AUBURN HILLS, Mich.: J.R. Smith learned something about Tyronn Lue during the Cavaliers coach’s first playoff series.
It was his hands that were telling.
“His hands don’t shake when it’s time coming down the stretch to draw something up. That’s big,” Smith said Sunday night.
The Cavs had just closed out the Detroit Pistons 100-98 in Game 4 of the first-round playoff series at the Palace of Auburn Hills. They will play either the Atlanta Hawks or Boston Celtics, a series currently tied 2-2, in the Eastern Conference semifinals beginning Monday at Quicken Loans Arena.
There had been questions about Lue coming into the postseason, especially since he was facing the Pistons’ savvy veteran coach Stan Van Gundy.
Those questions seemed valid after Lue struggled with his rotations in the regular season and the Cavs’ defense regressed after he replaced David Blatt on Jan. 22.
As the highest paid assistant coach in the NBA, Lue has the respect of LeBron James. But when the Sporting News ranked the 16 coaches in the NBA playoffs, Lue was 14th, ahead of only the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Billy Donovan and the Houston Rockets’ interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
Apparently a 27-14 record in the regular season didn’t inspire much confidence among some league observers.
Smart remarks
Van Gundy was somewhat derisive toward Lue after Game 2. When asked about Lue’s decision to put James in to start the second quarter instead of sitting him as Lue usually does, Van Gundy said, “LeBron’s always a pretty good adjustment. That’s really smart coaching. It is. That’s really smart coaching, to put LeBron on the floor. I give him a lot of credit for that adjustment, if that’s what you want to call it.”
Van Gundy might not feel that way about Lue now. Lue made several crucial decisions in the series. Most crucial were playing Kevin Love at center in a small lineup and a cleverly drawn inbounds play with 0.7 seconds left on the shot clock in Game 3 that led to Kyrie Irving’s dagger 3-pointer.
The Cavs also got their Big Three working in tandem and held the rebounding edge in two of the four games despite the presence of the league leader, Pistons center Andre Drummond.
“We definitely recognize it and understand that it’s his first challenge and he succeeded as well as any coach could or if he were a player as any player could in their first series,” James said of Lue on Sunday. “He physically, mentally and spiritually prepared us every single night and gave us a game plan along with the coaching staff. If we could execute that as close to 100 percent, then we had a good chance to win every game, which we did, because of the preparation of those guys starting with Coach Lue, our captain.”
Intentional foul
Lue was not afraid to take advantage of the Hack-A-Shaq rule and have the Cavs intentionally foul Drummond. The big man shot .355 from the free-throw line during the regular season and .324 in the playoffs, making 5-of-10 Sunday.
“I thought it gave us a chance to get our breath, catch our wind because [we] played a lot of minutes. And I also thought he gave us a chance to break their rhythm offensively,” Lue said.
Lue also used timeouts to rest James, who averaged 41 minutes during the four games, and other starters.
“We know this team is very explosive offensively. We know they have a very great crowd here in Detroit and we got up and they went on a good run, we just wanted to call a timeout and try to slow them down,” Lue said of what he did in Game 4. “Let our guys refocus.”
What impressed both Smith and James was Lue’s demeanor during those breaks.
“He’s very calm in the huddles, he knows what he’s doing, he looks everybody in the eye and tells them what we need to do and we respond to him,” Smith said. “In my eyes, he’s doing a helluva job.”
James said he didn’t learn anything about Lue during the series.
“Um, no. He’s just very composed,” James said. “He’s very sure of his knowledge of the game and what needs to be done for our team to be successful. I just think it’s great to have him standing up over there because he’s very even-keeled. He knows what he wants from us, he demands it. For the players, we just have to go out there and demand it from each other as well.”
The feeling-out process in their first postseason goes both ways. Lue also got some insight into his team.
“We’re able to get hit and keep moving forward,” Lue said. “We’ve been harping on that all season — not to drop our head, not to have bad body language when teams make runs. This series we got down a lot. Every game we were down and we just kept pushing, kept moving forward. That’s the biggest growth of this team right now, staying with it and not giving in when things get tough.”
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.