Champ 2016 Playoff Blog

admin

James Jones, the Wine and Gold’s sharpshooting reserve has played in numerous postseason games over the course of his 12-year career – winning a pair of NBA titles among his six straight trips to the NBA Finals.

As the Cavaliers try to make history – Cavs.com asked the savvy vet to share his thoughts following Thursday's shootaround in preparation for Game 6 …

Right now, we feel great. We’re back home. We did what we needed to do – going in and getting a victory on the road on Monday night.

Tonight, we have to come back and protect home court, which we didn’t do last time. So, we’re motivated to come home and show what we’re about.

All the pundits are trying to figure out which team the pressure is on. I think the real pressure’s on those who’re picking us to lose.

For us, we play the game of basketball. There are pressure points in every game. And those pressure points are, by and large, created during the game. The stuff that happens before tip-off is all chatter and noise. None of that stuff matters.

When you get down to it, it’s five guys on each team, coaches and reserves trying to win a chess match until the final buzzer sounds. It’s that simple.

We have to continue to be physical. We have to continue to be aggressive defensively without fouling and we have to play until the tank’s empty. We have to make tough plays, we have to make big shots and we have to get the 50-50 balls. We have to get out in transition because we have an advantage in transition.

They’re a good defensive team in the halfcourt, and they switch a lot to eliminate your triggers. So for us, if we have a greater pace and have a better motor and play as hard as we can, that’s our type of basketball – and we’re very, very good at that.

Coach Lue said it best: ‘You don’t play Golden State, you attack them.'

You can’t play their game; you can’t sit back and try to absorb their best shots. You can’t sit back and try to figure out how to play within their defensive scheme. You have to attack them.

They’re very good on the offensive end and the only way to slow them down or to have success is to attack them on their other end. You have to make them work on both ends of the court – something that’s extremely tough to do when you play at the pace that they do.

We’d love to see Kevin Love get back into his rhythm and we feel like he will.

The cure for lack of rhythm – when you’re struggling, trying to find your way – is excess effort. Teams get a read on you, they get a bead on you, they know your spots, they’ve scouted you. Over a series, they know your strengths and weaknesses.

So for Kevin, if he can get out in transition and get some easy ones, if he can sprint the lane and get a dunk or play with force down low, get a couple shots on the inside, get a couple forceful post-ups. Just attack the game.

When you’re a rhythm player, you’re accustomed to the ball finding you and the shots being there. But with the different matchups, the different lineups, the way Golden State plays – combined with LeBron and Kyrie having great individual performances – the offense isn’t going to be predictable, the offense isn’t going to be consistent, based on what they’re doing to us and based on how we’re trying to attack them.

So, like I preach to all our guys, it doesn’t matter who you are, star player or not. If you’re away from the ball, you have to create your own rhythm, you have to create your own momentum. Because in an ideal world, they’d love for our guys to go one-on-one and stay home on our shooters.

So in order to get yourself going, you have to find ways to beat their scheme. And usually that means either very early in the shot-clock or near the end of the shot-clock, you have to be aggressive, you have to move with force, you have to attack.

And so, for Kevin, it’s just continue to grind, continue to work and try to win every moment of the game – every possession, every action, every cut. Because over time, we’ve seen it time and time again, it’s not how you start the game, it’s how you finish.

In the Playoffs, a six-point, six-rebound burst might mean more to you than a 20-point, 10-rebound effort that really doesn’t impact the flow of the game.

I know some media members wrote about Coach Lue reading an inspirational message by Mark Twain in the pregame locker room the other night. That’s not something he does a lot of.

A lot of coaches do it. It depends on the coach’s personality.

Coach Lue is extremely perceptive. And my thing is to always give context.

And the context for us is that this game has given us everything. A lot of us, we define our lives by what we do in this game.

But outside the game, life still goes on. There are real world issues, there are things that are so much bigger than basketball. And the good coaches have a way of giving you context – not just about the moment, not just about the game, but overall – your purpose in life, where you fit in the world.

So, a lot of coaches do it. Every coach isn’t effective with it and every group isn’t receptive.

This group is receptive because we understand that we’re playing for something that’s so much bigger than ourselves, so much bigger than basketball. To be able to reach the heights we’ve reached, we’ve had to sacrifice a lot and a lot of people have given and poured a lot into us.

Coach Lue reminds us, and we all understand that this is life-changing – not only for us, but for others. It’s an opportunity we can’t miss.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-stayin-alive

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Stayin' Alive"

James Jones, the Wine and Gold’s sharpshooting reserve has played in 130 postseason games over the course of his 12-year career – winning a pair of NBA titles among his five straight trips to the NBA Finals.

As the Cavaliers battle the Golden State Warriors in their best-of-seven series – Cavs.com asked the savvy vet to share his thoughts throughout this season’s Playoff run …

Even down 0-2, we’re good. We’re feeling good about tonight.

We’re back home and we’ve been playing amazing in this building – in the Playoffs, all season long. We have a very good rhythm in this building. We have a good feel, offensively. We just play so much better at home.

Defensively, we’ve been solid in spurts. We need to be much more consistent there. But offensively, we’re ignited when we come home. So we’re looking forward to tonight.

We need that lift on the offensive end. With Golden State, you can do a great job against them defensively; you can hold them under 100 points. But right now we’re not scoring the points we need to alleviate pressure on our defense and to make them play in the halfcourt.

Playing off missed shots – any team will tell you – when you’re playing off of misses, it’s so much easier. So right now, we just have to make shots. And we will. We’ll make shots tonight.

Coach Lue has been preaching “pace” since he took over and we’ve been playing with good pace through the Playoffs.

On Sunday night, again, I think we did well at picking up the pace in spurts. But we definitely need to have better pace in the halfcourt.

It’s not just about how fast you get from end to end. You can’t play in “fastbreak mode” all game. But when we get in the halfcourt, we just have to get in a better tempo, get into a better pace. I think we did a decent job getting out in transition with our full-court pace, but we didn’t do a great job – at all – with our halfcourt pace. But we’ll rectify that tonight.

Like I’ve said before, Golden State is a team that makes you pay if you make mistakes. They’re a team that dares you to be consistent, defensively as well as offensively. And we got frustrated with our results. We got frustrated and started pressing.

We had some passes we shouldn’t have made. And we need to share the ball better – a LOT better. But we didn’t do that.

It’s night and day when you look at the way we’ve played when we share the ball and the way we play when we’re trying to do it all from the top-down. We have to be better at that, because the Warriors are a team that thrives when you play top-down.

But when you move the ball – just as they do – and you shift their defense from side to side, you can get really good looks. They play small a lot, so that allows you the opportunities for offensive rebounds and it also allows you to get good looks at the basket because they don’t have that traditional seven-foot rim protector.

It’s a sports cliché, but you really have to take these games – especially these – one game at a time, because in the Playoffs, one game is a momentum builder. One game can start your rhythm. You can have one game that changes the entire flow, that changes the feel of the series.

It’s a constant battle of adjustments and improvements, so you just improve one game at a time. You can’t improve four games all at once.

So we’re just excited to be back at home.

That’s why teams fight so hard for homecourt advantage, so they can start the series off at home. Game 7 at home is big, but starting at home gets you in your rhythm early. We’ve been no different.

They did their job, now it’s time to do ours. And right now, we just have to protect homecourt.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-defend-the-land

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Defend The Land"

As the Cavaliers try to make it six straight appearances for both Jones – (and the man who called him “my favorite player of all-time,” LeBron James) – Cavs.com asked the savvy vet to share his thoughts throughout this season’s Playoff run …

This is what we’ve played for, worked for all season. Everything that went on during the regular season is in the distant past at this point.

Those 82 games don’t matter when you get to the postseason. In the postseason, you start fresh. And it definitely doesn’t matter once you get to the Finals – because the team that shows up in the Finals is usually nowhere near the team that finished up in April.

Right now, I’m just excited to be here, excited to have an opportunity to go out here and compete for what we ALL want to compete for which is a World Championship.

In terms of the regular season, some might want to focus on the two losses we took to Golden State this season. And you don’t throw them out.  There’s something to be gleaned, something to be learned from those losses. But they have no impact on Thursday and the series going forward.

What we did in the past, what they did in the past is irrelevant. At the end of the day, it’s what we do from Thursday forward that really matters.

A huge reason we’re in the position we’re in to compete on this stage is Tyronn Lue. He gets it. He has a unique perspective that resonates with this team in particular – the makeup of this team.

That’s not to say that there aren’t areas in which he can improve – and he’d be the first one to tell you that. But I think the baseline from where he’s starting from is so great, especially for this group.

He’s able to reach us, he’s able to teach us, he’s able to push us with a unique perspective for an accomplished team like we are. That’s a tough task, but he’s been able to do it seamlessly, he’s able to do it consistently and he’ll continue to do it consistently because that’s just the way he’s built.

Of course it helps that he played the game and he won an NBA title doing it. Experience always helps – whether it’s in the front office, on the court or on the sidelines. Sometimes it’s underrated. Sometimes it’s overrated. But in his case, it’s a great component of his overall balance.

And he won’t rest on that. Coach won’t say: ‘Hey, I’m really good because I played the game.’ He’ll say it gives him a different perspective. He’s a really good coach because he works at coaching – teaching, critiquing, instructing, adjusting. He’s doing it all in an effective manner.

This team was built for where we’re at right now. We have the perfect veteran mix.

This team’s veterans are about winning. There are no egos, no desire for the spotlight; just a collective desire to win for each other – not individually or for personal agendas or personal gain, but for collective gain.

So, to have veteran guys who’ve had the opportunity to win – and who’ve also experienced some severe losses – it’s kind of helped to steel our minds, so that the only thing we care about on game night is doing whatever we can to help the team win.

And now it’s time to win at the highest level.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-setting-the-stage

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Setting the Stage"

clejgabriele

In terms of the team’s mindset coming into Game 5, we’re good. We went on the road. We had two poor showings on the road. I don’t want to say completely poor showings, but the first halves were bad.  We did some good things overall, but not enough.

Now we’re back home, where we’re going to be tested. We’re going to have to come out and compete and get out to a good start and try to change the trend – which has been slow starts and strong finishes.

This is where Playoff experience is big. But so is inexperience – where guys haven’t had to face these types of situations where they have to learn and they have to figure it out.

This team’s equipped with everything we need to do it, and it’s the progression of any veteran team – to continue building chemistry in the evolution of a champion.

I think our young guys are in a good place, mentally.

I think for those guys, it’s a chance for them to sit back, evaluate and realize that it’s not about the schematics and schemes. It’s really about consistency of effort and attention to detail. The human condition allows you to overlook that during the regular season. When you get to the Playoffs, you can’t because of every game’s value.

We knew the crowd would be good in Toronto. And Toronto’s a good team.

And you can talk about a team’s level when they’re at home with a great crowd that’s giving them energy. They’re running, they’re playing at a breakneck pace and they’re playing at an elevated level.

But usually, it’s about us. That’s how we look at it. Whether we go in there and play at an elevated level or not. And that’s where you see the gap.  If you don’t meet that level – and we didn’t – by the time you look up, those guys have built a lead and then slowly come back down to Earth and become who they are for 48 minutes.

But Toronto did a great job of getting off to a great burst at the beginning of games that put us in a deficit that’s been too tough for us to climb out of.

We’ve gotten here in diametrically different ways.  They’ve played every other day for a month; we’ve had long stretches between rounds.

If anything, we’ve had the opportunity and the chances to stay sharp – to get healed and healthy. And we are that. They’re a deep team, too, so it’s not an issue of them playing games every other day. But they are playing heavy minutes coming right off an NBA schedule.

Either way, it comes down to a 48-minute span in a 48-hour window – whether or not we’re going to give it everything we have every possession. And we haven’t been doing that lately.

As you get deeper and deeper into the Playoffs and closer to the Finals – and you haven’t done it before – you don’t realize that regardless of the outcome, the closer you get to the Finals, the intensity, the urgency ratchets up.  And regardless of how you’re playing – whether you’re playing at a great pace and playing well, there’s still another level that you have to get to.

For us, we’ve been playing at a really good pace, in a really good zone. And we’ve been trying to maintain that level, that zone, rather than pushing that level and that zone.

With our young guys, sometimes we’ll say: “You need to see the ‘bad tape.’”

If all your games are the same and you’re playing at a constant level, you never really know that you’re not getting to the next level. It’s only when you have a bump (or a drop) that we’ll say: ‘Hey, we’re teetering here and we have to get better’ or ‘Hey, we were good here, but we can get better. How do we chase that down again?’ We’re in that “chase” mode right now, we’re trying to chase that next level.

Sometimes it’s hard to find reality in a win.

We’re 10-2 in the Playoffs, we’re playing a very good team, but we’ve played well at home – which is where we want to be and it’s why we fought so hard to have homecourt advantage.

Their crowd was great up in Canada. When they’re trying to torment us, we take it as a sign of respect.

If nobody knows or cares who you are, if you’re not the team to beat, they’re not gonna bother. If they’re gonna pull out all the stops to beat you, it’s gonna push you to another level and reach higher heights.

At some point, we all need some external pressure to push us to another level. And so for our guys, who are exceptionally talented – they’re elite – they’re good enough to dominate their normal matchups on the court. When you add the other factors (which add to the opponent’s level) and other factors which challenge your ability to focus through a 48-minute game – it kind of just pressurizes them and desensitizes them to the external environment. And it helps them focus at critical moments.

And as you do that long enough, it starts to make all the adjustments, the reaction time, the process of this whole ‘win-or-go-home’ atmosphere enjoyable because you realize you have the skillset to do what very few people can do – to persevere through these adverse conditions and still come out on top when everything’s against you.

If a player tells you he’s not rattled by it or it doesn’t affect him, it’s untrue.

The only way to learn something is to learn it. You have to be exposed to it.

So it’s not that guys don’t feel the pressure or the stress. That’s the human condition. We all feel stress. It’s just that the guys who are able to process it can play through it.

Of course you’re rattled. We’re rattled. It’s human nature.

But what helps you process it is bouncing back. You have a bad play, you bounce back and have two good plays. You have a bad first quarter, you bounce back and have three good quarters. You have a bad game, you bounce back and have a great game.

That’s the process and it’s how you respond to it. And I have no doubt our guys are going to respond well because at the end of the day, they’re too competitive not to.

There’s only three ways we can respond to what happened this weekend in Canada: You can get worse. You can maintain the status quo. Or you can get better.

And getting better isn’t just about effort. It’s about focus. It’s about discipline. It’s about consistency – being able to trust your gameplan.  And ultimately, those things determine the W and the value of the W.

We need to win and we need to keep getting better. That’s what we’re chasing.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-going-next-level

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Going Next Level"

clenadams

As the team has some time off here between rounds, we’ve been watching the NBA Playoffs at home just like everyone else.

For me, I like to examine the game. I don’t really watch the game as a fan; I don’t get caught up in who’s doing what.

I’m looking to see what they’re executing. I’m looking to see their adjustments, their tendencies, what they’re going to, which players are in what action and how many times they explore the second and third options within each set.

I stopped watching as a fan a long time ago. It’s hard to turn off your basketball mind and just watch it and get excited about the athleticism and the skill on the court. I always find myself critiquing, criticizing and evaluating what’s going on.

I wouldn’t say it makes watching the game more fun, but it does make watching the game more efficient.

It’s like chess. Some people say it’s a thinking man’s game; others say it’s boring.  But chess lovers love the strategy and the forethought. For me, watching the game from that standpoint is enriching. I enjoy it, I feel like I’m learning something. Instead of just watching TV, I’m digesting the game.

But it’s not like we’re just sitting around watching the Playoffs. We’ve been getting after it pretty good in the gym.  This time off is mostly a good thing.

Naturally, nothing is 100 percent positive. You want to keep going and maintain that in-game rhythm. But I’m a proponent of health above all else. It’s a lot easier to find your rhythm than it is to find health at this stage of the season.

We’re all pros, and this time off is perfect for us to sharpen our swords, so to speak, to hone in, lock in on our skills – shooting, passing, fundamentals. And it gives us a chance to work over our defensive and offensive principles so that when the games finally arrive, we’re totally efficient.

I’ll say this, though. We’ll be more than ready to face an opponent by the time this week is over.

You always want to sit back and do work in the lab – strategize, adjust, and then ratchet up to full speed. And hopefully, when you’re done, you’re confident in what you’re doing so you can just go out there and react.

So for us, we’re all competitive. And if you leave us around here too long, we’ll start to beat each other up. So this layoff is just enough time for us to recalibrate, get into attack mode and then come out here on Sunday or Tuesday night and produce.

It was nice to get back-to-back sweeps. I’ve been on the other end of taking it on the chin in a Playoff series.

How a team reacts to getting swept just depends on the team. For some, it motivates them. Some become disheartened.

But hopefully, for us, it just sets the bar for when those teams are playing us now and in the future, they know that it’s gonna be a rough mountain to climb. And for us, that’s something that we want to maintain.

Sweeping a team isn’t easy. You’re talking about the best players in the world in the best league in the world. And every game is decided by just a few key plays. And we made those plays. So sweeping a team, really, is a matter of making key plays in key moments much more so than overwhelming or dominating that team.

And that’s our mindset. We’re happy about the sweeps and the rest. But really, we haven’t done anything.

We came in as the top seed and we’ve won two series, we protected homecourt and got wins on the road. But that’s what we expect of ourselves. Those are just things you’re supposed to do if you’re going to call yourself a contender.

So for us, we’ve been good, we feel we can be better and we know we need to get better. In order to win the title, you just have to continue to grow, get better and adapt to every round.

Again, every game, every series in the Playoffs take on their own lives.  If you win one by 20 points, that’s absolutely no indicator of what will happen in future games. Every game is its own beast. And so for us, we have eight wins. And that’s all it is. You need 16 for a Championship.

It’s kind of a paradox in a way: Each playoff game is its own separate entity and, by the same token, each game is a ‘continuation’ of the previous one.

You have adjustments that are (and aren’t) made, cleaning up small details and discovering that a play here or a play there could have changed the entire outcome. It can be a turnover that leads to a three or a long rebound that leads to a layup and the next thing you know, it’s a 10-0 run.

The postseason is so fragile, and whatever you did the day before – win or loss – doesn’t mean anything the next day. Because the next day, you’re facing a motivated opponent who’s made some adjustments and looking to exploit the weaknesses that you might perceive were your strengths in the previous game.

It can be really fragile when you’re on the road, especially for the younger players. But we’ve been very good on the road in the Playoffs over the last couple years.

A big reason is because our players have a chip on their shoulder. And we actually have guys that live for adversity. There’s nothing better for our guys than going into a hostile environment and silencing the crowd and proving someone wrong. We have guys who are extremely talented who’ve been underdogs or underappreciated in some form or fashion.

So there’s that chip that they carry. And when you have that, it’s the fuel that drives you to be special. And when we’re on the road, we’re clear about what we want to do, and we take the challenge. That’s the biggest part of winning on the road. You have to be able to take that challenge for the entire game because sometimes it’s easy to pack it in and play for the next game.

But with this group – even if it’s to a fault – we’ll go down swinging.

Winning on the road is excellent. It’s a shot in the arm when you’re trying to go on a run, especially when you’re trying to string together wins, because the expectation is that you protect your home floor.

So, yes, winning on the road can be really satisfying. But for me, the more I play, the more I enjoy playing at home in front of the fans. Winning on the road, we as a team enjoy it. And I know that, in order to be a Champion, you have to win on the road.

But there’s something special winning at home – in front of your fans, your friends and your families.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-staying-sharp

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Staying Sharp"

It’s good to have Game 1 in the books after the long layoff. There’s no doubt it affected us – mostly positively, but not completely.

I think having that time off is why we were able to come out with so much force and build an 18-point lead and that was all positive.

Whenever you have that much time off, it can go one of two ways: you can come out and struggle early and you can turn it on late or you can turn it on early and kind of fall into a lull. And I think that Monday night, after getting that big lead, we sort of fell into a lull. We gave up some easy baskets, but we were able to make some baskets off offensive rebounds that gave us our momentum back.

But we’re healthy after eight days, and that’s the goal of having that much time off. And I think we made the most of it because, at the end of the day, once the game got tight and we needed to get stops and win, we just looked like the fresher team.

During the regular season, every time you play, you play hard and the next game, you feel 90 percent, you feel sore, you feel tightness, you might need to do something a little extra to get yourself going.

But when you have eight days, you have enough time to work the kinks out and really get whole. And you can feel the difference knowing that, ‘Hey, I woke up this morning and I’m not sore or tight. I woke up this morning springy.’ And to be able to take that feeling into shootaround or a game is a lot different than feeling like you have to get the engine going.

And it’s just important for the older guys.

Our young guys, these guys have played a lot of minutes. And they want to feel great. And they know what that feeling is because they’ve reached it at some point during the past year-and-a-half.

So just having that baseline makes it easier for those guys to think: ‘I feel good and I remember that feeling, that stretch during the season or before the season or during All-Star Break when I really felt fresh. And I’m trying to chase that feeling and keep it.’

And when you have eight days off – four days into that stretch you’re thinking, ‘Let me just maintain this.’ And that’s how you ride that momentum through the rest of the series and the rest of the Playoffs.

Personally, I haven’t been getting steady minutes during the postseason, but it doesn’t bother me.

The only goal is to win. I’ve been a pro a long time and I pride myself on being a professional. And playing time and minutes are things that I can’t control. The only thing I can control is what I do when that opportunity comes.

So it’s a challenge for me – and one that I enjoy – because it forces me to push myself and test myself and maintain a certain level of efficiency and excellence that you typically get from playing.

At the end of the day, I know I could go a month without playing and I’ll be ready. And I appreciate that my teammates respect and understand that about me.

It’s not as easy for younger players – because usually when guys come into this league, they’re trying to establish themselves. And they’re basketball players, which means they’ve been playing this game all their lives and they still play because they love the game. And their love of the game and love for competition and opportunity to play is what propels them to wake up in the morning and come in here and work.

But the longer you play, the more you realize that the more professional you become, the desire to become an expert in your field is what pushes you. So I come in here early just looking to get better because I want to be the best basketball player I can be.

A lot of times for younger players, their reward is playing time. If the playing time is there, they’ll continue to work. If it’s not, it can be depressing. And you start to search for ‘What else can I do to earn minutes?’ And they don’t understand that’s what coaches are for. So it takes some time and a period of adjustment.

I went through it in the middle part of my career. It’s an adjustment where you say: ‘Hey, regardless of the outcome, my input will remain unchanged. I’m gonna work hard, I’m gonna bring it, I’m gonna invest the time to be the best player I can be at my position. And I’ll leave it up to the coach to make a tough decision: when to play me, how to play me, where to play me (if he plays me at all.) But it won’t change how I approach it and how good I am at my job.’

There’s always something you can get better at. And I think all players – young and old – can benefit from the weight room.

I’m still around the same weight as I’ve been – around 215 – but I’m in the weight room every day. I’m fighting Father Time, so as much as I can, I’m trying to improve what I can improve.

And with the decision to move from the 3 to the 4 (predominantly the 4), not only do I have to be stronger, I have to look stronger. Because when you’re going against an opponent, the first thing you do is give them the eye test. If they look like you can overpower them, you’re going to try to overpower them.

Understanding that part of it is what drives me to come in and lift. If I’m going to be a 4, I’m going to be the best ‘little 4’ in the league.

Work in the weight room is like maintenance. It’s like a car. If you have a high-mileage car, you can wait until the “check oil” or “check engine” light comes on. But if you have the luxury of giving it a good run-through every day, you would do that.

So the maintenance part of it is big for me and it’s big for all the guys. They’re competing at the highest level and they’re asking a lot from their bodies. So in order to combat the physical nature of the game, you have to build that armor. The stronger you build it, the longer it can go.

One individual who has about the best coat of armor around is LeBron James and this postseason will be our sixth straight together.

He’s in a great place right now. His emotional stability is increasing every year, but specifically from last year to this year.

I think he’s in perfect sync mentally and physically and, more importantly, he has a very good feel for his teammates, our system and just the organization as a whole. And by ‘organization’ I mean what coaches expect from him what his teammates expect of him (and what he expects of us).

So that comfort level allows him to really do everything he needs to do – in the weight room, in the film room, on the court – knowing that we’re all on the same page.

This year – dealing with the ebbs and flows of the game, the highs and lows – he’s been able to absorb that extremely well. And controlling his emotions is what this team feeds on. So you’re seeing over the last four, five months his ability to process things that frustrate him and still push out something positive, still fight through it and give our guys confidence that the mistakes that they’re making and the mistakes they’re going to make won’t disrupt him.

Because we all know it starts and ends with him. And as long as he’s stable and strong, we’re fine.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-coat-of-armor

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Coat of Armor"

Everyone handles the postseason differently; there’s no set way to approach it.

Some guys will try to lock in and focus more deeply. During the regular season, you play 82 games and I think sometimes guys have the tendency to shortcut their daily routine and just try to get themselves prepared for the Playoffs – when you have a day or two in between and can really zero in on your opponent.

It’s difficult to get a true, deep rhythm for all 82 games, so I think some guys switch up their routines. But I try to stay consistent.

What you’re seeing with our team this year is the true value of playoff experience – specifically guys like Kyrie, Kevin, Tristan and Delly – from Year 1 to Year 2.  That’s where you make your biggest jump as a pro.

You re-think in the whole process, the whole preparation – as far as focus on the details, understanding the significance of every possession and understanding what coaches are looking to do. You learn about how the rotation gets tightened and minutes are streamlined.

But most importantly, you learn to deal with the atmosphere. You have to get accustomed to the atmosphere where every possession has so much more meaning and the crowd responds with a different level of anxiety. So, it’s a challenge for young players making their first trip. But it gets better with time.

If there’s one recurring theme in the Playoffs, it’s the importance of possessions. It’s like a broken record, but it’s something younger players have to etch in their minds.

And as you get older you begin to understand: the longer you play, the more you’re in the postseason, the more you understand that this is a privilege -- and these moments can be fleeting. And you place more value on everything.

These younger guys, as they start to see how these games play out and see that a single possession can change an entire game and, often, and entire series, they start to realize that every possession is critical. And you don’t take any possession for granted because you can’t take the Playoffs for granted.

The best advice I was given and give to younger guys is very simple: Just be a pro.

Understand that you play the game to win and that your job is to be the best prepared that you can possibly be. That means you have to put distractions aside; you have to lock in and focus and make this your singular priority. For these two months, just give yourself to the process of preparing to win playoff games. If you do that, you’ll find yourself learning what it takes to win.

In the Playoffs, you’re either the hunter or the hunted. It’s all a mentality.

When you’re the hunted, your opponent – players, coaches, organizations – are looking at you as an opportunity, a stepping stone.

A lot of players make their mark, even make their careers on knocking off the top teams. It’s how a lot of coaches save their jobs. That’s the reality.

When you’re the hunter, it’s the opposite. You’re trying to stake your claim and make a mark. You’re trying to preserve your spot at the top. Individually, you’re trying to make sure the team doesn’t blow it up and search for other ways to reach a higher level.

That’s just the reality of being the hunted vs. being the hunter. I hate to say that it’s “kill or be killed,” but that’s how it’s described in the animal kingdom.

Me, I actually prefer being the hunted – right where the Cavaliers are at this stage of the Playoffs. Because it requires a bit of self-motivation and a challenge from within to resist the challenge from someone else.

Being the hunter is easy. You just look at who’s above you and you try to chase them. When you’re the hunted, you don’t look back to see who’s coming up. You look forward to distancing yourself from the competition.

champs-2016-playoff-blog-youth-movement

Champ's 2016 Playoff Blog: "Youth Movement"

Presented by:

fubo

REMAINING ROUND 2, GAME 4 TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE NOW. <strong><a href="https://seatgeek.com/cleveland-cavaliers-tickets?market=open&amp;aid=15870&amp;pid=web&amp;rid=50624&amp;utm_medium=partnership&amp;utm_source=cavs_ticketing&amp;utm_campaign=web&amp;utm_content=playofftickets">FIND SEATS &gt;&gt;</a></strong>