For those of you that took in a few minutes of yesterday’s Yankee game, that may have been the bottom.  There is certainly the theory that in a long season, you go go through peaks and valleys but SU is pretty certain that this is who they are with the current roster.  Carlos Beltran has a nice hitting streak going with basically 1 hit a game.  Texeira has been red hot for him this early in the season but he is not going to hit 40 homeruns and drive in 120 runs this year so he will cool.  The issue is that McCann and Headley are only mediocre hitters and will not pick up the slack.  If George was alive, surely someone like Stephen Drew would have been sent packing by now.  SU says players need to earn their playing time.  Girardi needs to make guys uncomfortable.  Open the Wilkes Barre Scranton express.

Good comment from relatively new SU subscriber A. Zagin yesterday on Kyrie Irving:

“I think the cavs play is slightly less surprising than most fans think. All year people praised kyrie Irving offensively, and he is extremely talented, but is his absence or injury plagued playoffs that much of a loss. Lebron was fortunate to have him alleviate some of the regular season rigors, but the playoffs are entirely different. With kyrie either spotting for up or on the bench, the most noticeable result is that all of the isolation sets that lebron used to allow kyrie to run, mostly when lebron needed a rest, are now being taken over by lebron himself. This just gives lebron more time with the ball in his hand, and while he’s not the shooter Irving is, he’s stronger, finishes better, and sees the floor better. Combine all of this with the fact that kyrie’ minutes are being filled with Matthew dellavadova, who people forget was arguably the best college player in the country his senior year. Dellavadova, while not as offensively gifted as Irving, is a much bigger and better defender who can knock down open jump shots created by lebron.”

One thing about Kyrie is that he is a terrible defender.  SU assumes his game will evolve over time on the defensive end.  I am not a fan of Dellavadova as he rarely shoots well when given more minutes.  But he is a tough kid and as Andrew points out, was a force offensively in college.  I still think the Cavs are much better with Kyrie contributing some minutes as LeBron can wear out having to play both ends against the Warriors.

Crazy number of injuries in the NBA playoffs this year.  They are really having an impact on the various series.