5. James spoke of breaking the bad habits the Cavs built up the last few years. When he says that, he’s speaking directly to Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters. And he’s not the first veteran to say it. When the Cavs were destroyed in a critical late-season loss to the Atlanta Hawks last April that effectively eliminated them from the postseason, Luol Deng’s frustrations similarly boiled over.
6. “We have a lot of good players, a lot of individuals who could take over games, but we have to realize that’s not our strength,” Deng said. “We’ve shown when we share the ball and play together, we’re a different team.”
7. Deng is gone, but James is preaching a similar message. It was striking to me watching LeBron stand around the 3-point line near the end of the first half Tuesday. The Cavs’ only basket over the final 3:23 of the half was a miracle bank shot from Tristan Thompson and they trailed by five in the final seconds. The Cavs had 15 seconds to run a play, but James watched Irving just dribble the ball down and hoist a 3-pointer. James barely moved the entire time. No one really did. LeBron stood there for a moment before walking to the locker room.
12. Waiters made 42 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts last season (72-for-173). That ranked 35th in the league (minimum 100 attempts), which was higher than Kevin Love (40 percent) and Irving (32 percent).
13. So when Waiters stayed behind after the team’s morning shootaround Tuesday and worked out for another 40 minutes, after the bus and rest of the players were long gone, it wasn’t surprising to watch him working primarily on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Yet when I asked him about focusing on that this season, he dismissed it.
14. “That’s not my game,” he said. “I can do it, but you know what I’m effective at: pick-and-roll and things like that.”
24. Right now the Cavs aren’t even to the paint job yet. They’re still working on the engine. Tuesday was James letting the young kids see what happens when they continue to play as they have in past years
