Latest / Fear the 'Fro: A Cleveland Cavaliers Podcast / MAX STRUS: Luka's Dream Killer

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MAX STRUS: Luka's Dream Killer · Fear the 'Fro: A Cleveland Cavaliers Podcast

• 0:00
  Cue the Germans!
• 0:29
  Ho ho ho, welcome to the Fear the Fro podcast, Max Struce. Holy shit, what an evening. Was
• 0:36
  there a more satisfying regular season game than this? Certainly not for Max Struce. There
• 0:41
  is no other place to begin but the marquee free agent acquisition of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
• 0:46
  Now much maligned as he may have been over the course of these several months with the Cleveland
• 0:52
  Cavaliers due to his shooting splits he showcased tonight. Exactly. What it is about Max Struce
• 0:58
  that makes him so magnificent as a contributing member of this Cavalier squad. Take away the
• 1:05
  final stat line, the 21-4-4. What is really more majestic here is the manner in which it
• 1:12
  came tonight. Max Struce in the first half was imposing his will on the defensive end. Multiple
• 1:18
  times he sent guys packing. But beyond that, the fourth quarter rolls around. and Max Struess
• 1:24
  is a house on fire. Five three-pointers, five of his 70% three-point shooting, seven makes
• 1:30
  tonight. However, four of those came in a 67-second span in which Max Struess humiliated on repeat,
• 1:42
  Tim Hardaway Jr., Luca Doncic. Tim Hardaway Jr. than Tim Hardaway Jr. again. This is what
• 1:48
  I would recommend to all of you. You don't even get to see the true majesty of it. It's not
• 1:53
  just that Max Struse hits the full court game winner on Luka Doncic. What happened after
• 1:59
  Kyrie Irving committed that inbound violation? The Cavalier broadcast clipped the play that
• 2:05
  they ran. You saw Max elevate and hit the shot on the Cavs broadcast but really all you got
• 2:10
  out of that was knowing that Luca was pissed about something because he was clearly scapegoating
• 2:15
  some teammates. MVP am I right? If you go back and watch the Mavericks version of the broadcast
• 2:23
  what you'll see is Max come running across the paint and Jared Allen giving Luca a screen
• 2:29
  that gave Max just enough time to catch the ball, release it and nail that corner three.
• 2:34
  And that stretch of four triples obviously that is the story of the game. But this fourth quarter
• 2:40
  was one which took what would have been a crushing collapse by the Cavaliers after blowing open
• 2:45
  the game in the first half, the second quarter specifically. The Cavaliers at one point with
• 2:50
  three minutes left in the second quarter, they had hit seven of nine three-pointers that they
• 2:56
  put up. Blew it open, 15-point lead. It would get whittled down due to 14 points in the final
• 3:01
  three minutes of the first half by Luka, including four triples. But how satisfying is it to look?
• 3:08
  At the end of that first half, when Luca poured in 14 points and 3 minutes, not knowing that
• 3:14
  the end outcome was to be that Max Struus would outdo him, pouring in 15 points, all of which
• 3:20
  came from behind the line and one of which came from behind halfcourt. Anything you can do.
• 3:27
  Doc, you want to take it? We can play VATTER. See, for once, his excuses are coming in handy.
• 3:32
  Now brace yourselves, Cavs fans. In any game that ends... this incredibly for us or terribly
• 3:38
  for them, you're going to get a lot of excuses. And I've already seen it from Mavericks fans
• 3:42
  saying, oh, it should have been a jump ball when they tackled Darius Garland or, or that
• 3:47
  was a foul by Max Truss when Kyrie Irving hooked his arm or, oh, Jared Allen, that should have
• 3:52
  been an and one from PJ Washington, which I guess would have given them time to collect
• 3:58
  themselves. So they didn't just give Max Truss an unimpeded run-up into his three quarter
• 4:03
  court bomb. Now the reality is, if you continue to allow Tim Hardaway Jr. to pick up a guy
• 4:09
  who has made his last two, his last three, his last four three-point attempts in a row, Not
• 4:14
  two, not three, not four. I don't have much sympathy for you. Jason Kidd was watching a
• 4:21
  double-digit lead get cut down to four points in a matter of seconds and he just sat there
• 4:27
  saying, I don't give a shit. Now when the whole run kicked off from Max Truce, It came off
• 4:33
  a situation where he set a top of the circle screen for Donovan Mitchell, who came over,
• 4:39
  and Tim Hardaway Jr. decided to try to go over top of the screen. In the process, he stumbled,
• 4:44
  but to me, the clear call there was, Luca should have rotated to stay along with Strews. Instead,
• 4:49
  nobody did, and he had enough time to get a shot off while Tim Hardaway Jr. just blll
• 5:01
  But I'm not Steve Jones, so what the fuck do I know? The second one, clearly that was a
• 5:06
  situation where the Cavaliers had a chance to run a play. Max came running across the paint.
• 5:12
  Allen set that screen, so good execution. Don Cich blamed his teammates, of course. That's
• 5:17
  what happens. And then the next two after that, a drop pass from Darius Garland that Tim Hardaway
• 5:23
  Jr. couldn't close on. Donovan Mitchell assisted on three of the four three-pointers for Max
• 5:27
  Struce in that stretch. but Tim Hardaway Jr. just not a strong enough defender to make the
• 5:33
  looks be difficult enough, and sometimes when you're hot, you're hot. However, having him
• 5:37
  in there late in the game seems questionable, giving the information I'm about to provide
• 5:42
  you. Over the course of this entire season, there is one member of the Mavericks rotation
• 5:48
  that has a positive plus minus playing alongside Tim Hardaway Jr., and that is the newly acquired
• 5:54
  Daniel Gafford. He's nearly a plus 10, except everybody else who matters. It's the opposite.
• 6:00
  Kyrie is a plus 8 without Hardaway Jr. Luke is a plus 12 without him. PJ Washington newly
• 6:06
  acquired plus 11 and Josh Green a plus 12 without him. Nobody seems to play better when that
• 6:13
  man is on the floor except for Max Strews tonight. So here's a fun stat to share with you. Now
• 6:18
  there have been seven men in the NBA who have gone at least five for five from outside the
• 6:24
  arc in a quarter of basketball. three sets of teammates. We have Keegan Murray and Malik
• 6:29
  Monk, both have done it for the Kings. We have Boyan Bogdanovich and Jalen Brunson, both have
• 6:34
  done it for the Knicks. And we have Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, both have done it for the
• 6:38
  Warriors. But none of those men have gone a perfect five for five or better from outside
• 6:43
  the arc in the fourth quarter. Max Truce is the only man to achieve that feat. Now every
• 6:50
  single time that has happened, unsurprisingly, given the statistical improbability of doing
• 6:56
  that, Those teams have won those games. A perfect 7-0. Now the last time somebody did what Max
• 7:01
  did in the fourth quarter of a game, prior to this season, was December of 2022 in a game
• 7:07
  where DeAngelo Russell hit six three-pointers in a victory over the Utah Jazz. Let's hear
• 7:13
  from Max Struess himself, shall we? This a post-game interview clip. I think this might be McNuggets.
• 7:19
  I don't know for sure, but I got the recording from Spencer Davies. on the Cavs Insider YouTube
• 7:24
  page. You should all follow that. Sometimes he even beats the Cavs posting of interview
• 7:29
  clips. 59 foot buzzer beat his second longest. I heard it was 60. Why you cut me short, man?
• 7:33
  60 foot buzzer beat his second longest in NBA history right there? Yeah, that's what they
• 7:38
  just told me back there. So pretty cool. But if it ain't first, you're last, in the great
• 7:42
  words of Ricky Bobby. Who was first place if Max is second since 1979, 1980? That would
• 7:48
  be Devonte Graham, who hit one from just a foot longer, 61 feet. Tim McMahon has a post saying
• 7:53
  it's 59 feet. Max seems to believe that somebody told him it was 60 regardless. Another interesting
• 7:59
  nugget revealed in that post game interview is that he hit an even longer buzzer beater
• 8:05
  with his Division 2 school, Lewis, before he went on to play at DePaul. So Max Truce, no
• 8:11
  stranger to that type of situation. However, it probably only emerged tonight due to Donovan
• 8:16
  Mitchell being out of the game. One other thing. If we're going to nitpick how that final possession
• 8:21
  played out. I don't know that the Mavericks anticipated scoring with any time left on the
• 8:27
  clock, but I thought they should have pressed up on the inbounds. It did not seem particularly
• 8:32
  difficult for Evan Mobley to be able to toss that ball to Struz who could load up in motion
• 8:37
  and get a fairly clean look off. The odds of it going in are minimal, but I did not like
• 8:42
  how they defended that at all. And they set up Luka Doncic to be on that poster, to be
• 8:47
  in that moment of history. forever after what should be a game where he's celebrated. Losing
• 8:53
  a game where your team has less turnovers than the star player of the other squad. Only five
• 8:58
  Maverick turnovers. Donovan Mitchell alone had seven turnovers. Only seven teams this season
• 9:04
  have lost a game where they've had five or fewer turnovers. It just doesn't happen. And if I
• 9:10
  tell you that Luca and Kyrie are going to combine for 75 points and their splits are going to
• 9:16
  be 50, 60, 3, 100 and... 59-55-100. Who loses that game? It just doesn't happen. So there's
• 9:24
  things to nitpick, but tonight is not going to be that night. Tonight is going to be the
• 9:28
  night that we acknowledge that despite allowing Luca to score 45 points, something he's done
• 9:34
  13 times during his NBA career, we are one of just two of those 13 games which resulted in
• 9:41
  a loss. The other being the LA Clippers. We got a much needed win. Hopefully one that propels
• 9:47
  us to victory tomorrow on vibes alone and Mike Mascalla got bought out tonight. Who knows,
• 9:52
  maybe a buyout target for the Cavaliers. I could get on board with that. I wanna play you JB
• 9:59
  celebrating Max Struce's performance in his post game presser, some comments from the coach.
• 10:05
  What he did tonight was absolutely ridiculous. Come back in that fourth quarter for us to
• 10:10
  be down the way we were. But that's who Max is. And it's as simple sometimes as chasing
• 10:17
  down a loose ball or, you know, making an extra rotation. Like, Max never quits. And, you know,
• 10:23
  we were down, and he had the same mentality. He wasn't going to quit. And he just kept making
• 10:28
  play after play after play on both ends. Now, you deserve to hear the calls from the Mavericks
• 10:34
  announcers. I'm going to give you those now. Cleba closes out, but Struce still drills the
• 10:38
  three. They just got an inbounds violation. I left that in there. And now off the inbound.
• 10:46
  Strews again.
• 10:50
  It's a bad call. You got to be ready though to defend. Struce looking to go three for three
• 10:55
  on threes. Big time shot making. Mitchell in the open court. Now to Garland. Struce wants
• 11:02
  it. He's got it. What is happening?
• 11:10
  Now one play that was incredibly pivotal that didn't involve making a 3 pointer came with
• 11:14
  roughly a minute left in the 4th quarter as Darius Garland failed to score at the rim and
• 11:20
  fell to the floor by the stanchion looking hurt which took him out of the play. It gave the
• 11:25
  Mavericks a 5 on 4 advantage with a trailing by 2 points and Kyrie Irving pressing looking
• 11:31
  to score. Max Truss managed to get in front of him to cut off his angle and in trying to
• 11:37
  draw a defensive foul. Kyrie Irving used his inside arm to hook Max. Max smartly just put
• 11:44
  his arms up so that the referees could see what was happening and he was whistled for a second
• 11:48
  turnover. Now Kyrie Irving was incredible. In the third quarter he scored 12, in the fourth
• 11:53
  quarter he scored 10. He got 22 of his 30 points in the second half. But two critical turnovers
• 12:01
  late in the fourth quarter. One on the inbound violation which you could say is Tim Hardaway
• 12:06
  Jr.'s fault or you could Regardless, nobody but Kyrie is to blame for the offensive foul
• 12:13
  late in the game. And now he falls to 5 and 6 since departing the Cavaliers against his
• 12:18
  former team. He split the series with the Celtics, he split the series with the Brooklyn Nets,
• 12:23
  and this was his first outing as a member of the Dallas Mavericks and the Cavaliers come
• 12:28
  away victorious. Which I am pretty happy about. I've always been somewhat conflicted on the
• 12:33
  subject of Kyrie Irm. It should be pointed out, he and Luca both stuck around to sign autographs
• 12:39
  after what must have been a crushing loss. So credit to them. It does soften my cold dead
• 12:45
  heart a little bit. And in terms of just fandom in general, without him we don't win a title.
• 12:52
  And in that way, it's the same way that I didn't understand how people could be upset with LeBron
• 12:57
  after he came back and we won a title for what he did when he departed the first time. I do
• 13:01
  have a friend I work with who still just doesn't like him. because of the decision. And I could
• 13:07
  never grasp how he couldn't get past that after he returned here to play for Dan Gilbert and
• 13:13
  help us win a title. I just wanna say time out. Time out, time out!
• 13:20
  That, by the way, is Donovan as Darius Garland was being tackled and he was trying to get
• 13:25
  a timeout called. He succeeded, by the way. So that effort was not for nothing. But back
• 13:29
  to Kyrie. He's a part of one of the happiest memories of my life. And that will always be
• 13:34
  with me. The fact that he left on bad terms, that always rubbed me raw. But regardless of
• 13:40
  that, I would say that he's probably the third greatest cab of all time. I would put Mark
• 13:44
  Price above him. Longer tenure. Didn't leave under auspicious. circumstances and was just
• 13:51
  as impactful in building a team which very well could have won a title if not for Michael Jordan.
• 13:56
  So to me, Mark Price is still the second greatest cavalier of all time. I realize for some people
• 14:03
  they would make the argument, well Kyrie's clearly a better player and I think that's true. But
• 14:06
  to me, greatest in a franchise's history means with that team. Not their greatest career or
• 14:12
  the greatest talent, but the greatest contributions to a team. I think Kyrie also there's something
• 14:18
  to be said for the fact that he was the beneficiary of LeBron being there. Before LeBron arrived,
• 14:23
  we achieved no team success with Kyrie there. So I'm not going to hold it against Mark Price
• 14:29
  that he didn't have the benefit of playing against or alongside rather perhaps the greatest to
• 14:34
  ever do it. But this isn't about slandering Kyrie. I'm happy we got the victory over him.
• 14:39
  I'm happy we got the victory over Luca. And ultimately on a night where the Knicks fall.
• 14:44
  The Cavaliers need every win they can because Milwaukee seems to be pulling it together and
• 14:48
  it is critical to stay in that 2-3 slot. Whether we're second, whether we're third, a four game
• 14:54
  cushion over the Knicks is valuable. What happens with the Sixers is worth monitoring. Joel Embiid
• 15:00
  could be back by late March, which would get him a little bit of a ramp up even before the
• 15:05
  playoffs. And after losing two games to the Sixers in recent memory without Joel Embiid,
• 15:11
  I don't want anything to do with them. Now, despite most of this game being about Max Truce,
• 15:15
  we do need to spend some time on some other positive developments. George Yang is starting
• 15:20
  to turn things around. Now, I've been conflicted about JB's apparent preference of George Yang
• 15:26
  over Dean Waite. It kind of seems like from the point that Evan Mobley came back, while
• 15:30
  Dean was good enough to fill in as the starter when Mobley was out, with Mobley back, I think
• 15:35
  he sees a bit of redundancy in them, that Evan is just a more elite version of what Dean's
• 15:40
  very good at. So Dean has been not only removed from the starter spot, but also kind of positioned
• 15:47
  below George Yang. And I know he does come into the game before him sometimes, but the way
• 15:51
  that JB is using the rotation right now, he's essentially getting three, three and a half
• 15:56
  minutes in the middle of the first, and then just being sent to the pine when George comes
• 16:00
  in, never to be seen from again. The minutes feel kind of tokenish and almost meaningless.
• 16:05
  And I assume... He's playing him because he doesn't want to take him totally out of the
• 16:09
  rotation, but it doesn't feel like his results on the court even give him a longer leash.
• 16:15
  It feels like JB is pretty much locked in to this minute structure that he has and whether
• 16:20
  Dean is contributing or not contributing, I'm not confident that he's going to remain on
• 16:25
  the court in favor of George Nyang. Now, to George's credit, a man who started 1 for 15
• 16:31
  from outside the arc to begin the month has largely turned it around in these last few
• 16:36
  games. And not just with the 3 point shooting. He's 8 for 14 over these last 4 games. But
• 16:42
  over the last 3 games, he's added 4, 5 rebounds, he's doing his part to help on the glass and
• 16:48
  while he'll never be a lockdown defender, the Cavaliers have started after this game where
• 16:53
  they knocked down 23s on 40 attempts. The one thing you can guarantee about George Yang is
• 16:59
  if you give him a look he's going to put it up. And he hit some pivotal buckets in that
• 17:04
  second quarter. when the Cavaliers blew it open and expanded the lead to 15 points despite
• 17:09
  the fact that dwindled as time went along. Now a ton of discussion has been committed to rotations
• 17:16
  and why JB has yet to go back to the injury lineup. We don't even see Wade Acoro and Struce
• 17:23
  play alongside one another. We see some Wade Acoro and Laverte but those 3 guys who sat
• 17:29
  in the starting lineup together we really don't see them. log minutes collectively. They've
• 17:34
  only logged 31, 32 minutes since Darius Garland's return. So, minable time on the court together.
• 17:41
  And Spencer Davies put that question to JB in pregame availability before the Mavericks game
• 17:47
  tonight. Yeah, I mean, again, it's one of those things that you're kind of juggling because
• 17:52
  of, obviously started with minute restrictions and how you're working through those things.
• 17:56
  And then, you know, working a 10 man rotation, you know, makes it a little bit difficult as
• 18:00
  well. But you know, we'll get there and it's one of those things where, you know, we're
• 18:05
  not jumping the gun, you know, like we understand what's in front of us, how we're gonna improve,
• 18:10
  how we're gonna get there, but we also do a lot of studying on our lineups and those types
• 18:15
  of things to get those combinations the way that we want them. And again, we'll get there
• 18:20
  with time. I would be curious to hear what he's told the guys in terms of how he deploys them.
• 18:26
  I would love to hear from Dean in terms of... you know, what has he told him about what his
• 18:31
  role is moving forward? Because in a way it does kind of just feel like he's a cushion
• 18:36
  between when he wants to get Yang out on the court so that he gets time to play with both
• 18:40
  Donovan and Jared and then also Mobley and Garland. It feels like he just buys those first few
• 18:45
  minutes and then Dean gets a quick hook. But another storyline that has existed over the
• 18:51
  course of the last week has of course been Darius Garland taking a lot of bullets. Amongst Cavs
• 18:57
  fans for his failure to return to the form that we've come to expect and Donovan Mitchell hearing
• 19:03
  it, seeing it on social media spoke out in defense of his friend. He had this to say. The kid
• 19:10
  has done a lot here, so much. For it to be devalued all for a few games is complete bullshit. It's
• 19:16
  not fair to him. He's done so much for us as a team. Before I got here, while I've been
• 19:20
  here, he's going to get back to his form. The kid is 24 years old. It's not always easy to
• 19:25
  figure out a fit. He's done a phenomenal job of it and will continue to get back to it.
• 19:30
  Come play off time, he'll be right there with us. We have his back. So it's obvious Donovan
• 19:35
  sees that Darius has now become the target amongst Cavs fans. And you know, to start the season,
• 19:41
  it was Allen, then it became Bickerstaff, then it became Evan Mobley. Now we're on Darius.
• 19:46
  And that's not to say that the criticisms aren't valid. Absolutely they are. I'm not discarding
• 19:52
  anything that's happened. The offense has gotten worse since he's returned. We're putting up
• 19:56
  less three-pointers. We score less points as a whole. Really the only area analytically
• 20:01
  that has improved is our defensive rating and that's largely because Evan Mobley has gotten
• 20:07
  back into the fold. I agree that the offense hasn't looked as fluid, as explosive out of
• 20:14
  the gates. We haven't put up as many three-pointers as when Darius and Evan were out. Contextually,
• 20:22
  we just have to acknowledge a couple things. When we plop Dean and Okoro, Merrill, into
• 20:28
  big minute rolls, we ask them to essentially do one thing. Take the shots that were open
• 20:35
  without discretion and move the ball if they're not there. We don't ask them to have a floor
• 20:40
  game. We don't ask them to run pick and roll. We don't ask them to lob alley oops. Those
• 20:45
  are all things in Darius's bag. We're taking a much more complex. much more developed player
• 20:53
  and trying to plug him into a hole that was being filled by a fairly one or two dimensional
• 20:59
  type guy. I'm not trying to discount a coro there but offensively still the majority of
• 21:04
  his damage comes in transition or taking spot up threes. I mean he's only taken two mid-range
• 21:10
  shots now. He's made two mid-range shots the whole season one of them coming tonight. So
• 21:16
  I just don't know. What we get out of dwelling on the fact that Darius isn't playing like
• 21:21
  the Darius we know. It's obvious. He was 2 of 10 tonight. But we can't sit here and play
• 21:27
  both sides of the fence. Do you want him to fall in line in the offense that was so effective
• 21:32
  in his absence? Or do you want him to play for the 21 and 8 that you were used to before?
• 21:39
  I realize you probably want both. But here's what I would say. It may not be possible in
• 21:44
  a situation where we want to take the ball out of his hands more, where we want him to pass
• 21:49
  it faster, or shoot it faster, or dribble less. There may be some compromise on that front.
• 21:55
  There certainly will be a learning curve. If what you really want, because what I hear from
• 21:59
  people is that they want us to play like we did during that injury stretch. I think that's
• 22:03
  what we all want. But it seems like those same people aren't willing to ride out the growing
• 22:09
  pains that it may take. to change the way an all-star level talent like Darius Garland has
• 22:14
  played for the majority of his career. The man deserves a little grace. And not because you
• 22:20
  owe him anything or because you owe Donovan anything. Nobody comes to the internet for
• 22:25
  positivity. And if there's any remaining professional athlete who thinks Twitter is redeemable, well
• 22:32
  then my pussy is in the bio. People will frame it as this whole like optimism versus pessimism
• 22:38
  thing. There's plenty of pessimism deep inside my soul every day when I wake up and I say,
• 22:44
  what are we here for really? I sit in front of this computer. I'm talking to no one. Does
• 22:48
  my life even have meaning? Is anybody listening? But I do my absolute best not to let it seep
• 22:54
  into my fandom because that's supposed to provide me joy, not make me want to kill myself. What
• 23:00
  Max did tonight was transcendent. It was maybe a once in a lifetime experience. And if your
• 23:06
  enjoyment of that was diminished, by the fact that Darius Garland was 2 for 10, well then
• 23:12
  you may be a lost cause. It's possible. I said before Evan and Darius come back, all I want
• 23:18
  is a huge sample of data where the core four is healthy and playing together, playoffs included.
• 23:24
  I want them to be healthy throughout this whole stretch and through an entire playoff series.
• 23:29
  And then we'll have a huge sample of data to make meaningful conclusions about, okay, is
• 23:36
  this team making any progress? Are we better suited? Playing with less overall talent perhaps,
• 23:43
  but in a system that maximizes their strengths, like what we did during that injury stretch
• 23:48
  there. All those things are valid. I haven't closed my mind off to any of them. What I do
• 23:53
  think is that being able to assemble this much talent on the roster is damn near impossible
• 23:59
  in the modern NBA. So again, I reiterate, I wanna give it every opportunity to work. And
• 24:06
  the fact that we're doing it, from the number 2 seed right now is incredible in and of itself.
• 24:13
  I don't think that should be taken for granted. So in any case, this was an unbelievable night.
• 24:19
  Max Druse, one of the best games I've ever witnessed and I'm grateful for all of you who have chosen
• 24:26
  to share it with me, Bob Schmidt, voice of Fox Sports Radio on the Fear the Fro podcast. If
• 24:30
  you want to be a part of the podcast, go to CavsPod.com, click talk to Bob, submit your
• 24:36
  comments. your questions, the things you disagree with, maybe you hate Darius Garland, you can
• 24:40
  tell me there, maybe you love Max Struce, you can tell me there. And if you haven't left
• 24:45
  a rating or a view, please, if you're so inclined, those things are huge in terms of putting this
• 24:50
  podcast in front of more people's eyes, in front of more people's ears. This is the Fear the
• 24:56
  Feral Podcast. We'll be back with more Cavalier Talk next time.
• 25:04
  Laverne, lot of them over here. This has been Fear the Fro. If you like the show, subscribe
• 25:10
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• 25:15
  time for more Cavs and NBA coverage.