INDEPENDENCE: Perhaps the best bash on Cleveland’s West Side on Thursday night will have nothing to do with the NFL Draft.
Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue will host the coaching staff, members of the basketball operations department and all employed at Cleveland Clinic Courts at his home for a watch party for Game 6 of the first-round playoff series between the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors.
Lue said he expects 60 or 70 to attend, and joked that he’ll need 1,800 carry-out chicken wings from Applebee’s, “fried hard, sauce on the side,” keeping alive his revelation of a playoff-eve meal with his cousin before the Cavs’ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers.
Actually, the food will be prepared by team chef Terry Bell, Lue said.
The Cavs completed a sweep of the Pacers on Sunday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse and will face the Bucks or Raptors in the Eastern Conference semifinals, scheduled to open Monday at Quicken Loans Arena.
Lue said he has drawn up game plans for both the Raptors and Bucks, but hasn’t shown them to the players. At practice Wednesday, the Cavs worked on some things that will be applicable to either team, then finished with a VersaClimber competition. To change the environment, the contest was accompanied by music supplied by a deejay.
The music was so loud that Lue conducted his press conference in the media workroom instead of on the court so he could leave earlier.
Strength and conditioning coach Derek Millender devised the VersaClimber contest, which offered a prize to the winning group, but Lue couldn’t explain the format.
“I don’t know. I can’t get involved in that,” Lue said. “I can’t speak on conditioning because look at me — wings, fried hard, sauce on the side.”
Kyrie Irving would offer nothing on who won or who excelled, although it may eventually be revealed on a Road Trippin’ podcast with Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye.
“You’ll never know. You’ll never know,” Irving said. “Just stays within our team, man. Not really for you guys, our internal stuff and what matters to us and what gets us going and what motivates us to get ready for every single series and every single game we play.”
Irving said he did believe it was an inventive way to engage the Cavs.
“Adding competition to anything raises the level, [it] gets my blood going,” he said. “All is fair in competition. When you’re going against your teammates and your brothers and you get a chance to kind of work on things that you’re preparing yourself for for the game, it helps the group, it helps the mental preparation.”
Lue said while the Cavs wait to learn their opponent, he would use on-court time to “get ourselves right” and fine-tune.
Irving said he would also be watching Raptors-Bucks Game 6, even though the Cavs went 3-1 against both teams this season and beat the Raptors in six games in last year’s Eastern Conference finals.
“We kind of know those teams pretty well,” Irving said. “Now that they’re in Game 6, just see where I can learn a few things and where we can exploit them a little bit — either team — as a fan and as a player.”
There won’t be that much analysis at Lue’s house. Lue said he doesn’t expect to be pausing the action on television to re-watch something that catches his eye.
“This is just more of a fun get-together,” he said.
There probably won’t be any changing channels to the NFL Draft, either. The NBA game tips at 7 p.m., followed by the Spurs-Grizzlies Game 6 at 9:30, while the draft starts at 8.
“No, I am [a football fan] but it’s basketball season, playoff time,” Lue said.
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.