INDEPENDENCE: Tyronn Lue couldn’t hide his swagger.
The regular season was mercifully over. As Lue walked to the locker room after his postgame news conference Wednesday night, the Cavaliers coach didn’t seem to care that the defending NBA champions had finished with the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. He’d tossed away a chance at No. 1 after consecutive losses to the Atlanta Hawks when he elected to sit the Big Three.
He’d gotten what he wanted — a healthy team (discounting the brace on Tristan Thompson’s sprained right thumb) with his stars rested as the Cavs open the playoffs against the Indiana Pacers at 3 p.m. Saturday at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland.
Lue sounded like the point guard who played in the NBA for 11 years, not a second-year coach whose team is being second-guessed and criticized at every turn. Too old. Too slow. Can’t play defense. Locker room issues. A flip-the-switch mentality that may prove lethal.
“Get ready to write your next book, muthaf*****,” Lue said, his comment directed at Jason Lloyd of The Athletic and/or Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
Lue made his mark during last year’s run to the championship with his masterful strategy, especially on inbounds plays. He remained calm in the face of adversity, especially when the Cavs fell behind the Golden State Warriors 3-1 in the NBA Finals.
Lue knows the Cavs thrive when assaulted by doubt. General Manager David Griffin knows it, too.
“We had a very rocky, adverse regular season. In many ways, that’s a real blessing for us because it’s how we like it,” Griffin said Wednesday before the season-ending loss to the Raptors at Quicken Loans Arena. “This team is much more comfortable with its back against the wall and when everybody says we can’t.”
Perhaps Lue realizes how the Cavs will respond to the rampant disrespect. That includes being passed over for the 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. games on Easter Sunday that went to Portland at Golden State and Chicago at Boston, respectively.
But although Lue has a 78-45 record directing the Cavs, even though he doesn’t turn 40 until May 3, he is confident in himself.
When the Cavs routed the No. 1-seeded Celtics in TD Garden on April 5, the Cavs came up with a game plan to limit Isaiah Thomas’ success in the pick-and-roll. He went 9-of-19 from the field, 1-for-8 from 3-point range and while Thomas finished with 26 points, Lue believed the Cavs “kind of took him out of the game.”
Lue has plenty more where that came from, some in the notebook he’s compiled over his years as a player and coach, a protégé of the Clippers’ Doc Rivers.
Lue said Thursday he’s been prepping for the Pacers for “a while,” figuring they would be the first-round opponent. He’s been working on general schemes for the playoffs for weeks, at least dating back to a March 21 practice at UCLA.
The way he described it made it sound similar to how the Ohio State football program devotes practice time year-round to archrival Michigan.
“We’ve worked on it throughout the course of the season and we’ve done it the last two seasons also,” Lue said of defensive preparation. “We just didn’t use some of it. But we always worked on things that we could possibly use in the playoffs, so guys adapted to it well because we had done it before. We will see how it goes.”
But Lue is more than a strategist. As the playoffs wore on in 2016, he grew into a master motivator. Before Game 6 of the NBA Finals, he flipped on the television and watched a special about the Civil War. He used some of what he learned in his pregame speech, which also included a quote from Mark Twain.
The night before Game 7 in Oakland, he toured nearby San Quentin prison with Cavs assistant James Posey and former NBA players Chauncey Billups and Rod Strickland, according to the San Quentin News. He surely referenced that before the biggest game in Cavs history.
Lue spoke to the team before Thursday’s practice, but said he didn’t quote Twain.
Asked what he said in his message, Lue said, “I’d like to remember those four games we won in a row,” referring to a stretch that began March 31 against the 76ers and continued with victories over the Pacers, Magic and Celtics. “Can we remember those? It’s a long season. It’s new challenges each season, and new players.
“I know y’all count it as a lost season, but we won [51] games. We’re second seed. It’s not like we’re [the] eighth seed and we needed a team to win last night to back into the playoffs. I mean, damn, what do you want? With all the injuries and all we’ve been through and new pieces, I feel good.
“Last couple games against Atlanta was tough games, but those first three quarters in Atlanta, that’s who we are. Defensively, offensively, playing with pace. And then our guys didn’t play in Miami [or against Toronto] so we’re ready. We’re ready for this moment.”
Lue said he had no stories saved for the day the Cavs began their journey to try to repeat as champions.
“Um, no stories, not yet, not yet,” Lue said.
But there was a sense there will be more, a sense that Lue, too, is ready for this moment.
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.