You are here

Cavaliers mull over possible Game 5 tweaks

By Reuters - Jun 14,2015 - Last updated at Jun 15,2015

Cleveland Cavaliers’ guard J.R. Smith warms ups before Game 4 of basketball’s NBA finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors in Cleveland on Thursday (AP photo by Tony Dejak)

Just as Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr did not want to reveal details of an altered game plan for Game 4, his Cleveland Cavaliers counterpart did not want to tip his hand for Game 5.

Cavaliers head coach David Blatt was asked how he would counter Kerr’s decision to go smaller with his starting five last Thursday, replacing centre Andrew Bogut with swing-man Andre Iguodala.

Iguodala scored 22 points in the 103-82 win in Cleveland to tie the Finals at 2-2 with Game 5 at Oracle Arena in Oakland on Sunday.

“I think that we’ve made more than our share of adjustments throughout the course of the entire play-offs, not only in this series,” said Blatt, referring to the adjustments he has been forced to make because of injuries to starters Kevin Love (shoulder), Kyrie Irving (knee) and a suspension to J.R. Smith.

“Every game brings out new things and certainly presents new challenges. If you look at the one game, it makes you think ‘okay, we’ve got to change this, that and the other thing.’ If you look at the four games, in three out of four of those games we were pretty good doing the things that we did. So I think you’ll see a combination of both of those possibilities.

“We’ve got to continue to do certain things really well. What we need to change, we will.”

If Cavaliers superstar LeBron James has his way, he wants his coach to stick with the team’s starting five of James, Matthew Dellavedova, Iman Shumpert, Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov.

“In this case with our bigs, Timo and Tristan, Timo’s starting off on [Iguodala], it’s a different match up than Bogut, obviously,” James said.

“You’ve got a guy that’s primarily on the perimeter in Game 4 versus guarding a guy that’s always in the paint, for the most part, unless he’s initiating offense.

“So it’s definitely a different change for us. But I think we’ll be much more prepared for it tomorrow night if they go with the same line-up.

“We’re going to play our game. We’ve gotten to this point by playing the way we play, and we’re not going to change. We’ll make adjustments throughout the game, but we won’t change our starting line-up.”

Off guard

LeBron James is trapped in the endless online loop of the moment he got caught with his pants down on national television.

James’ wardrobe adjustment — briefly lowering his compression pants in the moments before his Cleveland Cavaliers took on Golden State Warriors Thursday — was another example of television not moving fast enough to stop a moment best left off the air.

The moment flashed by so quickly, with James’ body partially obscured by an onscreen graphic, that many viewers probably missed it in real time.

“You needed to have a really good DVR and a microscope, I think,” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council. His watchdog group frequently encourages its members to file complaints to the federal government for violations of indecency standards but in this case he advised followers to stand down, calling it “much ado about nothing”.

The Federal Communications Commission would not comment Friday on whether anyone had formally complained about James’ unexpected exposure.

Dating back to Janet Jackson’s exposed breast on a Super Bowl halftime show and even before, directors of sports and entertainment events have long been on guard to stop such moments from slipping through. Often, telecast of live events are delayed several seconds to enable someone backstage to press a button to stop offensive language.

Success is mixed at best: A week earlier, bilingual jockey Victor Espinoza could be heard offering swear words in English and Spanish after guiding American Pharoah over the finish line for the Triple Crown.

A director is usually backstage watching several different camera feeds and ordering which one goes out over the air, and will head to another shot if something untoward is shown. Generally, there’s not enough time to edit out something that happens so quickly, said Ross Greenburg, an independent sports producer and former president of HBO Sports.

“Something like this is very rare, is next to impossible to prevent, and to my knowledge there is no video delay in effect that could prevent it from going out live,” said Marc Payton, a recently retired sports television director who was in charge for national baseball, football and boxing telecasts.

Don’t just blame TV, Greenburg said. A star like James in a big event like the NBA finals should be aware that a camera is going to be trained on him from the moment he walks out of the locker room.

ABC Sports would not comment on James’ extra exposure, and Cavaliers star was traveling West on Friday.

 

Twitter was alight with followers only too happy to fill in the breach, though.

up
31 users have voted.


Newsletter

Get top stories and blog posts emailed to you each day.

PDF