[Grades] Grades v. Cavs 01/14/13

[Capt. Factorial]

How 'bout a list of teams that did beat Cleveland by 20-30? And were these stats pre or post Verejao injury?

I gave you the complete list. It's in the paragraph above the list of selected teams that didn't beat Cleveland by 20. Please refer to my original comment.

As far as Varejao goes, I don't know. I looked through the entire schedule to get those lists, and all the games in question were pretty much evenly distributed.

In answer to your question, for a very simple reason - if the Kings played a modicum of defense they would have destroyed Cleveland. Cleveland doesn't match up well with the Kings, especially in the post. At what position are they significantly better than the Kings? Even at pg, Irving is moderately better than IT (He certainly doesn't dominate; that's for sure). And with the Kings, Cousins is like a man among boys. It was obvious to me from the beginning of the game that the Kings were playing down to their competition.

If your theory is that the Kings are somehow "perfectly designed" to beat the Cavaliers, there's really no counter to the argument because it's completely subjective. Furthermore, it's unfalsifiable in your eyes (the Kings ought to beat the Cavaliers by 20-30, but they didn't because they "played down", argument is still true) so there wouldn't be much incentive to argue the point anyway.

Even so, it's obvious the Kings aren't perfectly designed to beat the rest of the league (Kings season-average margin: -5.87 ppg) and the rest of the league isn't designed to beat the Cavaliers by 20-30 (Cavaliers season-average margin: -5.70 ppg). Maybe we are perfectly designed to beat a lottery team in the East. Yippee. Lot of good that does us. But I still doubt it.

We're not that good. The Cavs aren't that good. We beat them in our house, and we had a respectable lead for a while. I don't see the point in making our victory out to be something less than it was just because you think we, as a bad team, ought to blow them out.

 

[The_Jamal]

Ok, whoa whoa whoa. I hope are you are merely referencing the fact that Kyrie seems to struggle aginst IT/us head to head?

This. Kyrie will likely be an All-Star this season and is well on his way to being one of the elite players in the game. There are only a handful of players in the NBA I would rather build a team around than him

 

[jalfa]

This. Kyrie will likely be an All-Star this season and is well on his way to being one of the elite players in the game. There are only a handful of players in the NBA I would rather build a team around than him

and he's three years younger than Damian Lillard. it's absurd. if only he didn't suffer from Bogut-syndrome.