The Cavaliers (30-12, 4th best record in NBA) are getting 25.0 ppg from LeBron James, 15.8 ppg from Kyrie Irving, 15.6 ppg from Kevin Love, and 12.3 from J.R Smith. They recently said goodbye to head coach David Blatt and put assistant Tyronn Lue in charge. Here’s the Akron Beacon Journal reporting:
The Cavs rank 28th in the league in pace, or possessions per 48 minutes. Lue wants to get this team playing faster, but he cautioned Saturday that will take time. This team is used to a slow pace that has proved successful.
When Lue tried to speed that pace up Saturday, all three of his stars asked out of the game early because they were tired. That forced him to use 10 players in the first quarter, jumbled his preset rotation and he struggled to recover. LeBron James didn’t dispute the idea the Cavs aren’t physically ready yet to run Lue’s style of offense.
“We played slow basketball up to this point,” James said. “We walk the ball up a lot. … All of us need to do something different as far as our pace and our conditioning. If he wants us to play faster and you want to be out on the floor, you can’t get tired. And if you do, you’ve got to come out. Something that Coach Lue wants us to do and we’ve all got to accept it.”
