The Cavaliers were the most active team at the trade deadline as they made huge changes to their roster, sending six players out and bringing four in.
After a comfortable win over the Hawks despite not having any of their new players on board, the Cavs headed to Boston for their first game with their new full squad. George Hill got the start, but Jordan Clarkson, Rodney Hood and Larry Nance all played roles in a blowout win to spoil Paul Pierce’s retirement night and put the league on notice that this new-look Cavs team would be different than the one we’d seen struggling over the past month and a half.
There were a lot of ways the Cavs played better on Sunday and real reasons for optimism going forward that some of their issues can legitimately be fixed by this group. You can point to a greater effort on the defensive end, helped by the addition of younger, faster athletes with length on the perimeter, as well as the spacing provided by the extra three-point shooting they now have. However, more than anything, the guys seemed to be enjoying playing together, including those that have been on the Cavs all year, and Dahntay Jones, a former Cavalier from the team’s championship run, knows why.
https://twitter.com/dahntay1/status/962814280939667456
That’s a pretty succinct way of putting it, and considering all the reports we’d heard out of Cleveland prior to the deadline it also seems fairly accurate. We heard an awful lot in January about how the Cavs didn’t trust each other on either side of the ball, and the opposite was clearly the case on Sunday. The ball moved better, as did the players, and there was a different energy on display than anything we’d seen out of the Cavs in more than a month.
This would seem to give credence to the report just prior to the deadline that the issue wasn’t on the court but simply that the guys didn’t like each other. Now most of those problems appear to be gone and things are looking very good in Cleveland. We’ll just have to wait and see if that holds true through the honeymoon period for the new players.
Have you checked out the new DIME podcast?
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