No defense for defense

There is an old axiom in pro basketball:
"The distance between the assistant's chair and the head coach's chair is the longest journey a man can take."
Mike Brown is finding that out firsthand.
Brought in over the summer to give the Cavaliers a defensive rudder, he has not done that through nearly six weeks of the season. The Cavs are defenisvely improved at times, but at the end of the day are still a poor defensive team, prone to missing assignments, running toward the ballhandler like sheep, and being as soft as an Oreo cookie inside.
They also rank dead last in the NBA in defending the three-pointer.
The Cavs sprinted out to a 9-2 start thanks in large part to blistering teams with their offense. But then, they lost a blowout to the Pacers on Thanksgiving night. The offense has cooled considerably since then, and the defense hasn't been able to pick up the slack.
They looked as bad defensively as they have all season in back-to-back losses to New Jersey Friday night (109-100) and Milwaukee last night (111-106). LeBron James scored 52 last night, an alarming throwback to last season's loss at Toronto when LeBron scored 56 and his teammates stood around and watched him.
Since Thanksgiving, Cleveland has a 2-6 record, including a 1-2 record at home, where they started the season 6-0.
Before I get too carried away with a forecast of doom and gloom, let me say I don't think the recent slide is due to incompetence on the part of Brown, or indifference on the part of his players. This is not a team of Jeff McInnises (Damon Jones possibly withstanding).
I think, however, there is some kind of communication breakdown between Brown and his players. Somehow, the message Brown is trying to convey is being lost in translation. And part of it might be due to Brown treating defense like quantum physics.
The Cavaliers beat reporter at my newspaper told me Brown fills blackboards upon blackboards with diagrams and minutiae at practice. It makes the media's eyes cross, so imagine what it does to Drew Gooden.
Assistant coaches spend years building up knowledge about basketball, so much that, if a college offered it, a lot of NBA assistants could probably earn a PhD in basketball theory.
Then an assistant becomes a head coach, and suddenly it becomes all about taking complex concepts and distilling it into a simpler format your garden-variety NBA jock can get his head around. That might be the transition Brown has yet to make.
Stephen Hawking wouldn't explain astrophysics to a group of high schoolers the same way he would explain astrophysics to an MIT symposium, would he?
Brown has to reach his players, educate them, then crack the whip and make them carry out his orders on the floor. It is a system of constant maintenance until the idea of dominating defense takes root and the Cavs begint to pride themselves on it.
Until then, we are probably going to be witness to more 110-point outputs by opposing teams. Here's hoping Brown makes his breakthrough before the Cavs careen too far down the standings in the East.