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Rob said:
Then put TT back in earlier in the 4th you dumbass!
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Agreed. Thought he should've been in 2-3 minutes earlier. Frye's shot was falling but he was getting worked defensively in the paint.
 
 
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Love: They changed their defensive coverages in the second half, and this meant LeBron and Kyrie got more opportunities
 
PG01 -----> W --------> 123.0 ORTG ------> 121.8 DRTG -------> Shoot-out; Shumpert benched
PG02 -----> W --------> 122.5 ORTG ------> 116.2 DRTG -------> JR gets hurt. Great defensive 3rd quarter.


We don't seem capable of playing very good defense for an entire game against playoff competition, so we're going to have to settle for playing like a great quarter of defense and letting our offense carry us home. Tonight we did that in the 3rd quarter, played excellent defense.
 
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0-2, fellas.

Enjoy that #1 seed for a few more games!
 
I totally loved this piece from The Ringer, just from the title alone -- "The Cavs Toughest Playoff Foe Is Their Own Defense". Captures perfectly the feel of watching this team, like the only thing that can stop us is our own crappy defense. Can our offense pile up more points than our defense can give away? That's where the suspense is, who gives a shit about the other team. Watching us right now is like watching someone trying to bail out a leaky boat with a big hole in the bottom (the defense).

https://theringer.com/2017-nba-play...rs-defense-indiana-pacers-game-2-49d70173eb39

The Cavs’ Toughest Playoff Foe Is Their Own Defense
Cleveland is up 2–0 on Indy, but it doesn’t look like a champion



1*TmI8YNwv-jTtxgZJQAU-dQ.png

(AP Images)

The Cavaliers are only sort of playing the Indiana Pacers in their first-round matchup with the Indiana Pacers.

That isn’t a knock on the Pacers, who have done an admirable job of providing an entertaining series thus far. Paul George is one of the better sparring partners LeBron James has ever had in the Eastern Conference, Lance Stephenson is an excellent maniacal supervillain, if not a particularly effective one, and the first two games have been close. Indiana was one shot away from winning Game 1 and stormed back with a 10–0 fourth-quarter run to turn a potential Game 2 blowout into a 117–111 loss.

But this is the first round. The Cavs have now won all 10 first-round games since James returned to Cleveland, and it would be stunning if they didn’t advance. The question is whether LeBron James can win the Eastern Conference finals for the seventh straight year and the Cavs can repeat as NBA champions. If so, their toughest opponent along the way will almost certainly be their own defense.

Cleveland’s defense is awful. The Cavs finished the season with the 22nd-ranked defense in the NBA, worst of the 16 teams to qualify for the playoffs. After the All-Star break, they were 29th out of the NBA’s 30 teams. There are so many stats in which they are super-subpar: They finished the season with the league’s worst transition defense, the fewest steals per possession, the 25th-most blocked shots, the ninth-worst defensive rebound rate. Alone, these stats indicate individual weaknesses — a team that gambles to block a lot of shots might suck at rebounding, etc. Combined, they are stunning. If you’re not forcing steals, not blocking shots, and not getting defensive rebounds, you’re essentially just standing still while the other team plays offense around you.

When Will Cleveland Flip the Switch?
Tyronn Lue wants us to believe this is all part of his plan, but the Cavs’ performance against the Spurs wasn’t very…theringer.com
Coach Tyronn Lue insisted that the team was ready to flip a switch come playoff time. It had a super-secret defense (one that was actually good) to bust out when the going got tough. We sorta believed him, because the Cavs had a top-10 defense last year and featured players with strong defensive reputations like Tristan Thompson and Iman Shumpert.

Through two games, the switch has decisively not been flipped. In Game 1, the Cavs had a 118.9 defensive rating, which would have been the worst in the league over the course of the season. In Game 2, they had a 112.0 defensive rating, which is better, but also would have been the worst in the league over the course of the season. The Pacers were as mediocre as possible on offense during the regular season — they finished 15th in offensive rating — so the Cavs should be able to make them look bad, or average, or at least not extremely good.

The Cavs are winning because its defense has managed to pass the (easy) test posed by Indy. Monday night, all three members of Cleveland’s Big Three scored 25 points for the first time in their three postseasons together. Kyrie Irving got torched frequently by Jeff Teague, who finished with 23 points on just 12 shots. But Irving torched Teague even more frequently, finishing with 37 points. The Cavs hit 13 3s after hitting 11 in Game 1. They shot 55 percent from the field and 42 percent from deep, and hit 20 of 23 free throws. (Do people care about teamwide 50–40–90s? The Cavs needed one more FT to pull it off.) The idea of the Cavs beating the Pacers isn’t particularly exciting. When you think of it as the Cavs firing on all cylinders in an attempt to frantically make up for their own defensive failures, it’s much more fun.

It’s going to be hard to get worked up about any matchup the Cavaliers face before the Finals since there’s no other LeBron-like player in the world, let alone the Eastern Conference, and LeBron’s trips to the Finals have become routine. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a nemesis: a porous defense that makes any opponent a worthy adversary.
 
It kills me how sports writers and radio sports talk guys are talking about the Pacers like they're the Washington Generals. Many do this as a back handed way to beat up on the Cavs.

I can agree with the article above about how the Cavs need to step up their game for the playoffs. They've taken some steps but they still have a lot to clean up. Anyone from Griffin to Lue to Lebron would agree they have lots of room to improve.

But to hear people devalue the talent on the Pacers as though they have no business being on the court with the Cavs is disingenuous. Paul George is playing to his peak ability right now. The surrounding cast might not be a team of all-stars but they're no slouches either. The Pacers certainly have the ability to beat any team in the league on any given night.

No doubt the Cavs have proven they're better and they could definitely do a better job of holding their leads instead of pissing them away every game. But I've heard some people talking about PG and the Pacers like they're pure trash, which is bullshit.
 
buzzdog said:
It kills me how sports writers and radio sports talk guys are talking about the Pacers like they're the Washington Generals. Many do this as a back handed way to beat up on the Cavs.

I can agree with the article above about how the Cavs need to step up their game for the playoffs. They've taken some steps but they still have a lot to clean up. Anyone from Griffin to Lue to Lebron would agree they have lots of room to improve.

But to hear people devalue the talent on the Pacers as though they have no business being on the court with the Cavs is disingenuous. Paul George is playing to his peak ability right now. The surrounding cast might not be a team of all-stars but they're no slouches either. The Pacers certainly have the ability to beat any team in the league on any given night.

No doubt the Cavs have proven they're better and they could definitely do a better job of holding their leads instead of pissing them away every game. But I've heard some people talking about PG and the Pacers like they're pure trash, which is bullshit.
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Look I've been an infernal pessimist all year but even I'm tired of the scrutiny and ridicule that's accompanied the Cavs' victories so far this round. The predominant narrative so far this playoffs isn't the Warriors battering yet another incomplete team or the Celtics exposing themselves as absolute frauds...it's that the Cavs aren't eviscerating the "lowly" Pacers on a nightly basis.

Do I think that the Cavs are playing GREAT right now? No. Do I still have very grave concerns about their defense, several players and a certain bug-eyed coach's failure to comprehend a competent rotation? You betcha. But the difference between the Cavs of today and 2 weeks ago is that they're actually winning games, and in the playoffs that's what matters.

Yet the Cavs are seemingly the only team expected to blow out their opponents lest they get perceived as vulnerable. Whatever. Still a long way to go with effort and concentration but I do think it's more a lack of respect for Indiana than an inability to keep games out of reach. We'll see if they build on it to become more "complete" as the playoffs transpire.
 
It's a no win game for the Cavs anyway... if they don't blow them out, the Cavs get scrutinized. If they DID blow out the Pacers, it just means it's a weak opponent and let's see how they do against __________.

Just win baby, by any means possible, and hopefully keep incrementally plugging leaks along the way so we hopefully peak at the right time. Everything else is just noise. We all by now should be incredibly toughened to it as a fan of this team with LeBron.
 
brownsbuck6 said:
It's a no win game for the Cavs anyway... if they don't blow them out, the Cavs get scrutinized. If they DID blow out the Pacers, it just means it's a weak opponent and let's see how they do against __________.

Just win baby, by any means possible, and hopefully keep incrementally plugging leaks along the way so we hopefully peak at the right time. Everything else is just noise. We all by now should be incredibly toughened to it as a fan of this team with LeBron.
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Obviously we're not getting any credit for beating our first round opponent, no matter how we do it. Expectations are far higher than that, and should be.
 
JMoneyYourHoney said:
Look I've been an infernal pessimist all year but even I'm tired of the scrutiny and ridicule that's accompanied the Cavs' victories so far this round. The predominant narrative so far this playoffs isn't the Warriors battering yet another incomplete team or the Celtics exposing themselves as absolute frauds...it's that the Cavs aren't eviscerating the "lowly" Pacers on a nightly basis.

Do I think that the Cavs are playing GREAT right now? No. Do I still have very grave concerns about their defense, several players and a certain bug-eyed coach's failure to comprehend a competent rotation? You betcha. But the difference between the Cavs of today and 2 weeks ago is that they're actually winning games, and in the playoffs that's what matters.

Yet the Cavs are seemingly the only team expected to blow out their opponents lest they get perceived as vulnerable. Whatever. Still a long way to go with effort and concentration but I do think it's more a lack of respect for Indiana than an inability to keep games out of reach. We'll see if they build on it to become more "complete" as the playoffs transpire.
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Sums it up for me pretty well.

Its fine to not be pleased with how they are Playing right now but the Scrutiny and Disrespect by the Media and the Pessimism here are going too far.. at least for my taste..

They clearly still cant play more than one great consecutive Quarter a game.. propably energy/conditioning wise. They have not played hard in months.. of course they are not in shape for that right now.. but the chance is good they will be over time.

It's totally possible that the Team in May and June will look nothing like its looks now in Terms of defense, errors and blowing leads.

It is totally weird ... usually Teams dont do this.. our Guys have totally switched any script on how the whole Regular Season followed by Playoffs stuff usually works. They took the "We dont care about the RS" to whole new level. The 95 Rockets or 01 Lakers(underachieving Defending Champs until the Playoffs) at least had major Injuries to show for. The Rockets missed Hakeem and the Lakers Kobe for huge chunks if i remember correctly. The Cavs simply didn't give a flying fudge..

Its easy to give in and say "Well we still look bad at times, no way we can beat GSW or SA" .. But i think we are not nearly peaking right now while GSW and SA are..
Our Defense doesnt have to miraculously become totally Elite... "average" would suffice.. and i think that is not that unrealistic with time and effort. And once our Defense is not as bad anymore we are a whole different Team.

Also i think people forget too easilly that last year our defense was really hit and miss. We where great at times but also horrible the next game..

Our Def Ratings..
Against Det:
Game 1: 119 Game 2: 99 Game 3: 109 Game 4: 114
Against ATL:
Game 1: 104 Game 2: 108 Game 3: 114 Game 4: 109
Against TOR:
Game 1: 91 Game 2: 96 Game 3: 116 Game 4: 125 Game 5: 83 Game 6: 98
Against GSW:
Game 1: 116 Game 2: 118 Game 3: 96 Game 4: 128 Game 5: 98 Game 6: 107 Game 7: 98

We defended when it counted most but our defense was far from great last Playoffs..

We where 6th last year i Playoff Drtg.. now we are 12th while likely improving every Game. I dont think its that unlikley we get back to around where our defense was last year.

We Played what you would consider good to great defense (105 Def Rating or below) only 9 out of 21 Times..
 
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BigJ said:
Its easy to give in and say "Well we still look bad at times, no way we can beat GSW or SA" .. But i think we are not nearly peaking right now while GSW and SA are..
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Maybe San Antonio, but Golden State most certainly is not peaking right now. They have things to work out too.
 
The thing about Cleveland's defense is they don't really impose their will on that end. They're not like the old Grizzlies teams that grinded you down all over the floor. Nor are they like LeBron's Miami teams that tried to create chaos with their blitzing schemes. They're a numbers team. They're going to try and bait you into the worst possible option on every play. That's why you see them going underneath Teague screens, or basically leaving Stephenson wide open. They're going to try and take away your best one or two options (doubling PG, tracking CJ all over the floor).

The thing about that strategy is it's still allows the other team to get shots up. It doesn't really generate turnovers, or even wild shots (with the exception of random Lance drives). That's not necessarily a problem when you're an elite rebounding team, but the Cavs have kind of fallen off a cliff rebounding wise. If you're still allowing your opponent to get shots off, albeit low percentage, and you aren't rock solid on the glass, your D will suffer. You're also going to run into problems when you face a team with a Paul George level talent that can score on any defense. He can get his against just about any defense, and it's something the Cavs haven't run into in the Eastern Conference in the last 2+ years.
 
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