Cleveland Should Fire Mike Brown
Cavaliers head coach is ruining an NBA title contender
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach Mike Brown is mishandling LeBron James and a Cavaliers team that should threaten to win the NBA's Eastern Conference.
Note to Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert: Fire head coach Mike Brown, before it’s too late.
After a recent thrashing by the amazing Phoenix Suns, it’s clear that Mike Brown is thwarting any chance LeBron James and the Cavaliers have of winning the NBA’s Eastern Conference.
Proponents of Brown will point to his solid record in two and a half seasons as the Cavaliers’ coach, and others will underscore Cleveland’s success in Brown’s second year (50 wins and a playoff series victory).
The fact remains that the Cleveland Cavaliers have the NBA’s best player in LeBron James, who can dominate any team at any time. Plus, James is surrounded by a very solid cast of NBA players.
Larry Hughes, when healthy, is a stellar slasher and perimeter defender. Drew Gooden has developed into a steady scorer and rebounder in the post, and Anderson Varejao is pure energy and production off of the bench.
Even Damon Jones, an awful free agent acquisition in 2005, has been a wonderful reserve, shooting 41% from 3-point range.
Yet the Cleveland Cavaliers are nearing the All-Star break in fifth place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference and in third in a Central Division they should dominate. Despite having an NBA MVP candidate and arguably the game’s best player in LeBron, Brown’s Cavaliers rank near the bottom of the league in scoring.
The most eye-popping statistic, which can be easily linked to coaching, is that only LeBron James shoots 48% from the field. Even 7-3 center Zydrunas Ilgauskus shoots more poorly.
Maybe worse than this, though, is that LeBron is taking just 20 shots per game and is often satisfied to stand rooted on the weak side of the court, while lesser-players like Eric Snow take jumpers at key times in the game.
All of this must be blamed on Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Brown.
Sure, Brown can’t make shots, but he can design offenses that give players better looks at the basket. He can run plays for LeBron James when his team falls behind by five or more points, yet for some reason, he never does.
When teams with superstars are in close games in the fourth quarter, the offense runs through their great NBA players. When Dallas, Washington and Miami are behind, you can bet that Dirk Nowitzki, Gilbert Arenas and Dwayne Wade, respectively, will have the ball.
When Phoenix was dismantling the Cavaliers in Cleveland recently, LeBron James, who scored 30 in the game on 12 of 22 shooting, took just four shots in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, reserves Daniel Gibson, Donyell Marshall, Jones and David Wesley took 10 – mostly from long-range.
Not only does Mike Brown mishandle LeBron James (he never knows when to play and when to sit his star), Brown is clueless about player rotation and matchups.
The Cavaliers strategy against the Suns and two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash was to switch on ball screens. This left post players on Nash, who readily dropped long-range jumpers against the slower Cleveland big men or dropped it inside to his leapers, who easily slammed home dunks over the Cavaliers’ smaller guards.
When Brown decided to go smaller and stop the switching, he couldn’t get the personnel right, electing to go with David Wesley, over a bigger, yet more athletic, Sasha Pavlovic.
Wesley recently had a good game off the bench, so it was as if Mike Brown was rewarding him, like a coach might reward a high school player for working hard in practice. This is the NBA, Mike, not AAU basketball.
Pavlovic is 6-7 and far more capable of defending guys like Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa. Plus, Pavlovic brings the scoring punch that Wesley lacks.
In his last five games with 14 or more minutes, Pavlovic is 19-34 from the field – a nifty 56%. When Pavlovic gets consistent minutes, he produces. Too often, though, under Mike Brown’s bizarre coaching practices, Pavlovic goes long stretches of three or more games, never leaving the bench, making it very difficult to be consistent, when he does play.
These are just a few of the stark errors in judgement that Cavaliers coach Mike Brown makes daily.
If it’s so easy for a former high school basketball coach and most Cleveland Cavaliers fans to understand these shortcomings, certainly Cavaliers GM Danny Ferry should be able to see them.
Hopefully, he will, and he’ll pass his findings along to Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.
From there, Dan, it’s up to you to play Donald Trump and say to Mike Brown, "You’re fired."
