Cavaliers using fourth starting lineup of 2017-18 season
The Cavs will start Derrick Rose, JR Smith, LeBron James, Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson on Saturday when they play the New Orleans Pelicans, Lue said.
Cleveland opened the season with Rose, Dwyane Wade, James, Jae Crowder and Love as its starters. It switched to Jose Calderon, Wade, James, Crowder and Love; then to Smith, James, Crowder, Love and Thompson. And now this.The latest lineup swap sends Crowder, the only player Cleveland received from the Kyrie Irving trade currently in Lue's rotation, to the bench.
"Just another class act by Jae. He was great," Lue said of the latest potentially difficult conversation he had to have with one of his players -- mirroring the chats he already had with Smith, Thompson, Wade and Channing Frye -- about his role changing. "[He] said 'Nah, do whatever you want. You don't have to explain anything to me. I just want to win. That's the most important thing.'"
"I've been open to change because we haven't found our groove yet," Crowder said. "We're still searching for answers to see how we can get games rolling in our favor. So I'm open to whatever the team wants me to do, because at the end of the day we're trying to reach a goal."
It also means abandoning Cleveland's experiment with Love as the team's starting center -- the most radical adjustment Lue planned for the team during the offseason. "Kevin's still going to play some 5 when Jae comes in early for Tristan," Lue said. "We just can't have him playing 35 minutes at the 5. It's wearing him down. You can kind of see that. It's affecting his shot. We tried it. We said we've got a lot of versatile lineups we can try and change, but just getting back to who we were, how we've started over the past three years."
James, whose Miami Heat team started 9-8 in 2010-11 in its first season together and whose Cavaliers went 19-20 at the beginning of 2014-15, sees a parallel with this Cavs team that is trying to incorporate eight new players.
"It's just a learning curve that you have to go through when you're adding a new group, and I don't want it easy, anyways," James said. "I don't like for it to be easy. I like the challenge."
The Cavs will be starting games for the foreseeable future with four of the five players who started against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals and Rose swapped in Irving's place.
Yet another starting lineup shift is on the horizon, expected to come whenever Isaiah Thomas is able to return from his right hip injury. Thomas is on the road trip with Cleveland and went through individual skill work on the court after the Cavs' practice at the National Basketball Players Association's offices in downtown Manhattan.
"Man, it's all about just playing good basketball," Rose said. "If I wasn't playing, or whenever IT gets back and I get moved to the bench, I don't care. I could be the equipment guy. As long as I'm part of this team, it really don't matter."
The Cavs have lost two of their last three games and allowed each of their opponents in that span -- Orlando, Chicago and Brooklyn -- to make 17 3-pointers. Lue said while reviewing the game film that he counted his team only contesting 36 of the Magic's 73 shots, a "terrible" defensive showing in his estimation.
"My patience hasn't really run thin as far as winning," Lue said. "Just, defensively, we've got to be better understanding what we're trying to do defensively."
While the constant roster shuffling and recent losses could point to turmoil, the Cavs are staying process oriented.
"I can't put a timetable on it, but you'll know. You'll know when it starts clicking," Crowder said. "You'll see games start going in our favor in a big, impactful way. But I can't put a timetable on it because I don't know. I definitely feel like it will come sooner than later." Added James: "We can be a pretty good team. But like I said, it's too early. I mean, we're what, five games in so far? Five games in. So we have the talent, but talent can only go so far. We got to put in the work, which we've done so far, but we got to continue to put in the work."
Author: Dave McMenamin, ESPN
Source: http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/21185431/cleveland-cavaliers-using-fourth-starting-lineup-2017-18-season
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