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A Cleveland Cavs and NBA-centric basketball podcast from lifelong Cavaliers fan, Bob Schmidt. Reach Bob at bob@fropod.com, or @fearthefropod on Instagram, and X (Twitter).
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Cue the Germans! Ho ho ho, welcome to the Fear the Fro podcast, Max Struce. Holy shit, what an evening. Was there a more satisfying regular season game than this? Certainly not for Max Struce. There is no other place to begin but the marquee free agent acquisition of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Now much maligned as he may have been over the course of these several months with the Cleveland Cavaliers due to his shooting splits he showcased tonight. Exactly. What it is about Max Struce that makes him so magnificent as a contributing member of this Cavalier squad. Take away the final stat line, the 21-4-4. What is really more majestic here is the manner in which it came tonight. Max Struce in the first half was imposing his will on the defensive end. Multiple times he sent guys packing. But beyond that, the fourth quarter rolls around. and Max Struess is a house on fire. Five three-pointers, five of his 70% three-point shooting, seven makes tonight. However, four of those came in a 67-second span in which Max Struess humiliated on repeat, Tim Hardaway Jr., Luca Doncic. Tim Hardaway Jr. than Tim Hardaway Jr. again. This is what I would recommend to all of you. You don't even get to see the true majesty of it. It's not just that Max Struse hits the full court game winner on Luka Doncic. What happened after Kyrie Irving committed that inbound violation? The Cavalier broadcast clipped the play that they ran. You saw Max elevate and hit the shot on the Cavs broadcast but really all you got out of that was knowing that Luca was pissed about something because he was clearly scapegoating some teammates. MVP am I right? If you go back and watch the Mavericks version of the broadcast what you'll see is Max come running across the paint and Jared Allen giving Luca a screen that gave Max just enough time to catch the ball, release it and nail that corner three. And that stretch of four triples obviously that is the story of the game. But this fourth quarter was one which took what would have been a crushing collapse by the Cavaliers after blowing open the game in the first half, the second quarter specifically. The Cavaliers at one point with three minutes left in the second quarter, they had hit seven of nine three-pointers that they put up. Blew it open, 15-point lead. It would get whittled down due to 14 points in the final three minutes of the first half by Luka, including four triples. But how satisfying is it to look? At the end of that first half, when Luca poured in 14 points and 3 minutes, not knowing that the end outcome was to be that Max Struus would outdo him, pouring in 15 points, all of which came from behind the line and one of which came from behind halfcourt. Anything you can do. Doc, you want to take it? We can play VATTER. See, for once, his excuses are coming in handy. Now brace yourselves, Cavs fans. In any game that ends... this incredibly for us or terribly for them, you're going to get a lot of excuses. And I've already seen it from Mavericks fans saying, oh, it should have been a jump ball when they tackled Darius Garland or, or that was a foul by Max Truss when Kyrie Irving hooked his arm or, oh, Jared Allen, that should have been an and one from PJ Washington, which I guess would have given them time to collect themselves. So they didn't just give Max Truss an unimpeded run-up into his three quarter court bomb. Now the reality is, if you continue to allow Tim Hardaway Jr. to pick up a guy who has made his last two, his last three, his last four three-point attempts in a row, Not two, not three, not four. I don't have much sympathy for you. Jason Kidd was watching a double-digit lead get cut down to four points in a matter of seconds and he just sat there saying, I don't give a shit. Now when the whole run kicked off from Max Truce, It came off a situation where he set a top of the circle screen for Donovan Mitchell, who came over, and Tim Hardaway Jr. decided to try to go over top of the screen. In the process, he stumbled, but to me, the clear call there was, Luca should have rotated to stay along with Strews. Instead, nobody did, and he had enough time to get a shot off while Tim Hardaway Jr. just blll But I'm not Steve Jones, so what the fuck do I know? The second one, clearly that was a situation where the Cavaliers had a chance to run a play. Max came running across the paint. Allen set that screen, so good execution. Don Cich blamed his teammates, of course. That's what happens. And then the next two after that, a drop pass from Darius Garland that Tim Hardaway Jr. couldn't close on. Donovan Mitchell assisted on three of the four three-pointers for Max Struce in that stretch. but Tim Hardaway Jr. just not a strong enough defender to make the looks be difficult enough, and sometimes when you're hot, you're hot. However, having him in there late in the game seems questionable, giving the information I'm about to provide you. Over the course of this entire season, there is one member of the Mavericks rotation that has a positive plus minus playing alongside Tim Hardaway Jr., and that is the newly acquired Daniel Gafford. He's nearly a plus 10, except everybody else who matters. It's the opposite. Kyrie is a plus 8 without Hardaway Jr. Luke is a plus 12 without him. PJ Washington newly acquired plus 11 and Josh Green a plus 12 without him. Nobody seems to play better when that man is on the floor except for Max Strews tonight. So here's a fun stat to share with you. Now there have been seven men in the NBA who have gone at least five for five from outside the arc in a quarter of basketball. three sets of teammates. We have Keegan Murray and Malik Monk, both have done it for the Kings. We have Boyan Bogdanovich and Jalen Brunson, both have done it for the Knicks. And we have Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, both have done it for the Warriors. But none of those men have gone a perfect five for five or better from outside the arc in the fourth quarter. Max Truce is the only man to achieve that feat. Now every single time that has happened, unsurprisingly, given the statistical improbability of doing that, Those teams have won those games. A perfect 7-0. Now the last time somebody did what Max did in the fourth quarter of a game, prior to this season, was December of 2022 in a game where DeAngelo Russell hit six three-pointers in a victory over the Utah Jazz. Let's hear from Max Struess himself, shall we? This a post-game interview clip. I think this might be McNuggets. I don't know for sure, but I got the recording from Spencer Davies. on the Cavs Insider YouTube page. You should all follow that. Sometimes he even beats the Cavs posting of interview clips. 59 foot buzzer beat his second longest. I heard it was 60. Why you cut me short, man? 60 foot buzzer beat his second longest in NBA history right there? Yeah, that's what they just told me back there. So pretty cool. But if it ain't first, you're last, in the great words of Ricky Bobby. Who was first place if Max is second since 1979, 1980? That would be Devonte Graham, who hit one from just a foot longer, 61 feet. Tim McMahon has a post saying it's 59 feet. Max seems to believe that somebody told him it was 60 regardless. Another interesting nugget revealed in that post game interview is that he hit an even longer buzzer beater with his Division 2 school, Lewis, before he went on to play at DePaul. So Max Truce, no stranger to that type of situation. However, it probably only emerged tonight due to Donovan Mitchell being out of the game. One other thing. If we're going to nitpick how that final possession played out. I don't know that the Mavericks anticipated scoring with any time left on the clock, but I thought they should have pressed up on the inbounds. It did not seem particularly difficult for Evan Mobley to be able to toss that ball to Struz who could load up in motion and get a fairly clean look off. The odds of it going in are minimal, but I did not like how they defended that at all. And they set up Luka Doncic to be on that poster, to be in that moment of history. forever after what should be a game where he's celebrated. Losing a game where your team has less turnovers than the star player of the other squad. Only five Maverick turnovers. Donovan Mitchell alone had seven turnovers. Only seven teams this season have lost a game where they've had five or fewer turnovers. It just doesn't happen. And if I tell you that Luca and Kyrie are going to combine for 75 points and their splits are going to be 50, 60, 3, 100 and... 59-55-100. Who loses that game? It just doesn't happen. So there's things to nitpick, but tonight is not going to be that night. Tonight is going to be the night that we acknowledge that despite allowing Luca to score 45 points, something he's done 13 times during his NBA career, we are one of just two of those 13 games which resulted in a loss. The other being the LA Clippers. We got a much needed win. Hopefully one that propels us to victory tomorrow on vibes alone and Mike Mascalla got bought out tonight. Who knows, maybe a buyout target for the Cavaliers. I could get on board with that. I wanna play you JB celebrating Max Struce's performance in his post game presser, some comments from the coach. What he did tonight was absolutely ridiculous. Come back in that fourth quarter for us to be down the way we were. But that's who Max is. And it's as simple sometimes as chasing down a loose ball or, you know, making an extra rotation. Like, Max never quits. And, you know, we were down, and he had the same mentality. He wasn't going to quit. And he just kept making play after play after play on both ends. Now, you deserve to hear the calls from the Mavericks announcers. I'm going to give you those now. Cleba closes out, but Struce still drills the three. They just got an inbounds violation. I left that in there. And now off the inbound. Strews again. It's a bad call. You got to be ready though to defend. Struce looking to go three for three on threes. Big time shot making. Mitchell in the open court. Now to Garland. Struce wants it. He's got it. What is happening? Now one play that was incredibly pivotal that didn't involve making a 3 pointer came with roughly a minute left in the 4th quarter as Darius Garland failed to score at the rim and fell to the floor by the stanchion looking hurt which took him out of the play. It gave the Mavericks a 5 on 4 advantage with a trailing by 2 points and Kyrie Irving pressing looking to score. Max Truss managed to get in front of him to cut off his angle and in trying to draw a defensive foul. Kyrie Irving used his inside arm to hook Max. Max smartly just put his arms up so that the referees could see what was happening and he was whistled for a second turnover. Now Kyrie Irving was incredible. In the third quarter he scored 12, in the fourth quarter he scored 10. He got 22 of his 30 points in the second half. But two critical turnovers late in the fourth quarter. One on the inbound violation which you could say is Tim Hardaway Jr.'s fault or you could Regardless, nobody but Kyrie is to blame for the offensive foul late in the game. And now he falls to 5 and 6 since departing the Cavaliers against his former team. He split the series with the Celtics, he split the series with the Brooklyn Nets, and this was his first outing as a member of the Dallas Mavericks and the Cavaliers come away victorious. Which I am pretty happy about. I've always been somewhat conflicted on the subject of Kyrie Irm. It should be pointed out, he and Luca both stuck around to sign autographs after what must have been a crushing loss. So credit to them. It does soften my cold dead heart a little bit. And in terms of just fandom in general, without him we don't win a title. And in that way, it's the same way that I didn't understand how people could be upset with LeBron after he came back and we won a title for what he did when he departed the first time. I do have a friend I work with who still just doesn't like him. because of the decision. And I could never grasp how he couldn't get past that after he returned here to play for Dan Gilbert and help us win a title. I just wanna say time out. Time out, time out! That, by the way, is Donovan as Darius Garland was being tackled and he was trying to get a timeout called. He succeeded, by the way. So that effort was not for nothing. But back to Kyrie. He's a part of one of the happiest memories of my life. And that will always be with me. The fact that he left on bad terms, that always rubbed me raw. But regardless of that, I would say that he's probably the third greatest cab of all time. I would put Mark Price above him. Longer tenure. Didn't leave under auspicious. circumstances and was just as impactful in building a team which very well could have won a title if not for Michael Jordan. So to me, Mark Price is still the second greatest cavalier of all time. I realize for some people they would make the argument, well Kyrie's clearly a better player and I think that's true. But to me, greatest in a franchise's history means with that team. Not their greatest career or the greatest talent, but the greatest contributions to a team. I think Kyrie also there's something to be said for the fact that he was the beneficiary of LeBron being there. Before LeBron arrived, we achieved no team success with Kyrie there. So I'm not going to hold it against Mark Price that he didn't have the benefit of playing against or alongside rather perhaps the greatest to ever do it. But this isn't about slandering Kyrie. I'm happy we got the victory over him. I'm happy we got the victory over Luca. And ultimately on a night where the Knicks fall. The Cavaliers need every win they can because Milwaukee seems to be pulling it together and it is critical to stay in that 2-3 slot. Whether we're second, whether we're third, a four game cushion over the Knicks is valuable. What happens with the Sixers is worth monitoring. Joel Embiid could be back by late March, which would get him a little bit of a ramp up even before the playoffs. And after losing two games to the Sixers in recent memory without Joel Embiid, I don't want anything to do with them. Now, despite most of this game being about Max Truce, we do need to spend some time on some other positive developments. George Yang is starting to turn things around. Now, I've been conflicted about JB's apparent preference of George Yang over Dean Waite. It kind of seems like from the point that Evan Mobley came back, while Dean was good enough to fill in as the starter when Mobley was out, with Mobley back, I think he sees a bit of redundancy in them, that Evan is just a more elite version of what Dean's very good at. So Dean has been not only removed from the starter spot, but also kind of positioned below George Yang. And I know he does come into the game before him sometimes, but the way that JB is using the rotation right now, he's essentially getting three, three and a half minutes in the middle of the first, and then just being sent to the pine when George comes in, never to be seen from again. The minutes feel kind of tokenish and almost meaningless. And I assume... He's playing him because he doesn't want to take him totally out of the rotation, but it doesn't feel like his results on the court even give him a longer leash. It feels like JB is pretty much locked in to this minute structure that he has and whether Dean is contributing or not contributing, I'm not confident that he's going to remain on the court in favor of George Nyang. Now, to George's credit, a man who started 1 for 15 from outside the arc to begin the month has largely turned it around in these last few games. And not just with the 3 point shooting. He's 8 for 14 over these last 4 games. But over the last 3 games, he's added 4, 5 rebounds, he's doing his part to help on the glass and while he'll never be a lockdown defender, the Cavaliers have started after this game where they knocked down 23s on 40 attempts. The one thing you can guarantee about George Yang is if you give him a look he's going to put it up. And he hit some pivotal buckets in that second quarter. when the Cavaliers blew it open and expanded the lead to 15 points despite the fact that dwindled as time went along. Now a ton of discussion has been committed to rotations and why JB has yet to go back to the injury lineup. We don't even see Wade Acoro and Struce play alongside one another. We see some Wade Acoro and Laverte but those 3 guys who sat in the starting lineup together we really don't see them. log minutes collectively. They've only logged 31, 32 minutes since Darius Garland's return. So, minable time on the court together. And Spencer Davies put that question to JB in pregame availability before the Mavericks game tonight. Yeah, I mean, again, it's one of those things that you're kind of juggling because of, obviously started with minute restrictions and how you're working through those things. And then, you know, working a 10 man rotation, you know, makes it a little bit difficult as well. But you know, we'll get there and it's one of those things where, you know, we're not jumping the gun, you know, like we understand what's in front of us, how we're gonna improve, how we're gonna get there, but we also do a lot of studying on our lineups and those types of things to get those combinations the way that we want them. And again, we'll get there with time. I would be curious to hear what he's told the guys in terms of how he deploys them. I would love to hear from Dean in terms of... you know, what has he told him about what his role is moving forward? Because in a way it does kind of just feel like he's a cushion between when he wants to get Yang out on the court so that he gets time to play with both Donovan and Jared and then also Mobley and Garland. It feels like he just buys those first few minutes and then Dean gets a quick hook. But another storyline that has existed over the course of the last week has of course been Darius Garland taking a lot of bullets. Amongst Cavs fans for his failure to return to the form that we've come to expect and Donovan Mitchell hearing it, seeing it on social media spoke out in defense of his friend. He had this to say. The kid has done a lot here, so much. For it to be devalued all for a few games is complete bullshit. It's not fair to him. He's done so much for us as a team. Before I got here, while I've been here, he's going to get back to his form. The kid is 24 years old. It's not always easy to figure out a fit. He's done a phenomenal job of it and will continue to get back to it. Come play off time, he'll be right there with us. We have his back. So it's obvious Donovan sees that Darius has now become the target amongst Cavs fans. And you know, to start the season, it was Allen, then it became Bickerstaff, then it became Evan Mobley. Now we're on Darius. And that's not to say that the criticisms aren't valid. Absolutely they are. I'm not discarding anything that's happened. The offense has gotten worse since he's returned. We're putting up less three-pointers. We score less points as a whole. Really the only area analytically that has improved is our defensive rating and that's largely because Evan Mobley has gotten back into the fold. I agree that the offense hasn't looked as fluid, as explosive out of the gates. We haven't put up as many three-pointers as when Darius and Evan were out. Contextually, we just have to acknowledge a couple things. When we plop Dean and Okoro, Merrill, into big minute rolls, we ask them to essentially do one thing. Take the shots that were open without discretion and move the ball if they're not there. We don't ask them to have a floor game. We don't ask them to run pick and roll. We don't ask them to lob alley oops. Those are all things in Darius's bag. We're taking a much more complex. much more developed player and trying to plug him into a hole that was being filled by a fairly one or two dimensional type guy. I'm not trying to discount a coro there but offensively still the majority of his damage comes in transition or taking spot up threes. I mean he's only taken two mid-range shots now. He's made two mid-range shots the whole season one of them coming tonight. So I just don't know. What we get out of dwelling on the fact that Darius isn't playing like the Darius we know. It's obvious. He was 2 of 10 tonight. But we can't sit here and play both sides of the fence. Do you want him to fall in line in the offense that was so effective in his absence? Or do you want him to play for the 21 and 8 that you were used to before? I realize you probably want both. But here's what I would say. It may not be possible in a situation where we want to take the ball out of his hands more, where we want him to pass it faster, or shoot it faster, or dribble less. There may be some compromise on that front. There certainly will be a learning curve. If what you really want, because what I hear from people is that they want us to play like we did during that injury stretch. I think that's what we all want. But it seems like those same people aren't willing to ride out the growing pains that it may take. to change the way an all-star level talent like Darius Garland has played for the majority of his career. The man deserves a little grace. And not because you owe him anything or because you owe Donovan anything. Nobody comes to the internet for positivity. And if there's any remaining professional athlete who thinks Twitter is redeemable, well then my pussy is in the bio. People will frame it as this whole like optimism versus pessimism thing. There's plenty of pessimism deep inside my soul every day when I wake up and I say, what are we here for really? I sit in front of this computer. I'm talking to no one. Does my life even have meaning? Is anybody listening? But I do my absolute best not to let it seep into my fandom because that's supposed to provide me joy, not make me want to kill myself. What Max did tonight was transcendent. It was maybe a once in a lifetime experience. And if your enjoyment of that was diminished, by the fact that Darius Garland was 2 for 10, well then you may be a lost cause. It's possible. I said before Evan and Darius come back, all I want is a huge sample of data where the core four is healthy and playing together, playoffs included. I want them to be healthy throughout this whole stretch and through an entire playoff series. And then we'll have a huge sample of data to make meaningful conclusions about, okay, is this team making any progress? Are we better suited? Playing with less overall talent perhaps, but in a system that maximizes their strengths, like what we did during that injury stretch there. All those things are valid. I haven't closed my mind off to any of them. What I do think is that being able to assemble this much talent on the roster is damn near impossible in the modern NBA. So again, I reiterate, I wanna give it every opportunity to work. And the fact that we're doing it, from the number 2 seed right now is incredible in and of itself. I don't think that should be taken for granted. So in any case, this was an unbelievable night. Max Druse, one of the best games I've ever witnessed and I'm grateful for all of you who have chosen to share it with me, Bob Schmidt, voice of Fox Sports Radio on the Fear the Fro podcast. If you want to be a part of the podcast, go to CavsPod.com, click talk to Bob, submit your comments. your questions, the things you disagree with, maybe you hate Darius Garland, you can tell me there, maybe you love Max Struce, you can tell me there. And if you haven't left a rating or a view, please, if you're so inclined, those things are huge in terms of putting this podcast in front of more people's eyes, in front of more people's ears. This is the Fear the Feral Podcast. We'll be back with more Cavalier Talk next time. Laverne, lot of them over here. This has been Fear the Fro. If you like the show, subscribe and rate wherever you listen. Our guy, Bob Schmidt, always gets a reaction out of it. Join us next time for more Cavs and NBA coverage.