1) At any position, Earl Clark is a near disaster on the court. He doesn’t have the skill sets necessary to play a substantial role on this team. He can do some things that are helpful, but only if he can shoot.
2) If starters suck and defensive energy is low, sub in second team early and make sure Delly is on the floor. You waited WAY too long to sub out the starters in the third quarter particularly.
3) If the team doesn’t know defensive intensity wins games, don’t remove Delly from rotation. It appeared to me that Delly was either out of the rotation or nearly so until garbage time. His energy is amazing on the defensive end. So you need to reward the players who follow your philosophy with minutes. Not set them on the bench.
4) If team doesn’t pick up full court when they should, tell them to do it! You are the coach!! In your post game presser you mentioned that the team should realize that they needed to pick up the intensity and should have spontaneously picked their man up full court. The ONLY player that does that was on the bench. So you could have considered telling them to pick up full court at a well staged time out. I thought coaches did that?
5) If you need to yell at them to push the ball every possession, someone isn’t listening! I admire that you are very vocal and yell “push it” every possession, but it seems to me that you shouldn’t have to say it more than a couple of times. If it isn’t happening, the point guard needs to kick some butt and make it happen. If he doesn’t, then maybe he isn’t listening.
Well, those are just a few suggestions. I know that I am just a fan and blogger, but the performance from Brown’s team last night makes me feel like a thoughtful fan who played basketball might have a valid suggestion or two.
Either way, I certainly hope that last night’s game is not a reflection on what we will see the rest of the year. I actually don’t think it will be common and Luol Deng summed it all up in his post-game interview quite well. The Cavs needs to realize when a team makes a run, they must STOP THEM to close out the run and not try to OUTSCORE them. If that is true, Brown needs to play the players that embody that philosophy when these runs occur instead of players who take the other approach. I know they need to learn but Byron already tried the approach of letting them swing on the vine and it failed. The only way Brown can make his point is to take away or add minutes on the court. Then explain to them when reviewing the film why he did what he did. It might just work.