In these playoffs, we have played 398 minutes with Irving on court and 178 minutes without Irving on court.
WITH Irving OFF court, our defensive rating is 89.1, equivalent to the best defense ever (I know you can't straight compare DRtgs due to overall league style of play due to rules, etc., but the 2003 Spurs had a rating of 94.1 and a bunch of teams from the '73-'74 season had lower ratings). Put another way, at our current playoff pace, that would mean we would allow 82.6 points a game.
WITH Irving ON court, our defensive rating is 106.9 which would be about 21st in the league this year.
With Irving off the court, the Cavs are 17.8 points per 100 possessions BETTER on defense.
With Irving on court, the Cavs are +4.5 per 100 possessions.
With Irving off court, the Cavs are +19.9 per 100 possessions.
Our defense is tremendous with Kyrie off court and the sample size is not small. At this point, the Cavs must be seriously considering bring Kyrie off the bench as a scoring threat because when he starts, the opposition goes right at him in pick and roll and builds leads. The opposition is scoring 47% of the time it puts Kyrie in pick and roll and runs a play and drawing shooting fouls an additional 7% of the time.
