Welcome to Fear the Fro. Shot blocked by Mobley. Holy Mobley. Down to the Mitchell is eight
for eight from downtown. There is Garland. Hit it from Euclid. Laudale is pow. Whoa, that
was gorgeous! A Cleveland Cavalier podcast. What do we need to add? What do we need to
give the coach? The game has come down to space and opportunity. We address that... Hosted
by the voice of Fox Sports Radio. Yeah, his name is Bob Schmidt. Bob Schmidt. Spectacular
talent. That guy is a legend. Get out of the buzzer! Welcome to the Fear the 'Fro podcast.
We're back from All-Star Break, not the way that I wanted to return. I laid out for an
entire week. I sat out through all the bitching and the moaning about All-Star Break and the
meaningless exhibition that is that. I said no, I'm going to come back when the games come
back and the Cavaliers keep this momentum going after the break, a break which saw them in
second place and while they still maintained second place, lost a little ground tonight
as the New York Knicks gave a pretty good pummeling to the Philadelphia 76ers and we dropped this
game 116-109.
to the Orlando Magic. Now there's a lot of stuff we can discuss but I think the first thing
I should acknowledge is that I did a very long podcast with Mack Perry of the It's Cavalier
podcast. If you haven't heard that you should check it out. It will be probably a much more
enjoyable listen because we recorded it prior to the game tonight but I did not want to wait
any longer to come back so let's get into what transpired tonight despite the fact that it
wasn't necessarily positive. Let's get to the elephant in the room right out of the gate.
Darius Garland. I feel like that has been the majority of the conversation as he's been re-acclimated
to the rotation here in Cleveland and with Donovan Mitchell out of the game due to illness tonight.
Certainly, you saw the impact of a guy and you saw how meaningful he is to everything that
the Cavaliers are doing out here. Darius Garland had a chance to put together a game that would
halt. a lot of the criticisms that he's taken. You could make the argument that, okay, yeah,
Darius, his stats aren't great, but he's in a situation where not as much as being asked
of him. He's being asked to fill a certain style of play. He's trying to do that, and we shouldn't
get fixed. I've made all those arguments myself. Tonight was a game, though, where he could
not afford to sit back because we did not have option 1A Donovan Mitchell. And 18 and 10,
not bad on the surface, but ultimately not enough. And certainly not enough in the first half.
There's... No way to sugarcoat it. It wasn't Darius Garland's best effort. We also had a
lot of turnovers. Now some of that you need to credit to the Magic. They are a very good
defensive team. They were very physical, a lot of slapping, a lot of grabbing. JB alluded
to that in the post game. In fact, let me play you that now. I mean, obviously that's a strength
of theirs. Give them credit, they use it well. I think it forced us into some of our turnovers.
Hard to win. You turn it over 19 times. but they have great size, great length that was
supposed to make them a really good defensive team. And, you know, it's on us to, you know,
move them around a little bit more, make them chase us a little bit more, get the ball from
side to side, and then be strong with the ball. I thought they did a good job of fouling us
and helping create some of those turnovers, but being physical, slapping, reaching, grabbing,
holding, you know, that helped them create some of those turnovers. So clearly, I think you
hear some frustration with JB, despite the fact that we won the free throw battle. I don't
think he particularly enjoyed how physical the Magic were able to play. But to their credit,
if you always push the envelope, it's a little bit like the Draymond Green thing. Mo Wagner
plays a certain way. And yeah, they're going to call him for plenty of fouls. It's not as
if he escaped unscathed today. He had four personal fouls, but it felt like he could have easily
fouled out. He's effective and he knows his game and knows... exactly who he is and knows
how to play on that gray line. Again, there was a lot of offensive fouls when he had the
ball in his hand. I don't know how our guys are supposed to defend when they're in legal
guarding position and he's allowed to launch himself through their body over and over and
over and over again. So again, I'm not taking anything away from him. He understands what
they allow him to get away with. He's an extremely effective player and he impacts winning. I
mean, you're taking a little away from him. Over and
Now other people would like credit for predicting, you know, breakout teams before it happened.
I was in early on the Oklahoma City Thunder. I don't care if you ever give me credit for
correct predictions that I make. What I do want you to recognize is when I'm first to the,
I hate this guy and you should all hate him two party. And I believe I was with Moe Wagner
because I've been saying it for multiple years now. I might, in fact, I might've been the
very first person to say Mo Wagner. You piece of shit. Yes. Basically, since he's been a
member of the Orlando Magic, I have hated this man. So if you're there with me, well then
you have exquisite taste. Exquisite. It's exquisite. You and I are kindred spirits of asshole identification.
Look at that huge German asshole. Mo Wagner has now eclipsed, in my mind, Marcus Morris
and Jae Crowder. And that's not to say that I still don't have an excessive amount of disdain
for them, but they are not effective basketball players anymore. In the case of Marcus Morris,
He's all but irrelevant. Jake Crowder is out there logging trash minutes. George Yang lit
up that fat bitch for 33 points. You fat piece of shit. My hate for them, it doesn't burn
as bright as watching a guy who not only hands us a loss, but leads the way for the magic
in doing it. So he has eclipsed them. Now, he has not eclipsed players. I was asked by Darlene
on Twitter, what about a Draymond Green or a Joel Embiid or a Dillon? Well, she asked me
Dillon Brooks. And then. The Duke of Sports asked me, well, what about Dramat? No, those
guys are on their own level. Mo is just recklessly aggressive. So far, to this point, he hasn't
hurt anyone. He did not punch Donovan Mitchell in the penis. Dong. But this isn't a magic
podcast, okay? You wanna hear the fifth year anniversary of that? Go to the Six Man Show.
Let's get back to Darius Garland. Darius Garland did not have a good first half. There's really...
No way around it. We kind of things unraveled a lot in the middle of the second quarter.
Thanks to mostly Jared Allen in that final stretch and an eight Oh run to close out the second
quarter. The Cavaliers did cut the lead to four points, but that was largely on the heels of
the big man. I thought Darius Garland struggled mightily. I thought Caris LaVert struggled
mightily in the first half collectively. Those two guys were three for 12 and we had nine
turnovers at halftime. So that's. It's unacceptable. 6 points from Garland isn't enough. Now obviously,
being that he finished with 18, he did do a lot of scoring and fairly efficiently in the
second half. Now just in a 1 minute span in the third quarter, Darius Garland ripped off
6 points of his own and had a steal that put the Cavaliers back in the lead finally. After
digging a hole in the second quarter, they clawed back in the third quarter. Their first and
third quarter was very good tonight. Second and fourth, that's where they lost the game.
And a lot of that directly overlaps with when those guys on the Orlando bench murdered us.
Now I spent a huge portion of my conversation with Mac Perry talking about the luxury of
being able to play through some peak and valley performances from a Struce and a Darius Garland
because of how well the rest of the team was playing. With Donovan Mitchell out of the lineup,
it becomes a lot more difficult. So in the absence of your best player, if the bench only scores
24 points, probably an uphill battle. Every single one of the Cavalier starters shot better
than 50% from the floor. Isaac Okoro, probably him or maybe even Max Struz, one of those guys
I would say were the bright points for tonight. I thought it was probably, I would give the
nod to Isaac. Outside of incredibly efficient offensive production, I thought he did a good
job taking Franz Wagner out of the game. Now, Mobley drew the toughest assignment in theory.
in Paulo Banquero, although I thought Banquero settled for a lot of jumpers and he was just
not hitting them tonight. This Orlando Magic team, it's interesting to watch them and see
what we've seen this season because earlier in the year we got just a transcendent career
night from Paulo Banquero where he went for over 40 points and tonight it could not have
been more the opposite. He started the game 0-6, didn't even score till midway through
the second quarter and at the end of the evening he was an abysmal 4-15. What really carried
the day was the bench, as I said. Now, just to put this into some context, statistically
speaking, we have given up four 60-point bench outings this season, but none since late November.
This was the first one of this calendar year, and this was the first one in basically three
months. The Cavs themselves have scored over 60 points with their bench unit five times,
and they have won every single one of those games. Some of them have been their more impressive
outings. We did it to this Orlando Magic team. in late January in that game we won going away.
We failed on multiple fronts. Physicality, their bench exploded, they had an outlier shooting
night. I didn't love all the rotations. Lots of things to improve upon, Darius's play included.
But the second half, we got a good game out of Acora, we got a good game out of Struce,
we got a good second half out of Darius Garland. Jared Allen, I thought, had some huge possessions
during the course of this game when we needed buckets to keep it competitive. and Evan Mobley
came out of the gates quick. With a back-to-back in front of us against Philadelphia, if you
told me I could only have one of the two games, of course I would pick Philly, and they got
handled tonight by the Knicks. So I'm hopeful that Donovan is back in the second half of
this set, and that the Cavaliers give us something that can quickly wipe away the memories of
this game. But let's keep it moving, because we have an update on the enemy of the pod front.
Tim Bontemps stopped ducking the smoke, so even though he's technically not the enemy of the
pod. Let's just fire up a past enemy of the pod update, shall we? Enemy, enemy,
enemy of the pod. Fuck him! So today I received a tweet from BP and Pepper Pike, one of the
listeners of the podcast, friend of the podcast, telling me, making me aware that an appearance
by Tim Bontemps on 92.3 The Fan was coming. And that if I tuned in, in what was five minutes
from the point I was made aware that Tim Bontemps would be doing an interview. So I did. I tuned
in, I rolled tape, I recorded the whole 12 minute interview, and yes, finally, finally we got
Tim Bontemps addressing his slanderous, unnecessarily harsh critique of Evan Mobley from just a month
ago. Now I will set it up again. I know most of you heard this, but could be new listeners.
At any point, I'll give you the concise summary of what Tim Bontemps said previously. It goes
as follows. I mean, to me, Evan Mobley's been one of the more disappointing players in the
league. He has not improved on offense at all. If you're a non-shooting four, which is what
Evan Mobley is, that's probably the least valuable player in the league. Now, we don't need to
rehash my feelings or your feelings on that. I think they generally go as follows. You piece
of shit! But ever since Evan Mobley knocked down those three triples, I was waiting to
hear how he would couch. or walk back his comments when he had to acknowledge that Evan Mobley
perhaps isn't the lost cause that he presented him as. Now just to support how good Evan Mobley
has been in the month of February, I alluded to this on the It's Cavalier podcast, but he's
second in the league with players who have over 20% usage in 25 minutes per game in true shooting
percentage. The only guy who's outperforming him in this stretch during February is Danny
Avdya. His box plus minus. for the month of February coming into the evening was a 7.3.
And to put that in some perspective for you, typically guys who get a six or more over the
course of a season, that's an all NBA season. Dudes who get up around an eight. So Evan's
splitting the difference and he's, in fact, he's leaning more towards the plus eight. That
would be an MVP season level. What he's doing this month, it's truly the worst confluence
of events for the Timbontemps anti-mobile development agenda. that could possibly play out. Now at
some point he was going to have to address it. People have been tweeting him. He hasn't been
on the podcast where it came up on the low post or the hoop collective but it was only a matter
of time and today was that day. Today on Cleveland radio, as is to be expected, you got a much
more conciliatory, measured version. What was this? He has not improved on offense at all.
Became this. And obviously since coming back from... the knee surgery, he's hit some shots.
What was this? There's not a real logical path for this team making any kind of run in the
playoffs. Is suddenly this? I think they could make the conference finals now, especially
if they get matchups to fall a certain way. That's a win, right? It's at least a half win.
Some Cavs fans took an exception to what you said about Evan and his development in year
three. Are you buying into this, even though it's a small sample size, that this could be
the turning point for him in terms of what he does offensively? I mean, again, I'm not trying
to parse words at all, right? But like, I just need to see a lot more than a handful of games
where he took a couple threes. Now that's kind of the approach that I would think that he
would take. I will say, this interview was 12 minutes. It didn't even make me angry. I'm
not mad, Tim. I'm just... I'm just disappointed. The easiest way to avoid having to acknowledge...
that perhaps your criticisms were unfounded, don't take the L, just say, okay, best two
out of three, and then say, okay, best of five. Well, let's make it best of seven. Just keep
extending the sample size. Now, eventually there may be just a mountain of unimpeachable evidence
that contradicts your first most emphatic take, but hopefully by that point, people have forgotten
all about it and moved on. I mean, I ran out of steam on the enemy of the pod within a month.
If I have to keep this thing going for six months, I don't know if I can do it. I'm not that creative.
The Cavs from last year's team took Lowry Markkinen, not a very good player. Replace him. He's fine,
he's a rotation player. He's not a very good player. A average or below average player.
What about Donovan Mitchell? He's not below average, he's an average player. I mean, whatever,
he's not very good. But let's go back to the comments. Give me everything you got for this
wet ass P word. Where'd that come from? That's not the comments. The reason I've harped on
his situation so much is because it is really the critical question about the Cavs going
forward. I of course disagree with that. I think the very clear first concern, critical question
of the Cavaliers going forward is where is Donovan Mitchell in that future? His situation has
to be addressed first. He has the most potential to have the ability to leave. Evan Mobley to
me might be the third most pressing concern for this Cavalier team because even in a situation
where you decide either him or Darius Garland isn't a long-term fit with the construction
of the roster, Darius is already on a max contract. You don't have that problem yet with Evan Mobley.
And even if you didn't think he was gonna be a long-term fit alongside Jared Allen, in all
likelihood, you would just extend him and deal with that later. when you're absolutely confident
that doesn't happen. But I think he's far from the most pressing concern for the Cavaliers.
However, I know that there's that group of people who believe that the Cavaliers will never be
a championship contender until he's our best player. I will tell you, I'm not of the belief
that so long as Donovan Mitchell is on this roster, Evan Mobley will ever be the best player.
Donovan Mitchell is, period. A night like tonight should illustrate to you just the impact he
can have on a game with the way that he plays. And... I don't think that that's the type of
player that Evan Mobley is. I think he can be an elite player in this league. I don't think
he can be option 1A on a team, both offensively and defensively. And in my mind, I'm not sure
if that's what Bontemps believes, but he puts an immense amount of focus on a guy who I think
has a very high floor already. I would have far more concern with a guy who, when he plays
bad... by his standard can have a much more detrimental effect on the whole roster. And
that's a guy like Adarious Garland. But let's go to the, let's leave this behind though.
To wrap this up, no, I'm not going to make Timbontemps the enemy twice because quite frankly I think
he's slowly walking this back. And if I was to institute one person a second time, well
then the grievance should be worse. It should be like I let you off for a slap on the wrist
because you stole some candy from the grocery store. and then you still came back to the
same grocery store and you put your penis in one of the donuts. I love apple fritters. I
need to see a ramp up of tensions. This is not that, this is working in the opposite order.
So no, Tim Bontemps is not the enemy of the pod. I will wait till I feel more aggrieved.
And right now, I will tell you what bothers me more, quite frankly, it's when I hear people
use the phrase. It's like it's the worst kept secret in the NBA. worst kept secret in basketball
to talk about their belief that it's just a known fact that Donovan Mitchell is gonna walk
away. People who do that, they're getting under my skin vastly more than simply listening to
Bon Temps scale back his criticism until eventually he's praising Evan and he's done a complete
180 and he's gaslighting all of us about how we didn't hear what we heard. Okay, let's do
one more thing here before we wrap up this episode of the Fear the Frol podcast. Many of you have
participated in the audio mailbag. It is a feature I rolled out somewhere in the middle of this
season, where you can go to CavsPod.com, the website of the Fear the Frol podcast, and there's
a button on the website that says, Talk to Bob. It allows you to just record a voice memo,
essentially, and it sends it to my email account, and I can include it here as a way for your
voice to be heard, but also for us to interact in a little bit more personal way than me just
reading emails that you've sent to me. So... I got an audio mailbag submission. Let's hit
that. Please leave a message. And now a message recorded and submitted to me at calvespod.com.
Today our submission is from Zach. Hey Bob. Zach from Chicago. Zach, thank you for joining
me. What do you got? Absolutely loved the show. Look forward to new episodes each week. Appreciate
all the hard work. Over the past couple months, I feel like whenever Donovan gets interviewed
about the success of the team. He mentions players stepping up a lot. And I feel like top billing
usually goes to Sam Merrill. And it got me curious why. I mean, considering there's so many other
players that have been playing above their pay grade. Is Donovan lobbying for Sam in some
cryptic way amongst other players or am I reading too much into it? However, over the All-Star
weekend, it was never more clear about the promotion of Sam Merrill from Donovan than it's ever
been. So I thought there was something to it. But like I said, I might just be reading completely
too much into it. So curious your thoughts. Well, I'll tell you my thoughts, Zach. My gut
tells me you're probably reading a little bit too much into it. But then again. Who knows
what's going on inside Donovan Mitchell's mind. If we did, all of this drama around his impending
free agency would be much less dramatic. I will say this though. I think if you were to ask
me why Donovan Mitchell throws so much praise Sam Merrill's way, I think there's a few factors.
One would be recency, novelty. And by that, I mean there's a lot of other guys on the team
who were huge components alongside of him last year. Jared Allen. and Isaac Okoro. Those are
guys who occupied starting lineup positions or huge roles alongside of him during last
season, whereas Sam Merrill was essentially found money that didn't really work his way
into the rotation until December of this year. And we're still in the honeymoon stage of his
emergence. He hasn't been around long enough to take what he does for granted. He didn't
just work his way into the rotation, he exploded onto the scene. So for Donovan to praise him
as much as he does. Part of it, I think, is Sam Merrill has emerged in a way where he has
shown one skill that's extremely elite, and that tends to be something that the fans have
gravitated to. And in a three-point competition setting, of course that's the guy that he should
draw attention to, the elite three-point shooter who wasn't included in the competition. But
also, I think there's a certain element of it that when you're toiling away at your job,
let's say, sometimes the people who tend to get... praised all the time on the conference
calls and the manager meetings are the people who are working away the most for the least.
It's not necessarily the most valuable components of the team or of the corporate structure.
It's the ones who are working the hardest for the least monetary rewards and the kudos are
a way to make sure people feel appreciated regardless. of their stature on the team from a financial
or even solidified role perspective. Sam is on the fringe of having to fight for minutes.
I mean tonight, logging anywhere between 11 and 13 minutes, there may be a part of Donovan
that knows when they're back at full strength, the sacrifices are largely going to fall onto
Sam's shoulders to see his role dramatically reduced. So that praise may be a way of trying
to keep his morale. and spirits up and say, regardless of what you're doing out there on
the court, I want him to feel appreciated and loved and remain engaged in a way that he doesn't
have to do for an Isaac or an Allen because their roles are essentially solidified. That
would be my theory anyway. I don't think that Donovan is any more positive feeling towards
a Sam than he is towards an Isaac or towards a Jared Allen. I think he loves all his teammates.
I just think the three point competition was... the perfect storm, the perfect place for him
to give a shout out to Sam Merrill because Sam Merrill is so elite at that particular skill.
So that that's my feeling on it, but again, I don't know any better than you. Maybe there's
something to what you said. And nice belch by the way. You've done me proud. So thank you
for contributing to the audio mailbag. Let's wrap it up there. Shall we? Thank you to everybody
who participated, the reviews, the ratings. I appreciate them all. We'll be back, hopefully.
Following some more wins. Let's get back in the winning column. Shall we? I'm Bob Schmidt
voice of Fox Sports Radio and this is the Fear the Fro Podcast Okay, that's enough. Stop it
This has been another Fear the Fro. It's over. Podcast. That was pathetic. If you enjoyed
what you heard today Put another highlight reel, please consider subscribing. Check out fropod.com
for more Cavaliers and NBA coverage That's what's on display here Wet ass P word.