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Cavs: Three takeaways from thrilling comeback win over Heat

By Corey Casey

Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love reacts in-game. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Cleveland Cavaliers big man Kevin Love reacts in-game. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /
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Cleveland Cavaliers big men Tristan Thompson and Larry Nance Jr. go up for a rebound against Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images) /

Takeaway #3: J.B. Bickerstaff has this team playing hard

In a bunch of games, the Cavs will be out-manned from a talent perspective, but right now, Bickerstaff has this team playing hard. We’ve had three games since the All-Star break and in two of them they’ve fallen behind by at least 16 points and won; as I hit on after Friday’s game, Cleveland was able to will their way back and win on the road at the Washington Wizards.

In Monday’s game, though, this was a comeback effort against a very good Heat team.

Anyhow, you can certainly argue that John Beilein was a head coaching hire more so by Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, and maybe Bickerstaff was more so a head coaching hire by Cavs general manager Koby Altman. You can draw plenty of parallels from a few years ago when David Blatt was hired as head coach, and Tyronn Lue was the associate head coach.

The only difference is, any coaching issues that team may have had were overcome due to the talent level of the Cleveland Cavaliers at that time. No all the coaching changes aren’t good, but Bickerstaff has this team playing hard and so maybe this team will finally have some stability.

light. More. Cavs: Three focus areas for Bickerstaff for rest of 2019-20

This doesn’t mean all the Cavs’ problems are fixed. In the NBA, it’s a players league and talent is the most important thing by far.

The San Antonio Spurs’ fall off isn’t because Gregg Popovich became a mediocre head coach. He just doesn’t have the overall talent that he had a few years ago.

I’m sure Bickerstaff will do a nice job, but again, this is a players’ league and a head coach and coaching staff in the NBA can only do so much. In the NFL comparatively, the head coach/coaching staff is way more important.

A team like last year’s Cleveland Browns can have so much talent, but not win anything with a head coach the likes of Freddie Kitchens that is way in over his head. That’s not saying coaching in the NBA isn’t important, it is; it’s just more of a players’ league.

Next. Cavs: 15 greatest draft steals in franchise history. dark

The Cavaliers are still a work in progress and still have so much work to do when building this roster. Factoring in that, in a rebuild, we’ll probably see games like we saw in Miami on Saturday, because of the state of the roster and all the youth, but games like Monday’s are what you want to see when it comes to growth of these young guys from time to time.