Cavaliers: Gilbert, Ferry, Brown hold court on season
Rick Noland | The Chronicle-Telegram
INDEPENDENCE — It looked like a town hall meeting of sorts, Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry sitting comfortably in a chair on the left, no table in front of him, with owner Dan Gilbert in the middle and coach Mike Brown on the right.
With the Cavaliers set to hold their annual Media Day on Monday and first practice on Tuesday, all gave brief statements and fielded questions during an informal session with the local media this week at Cleveland Clinic Courts.
Like most political get-togethers, a lot of long-winded answers were given in general terms, but few newsworthy specifics were uttered.
There were a few, however. Here’s a look at some of them:
• Gilbert, citing a stat on 82games.com, pointed out that newly acquired point guard Mo Williams had the second-best field-goal percentage in the league last season on 2-point jump shots (.508).
• The owner isn’t concerned that his team’s payroll, which will be almost $90 million in 2008-09, is among the top three in the league, along with New York ($99 million) and Dallas ($86 million or more).
“What I always find baffling is these guys go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy these teams,” Gilbert said. “It’s not the time to get cheap.”
• Ferry noted one of the team’s major goals in the offseason was to improve its ballhandling and ability to attack off the dribble, saying, “We were fragile last year in that regard.”
• Brown pronounced the battle for the starting shooting guard position — Wally Szczerbiak and Sasha Pavlovic are the leading contenders, with combo guard Delonte West having an outside chance — to be a “wide-open, competitive deal.”
• The coach, who concentrated heavily on defense in his first two training camps before emphasizing offense last season, will seek to balance both ends of the floor in 2008.
“Last year, we went into training camp talking a little too much about offense,” said Brown, whose ability to teach that part of the game is still in question. “We lost our edge on the defensive end of the floor early on.”
• Though the lightning-quick Williams is at his best in a wide-open offense, don’t expect any major changes in the Cleveland attack.
“An overhaul? No,” Brown said. “Yeah, there will be some changes offensively.”
While Brown said nothing about what those changes would be, Ferry was quick to defend his coach and friend, saying, “We’re going to be a defensive team. That’s what we want our identity to be.”
• Brown, whose team lost Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in Boston last season after winning just 45 games in the regular season and earning the fourth seed in the playoffs, somewhat surprisingly said he wouldn’t put a lot of emphasis on earning home-court advantage throughout the postseason.
“I’m not afraid to play against anybody on the road in Game 7,” he said in a rare moment of bravado. “I feel like our core group can win against anybody, anywhere.”
• Brown wants to keep superstar LeBron James to an average of fewer than 40 minutes a game because the 23-year-old’s Olympic commitments make him “a guy who has played basketball non-stop for four years.”
• Eric Snow, who almost certainly is done playing in the NBA due to a bad knee but still has a guaranteed contract for $7.3 million in 2008-09, will be in town to take a physical.
“That’s the next step in the process,” said Ferry, who is hoping some or all of Snow’s contract will be paid through an insurance policy.
Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4061 or rickn@ohio.net.
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Filed by Rick Noland | The Chronicle-Telegram September 27th, 2008 in Sports. Popularity: 2% |
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