Fear The Sword: All Posts by Angelo Benedetti

Best of luck, Byron Scott: A farewell poem to the former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach

2013-04-19T17:42:34Z

By their sides you stood, through thick and thin,

Your steady demeanor the only calm in the storm.

Regardless of the odds, you led our team into battle,

Only problem was you pushed them too hard.

Now, they have pushed back and you are no more.

Scrimmages were too hard,

Camp Scott, too brutal.

Over the course of the season as injuries took hold,

Tumultuous losses shook the Cavaliers front office.

To greener pastures you go. Best of luck, Byron Scott.

An honest critique of Byron Scott and his job with the Cleveland Cavaliers

2013-04-04T18:47:18Z

It's been a rough month to be a fan of the Cleveland Cavaliers. After coming out strong in February after the trade that brought Marresse Speights and Wayne Ellington to town, many fans, myself included, had high hopes for the remainder of the season.

In retrospect, that was a mistake.

Here the Cavaliers stand, 22-52 on the season, in the midst of a heart-breaking 10 game losing streak. Their most recent loss, an absolutely embarrassing annihilation at the hands of the Brooklyn Nets, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back for many Cavs fans. And who's to blame them, really? This comes just shortly removed from the Cavaliers blowing a 27 point lead against the hated Miami Heat at home. Not only was the hometown Cleveland crowd robbed of a victory against LeBron James in the most heart-breaking way possible, it also denied them what would surely have been the highlight of the season in snapping the Miami Heat's near historic winning streak. Instead, they got embarrassed yet again and in a fashion much like they lost to the New York Knicks at home after having a substantial lead a week prior.

This is becoming a disturbing trend of late with the Cavaliers. Like clockwork, any lead that the team has going into the half can be expected to be completely blown in the third quarter. This is so common, that I tried to explain it away in an earlier post a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, it seems my explanations haven't caught on and a sizable portion of Cavs fans have come up with their own explanation to why the Cavaliers continually blow leads and look lost, confused and defeated on the court.

Byron Scott.

What started as a quiet din has erupted into a full-blown outrage, with many Cavaliers fans openly calling for Byron Scott's job. Of course, this has galvanized yet another portion of Cavaliers fans into defending Scott against any and all allegations. Unfortunately, the world isn't so black and white. While the problems with the Cavaliers haven't been 100% the fault of Byron Scott, they also haven't been 100% not the fault of Byron Scott. This is my attempt at trying to find some fair criticisms.

More: Quotes after loss to Brooklyn Nets Cavs lose 10th game in a row JRowan's fan post about kneejerk reactions

While the "Byron Scott can do no wrong crowd" loves to dismiss the collapses against the Miami Heat and New York Knicks away by saying that the Cavaliers had no business having that lead in the first place, that's no excuse. The NBA plays all 82 games in a season for a reason. On any given night, any team in the NBA can beat any other team. Games between two teams that are comically mismatched don't just get skipped over, their outcomes assumed. They get played. And they get played because upsets can and do happen. The Miami Heat have lost to the Washington Wizards and Orlando Magic this season. It's totally possible for them to lose a game to the Cleveland Cavaliers, especially if the Cavaliers were carrying a 27 point lead.

That's why these collapses cannot be just brushed away under the rug. There are lessons to be learned from these games and, unfortunately for the pro-Byron Scott contingent, that lesson is that Coach Scott sometimes mismanages the game clock and time-outs. The Cavaliers walked away from the Miami Heat loss with a timeout left. When Shane Battier and LeBron James were raining threes down in the Q, Scott failed to make any attempts to disrupt their momentum with a timeout. Examples of this are plentiful throughout most of these Cavaliers collapses. Say what you will about the inevitability of the loss, Scott walked away from those games without exhausting every possible strategy he had available.

Of course, Byron Scott wouldn't have needed to call those timeouts if the team on the floor wasn't short-handed and in the midst of blowing a 27 point lead. Those losses absolutely aren't all on him. But then again, when you're seemingly unable to coach defense, maybe there is a slight bit of blame to go around. And saying that Scott could coach defense in New Orleans and New Jersey isn't a valid excuse. Alonzo Gee and Tristan Thompson are above average defenders, yet the Cavaliers are an absolute sieve on defense. That said, Scott does deserve praise for the defensive development of Kyrie Irving throughout the year and for turning Alonzo Gee into a decent rotation player given his D-League background. But for whatever reason, this individual development is yet to develop into any sort of team development. That's an important point I'll come back to in a bit.

A much more fair criticism stemming from these collapses is Scott's poor play calling at the end of close games, of which there's been a lot of this season. While Scott's job is much easier with Kyrie Irving on the floor, the current strategy of "get the ball to Kyrie and pray" isn't going to be successful each and every night. Sometimes, like against the Toronto Raptors earlier in the year, it works out. Other times, like against the New York Knicks in that collapse, it fails spectacularly with someone like Tyson Chandler blocking a poorly selected three pointer. This is the one area of the game more than any other where a good coach really shows. And this is where Scott's weaknesses are most glaring.

A perfect example is the last game against the Miami Heat in Miami. While Kyrie Irving had been struggling all game, Dion Waiters was more than pulling his fair share. Yet again, the game came down to the wire. How'd it end? With Dion Waiters standing on the perimeter as Kyrie Irving tossed up an awkward scoop shot while tripping in the paint. Why wasn't a play called in that situation that utilized Dion Waiters, who had been hot the entire game? Why wasn't Kyrie used as a distraction to bait the defense away from Waiters to let him get open? Why was the selected play basically amount to "let a struggling Kyrie improvise against the best defense in the league"?

THIS IS THE BACKCOURT THAT BYRON SCOTT WANTED

Dion Waiters himself illustrates another concern of mine with Byron Scott. By all accounts, Byron Scott wanted Dion Waiters on the Cavaliers. He was Scott's pick in last year's draft. When he's played without Kyrie, he's improved immensely and shown massive amounts of potential. And yet, when Kyrie is playing, he turns into a spot-up shooter that occasionally goes ISO, usually with poor results. This is the backcourt that Byron Scott wanted, yet he's failed to design a system around the Kyrie and Dion in which both are used effectively. Much like he's failed to capitalize on Tristan Thompson's offensive development and call more plays which get the ball to him in the post. {Editor's note: I will have a piece on Byron coming up soon and I intend to slice up these points, but I'll let you guys react to them for now.}

HAS YET TO MANIFEST INTO ANY SORT OF NOTICEABLE IMPROVEMENT AS A TEAM.

And that I think is the fairest assessment of Byron Scott at this point. He obviously has an eye for talent and knows how to develop it. Under his guidance, Kyrie Irving has turned into a 20 year old all-star, Tristan Thompson has developed into a player fitting of a fourth-overall selection and Dion Waiters looks like a guy that could potentially one day be a difference maker. When healthy, Anderson Varejao has turned into an unstoppable double-double machine. And yet, the Cavaliers have only won 22 games this season. For some reason, all that individual growth and development has yet to manifest into any sort of noticeable improvement as a team. A starting five with two (three when Varejao is healthy) above average man-on-man defenders is somehow one of the worst defensive teams in the league. A team that can at times be an offensive powerhouse regularly blows double digit leads. A team with one of the best clutch players in the league regularly loses games in heartbreaking fashion.

Right now, the Cavaliers are less than the sum of their parts. And that's on Coach Scott. No more. No less. Does that mean he needs to be fired? Absolutely not. But does that mean he's blameless when it comes to this season's struggles? No. Just like the rest of the Cavaliers, Scott needs to learn from this season and improve his game if the Cavs want to be successful going forward. And if that doesn't happen, then it's time to start thinking about giving him the Ryan Hollins treatment. But not until then. No sooner. No later.

Follow @CavsFangelo

Theories on what the heck happens in the Cleveland Cavaliers locker room at halftime

2013-03-10T23:08:30Z

While Conrad was in town this past week, we talked about many things. Things like Twitter, how he doesn't know who Janet Reno is, how weird it is to bump into Greg Oden multiple times in the same night. But there was one topic above all that got me really thinking. He mentioned that during Friday's loss to the Memphis Grizzlies that the Cavaliers came out to start the third quarter and immediately got blown out of the water. Then I thought back to Monday night's loss against the Knicks where the same thing happened. And that of course brought about memories of games stretching back even into the LeBron James era where the Cavaliers came out to a crappy second half start.

So that got us thinking, what the hell are they doing during halftime? This isn't a Byron Scott thing. This isn't a "team full of young talent" thing. It's something else. Something more insidious. Even when there when the Cavaliers were posting 60+ win seasons, you could pretty much anticipate a slow second half start. But why?

Well, let's look at some possibilities:

The Cavaliers are getting half-time catering from Hot Sauce Williams or Melt. Perhaps The Onion was right. Perhaps the Cavaliers are struggling to get over a bit of a food coma to start the third quarter. I know that many of you outside Cleveland (and likely most of you that are here), probably have never been to Hot Sauce Williams, but the BBQ there is incredible. When I lived a mere 10 minutes away, I became a huge fan of their drive-through window and subsequently had to buy new jeans pretty shortly thereafter. And Melt? What can I possibly say about a place that serves a three pound grilled cheese sandwich? Perhaps someone hasn't yet realized that the Cavaliers shouldn't be eating such carb heavy meals during a break. I mean, this is the same team that diagnosed Anderson Varejao with a bruised knee that later turned into quadriceps surgery and a potentially life-threatening blood clot. Would you put it past them to serve their athletes pulled pork and grilled cheese sandwiches with pierogies on them? I wouldn't.
The tunnel leading back to the Cavaliers locker room is actually a Japanese obstacle course. Not familiar with the kind of obstacle course I'm talking about? Here's a quick primer. Crazy stuff, no? It also looks like a ton of fun, which is exactly why I could see someone like LeBron James demanding that an obstacle course like this gets built in the Q. And, since we all know that the Cavaliers bent over backwards to appease James in his tenure with the Cavs, they probably caved and built the stupid thing. Why is it still there, you ask? Simple. He's coming back in 2014. Haven't you heard the rumors? Duh, guys. Duh.
Zydrunas Illgauskas has a bizarre ritual where he wrestles the team during halftime to "keep them fresh". In case you forgot (or are Conrad's age), Big Z came stateside during the height of Seinfeld's popularity. In one of the more popular episodes, George Costanza reveals that his family refuses to celebrate Christmas and instead celebrates a holiday of their own creation called Festivus. One of the pillars of the Festivus celebration is the "feat of strength" in which the entire family wrestles the eldest until he is pinned. Big Z, being the eldest Cavalier during the LeBron days and having recently come back to the Cavaliers as assistant general manager, has made the "feat of strength" a cornerstone of his halftime ritual due to his Seinfeld fandom, continuing it to this day. He's a pretty weird dude. As for that year when Z was in Miami? That was just the team they were playing. Seriously, Christian Eyenga and Manny Harris starting for a professional basketball team? Yikes.
The Cavaliers locker room is covered with quicksand. You ever try to get out of quicksand? Shit's hard, man. This one's just speculation but maybe Conrad can leave a comment since he's now stepped foot inside to confirm/deny this one. My bet's on this one.
The Cavaliers play a team-building game of "The Floor is Lava" during halftime. Remember when you'd do that when you were a kid? You'd jump up on the couch and try to get around your parents house without touching the floor while your parents yelled at you? It was pretty awesome. Which is exactly why the Cavaliers do it during halftime. Only problem is, they're not five years old anymore. That game really takes a lot out of you.

If you have any ideas or theories, feel free to leave them below. We must get to the bottom of this. The first step to fixing a problem is identifying the problem, after all.

NBA All Star Weekend: The Cleveland Cavaliers other all stars

2013-02-15T22:05:30Z

I've never really won anything in my life. I once won a bronze medal in a Science Olympiad event for taking a test on epidemiology that has only made me a larger hypochondriac than I was before. Outside of that moment of glory, it's been nothing.

That said, I'm only 26 years old and grew up in the age where everyone is a winner and have an entire trophy case filled with participation trophies. As I'm older than pretty much everyone on the Cavaliers (sobs uncontrollably), they too are likely used to this same kind of treatment. As I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone (I'm a pleaser like that), I've decided to recognize the rest of the Cavaliers roster for their All-Star attributes. After all, everyone is an All-Star in their way. *cue sappy feel-good music*

Anderson Varejao: All-Star center (for no more than 25 games a year)

Dion Waiters: All-Star troll face

Alonzo Gee: All-Star ability to be seriously over-rated by Cavs fans for seemingly no reason

Tristan Thompson: All-Star ability to silence haters

Tyler Zeller: All-Star posture. Seriously, it's impeccable for a seven footer.

Shaun Livingston: All-Star resemblance to an skinny Ryan Hollins.

Wayne Ellington: All Star fanciest name that sounds like he should be a butler in a huge mansion. (Bonus points if you say it with a British accent while drinking tea at high noon)

C.J. Miles: All-Star at making Community and Street Fighter references on Twitter

Marreese Speights: All-Star at having a name impossible to spell correctly the first time.

Luke Walton: I can't even begin to attempt to come up with a joke here. Sorry Luke.

Omri Casspi: All-Star at getting onto the official All-Star ballot for no discernable reason whatsoever. Seriously, he made the official ballot over Andy.

Old Tristan is Dead, Long Live the New Tristan

2013-02-08T19:54:53Z

Shock filled the air in the Q.

Hushed whispers were heard across the draft party.

"I have no idea who this Tristan Thompson guy is" said the guy next to me.

Turns out, none of us really did.

Tried to understand looking past Jonas Valanciunas.

You didn't exactly endear me with your play as a rookie,

Terrible jump shots,

Rejected by the rim more often than not,

I couldn't stand watching you.

Still, I remained patient and hoped against hope.

Tristan, you've proved the haters wrong,

Absolutely awesome for the past few months.

New look Tristan, I love you.

Cavaliers Poetry: A Reflection on the Recently Departed

2013-01-29T04:45:45Z

In remembrance of our dearly beloved third string point guard, Jeremy Pargo:

Cold November night

The fans slowly shuffle in

They learn, no Kyrie

A broken finger

Mirrors broken hopes and dreams

Until, we witnessed

Pargosanity

Twenty eight points for the win

Night to remember

In remembrance of D-League sensation Jon Leuer:

Not going to lie

Do not remember your game

Think you looked okay?

I had a hard time

Keeping you and Zeller straight

Big, awkward, lanky

But with all that said,

Sure you will enjoy Memphis

Canton says 'hello'

The Official Fear the Sword Drinking Game

2013-01-17T21:40:08Z

Saying that this has been a rough season is a bit of an understatement. Thankfully for every writer here at Fear the Sword except for Conrad, we're of legal age to enjoy an adult beverage or two during a Cavs game, which makes things a bit more tolerable. Not all the way, but it helps a tiny bit. So, in the spirit of good fun, I thought I'd share a little drinking game for the Cavaliers. Obviously, drink responsibly and all that jazz. Don't be a dumbass.

Without further ado:

Drink if: Dion Waiters takes an ill-advised long two instead of passing to an open teammate
Modifier: chug if that teammate happens to be Kyrie Irving
Drink if: Omri Casspi takes the court
Modifier: chug if Luke Walton is also out there
Drink if: Daniel Gibson gets injured
Modifier: chug if Anderson Varejao gets injured
Drink if: the refs don't call a foul for Dion Waiters while driving to the rim
Modifier: chug anytime he blows a dunk
Drink if: Byron Scott keeps Kyrie Irving out until the last six minutes of the fourth quarter
Modifier: chug anytime he sees no playing time in the fourth at all
Drink if: Tristan Thompson hits that nifty little hookshot he's been making recently (got to be optimistic, you guys)
Modifier: chug anytime he gets blocked by the rim (also got to be realistic, you guys)
Drink if: Alonzo Gee turns the ball over while on a fast break
Modifier: chug if he passes out of a fast break

And finally, a rule that you should follow only if you're really asking for trouble:

Drink anytime that Dion Waiters retweets a compliment on Twitter

Add your own drinking rules in the comments section. (But remember to still drink responsibly and such.)

The Great Anderson Varejao Injury Conspiracy

2013-01-10T17:26:29Z

CONSPIRACY! The screams echoed across the Internet. From every corner, every mountain top, every Twitter timeline, Cavaliers fans were out in force, crying foul about how the Cavaliers obviously intentionally misled their fans about Anderson Varejao's injury, and were frantically trying to piece the vast conspiracy together, to get to the bottom of the whole sordid affair, and to discover who was really at fault for this great injustice.

To the best of my knowledge, the conspiracy that has been landed upon is as follows. The Cavaliers, knowing that Varejao was seriously injured and would miss months of action, wanted to keep the news from spreading and impacting Andy's trade value. As such, they created a smoke screen. An ingenious cover that no one would see through. They would say that Varejao had a grade-A ouchie, a real nasty boo-boo, and had to sit to recover from the world's meanest knee bruise. Yeah, no one would see through that. Nope, not at all.

Actually, we all pretty much started questioning this last week, but let's just forget that ever happened, okay?

Continuing on. After having successfully duped the rest of the league that Varejao was simply suffering from a really bad owie-wowie, they would trade him to a contender and bring back all the pieces that Cavs would need to win a championship right now and for another bajillion years. Once Varejao was successfully off their hands, Dan Gilbert and Chris Grant would laugh at the poor team who shipped their entire team off to the Cavs for a broken player and together they would rule over the NBA like Darth Vader and the Emperor.

Except that's all total bullshit.

First of all, players have to pass a team's physical before a trade can go through. This is routine. There is no way that if the Cavaliers traded Varejao with this injury that a team would not discover that his bruise was actually covering up major muscular surgery. Not happening. There was absolutely no incentive for the Cavaliers to hide or cover-up an injury of this magnitude.

Once you remove that incentive, the whole conspiracy thing pretty much falls on it's face. What your left with is something far less interesting. Either Andy's injury is a complicated, strange injury that is difficult to diagnose or got worse over time (which is totally possible because I've never heard of someone "splitting" their muscle and I wouldn't take any precautions whatsoever if I thought I simply had a bruise on my knee), or the Cavaliers medical team botched the initial diagnosis and were proved wrong by the second opinion (which, considering that this happened earlier in the year with Kyrie Irving's finger, there's also a good chance at this being the case as well).

But more importantly, and this is really personal for me, this is just a flat out shitty conspiracy. I love conspiracy theories. As a kid who could never fall asleep as a kid, I grew up on the late night call-in show Coast to Coast AM. Trust me, I know a good conspiracy. And this, this is garbage. This is boring. Come on guys, if you're going to make up a conspiracy theory about Anderson Varejao, at least make it interesting. Read and learn.

Conspiracy Theory #1: Dan Gilbert, being a multi-millionaire that owns a significant amount of real estate, is clearly a member of the Illuminati. By some conspiracy theories (in other words, the good ones), the Illuminati are not just a secret society of the rich and powerful, they're actually shape-shifting reptilian aliens that have secretly enslaved mankind. Let's go with that angle.

So Dan Gilbert is secretly a giant space lizard. Being a giant space lizard, he knows other giant space lizards with all kinds of cool shit that you can't even think of. Shit like rocket ships and laser guns and stuff like that. They also have a cool chamber like the one in Prometheus that can repair any kind of injury almost instantaneously. So Dan Gilbert wanted to use this space surgery tube on Andy so he wouldn't miss any time. Hence the story of a bruise, because, come on, it's a bruise. Who misses time for a bruise?

It took a while to get Andy in to see the space lizard doctor (I mean, let's face it, if you were space lizard doctor that was secretly ruling the earth, you'd have more important things to do than help the Cavs), and unfortunately they found out that he was too tall to use the surgery tube bullshitty thing. So they had to come clean and schedule Andy for contemporary surgery.

See, isn't that a better conspiracy theory? Now watch, I can do it again.

Conspiracy Theory #2: Andy was actually suffering from a bruise and was all set to make his return. Only thing is, he owed Samardo Samuels a bunch of money. Gambling debts, you know, Michael Jordan conspiracy theory shit. So Samardo gets all impatient and is all like, "yo Andy, pay up" and Andy is all like "naw dog, go back to the D-League, LOLs", so Samardo was then all like "YOLO" and got all mad and hired some hitman to club Andy's knee, causing the muscle split. For punishment, Samardo was waived. Of course, Omri Casspi witnessed this all go down and given that he's such a quiet, demure guy, he was appalled and asked to for a trade because he can't see the Cavs practice facility without thinking of this horrible sight.

See, this works because it combines multiple actual events, which lends credibility to the story. Also, everyone loves a good story about athlete's gambling and the "Nancy Kerrigan"-esque angle lends a "true crime" flavor to the whole thing. People eat that shit up. One more.

Conspiracy Theory #3: Anderson Varejao's not actually injured at all and the Cavaliers are simply tanking to improve their draft standings. This would also explain how shitty they are in general.

Now that you all know better, do better than that initial conspiracy. Make me proud.