The Cleveland Cavaliers appear to be doomed. More than simply struggling against the Indiana Pacers, the Cavaliers are legitimately on track to lose in the first round. Even if they don’t, they are in deep trouble early in their quest to make the NBA Finals for the fourth straight season.
Much of the reaction to the state of the series and the increasing possibility of an early end to the Cavaliers’ run has been to decry the state of LeBron James’ supporting cast. LeBron has Kevin Love, an excellent shooter, scorer, passer, and rebounder. And ... that’s about it.
It is true that the Cavaliers are painfully shallow, even after the series of midseason trades that reshuffled everything around LeBron and Love. Several of the newcomers have no meaningful playoff experience. George Hill has apparently aged quite quickly and has struggled to adjust offensively to playing with a force of nature like LeBron. Tristan Thompson has corkscrewed into a mire of his own making. J.R. Smith and Jeff Green aren’t living up to the unrealistic expectations placed on them.
There’s no question about it: the Cavaliers’ roster is not what it has been. Trading Kyrie Irving ravaged Cleveland.
Cleveland is trying to control the game with the series’ best player, a strategy that has worked in the past. It’s not working now.
Maybe that tells us something about the series’ best player.
This is actually apparent based on the style that LeBron has adopted here in the first round. It’s awfully similar to the style LeBron adopted way back in the 2015 NBA Finals, once Love and Irving were knocked out by injuries. The Cavaliers, then under David Blatt, ground everything to a halt, played ball control, put defenders like Matthew Dellavedova out there out of necessity, and rode LeBron almost entirely. It was a valiant effort, but it wasn’t close to enough. We all heralded the heroic effort that fell short.
Cleveland is edging that way here in the first round, despite having Love. The Cavs-Pacers series has the slowest pace of any playoff pairing so far at 93.6 possessions per game. (Four of the eight series are at 100 or more possessions per game, despite things typically slowing down in the playoffs.) Part of this is that Indiana plays slow — a Nate McMillan hallmark — but the Cavs are leaning into it despite being in the upper half of the league in pace during the regular season.
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LeBron is still an absolutely brilliant offensive player — one of the very best in the world. That he’s this good 15 years into his professional career, given the load he’s carried and reliability he’s shown, is simply incredible. He has a legitimate case as the best basketball player to ever walk the Earth. (A case that will not be litigated here or anywhere I am present, thank you.)
But James was a huge defensive minus all season, and it showed. The Cavaliers had the second-worst defense in the entire league. Recall that eight teams were openly trying to lose for at least the back half of the season (in some cases the entire season) and recall that an additional team was so bad that it kept pace with those teams trying to lose despite having no incentive to lose every game. The Cavaliers’ defense was worse than what all of those teams but one put up. (The winner of this category: your Phoenix Suns, who magically had the league’s worst offense and defense.)
Why were the Cavaliers so mediocre this season? Defense. Is LeBron responsible for any part of the defense? Of course. Did LeBron help or hurt the Cavaliers’ defensive performance? He hurt it.
LeBron is inextricable from Cleveland’s on-court problems this year, just as much as he is inextricable from its successes this year and beyond. Given the evidence, you cannot laud LeBron for being the entire reason the Cavaliers win and acquit LeBron from all blame when the Cavaliers fail.
This is all complicated by the aforementioned fact that Cleveland’s defense is performing well enough against the Pacers, and the offense is falling apart. There are a couple of theories. The first — that Tyronn Lue is playing defense-heavy lineups to account for the team’s struggles on that, sacrificing scoring punch — isn’t really borne out by the evidence. The only offense-first player out of the playoff rotation is Jose Calderon. And frankly, Cleveland doesn’t have many defense-first players to move into the lineup.
The second is that the Cavaliers’ defensive success in this series is a mirage. Consider the fourth quarter of Game 3: the Pacers scored 29 points in 23 possessions. Cleveland held a six-point lead going into the fourth despite a horrific, disastrous offensive performance in the third quarter. They lost it because they couldn’t stop Indiana, namely Bojan Bogdanovic. In the aggregate the Cavaliers defense is performing fine against the Pacers. But when it matters — when the game has been on the line — the defense has failed, because that’s what it has done all year.
The third theory is that the Cavaliers are so aware of their defensive problems they are exerting extra effort on that end to paper over deficiencies, thus leaving their offense hamstrung. LeBron looked gassed at times in the second half on Friday, but he was still great on offense in the fourth (12 points on 4-6 shooting, two assists, two turnovers). But he played the whole quarter and the Cavs were outscored by eight.
Whatever the reason for Cleveland’s offense to have disappeared too often against Indiana, you can’t remove LeBron from that equation. If he is the sun and stars of this galaxy in good times, he is also the sun and stars of this galaxy in bad times. LeBron may not be the sole reason things have gone dark, but he’s certainly some portion of the explanation. You can’t be so central to a team that fails and escape the stench of defeat entirely.
The good news is that Cleveland is still in this series: one win in Indiana in Game 4 and the Cavaliers regain home court advantage. The Raptors lost on Friday too, so Toronto won’t have the benefit of extra lengthy rest should the two favored teams advance. No one in the East looks truly unstoppable at this point, and the Pacers are pressing their luck by relying on comebacks against Cleveland. This too can be salvaged.
With LeBron, all things are possible. Until they aren’t.
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