CLEVELAND, Ohio — In this episode of the Wine and Gold Talk Podcast, Ethan Sands, Chris Fedor and Jimmy Watkins delve into a critical examination of the Cavs’ championship prospects in the coming years, highlighting the challenges they face to reach their goal in the Eastern Conference.
Takeaways:
The importance of mental toughness in playoff basketball is crucial.
Cleveland Cavaliers need to learn how to win at the highest level.
Cavs missed a significant opportunity to run the East this season due to injuries.
Winning a championship is a difficult task with strong competition in the West.
Donovan Mitchell’s leadership is crucial for the Cavs’ future success.
Darius Garland’s playoff performance raises questions about his future.
The draft lottery results can significantly impact team strategies.
Future player movements could reshape team dynamics in the league.
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Ethan Sands: What up, Cavs Nation? I’m your host, Ethan Sands, and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. And joining me today, of course, you know him, you love them. Chris Fedor, Jimmy Watkins. We’re getting into a whole lot of stuff today, and of course, it is a hey, Chris. Rendition of the pod, but there was a great game played tonight that I think we have to get into. First and foremost, the Denver Nuggets and the OKC Thunder are heading to seven games to figure out who will match up with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals. And guys, I know the playoffs are a brutal stretch of games, and obviously, if you Sweep, you get 16 games and you’re done. But before reaching the Western Conference finals, the Denver Nuggets will have played at least 14 different contests. This is their second game seven of this playoffs alone. What do you guys think about not only the war of attrition that they are going through, but also the understanding that there’s so much behind the scenes that they’re dealing with to get to that stage, and they still have one more game to win, and they’ll have to do it on road territory. Chris, what did you think about the contest? What did you think about how this game played out and the situation that the Denver Nuggets find themselves in?
Chris Fedor: Well, I’ll just say this, guys, I would not want to see Denver in a Game seven situation. Are you kidding me? All of that championship experience. Playoff. Jamal Murray. Playoff. Aaron Gordon. Jokic is the best player in the NBA. He’s the most impactful player in the NBA. He can control and dictate terms. So Oklahoma City, you know, in a situation that they’ve never been in before at home, that’s certainly going to help them. But like, these guys, man, Denver’s tough. Denver’s really tough. And I know that they have gone through things throughout the course of the regular season, but there’s just no substitute for experience. And we talked all throughout the course of the playoff run for the Cavs, and especially against Indiana. Like, the mental toughness, the fragility, like OKC is about to go into a situation that their guys just have never been in before. And I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how they respond to that. You know, I don’t have too many doubts about Shea. I just think his game transcends. But Jalen Williams as a number two scoring option in a Game seven with all of that pressure, all of those expectations. Who, man? Chet Holmgren. Same thing. So it’ll be really, really interesting to see. Just can OKC keep its composure and find a way to, you know, just get past Denver? Because if they get past Denver, like, they will have earned it. And I think that would do really, really impactful and positive things for the Thunder, not just for the remainder of this playoff run, but playoff runs in the future if they can slay this dragon.
Jimmy Watkins: There’s like four real basketball players on the Thunder shooting above 45% in this series. It’s Shay, it’s Hartenstein, it’s Casen Wallace and his fourth, Aaron Wiggins. Shout out. Aaron Wiggins save at basketball. This is what we’ve been talking about all year with okc. They’ve been an incredible regular. They’re a little Cavsy in that they underscore the difference between the regular season and the playoffs because during the regular season there are 68 win juggernaut who are playing without one of their three best players for like half the year. In Chet Holmgren, it’s like, oh my God, how’s anyone gonna deal with this team? This is a historically, like, their point differential is awesome. Their net ratings awesome. It’s the best defense. The Cavs have one of the best offenses ever. The Thunder have one of the best defenses ever. They’re playing a team with six dudes, eight dudes tonight. Julian Strother, you could put his road this, send this one to Naismith this. Julian Strother, random role player game. Awesome, awesome stuff from him tonight. 15 points. But like for most of the series, it’s been the Nugget starters, including Michael Porter playing with one freaking shoulder. He’s got, he’s got a shoulder pad on that left shoulder the entire series. And they’re hanging right like this is. This is talking about the Cavs. The Cavs need some of whatever the Nuggets got cooking over there. Just this, this. And by the way, I want to, I want to say because it was. Donovan mentioned the Celtics during exit interviews and how it took them seven years to. To get where they ended up with a championship. And Kobe Altman has used the Nuggets specifically as, as a, an example of how patience can pay off these. These teams that you’re referencing, these champions, they’ve never fall. Fallen as flat on their face as the Caps have in some of these playoff series. The Nuggets. The Nuggets were once a first round sweep, but that was when the year they had a ton of injuries. No Jamal Murray, I don’t think Aaron Gordon was playing Then either. It was just Jokic trying to hold the, the ship together. I don’t even remember who they were playing that year, but like, it’s a different kind of thing. The Nuggets were a question mark until they weren’t. We just learned that Nikola Jokic is an all time playoff performer. For Jamal Murray, all time shot maker Aaron Gordon, the list of playoff role players, I would take over. Aaron Gordon right now is very freaking short. Very freaking short. Michael Porter Jr. Who we kind of all think of as like this gunner, he never passes. These are all true. Both these statements are true. Shoot first, second, and third. Doesn’t read the game awesome on offense, but he fights for rebounds. He’s playing through this shoulder injury. He’s still finding ways to make an impact like that. The, the last series against the Clippers, he’s closing the game on the bench. Next game, 16 and 15, double double. Just like making it happen, making it happen. And Christian Brown, first time you’re getting thrown into the wolves like this as a starter and you got to play, you know, 35 plus minutes every night. Boom. He’s ready. He’s ready. There’s just like a, an essence to you where I can, I think I can just watch you for a quarter and be like, oh, you will survive in a playoff series. You. You understand this.
Chris Fedor: I think there’s a common theme in the playoffs this year, and I think it’s maturity and I think it’s experience, and, and I think, you know, that’s something that the Cavs ran into against Indy, and I think it’s something that OKC is kind of running into as well. I think a lot of people would say that the Thunder are the more talented team. I think a lot of people would say that the Thunder might even be the better team. But do they know how to do this? Do they know how to do this at this level, at this time of year? And I think it’s a legitimate question. Minnesota knows how to do this, right? Minnesota went to the conference finals last year. They learned a lot of stuff along the way. Rudy Gobert has been in playoff game after playoff game after playoff game. Mike Conley, same thing. Anthony Edwards is starting to get those, those battle scars from his playoff wars as well. And there’s just no substitute for those kinds of things. It’s so funny because, like, I remember the first year of LeBron James in Cleveland and like, one of his primary goals was to break the bad habits that Kyrie Irving had formed over the course of his early career because like, he had no clue what it took to win. He knew how to be a great basketball player. He knew how to put up stats. He knew how to become an All Star and a Rookie of the Year, but he didn’t know how to be a winning basketball player. And there was a game where LeBron just stood in the corner and said, you do it. You figure it out on your own. And, like, Kyrie just dribbled all the way around like he had no clue what. What to do. And LeBron was like, you’re going to have to fail. You’re going to have to understand that your style leads to failure, and you need to change that. And that was his way of doing it. And it works. It worked well enough for Kyrie to become a championship level player, but it didn’t happen overnight, Right? Like, he had to break those bad habits. And okc, you know, they started. They weren’t this. They certainly weren’t this. They had to become this. So I think there’s something to, you know, learning how to win at the highest level, especially when it comes to playoff basketball. And if they figure it out and they win Game 7 against the Nuggets, a group of champions who, boy, I think that emboldens the Thunder, but that’s a big if.
Ethan Sands: And I don’t want to rehash what we had on yesterday’s podcast, the whole, you gotta be a dog to do it. And I think we can all admit that experience can awaken that in you, right? Failure, obviously, LeBron James, your. Your analogy, Chris, and your experience covering that is extremely apparent because you get to see how that envelops in somebody. Kyrie Irving always had that dog in him, always. But it had to be turned into something else. He had to be filed into something that would allow him to play that way. And I think a great example is the Minnesota Timberwolves coach, right? Talking about how the mentality coming into this season was, are you a Western Conference finals team or did you just make the Western Conference finals? And I think Kenny Atkinson can take a lot from these coaches that are still in here because they’re pushing their star players and in ways that are one constructive, but are also like, we cannot do this without you playing to this caliber. And for me, the takeaway, I don’t know if it was a hot mic or if he was mic’d up or whatever, but again, the Minnesota Timberwolves coach was like talking to Anthony Edwards as he was coming to the sideline and was like, you know, they’re going to Keep coming, they’re going to keep going. This is you and you have to keep going. There is no let up. And it kind of goes back to what Donovan Mitchell was saying at his end of season press conference. Like, I don’t give a damn how tired you are. I don’t care if you’re hurt. And there was this great quote that I heard from one of my mentors today, like, you can play when you’re hurting, but you can’t play when you’re injured. And there’s different levels to this and I think the understanding for a lot of the players and a lot of the teams that are still currently in the playoffs is that you can change the course of the series through just a few possessions if you let up, if you don’t keep your foot on the throttle. And I think the understanding of that is something that the Cavs need to learn as well. And I’m going to keep going with the subtext questions as well.
Jimmy Watkins: Can I just say on the nature versus nurture thing of playoff basketball real quick?
Ethan Sands: Sure.
Jimmy Watkins: This is one case, but Andrew Nemhardt played, had his first playoff run last year and he was just ready for it. Just immediately like raised his game to a different level. Was awesome. In the game seven against the Knicks, you’re some, some guys they just got it. Some guys they just got it. And I’m open to like, I love Chris Finch, the T Wolves coach. I love what he’s saying to Ant in those moments. I think coaching matters in this and I think to some degree coaches can. Can mitigate an experience if they. And by the way, it’s probably no coincidence that Andrew Nemhardt was so ready for that, that last playoff run because his coach is Rick Carlisle, who’s seen everything. I mean, Rick Carlisle was on the court for malice in the palace. He freaking beat LeBron. The LeBron Miami Heat team with the Dirk Mavs. He’s a Hall of Fame coach, but I lean more towards nature than nurture on that kind of thing. And Andrew Nemhard’s a good example of that. Just saying.
Ethan Sands: Yeah, and that’s kind of what I was saying. It is always in you, but sometimes you need somebody to bring that out of you. And that’s what I wrote about for cleveland.com today is literally like you. Unless it’s not in you and somebody can bring it out of you. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and think about whether or not you have that and if, whether or not you’re going to be an 82 game player versus a 16 game player. And I’m going to keep going with these subtext questions because I think it applies as well. This one literally just says, are you guys shocked by the Knicks Celtics series so far? I didn’t see that one coming. I was thinking Celtics in five. And obviously the Celtics are going to Game six in New York to figure out whether or not their season will continue after losing Jayson Tatum due to a ruptured Achilles. After winning Game 5 in Boston and continuing their series and continuing their season. I just think that was a great example. And we talked about that a little bit on yesterday, yesterday’s podcast about what Joe Missoula said about the character of the players that he has. And that kind of goes into hand in hand with the dog mentality that we discussed. But for you guys, did you expect the Knicks to give the Celtics such a run in this Eastern Conference semifinals matchup?
Chris Fedor: Well, I didn’t expect Kristaps Porzingis to not be able to breathe. Joe Malazzula said in the second half of the game that Porzingis couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t play him in the second half. He has been downright awful for the Celtics and he was the one who, like, changed everything for them, made them so difficult to guard, made them so difficult to deal with on the defensive end of the floor. That size, that athleticism, that skill, it’s just a different team now. And we knew coming into the season that the Celtics weren’t the deepest team and that injuries were going to be if, if they popped up, they were going to be one of the things that could derail them. So I think the fact that Jrue Holiday was dealing with a bit of a hamstring issue. I think the fact that Kristaps Porzingis can’t play more than 10 minutes, like, all of a sudden you’re relying on Luke Cornett way more than you probably should. All of a sudden you’re relying on Al Horford way more than you should at this stage of his career. All of a sudden you’re relying on like these small ball lineups that are susceptible to offensive rebounds and getting beat in the paint and not having any kind of rim protection for Jalen Brunson and all these different kinds of things. So, like, I think if, if I would have known the severity of the situation with Porzingis going into this series between the Celtics and the Knicks, I don’t think I would have picked what I did. I would have thought that it would have had a chance to extend a little bit more because I think Kristaps Porzingis is very, very important to everything that the Celtics are and everything that they do. So when the status quo of this series changed and the Celtics figured out more information about Porzingis, about how much he can play, how much he can give to them, they became more vulnerable than certainly it seemed like they would have been going into this series and saying all of that. Congratulations to like Jalen Brunson for being awesome, awesome in late game situations and Boston having no answer for him whatsoever.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah, I think there was this, this sentiment that existed throughout coming out of last season generally that while the Celtics, we clearly all understand how good the Celtics are, they’ve been like a historic point differential team for a couple seasons now. And you see personnel wise, they’re a really good modern basketball team. Pass, shoot, dribble, defend, all that stuff. Everyone can do it. But they didn’t really get pushed last year. And the question with Boston has always been focus and late game execution and on the closest, if you can get the game to the closest margins and the nooks and crannies, like, can you out execute them on that? I think that’s possible. It was just, it was just unclear if anyone could do that. And frankly I certainly thought that the only team that was able to push them into that corner was the Cavs this season. Oops. And it should be noted that the Knicks were still down 20 in both of the first two games that they won at this series. So I mean, the facts led for.
Chris Fedor: 82 of the 96 minutes.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah, the Knicks deserve a ton of credit for bouncing back from that, but the Celtics deserve a ton of blame. Like a comeback is always a two sided story.
Chris Fedor: Yeah.
Jimmy Watkins: So yeah, hell yeah, I’m surprised. Hell yeah, I’m surprised by how it’s going. I was surprised, honestly impressed by Boston’s resiliency to win game five after everything they had been through with Tatum. Awesome Luke Cornette game. Awesome Jaylen Brown game. That’s a championship performance right there. Now, it didn’t get to the end. Still think that the Knicks could just be within single digits with five minutes left in game six. You got a chance. But I would just like to reinforce again, I know I said this yesterday, this is a missed opportunity for the Cavs. This might end up being their best chance to run through the east over the next however many years because they were really freaking healthy throughout the regular season, which is something that doesn’t come up when we start. Yes, it’s bad luck that they had injuries pop up during the playoffs at the worst possible moment against a bad team. That’s a bad matchup for them for sure. It’s also really good luck that they didn’t get injured before that point. Even though they were doing everything in their and their control to cut minutes and all that stuff. Like what they’re doing is they’re trying to prevent soft tissue injuries with that stuff. Like you can’t control sometimes you just land on somebody’s foot like Evan Mobley did, you know, like that that stuff just happens. Like Donovan Mitchell did like against Miami. Darius Garland shooting a three with the, with the toe already injured re aggravates. That happens. Bad landing, you know, there’s nothing you can do about that. I also had this is now I don’t want to do turn this into shooting luck corner, but I had this thought and I haven’t expressed it yet. For all the, for all the shooting above their head that the Pacers did in this series and the shooting below their basement the Cavs did in the series. The Cavs were the best shooting team in the league through the All Star break and then they were 18th during the second half of the season. I just think that’s interesting because the Cavs were an okay three point shooting team in the past. They became a really good one. Obviously they, you know, Ty Jerome being a really good shooter, someone they just didn’t have before. Sam Merrill getting more opportunities, getting a really good shooter, something they didn’t have before.
Ethan Sands: I’ve just.
Jimmy Watkins: Since the series has ended, I’ve been thinking about it through that prism. Like what if the Cavs were actually just closer to like a top 10 three point shooting team than the best three point shooting team in the league? I think that would help a lot of people wrap their head around what happened in the play. I’m not saying that’s true. I’m just saying what if. Because that’s how the numbers kind of bore out pre post All Star break percentage wise.
Chris Fedor: I mean, in the first half of the season, Charis LeVert was shooting a career high from 3 point range. He was shooting like 42% while he was a member of the Cavs. And George Niang, you know, he wasn’t shooting great by his own standards, but that’s.
Jimmy Watkins: DeAndre Hunter came in pretty hot though. DeAndre Hunter came in pretty hot.
Chris Fedor: He started hot, let’s say he started hot and then he cooled off from there. So I think that was part of it. I think you saw a Darius Garland slump, shooting slump in the second half of the season. I also think you saw an exhausted team in March. So it’s hard, I think, when you’re talking about those kinds of splits and you don’t provide the entire perspective like Kenny Atkinson has talked about all season long. And he reiterated it the other night when he was asked something similar to this. And look like the minute that the schedule came out, like, everybody in this organization looked at March and they said, oh, my God, are you kidding me? Like, we better not be in a playoff push at that point in time, because if we’re in a playoff push at that point in time, we’re fighting for seating at that point in time, we are screwed. Like, that was the initial reaction as soon as the schedule came out. In fact, I had somebody from the organization text me and said, do people in the NBA hate us? Like, what is this? Are you kidding me? So, like, Kenny Atkinson said, I don’t know how many times you can pull up the Google Doc that we have from all of the transcriptions. He used the word hellacious, I think at least 20 times this year to try and describe the march that they were in. So I think part of it was the shooting slump of Darius Garland. I think part of it was the subtraction of George Niang and Caris Levert. I think the other part of it was playing, you know, as many games in such a condensed fashion as the Cavs did in March, that they were just worn out and they weren’t playing their best basketball. I do think it’s interesting, but I. I don’t know that that gives you the right answer.
Jimmy Watkins: It’s also true that when they. When everyone was shooting a career eye from three in the beginning of the year, their legs were pretty fresh.
Chris Fedor: Fresh. It goes exhausted at that point.
Jimmy Watkins: It goes both ways. I mean, Isaac Coral was shooting, what, 50% from three.
Chris Fedor: Yeah.
Jimmy Watkins: Early in the season. Now he’s not taking that many, and I’m not. Again, I want to be clear. I’m not saying I’ve cracked the code. The Cavs were a fake, good offense the whole year. That is not what I’m saying here. I just think that that’s. That’s a different way to think about shooting variants as it pertains to this series.
Ethan Sands: I just did a quick Kenny Atkinson regular season document search and I used the word season rather than hellacious just because we have some people that don’t know how to spell and would have spelled hellacious wrong. And there are 25 different references to the Cavs schedule. Obviously there are some of those that include the questions that were being asked. So let’s go down to 15, but like 15 different times Kenny Atkinson mentioned the schedule for the Cavs this season. I think that’s a great point. And I wanted to go all the way back to something that Jimmy said about Jalen Brunson and the Knicks and getting the score close. And obviously Jalen Brunson has been absolutely phenomenal in the fourth quarter of games and clutch player of the year for a reason. But in game five, he was not on the court for a different reason. He fouled out, right? He wasn’t on the court for what, the last seven minutes because he was in foul trouble. I don’t know if the Boston Celtics figure something out with having to get Jalen Brunson into actions, getting him into foul trouble, or baiting him into doing the little head fake that he loves to do so much and actually getting the calls on that for being an offensive foul and whatever. But getting into the next question and Jimmy mentioned if the Cavs best shot to win a championship could have been this year. And this is a question from me based on a question that I had received on a different either radio show or YouTube, TV show, whatever you want to call it earlier this week. Do you think the Cavs will win a championship in the next two years? No cans, no if maybes, yes or no answers with explanations. And Chris, I’m going to start with you. Do you think the Cavs will win a championship in the next two seasons?
Chris Fedor: No, because I need to see it from this team in the playoffs. All of these things that they said about themselves, everybody’s going to say about them, too. And I honestly think that Donovan Mitchell was doing subliminal messaging the other day. I think he wants us to rip this team to shreds. I think he wants Darius Garland to recognize that he wasn’t good enough. I think he wants Evan Mobley to recognize that he can’t be invisible at various points or a forgotten man within the offense. Like, I think he wants all of these things said about the Cavs because he doesn’t want to say them himself, but he’s thinking them. He saw everything that we saw in these playoffs. Right, But. But I just don’t think Donovan wants to say them. I don’t think he wants to say them as bluntly as what the media would. So, no, I don’t think they can. I’ve got to see this team have a modicum of success in the playoffs. I’VE got to see Darius Garland look more consistently like a 16 game player as opposed to an 82 game player. I’ve got to see Evan Mobley, understand, as the second option, the second scoring option, you’ve got to be more consistent, you’ve got to be more consistently dominant. Now, he’s a little bit of a different case because even if he’s not great offensively, even if he’s not efficient offensively, he is making such an impact on the defensive end of the floor. So that like raises his floor as a number two option in the playoffs. But like, his usage rating dropped by five points from the regular season to the Indiana series. Donovan Mitchell’s usage rating skyrocketed from what it was in the regular season to the series against Indiana. And look, there were reasons for that. Evan Mobley missed a game, Darius Garland missed a couple of those games. So Donovan kind of took it upon himself to carry more of that weight offensively for this team. But how could anybody sit here and say, when they haven’t been able to get past the Eastern Conference semifinals and we’re talking about whether or not they can be successful in a playoff environment, how could anybody say, yes, yes, they’re going to win a championship over the next two years? Like, look, I think there are some factors that are going to be favorable for them. Certainly the injury to Jason Tatum opens the door. Who knows what Boston’s going to look like? That is the number coming into this season that was the number one team standing in the Cavs way. Like, you didn’t pick the Cavs to win the east because you said Boston loomed and they were the reigning champions and they were a great team. What are they going to look like next year? I don’t know. What’s Milwaukee going to look like next year? Is Giannis going to be in the East? Is he going to be in the West? Are the Knicks going to try and trade for somebody else? Are they going to trade cat and spare parts or something like that to try and get one of these guys that’s available this off season? I don’t know. So it’s, it’s certainly a situation where, you know, the door feels more open because of what could change in the East. But this team has flamed out in the playoffs over and over and over again. And I’m at a point where it’s just like, you got to prove it. You got to show that you can be a high level playoff basketball team. You’ve got to show that you understand how to handle everything. That comes with playoff basketball. The mental challenge, the physical challenge, the pressure of it all, the physicality, all of that stuff. And. And I have not seen enough evidence that the Cavs are ready for that. So my answer is no.
Jimmy Watkins: I mean, let’s just play a math. One team wins every year. You’re probably not going to win. Simple as that. The west is better. Their champion, while potentially beleaguered at the end of this, probably going to be better than yours. That’s how it’s worked out in recent history. The west wins more. That’s how it is now. We’re not talking about just making the Finals, talking about winning the Finals. And, I mean, there’s certainly an opportunity next year, as Chris said, a vacancy at the top with Boston down its best player. And even if Giannis does stay east or somebody else like the Knicks reconfigures their team in a massive way that makes them more palatable. A lot of those. It takes a little time to gel for those teams. The Cavs might say we got continuity if we stick together. These guys have been through some wars together. They’ve lost all of them. They’ve lost all of the important ones, and some of them in embarrassing fashion to smaller armies, but they’ve been in those wars. Yeah. The answer is no. I was going back through because I wrote a Donovan column for tomorrow morning, and the more I was going through what he was saying, the more I was thinking, oh, yeah, I see. I see a little bit of what Chris is saying here. He’s. He’s sneaking them in. Think about Donovan. Donovan’s such an interesting. He’s a. He’s a difficult guy to even like. Logistically, there’s two in the weeds. But an interesting guy to quote in writing because he’s so. He covers all the bases. He’s so long winded, it’s like, am I really gonna have a three graph quote from Donovan here? I don’t know.
Ethan Sands: But what.
Jimmy Watkins: Everything that he’s saying is interesting and pertinent to my topic. So what am I doing here? Regardless, he sneaks in some interesting stuff there. And it’s not just that Donovan doesn’t want to say these things about his teammates in the media. He can’t. It’s a bad look. He’s dropping crumbs for us. But I think he also understands that we are. We see what’s happening.
Chris Fedor: Yeah.
Jimmy Watkins: Like, he doesn’t have to do very much for us to understand. It isn’t like the Darius Garland conversation is interesting, though, because again, I still have a ton of questions about him and I don’t think that he handles generally the ebbs and flows of the playoffs very well. But again, he couldn’t walk. So, like, how am I supposed to evaluate him? I know during that Pacer series, now.
Chris Fedor: Imagine being in the front office.
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah, that’s hard. That’s really, really hard.
Chris Fedor: Off season for this team, a lot of critical decisions. It’s really difficult to know. Okay, you saw the two games against Miami. Now that was Miami. That was the worst playoff team that we’ve ever seen. They were the 10 seed. A 10 seed has never gotten into the playoffs before, so it’s the worst playoff team that we’ve ever seen. Darius was great in the two games against Miami, 24 points, seven assists. At one point in this playoff run, he was their leading scorer. But Indiana, like, was more of a playoff challenge. Indiana was always more of a playoff caliber opponent. So I don’t know how you evaluate that if you’re the front office. I don’t know what conclusion you come to if you’re the front office, except you just have to trust, like one, obviously they like him. They gave him the big contract for a reason. They believe in the Donovan Darius thing together. But, like, I think they have to try and quantify, like, how much better can Darius get moving forward? And like, if we think he can still get significantly better, then we’re probably less likely to even consider that. But if they always look at him as okay, defensive liability, undersized, can probably get out, muscled and pushed around, has a little bit of a flamboyance to his game, that sometimes leads to bad mistakes at critical points. Like, at some point you have to say, we know who he is as a player. We know the strengths, we know the weaknesses, which ones are correctable. Know what I mean? And like, not every weakness is correctable. Not every weakness is fixable. Like, sometimes you have to build a roster around a guy’s weakness. Sometimes you have to build a lineup around a guy’s weakness. Sometimes you have to build a defensive system around a guy’s weakness. So I don’t know that if the Cavs do decide to move on from Darius at some point, like, I don’t think it’s going to be simply just like what they saw against Indiana. Right? I think it’s who he is as a player, some of his own limitations. And here’s the other variable. Can we find somebody for much cheaper, that balances our salary cap book the way that it needs to, that can provide enough of the Other good stuff that Darius does not be. Darius not match Darius not be all star point guard, but be competent enough and compatible enough with Donovan Mitchell that you still feel like it will work.
Jimmy Watkins: You know what the hardest part about that is? I kind of feel like we do know what Darius Garland is as a player. Like the defensive stuff is gonna be the defensive stuff. He’s always gonna be like six 1,200ish. And teams are gonna go at him because of that. Like he’s done growing. He’s 20, he’s 25. No matter how badly Kenny wants to be 28, he’s 25. So it’s a human judgment, the calculus of Darius Garland in a vacuum, he’s worth it. The shot creation, the off the dribble, three point shooting, some of the frickin passes this guy makes. I mean he had a rough series but his first game back where he throws this like left handed hook pass around a Pacers guy for a dunk, there’s like frickin 10 dudes who can make that pass. Yeah, he’s amazing, an amazing playmaker, but can you do it with more pressure and more physicality? That’s what the Cavs are evaluating here, right? And it goes back to what like. And by the way, sometimes teams build around their guys weaknesses. They’ve frickin done it. They gave two elite rim protectors to this, to this smaller backcourt. They got Dean Wade, they got Isaac, they got a bunch of guys to guard the other team’s best guys so that Darius Garland doesn’t have to get caught on an island against some of the best players in the league. And if he does, that’s okay. You have at least one rim protector behind you at all times. It’s the best possible environment for his defensive weaknesses pretty much. So while, while while maintaining offense.
Ethan Sands: So let’s bring this full circle and get to the next topic because I have one last thing to ask you guys and I don’t want to hold you too late. And I think we go back to the dog conversation one more time. I think Darius Garland is a killer mentally when things are going right. And I think Jimmy, you pointed out that defensive weaknesses are going to be there and I think that’s absolutely true. But you also pointed out his strengths. And I think the hardest part for Darius Garland, especially after an off season where he had to refine his joy, refine what made him love the game of basketball, now he’s going to have to look himself in the mirror. This is his worth, not mine. Saying that he’s gonna have to look himself in the mirror and find out what’s there, find out who he is. And for me, it’s being able to balance the intensity, the fire, the. The maturity that he has when he is going one on one with somebody and he knows he’s gonna cook him. He knows he has an advantage, right? And then there’s the opposite defensively, when you know you’re at a disadvantage, when you’re not hitting your shots, when you’re not being the player that you know yourself to be, what are you then? Can you keep your level of joy, keep your level of mental toughness? And we’ve had this conversation throughout the playoffs. We had this conversation nearing the end of the season. Whenever we see Darius drop his head and go like. And trying to figure out what he’s going to do next, we already know how the rest of the game is going to go. And that’s the switch that it is for Darius, right? When it’s positive, the entire game is positive. But if there’s one thing that goes wrong and you see head droop down, it’s a wrap. And it’s a mental thing. And that’s the entirety of what Kenny Atkinson has been trying to preach to us throughout the season. It’s mental toughness, its maturity. Donovan Mitchell again, as Chris was saying, and something that I said a couple of days ago, like, he’s trying to tell us something without saying it, and he’s trying to show us something without saying it. And the reality of Donovan Mitchell telling everybody on this team to take this summer and sit with what happened, the embarrassment, the disappointment, that is him saying that we need something to change and we have the talent to do it. Chris, I’m going to go back to something that Max Drew said this time last year. We have enough. Kenny Atkinson again said it. We have enough talent. We have enough to get the job done. But it’s up here, the whole Yogi Berra saying 90% mental, the other half is physical. It’s between the ears. That’s where they need to improve the most.
Chris Fedor: Yeah, I mean, I just think the conversation surrounding Darius and. And this team in general, like the idea of Darius and Donovan and even Ty Jerome. The Cavs understand the defensive limitations. The Cavs understand that those guys are going to get picked on at various points, especially in a playoff environment. The idea was their offense was going to help offset that, and it just didn’t. Against Indiana, Ty Jerome wasn’t good enough. Right? He wasn’t good enough on the offensive End of the floor. He wasn’t making enough of an impact on the offensive end of the floor to justify playing time considering how much he was struggling defensively. And Darius was the same thing, right? You expect some defensive breakdowns from him. You expect him to get pushed around a little bit, you expect teams to hunt him, but you also expect him to get it back at the other end of the floor somehow, some way. 4 of 16 like that doesn’t offset all of the stuff that happens on the defensive end of the floor. So, like, if Darius is going to remain on this team, he’s going to have to be a consistently dynamic offensive player because of the problems that he’s going to have on defense. He is statistically one of the worst defensive players in the entire NBA. He is like, that’s just pointing out facts. Now, you have a bunch of different things that you use to measure that, but all of them point to him being a poor defender, a negative defender. And if you look at this series, and I know it’s hard because he couldn’t walk and you have to keep it in context, couldn’t walk. Every time he moved, it was very, very painful. And he didn’t have the same stop start, he didn’t have the same change of direction, but they were statistically a better team with Darius off the floor.
Ethan Sands: I think that’s a fair point. And we’re talking about reality here and I think Darius knows that. And he has to have that reality check with himself this summer, take the amount of time he needs to effectively heal and not try and come back too soon. Because we know Darius is a gym rat and wants to get back as soon as possible. But you need to heal first. And then you can go and take your, your frustrations out on the court. But before then, you got to figure out everything that you got going on between the years. And it’s going to take another grown man conversation with Donovan Mitchell about where he thinks this team is going to be. But the last question for today’s podcast, and it goes back to one of our subtexters asking, and I asked them because everything that was happening throughout the week about the draft lottery in Dallas, getting the number one pick after everything that happened this year, and this is one of the responses for Dallas to essentially get a mulligan for trading Luka is ridiculous. Nico Harrison might be the dumbest GM in sports. Again, this is not my words.
Jimmy Watkins: This is.
Ethan Sands: Listen up. Next to his words, he traded his franchise player for pennies on the dollar and gets rewarded with Cooper Flag. The Mavs will find a way to screw this up, too. Guys, I know Dallas has a lot of veteran leadership. Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, Kyrie Irving. Now they have, as it has been reported, number one, an overall pick and going to select Cooper. Flag with that pick. What do you guys think about this? And before we get into that, I want to give the remaining picks so everybody knows how the draft lottery panned out. Number one, Dallas Mavericks. Number two, San Antonio Spurs. Number three, Philadelphia 76ers. Number four, Charlotte Hornets. Number five, Utah Jazz. Number six, Washington Wizards. Number seven, New Orleans Pelicans. Number eight, Brooklyn Nets. Number nine, Toronto Raptors. Number 10, Houston Rockets. Number 11, Portland Trailblazers. Number 12, Chicago Bulls. Number 13, Atlanta Hawks. And number 14, again, the San Antonio Spurs.
Chris Fedor: I mean, I don’t even know what to say about this. Like, I totally understand why there are conspiracy theorists out there when it comes to the NBA draft lottery. Totally get it. Like, how could you not have a human reaction of the NBA helped the Dallas Mavericks get Cooper? Flag. Because of whatever reason you want to come up with. Just like in past years, you could say, hey, thanks to the NBA for giving the Cavs Andrew Wiggins so that they could flip Andrew Wiggins to Kevin love and help LeBron James come back to Cleveland. Or when LeBron James left Cleveland, hey, thanks to the NBA for giving them Kyrie Irving and a fresh start or whatever. But here’s the thing. I’ve never been in a lottery room. That’s one of the things that I haven’t done in my career. It’s something that I would like to do in my career. But I know so many people who have been in that lottery room, and I’ve talked to so many of them about this multiple times. And everybody that leaves that lottery room that has the experience of being in there will say point blank that they can’t see how this thing is rigged because of everything that has to go, right? The different combinations, the ping pong balls flying around and popping up. Like the way everything is done, everybody leaves that room and they say there’s no way that the NBA rigged that in favor of X team, Y team, Z team, or anything along those lines. So I have so many conversations with so many of those people, and they all say the same thing consistently. It just makes it hard for me to not believe them when they’ve been in there and they’re respected journalists. Whether it’s Jason Lloyd from the Athletic, whether it’s Jake Fisher, whether it’s Zach Lowe, who I’ve talked to about this sort of thing, whether it’s Tim Bontemps from espn, anybody that has been in there would tell you the same thing. So I think happy for Mavericks fans who were crushed by the whole Luka Doncic thing. But, yeah, I mean, Nico Harrison certainly doesn’t deserve this. You know, the Mavericks ownership, they don’t deserve this, but it is what it is. And Cooper Flag is going to be a member of the Dallas Mavericks and him, Kyrie and Anthony Davis.
Jimmy Watkins: That’s pretty intriguing to the conspiracy theorists out there. Ask yourself this. Why would the league give a generational talent to a dunderhead gm? Why would they do that? If I was Adam Silver, if. If Nico Harrison gets fired, okay. And get behind it. You want to. The Dallas Mavericks have done irreparable damage to their relationship with their fan base. Get the GM out of there. Give them an awesome player, reset. We’re all good. But ego doesn’t appear to be getting fired somehow. I mean, incredible job security, aspirational job security to mess up that bad. I mean, I think I’m trying to think, like, what’s our equivalent of trading Luca like that? Like if we just. If we just print like a blatant lie about Donovan Mitchell on purpose or something like that. Like that. I basically, honestly. I honestly can’t even make up a fake thing that would be as bad without getting in trouble. That’s how bad it would have to be for us to. For to do something as dumb as Nico. There’s that. First of all, there’s also. I think there’s also a draft lottery reform conversation about this, and I’m not really sure there’s any good answers here, because I personally like that all the teams that tanked are mad because I hate tanking. I think everyone should be trying all the time. I don’t know that there’s a perfect solution to achieve that end. But the fact that Utah and Brooklyn and Charlotte all ended up in Washington and Washington all got. Ended up getting screwed, even though they’re very. They all did their taking to various degrees. Whatever their goal was to lose, I like that it didn’t work out for them. On the other hand, I don’t like. I don’t. They do need help. They. The point of the. The point of the draft lottery is to prevent tanking. The point of the draft is to stabilize talent. That’s bad. And in this particular case, we have the Dallas Mavericks, who, as we established, total dunderhead running the team. They’re being rewarded for a terrible decision. The Philadelphia 76ers are being rewarded for at best extremely risky decisions that they made by trusting in mid-30s Paul George and 30 year old, 30ish year old Joel Embiid, both of which are injury prone. And surprise surprise, they got hurt. So I don’t like that those teams are getting not a get out of jail free card but new life into their organizations when they already had a lot to. Had a lot going for them. But there’s, there’s that conversation that is straight basketball stuff. Again, not a Nico guy. But the defense win championships philosophy with freaking Anthony Davis and Cooper Flag on the same team with Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford mixing in there somewhere. You’re probably gonna trade one of those guys at this point to get. I mean someone’s got a dribble, right? Who’s dribbling?
Ethan Sands: Kyrie?
Chris Fedor: Yeah, dribble enough for everybody in March.
Jimmy Watkins: In March he’s going to dribble. Until then you got to do something. I’m fascinated to see how they build out that team and how they pivot from this, especially considering I have no idea how to follow their GM’s thought process. They’re just a fascinating team to watch right now.
Ethan Sands: I think it’s an interesting situation to keep an eye on. Right. And obviously how they’ll potentially mess it up because that’s just how Nico Harrison has seemed to have done his generational talents and, and obviously it’s hard to criticize anything that Jimmy said, but I’m not going to repeat it.
Chris Fedor: I mean, I also think, you know, for Cooper Flag and the health of him and what he’s supposed to be moving forward, like there’s a better chance of that happening in Dallas than Washington. Right? There’s probably a better chance of that happening in Dallas than Utah. There’s a better chance of that happening in Dallas than. Than Charlotte. So I guess from that standpoint, like it doesn’t feel like he went to a situation that’s going to. Correct kill his career or like derail what he’s supposed to become. So I guess from that standpoint we collective, we all benefit from that and the NBA could benefit from that as well.
Jimmy Watkins: Keeping Cooper Flag away from Lamelo Ball win.
Ethan Sands: Fair enough.
Chris Fedor: Keeping Cooper Flag away from the Washington Wizards is a win too because that organization is just a disaster and that’s where people go to basically die.
Ethan Sands: Could you imagine if San Antonio would have got that number one seat like Cooper Flag, Victor Whitman Yama and whatever.
Jimmy Watkins: Five man, they should be shopping that number two pick.
Chris Fedor: It’s.
Jimmy Watkins: Wemby time yesterday. Go get someone. The timeline has been. Oh, yeah, accelerate your timeline.
Ethan Sands: Do we know? Do we know Wemby’s health?
Jimmy Watkins: Yeah.
Ethan Sands: Do we know?
Jimmy Watkins: We’re assuming. We’re assuming.
Chris Fedor: Playing soccer the other day.
Jimmy Watkins: I’m also assuming that the basketball gods are a merciful power and they’re not going to rob us from one of the most awesome players in generations. So go, go, go call Milwaukee. The second, second straight podcast.
Chris Fedor: I’m pitching that if they’re motivated enough, it’s the number two overall pick. It’s Stefan Castle. That gets you a megastar. It does. It’s just. Are they motivated enough to do that? Do they think Giannis is that kind of guy? Who else beyond Giannis? Anybody like that could shift it. I don’t know what Boston’s gonna do, but the Jalen Brown thing would be certainly interesting. I would say, indeed. Makes no sense whatsoever for San Antonio, given. Given Wemby. I think Giannis is like the only landscape shifter that’s out there. They don’t need Trey Young. They don’t need Darius Garland because they’ve got Dear and Fox. Although that would have been the destination for Darius.
Jimmy Watkins: Would you call about one of the Thunder guys if this playoff run doesn’t work out like J Dub? No, because not for that package necessarily, but just like maybe half of that package. I don’t know. That’d be interesting.
Chris Fedor: No.
Ethan Sands: Would you.
Chris Fedor: Do you think.
Ethan Sands: Do you think San Antonio would call about Jared Allen just because of him being a true sinner rather than Victor being a stretch four?
Jimmy Watkins: Nah.
Chris Fedor: No, probably not.
Jimmy Watkins: They’re chasing bigger fish.
Chris Fedor: Yeah.
Ethan Sands: And I. I said this the other day. I think Giannis next to Victor women makes the most sense. I was just asking to. To turn this calves. You know, how we do.
Chris Fedor: Kawhi would be interesting. Now, there’s another name that is out there. I think that that could potentially be had this offseason. You know, so many people are going to focus on Giannis. I think Kawhi. I think Kawhi in the right situation could change some things significantly. KD is a little bit difficult because he’s too old for the tail end of his career.
Jimmy Watkins: You might price that in.
Chris Fedor: Yeah, you have to like, he’s. He’s obviously not worth the package of number two overall. And Stefan Castle, the rookie of the year, not the way that Giannis is, but like one year, two years is when be ready. Is Wemby ready enough? You already have Dear and Fox. You accelerated the timeline. I’m just trying to think of who else could move the needle that kind of way.
Jimmy Watkins: Here’s a. Here’s an atom bomb. Zion.
Chris Fedor: Yeah, Zion’s interesting. Zion’s really interesting. I just don’t think, you know, and if there’s a place where it could potentially work like San Antonio, because Wemby’s going to be out on the perimeter a lot, he can stretch it out so it’s not as congested of a floor. Obviously, I don’t think Zion’s worth number two overall in Stefan Castle. That’s got to be reserved for Giannis. But Zion’s going to be somewhere, I think somewhere else other than New Orleans. And I don’t know if it’s San Antonio. It might be Miami. But him in San Antonio wouldn’t be horrible. I don’t think.
Ethan Sands: With all that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast. But remember to become a Cavs insider and interact with Chris, me and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. If you want to have your questions answered. And it doesn’t necessarily just have to be on the podcast, it can be directly to your phone. Sign up for a 14 day free trial or visit cleveland.comcavs and click on the blue bar at the top of the page. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. All you have to do is text the word stop. It’s easy, but we can tell you that the people who signed up stick around because this is the best way to get insider coverage on the Cavs from me, Chris and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast, it’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through subtext. Y’ all be safe. We out.
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