Why Aren't We Talking About the Cleveland Cavaliers?
Let's stop being cavalier about this. The Cavs are for real.
In 2013-14, the Golden State Warriors finished 6th in the west with 51 wins despite having the 5th-best net rating in the league. Steph Curry - fresh off his first all-star game - and his team bowed out in the first round. The following season, Curry won his first MVP while Draymond Green and Klay Thompson blossomed into the players we know today and the Warriors went on to win 67 games and their first title.
It’s a bit of a stretch but the parallel is there for this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Donovan Mitchell is fresh off his best NBA season so far and heading right into his prime. Darius Garland has already made one all-star team but is the same age as Klay Thompson was when he made his all-star leap in that first championship season. Evan Mobley made his first all-defensive team last year - several years ahead of Draymond’s first all-defensive team. If anything, the Cavs are a little bit further along than the Warriors were before their championship run.
Last year, the discourse on the Cavs focused on who would be the 5th guy in their starting / closing lineup alongside Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen. Throughout the season, they tried to answer that question with a conglomerate of players that included [deep breath] Caris LeVert, Isaac Okoro, Cedi Osman, Lamar Stevens, Dean Wade, and Danny Green.
That conglomerate was a little… underwhelming… to say the least. To address this, they jettisoned Cedi Osman and Lamar Stevens and brought in Max Strus and Georges Niang giving the Cavs a likely top 8 rotation of:
Guards: Garland, Mitchell, LeVert
Wings: Strus, Okoro
Forwards / Centers: Allen, Mobley, Niang
(Dean Wade, Ty Jerome, Sam Merrill, Isaiah Mobley, and Damian Jones will all try to crack the Cavs rotation this year. Wade has been in and out of the team’s rotation for the past two years. Jerome has played about 800 minutes during the last two seasons for the Thunder and Warriors and will likely get some minutes early in the season while Ricky Rubio is taking a break from basketball. Merrill and Mobley have momentum going into this season after dominating at summer league.)
In replacing Osman and Stevens with Strus and Niang, the Cavs get a considerable boost in their 3-point shooting. Last season, the Cavs took the second-least amount of catch-and-shoot 3’s which resulted in them ranking 19th in 3PM/game with Osman and Stevens only contributing 2.0 of those made 3’s per game. This led to their offense collapsing in a colossal tower of bricks as shot after shot clanged off the rim against a Knicks defense that chose not to guard anyone not named Donovan Mitchell or Darius Garland outside the paint.
Meanwhile, Strus and Niang combined for 4.5 3PM/game which would bring an additional 2.5 3PM/game for the Cavs - that difference in made 3’s per game would’ve brought them all the way up to 5th last year. The biggest gain the Cavs will see from this is in the corners: Strus made the 3rd most 3’s from that spot at an elite 45.1% while Niang had an even better percentage from there at 52.6%. It’s fair to assume that the paint should be a little less mucked up this year with this kind of floor spacing around.
(Sidenote: Isaac Okoro has a reputation as a total non-shooter. And he’s certainly not a great shooter. But he actually made the 13th most corner 3’s in the league last year at an okay clip of 37%. The issue is that he only took 20 total 3’s above the break - aka, any 3’s not in the corner. The only other player with that kind of disparity is PJ Tucker who has made a career of standing in the corner and shooting open corner 3’s when the ball makes its way over to him. Okoro has all of Tucker’s offense and more. He is a significantly better cutter and gets to the rim with an off-the-bounce game that punishes reckless closeouts. He clearly works hard and has gotten better every year so far. As disappointed as Cavs fans have been with him, don’t give up on him yet. He should be an important piece to the team this year.)
The Cavs love to run their offense with one or both of Mobley and Allen at the elbows in pistol or horns actions. I am particularly excited to see what their pistol actions look like with Strus and Niang on the floor next year. (For those who don’t know what the pistol play is, it involves two perimeter players - could be wings or guards - on one side of the floor with a big man at the top of the key. The three players then play a 3-man game giving the offense more options than in a 2-man game. For those interested in learning more about this classic offense, here is a video from Coach Daniel breaking down the pistol offense from seven years ago. Alternatively, here is a tremendous article breaking down the classic NBA play with videos included.)
One of the keys to this action is the off-ball guard (in the clip above it is Ricky Rubio) being a threat to shoot. If this guy isn’t a threat, it makes it easier for the defense to ignore him and focus more attention on Mitchell / Garland and Mobley / Allen. (Hot take but offenses generally get harder to defend when more players are threats to score.) Now, Strus and Niang aren’t as good of movement shooters as you would think given their reputations (29.3% and 33% off screens and handoffs respectively). But, they are still treated as threats and are lights out if they can get the ball in a standstill situation.
Despite the lack of 3-point shooting on the roster last season, Mitchell and Garland did a FANTASTIC job of breaking down the defense and finding Mobley and Allen in the teeth of it. And once they have it down there, Allen and Mobley are world-class at finishing around the basket. Mobley was 11th out of 255 players with more than 100 FGA inside 5 feet at an absurd 75.4%. Allen wasn’t far behind at 73.5%. (Both of them also finished in the top 6 for total number of dunks. Mobley was #1 with 215 jams.)
Part of this is baked into frequently having one of them stand in the “dunker spot” on the baseline. It’s easy to get dunks when you stand in the spot that’s named for being the spot that produces dunks.
But, it’s more than that. Watch Mobley on these plays below.
This is a theme for Mobley and he showed it throughout the first round. On the first play, he knows he’s not a threat from the corner. And he knows that his defender knows he’s not a threat. So, as soon as his defender turns his head to help out on the ball, Mobley is gone, knifing in for an open look in the lane.
Here’s the catch though. While Mobley is elite at finishing when he gets to the restricted area, he’s pretty much the opposite everywhere else on the floor. Last year, he shot a paltry 39% from 5-9 feet. The only forwards worse were Paolo Banchero and Giannis Antetokounmpo. (Bear with me, another side note: Giannis is insane. He is also terrible everywhere on the floor except in the restricted area. So, how does he average over 30 PPG? He shot a staggering 136 more shots inside 5 feet than anyone else in the league. One hundred and thirty-six! I don’t even know how that’s possible.)
Many times, when Mobley gets into a situation with a defender in front of him 10+ feet from the basket, it looks something like this.
Most of the time - especially when he catches the ball 10+ feet from the basket - he goes straight for the right-handed hook shot or turnaround jumper with no real counter-moves and a touch that isn’t good enough to make it over the defender consistently. (I could’ve made a nice compilation video of Mobley missing bad turnaround jumpers or hook shots from the Knicks series but decided to limit myself to 3 for the sake of all my friends who are Cavs fans. You’re welcome.) Sometimes Mobley plays patiently and it looks like this.
That’s a really good up-fake and patience under the basket to get a nice dunk. He’s young and should continue to improve as his career progresses but this is something that I’ll be watching closely for signs of improvement as the season gets underway.
Overall, on offense, Mobley is somewhere between Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo. He will (probably) never be as good of a scorer as AD nor will he (probably) be as good of a passer as Bam. His ball handling is good enough that the Cavs have experimented with him as the ball handler in the pick-and-roll to mixed results. If he makes some baby steps and, let’s say, ups his FG% from 5-9 feet from 39% to 45% and his FT% from 67% to 75%, we’re looking at Mobley scoring over 20 PPG. Nothing crazy, just reach for the low-hanging fruit that’s right there. Mobley’s offense stands to be the biggest bellwether in whether or not the Cavs can get to where they want to be.
Those critical of the Cavs offseason point to them not signing a true two-way wing that can hang with the best perimeter scorers in the league. Strus is a good positional defender but is certainly not a stopper. We’ll see if this comes to bite them come playoffs but I don’t think it’ll kill them. They managed to field the best defense in the league last year without a true perimeter stopper on the roster outside of Okoro (who still figures to play a prominent role on this year’s team). The Cavs’ defense should have no problem maintaining its stinginess this year.
This was a sneaky bad rebounding team despite fielding two big men in their starting and closing lineup. It’s easy to pin their rebounding troubles on Allen and Mobley - particularly after Mitchell Robinson treated Allen like a freshman guard trying to box out a varsity center in the playoffs - but this is more likely due to having an undersized rotation. Mitchell and Garland are both small guards and they played small at the 3 with Okoro, Osman, and Levert. Strus and Niang don’t address this - Strus is more of a 2 than a 3 on the glass and Niang has never averaged more than 2.7 RPG despite predominantly playing the 4. Rebounding will likely continue to be a weak spot for the Cavs this year.
Okay, zooming out.
The Cavs were a top 4 seed in the east with the league’s second-best net rating. Their playoff performance was indeed disappointing but was mired in some of the worst shooting of Donovan Mitchell’s career and a bad matchup against one of the league’s top offensive rebounding teams in the Knicks.
Their team is still young with Mitchell just entering his prime after making his first All-NBA team last year. Garland and Mobley still have a few years before they enter their prime with Mobley going into his 3rd NBA season - a common season for a player to make a major leap and their first all-star game. They’ve addressed their biggest weakness in shooting while also snagging some veterans with valuable playoff experience.
Looking at the competition, the Bucks continue to age and no one knows what to expect out of Khris Middleton this year. The Celtics traded their team leader for a very talented big man who hasn’t thrived in the past next to ball-dominant star perimeter players. The 76ers are… uh... let’s put it nicely and say are dealing with a little bit of drama. The Heat loom as a possible contender if the Damian Lillard trade ever happens but are already suffering from a lack of depth before even making that trade.
The pieces are all in place. The Eastern Conference is wide open. If any team is going to make that leap from outsider to contender this year as the Warriors did years ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers have to be at the top of that list.