays, the more Delonte is the second shortest guy, thus he would guard the 2.
It's tough to call for less Mo Williams minutes as a Cavs fan, but I think they would just work better defensively with Delonte at the point. Not that I think they should be playing Jawad Williams 25 minutes a game or something, but they need more perimeter defense now that they are getting more scoring from the power forward position with Antawn Jamison.
No comments:
Post a Comment