Cleveland Cavaliers: Larry Drew is an improvement on Tyronn Lue

Larry Drew may have displaced a championship-winning coach, but without the superhuman 6-foot-9 crutch we know as LeBron James, Tyronn Lue looked positively crippled as the Cleveland Cavaliers head coach.

With Tyronn Lue‘s departure many fans murmured audible sighs at the thought of less head-scratching substitutions and better than high school JV-level transition defense (that last part remains still unfulfilled). Though not up-to-date, based on eight games the Cleveland Cavaliers are allowing 1.32 points per transition possession under Larry Drew, behind only the San Antonio Spurs, according to Synergy Sports Technology’s stats on NBA.com.)

Yet if Drew hasn’t even begun to solve the Chinatown-sized puzzle of the Cavaliers’ transition defensive effort, his positive contributions are already apparent from both one’s eyes and the stat sheets.

Timeouts and Substitutions

There aren’t publicly available statistics on timeouts but watching the Cavaliers for the last season and a half it was difficult not to come to the conclusion that Lue was hesitant to call a timeout – sorta the opposite of his predecessor David Blatt. Perhaps it was the influence of coaching great Phil Jackson, who liked to have his teams work through their issues themselves, rather than call the immediate timeout. It often felt like Lue’s timeouts were slow. To his credit, Lue ran very good plays out of the timeout, better than we’ve seen from Drew thus far, to be honest.

Last night, Drew made a very well-timed timeout in the first quarter. Russell Westbrook had fed Paul George for a layup a moment earlier, then stole the ball from Cedi Osman, passing to George who threw it up for a Jerami Grant alley-oop and a 13-10 lead.

Drew called time, and the team followed with an 11-0 run. It’s anecdotal, to be sure, but it’s characteristic of Drew’s seeming greater sense of mastery — probably thanks to almost three more seasons of seasoning than Lue.