:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/42975276/456155062.0.jpg)
Every week or so, I try to bring you the best writing about the Cleveland Cavaliers from around the internet. But over the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of great content posted right here at Fear the Sword, so we thought we'd bring it all to you here in one convenient place.
As always, thank you for reading. It is an honor to write about this team at this moment. Tomorrow night is going to be incredible.
Boosh, David, and Justin participated in a podcast yesterday.
Earlier in the preseason, William took a look at the pace at which the Cavs were shooting threes:
It's clear the Cavaliers' offense will feature a lot of attempts from behind the arc; whether they come at a record-setting pace remains to be seen. Given the personnel, it makes sense.
David questioned the value of the offensive rebound:
How much the Cavaliers emphasize offensive rebounding has implications beyond their style of play. It's the closest thing to an elite skill that Tristan Thompson possesses at the moment, and if the Cavs don't value it, it might affect how much the team wishes to invest in their young power forward. Varejao might even be impacted by these considerations as he heads into the last year of his contract.
Chris looked at the importance of Jimmy Butler to the Cavs' main rival in the East:
Over the course of his NBA career, Butler has established himself as perhaps the best player at defending LeBron James man-to-man. At 6'7" and 220 pounds, Butler is an ideal size to defend James. He's also quick enough to defend James in space and is smart enough on defense to know exactly what to do in each offensive situation.
Trevor analyzed the Cavs' decisions regarding their 15-man roster:
The big news is that Lou Amundson, A.J. Price, and Alex Kirk all made the final 15-man roster. Amundson didn't play much either during the preseason, but in his minimal minutes he proved that he could fit well into the Cavs' rotation as a rebounder when Anderson Varejao sits. He and Kirk, who played decently during the preseason as a rebounder and defensive stopper (despite my absolute abhorance to his game) will be making the roster for much of the same reasoning; the Cavs need bench depth in the middle, and Amundson and Kirk are both bodies who can play center if Varejao goes down with injury or Brendan Haywood can't cut it.
William also wrote about the need for David Griffin to find cheap help for the roster in the coming years:
There are two ways to find cheap role players when you're a good team- from the latter parts of the draft, and from undrafted free agents. Matthew Dellavedova and Alex Kirk are the latter. Dellavedova will back up Kyrie Irving, and given the fact that Irving's missed a double-digit amount of games in each of his first three seasons, it's not unreasonable to suspect the 24-year-old Aussie will start a few games at point guard this season. Given the spotty injury histories of backup bigs Varejao and Brendan Haywood, there's a chance Kirk will be asked to contribute at some point as well.
Ryan has a preview of the awesome technology the team is going to use before games this season, and David wrote about the new scoreboard in the Q.
Justin wrote about some of the things that make NBA's regular season so special:
I love that the NBA always finds some terrible pop song to put in promotional ads. I love that any night can turn into much see TV, no matter how meaningless the game might be. No league promotes its players like the NBA does. It's a league full of weirdos and their personalities are fully embraced by the league and it's fans.
We also wrote previews of just about every major player on the Cavs (click on them to read them!):
And finally, previews of every other team in the Central Division:
There's probably even more great stuff that I missed, and I'm sorry about that.
Be sure to keep checking Fear the Sword in the coming days as we plan to have some more great articles. We'll have our collaborative season predictions post up in the morning, plus some other stuff leading into the game tomorrow. Once the season starts, we'll of course have coverage of every game, plus some new features including weekly Eastern Conference power rankings.
Did I mention that tomorrow night is going to be incredible?