Game Thread | 2021-2022 Season | Game #73 | Cavs @ Raptors | March 24, 2022 | 7:30 p.m.

[Heat Check]

I know everyone hates the JBB trash talk… but can anyone look at this offense and how stagnant it is and how to he has still failed to figure out how to use Levert. It’s inexcusable that they can’t run sets to get him open in the paint where he has success. Every ounce of their offense is initiated outside of the three point line.. they have to work so hard to score.

Defense has been atrocious in every aspect since the break also.

We don't run sets to get anyone open. It sounds unbelievable but it's a fact.

 

[Heat Check]

I think even the Cavs FO is not dumb enough to think that he is a long-term SF. They might have to do it for one more year. If we can somehow dump Love and get a wing this offseason...

He hasn't been playing SF for a long time now. I don't know what games people are watching.

 

[Dr. Claw]

We don't run sets to get anyone open. It sounds unbelievable but it's a fact.

and that's the problem.
This team could be so much better with an actual fuckin offense in place. This team needs it, badly. Especially when LeVert is on the floor...

As for the game... I knew it was a done deal when the Cavs gave up the lead.
Not running offense, letting all the 3s happen that could.

I think the Cavs would have fared better with JA. Clearly, with him guarding the rim, the rest aren't tempted to help defense away from shooters.
But JA ain't here and that's but a crutch at this point.

The offensive situation needs to be addressed.
The Bulls are in as much free fall as the Cavs, but the Bulls will prevail because they do just enough ball movement to get good looks for their shooters.

It's so frustrating. Okoro is hitting more and more of his corner 3s and so is LAMAR STEVENS.

Imagine what they could be doing with proper sets.

Fix it, please.

 

[Sir'Dom Pointer]

LOLOL JBB supporters.

 

[Heat Check]

OK, lots to unpack here. This is going to be a fucking essay.

First of all...

Slow clap. It was a clinic.

Nick Nurse made a checklist of all our flaws and methodically exploited them.

Small PG in a shooting slump who's slow/unwilling to react to traps. No organized offense or ball movement. Tendency to help off shooters. No game plan for defending pick and pops. Undersized (or slow, depending on lineups) positions 1 to 3.

Nurse took JBB's soul. You just hate to see it.

On top of all this, Nurse was probably giddy to see Love in the starting lineup. One of the many inexplicable coaching decisions of this season. Kevin can't play 33 minutes, and he DEFINITELY can't play 33 minutes against a super long and athletic team like the Raps. It was always going to be a disaster and that's how it turned out. Love is having a bad enough time playing defense even if you don't have him hard hedge all the way to the logo. Once he does that, it's over. He cannot and will not recover at all. Just the height of insanity to play him like that.

However, you just can't hide Love on D against a team like this anyway. He's almost unplayable, as the Raptors can play legit 5-out basketball. We can rage against that style all we want, but that's the league today. If you have shooters, they need to be the base for what you do on offense. They're not for the Cavs. On the contrary, really.

Here are the 3pt shooting percentages of some Cavs players in the last 5 games:

Love 41%
Lauri 39%
Okoro 59%

I hear a lot of people complain that teams are able to trap Garland because we don't have anyone on the wings to punish them by making shots. That's BS. We do have guys who are shooting very well. Yet we're not using them. Okoro (!!) has been absolutely on fire from the perimeter for a while now, and he got off three shots against the Raptors. Three. Love and Lauri are taking tough shots against hard closeouts because we never get them in pick and pops or coming off pindowns. And STILL they're making a good percentage. But Lauri only got 10 FGA'S in 36 minutes. Love, even with his customary hair trigger, only got 8 in 33 minutes. We're ignoring the players who should be taking the majority of our shots. But you can't just hand them the ball at the perimeter and expect stuff to happen. You need to run actions and move.

The Raptors know that. They looked like they were running warm up shooting drills with the way they casually moved the ball around until they found an open shooter. Boucher had an enjoyable time just setting fake screens and popping for open 3pt shots. Again and again. The way we overreact to anyone looking to drive into the paint is comical. You get beat by open 3pt shots in this league, not tough, contested fadeaway midrangers by Pascal Siakam (even though those are the shots that seem to piss of Cavs fans the most). That's a lesson I would think JBB would have learned by now.

I mentioned above that teams are getting way too comfortable trapping Garland. Well, duh. The guy has been scouted to death. The league knows he's not giving the ball up until it's too late. Fans seem to think we need "another ballhandler" there to "take off the pressure" from Darius, but that's not how you deal with traps. You do need an outlet guy nearby, sure, BUT then you take advantage by quickly moving the ball to a dude who has an opening. There should ne no dribbling at all.

We do have the personnel to move the ball like that – we saw it in the 1st half of the season. But it starts with Garland. He needs to be willing to give up the rock when he smells a trap coming.

I don't like to pile on individual players too much when the Cavs have a lot of systemic problems that start at the top, but... we just have to get more out of Cedi. We need to get something out of him. This was one of his worst games of the season, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. The same almost applies to Love, but when we decide we're not gonna help him at all to be efficient, I can't blame him too much. If you play Love, he has to be used like a specialist. JBB uses him like a jack-of-all-trades.

Stevens caused mayhem and scored a bunch because the Raps didn't give a fuck about him, but he – like the team overall – had some really demoralizing turnovers and mental mistakes as well. Still, like Lauri, he's been able to elevate his offense when he's been needed lately, and that's commendable.

Speaking of Markkanen... I guess this is as close as you can get to scoring 20 points in the NBA while not touching the ball all game. It's like a magic trick. He was the high Cavs scorer at halftime, and true to form, we totally went away from him in the 3rd. Of course the Raps also decided to take him out of the game, but that's why you have things like strategy and plays. Please use them, JBB. We need to be able to use these decisions to our advantage.

Lauri got put on an island a lot, which is a tough place to be against some of these guys. He doesn't really have the reach to bother big jumpshooters like Siakam, particularly when they're fading away. But as I said above, those are not the shots you win with in this league. It's the open 3's we should be really worried about.

Okoro needed more shots in his cozy corner. Defensively, he got exposed once again, as he usually does against these super long teams.

Really disappointed with Garland. There was never a point when it felt he was running the team. Half the time I didn't understand what the hell he was doing out there. Forcing passes, bricking shots, dribbling into trouble, stopping the ball. His game has been extremely tough to watch lately.

LeVert doesn't have the handles to play PG in the NBA. Not by a long shot.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

OK, lots to unpack here. This is going to be a fucking essay.

First of all...

Slow clap. It was a clinic.

Nick Nurse made a checklist of all our flaws and methodically exploited them.

Small PG in a shooting slump who's slow/unwilling to react to traps. No organized offense or ball movement. Tendency to help off shooters. No game plan for defending pick and pops. Undersized (or slow, depending on lineups) positions 1 to 3.

Nurse took JBB's soul. You just hate to see it.

On top of all this, Nurse was probably giddy to see Love in the starting lineup. One of the many inexplicable coaching decisions of this season. Kevin can't play 33 minutes, and he DEFINITELY can't play 33 minutes against a super long and athletic team like the Raps. It was always going to be a disaster and that's how it turned out. Love is having a hard enough time playing defense even if you don't have him hard hedge all the way to the logo. Once he does that, it's over. He cannot and will not recover at all. Just the height of insanity to play him like that.

However, you just can't hide Love on D against a team like this anyway. He's almost unplayable, as the Raptors can play legit 5-out basketball. We can rage against that style all we want, but that's the league today. If you have shooters, they need to be the base for what you do on offense. They're not for the Cavs. On the contrary, really.

Here are the 3pt shooting percentages of some Cavs players in the last 5 games:

Love 41%
Lauri 39%
Okoro 59%

I hear a lot of people complain that teams are able to trap Garland because we don't have anyone on the wings to punish them by making shots. That's BS. We do have guys who are shooting very well. Yet we're not using them. Okoro (!!) has been absolutely on fire from the perimeter for a while now, and he got off three shots against the Raptors. Three. Love and Lauri are taking tough shots against hard closeouts because we never get them in pick and pops or coming off pindowns. And STILL they're making a good percentage. But Lauri only got 10 FGA'S in 36 minutes. Love, even with his customary hair trigger, only got 8 in 33 minutes. We're ignoring the players who should be taking the majority of our shots. But you can't just hand them the ball at the perimeter and expect stuff to happen. You need to run actions and move.

The Raptors know that. They looked like they were running warm up shooting drills with the way they casually moved the ball around until they found an open shooter. Boucher had an enjoyable time just setting fake screens and popping for open 3pt shots. Again and again. The way we overreact to anyone looking to drive into the paint is comical. You get beat by open 3pt shots in this league, not tough, contested fadeaway midrangers by Pascal Siakam (even though those are the shots that seem to piss of Cavs fans the most). That's a lesson I would think JBB would have learned by now.

I mentioned above that teams are getting way too comfortable trapping Garland. Well, duh. The guy has been scouted to death. The league knows he's not giving the ball up until it's too late. Fans seem to think we need "another ballhandler" there to "take off the pressure" from Darius, but that's not how you deal with traps. You do need an outlet guy nearby, sure, BUT then you take advantage by quickly moving the ball to a dude who has an opening. There should ne no dribbling at all.

We do have the personnel to move the ball like that – we saw it in the 1st half of the season. But it starts with Garland. He needs to be willing to give up the rock when he smells a trap coming.

I don't like to pile on individual players too much when the Cavs have a lot of systemic problems that start at the top, but... we just have to get more out of Cedi. We need to get something out of him. This was one of his worst games of the season, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. The same almost applies to Love, but when we decide we're not gonna help him at all to be efficient, I can't blame him too much. If you play Love, he has to be used like a specialist. JBB uses him like a jack-of-all-trades.

Stevens caused mayhem and scored a bunch because the Raps didn't give a fuck about him, but he – like the team overall – had some really demoralizing turnovers and mental mistakes as well. Still, like Lauri, he's been able to elevate his offense when he's been needed lately, and that's commendable.

Speaking of Markkanen – I guess this is as close as you can get to scoring 20 points in the NBA while not touching the ball all game. It's like a magic trick. He was the high Cavs scorer at halftime, and true to form, we totally went away from him in the 3rd. Of course the Raps also decided to take him out of the game, but that's why you have things like strategy and plays. Please use them, JBB. We need to be able to use these decisions to our advantage.

Lauri got put on an island a lot, which is a tough place to be against some of these guys. He doesn't really have the reach to bother big jumpshooters like Siakam, particularly when they're fading away. But as I said above, those are not the shots you win with in this league. It's the open 3's we should be really worried about.

As I said, Okoro needed more shots in his cozy corner. Defensively, he got exposed once again, as he usually does against these super long teams.

Really disappointed with Garland. There was never a point when it felt he was running the team. Half the time I didn't understand what the hell he was doing out there. Forcing passes, bricking shots, dribbling into trouble, stopping the ball. His game has been extremely tough to watch lately.

LeVert doesn't have the handles to play PG in the NBA. Not by a long shot.

1. Agree that the Cavs overeact to dribble penetration, leaving tons of uncontested 3's. The Raptors made 16 last night, many uncontested with the shooters taking their time and shooting in rhythm. Particulaly in the first half when Siakam was getting uncontested corner 3's. Once he knocked down the first two he had his rhythm and confidence and ended up 6-for-7.

2. When Garland is doubled I don't know if he's trying to draw the defenders with him as far away from the rim as possible before getting rid of the ball so the Cavs will have a 4-on-3 situation. But the biggest problem I saw last night was Toronto kept switching and other than VanVleet they had four athletic players on the floor, all 6'6" to 6'9". The Cavs' screens were ineffective because Garland would end up with a long, athletic defender on him rather than a slow big.

3. By next year I don't expect Love or Cedi to be in the rotation. Love is a defensive liability and Cedi is awful except for occasional games here and there.

4. LeVert kept trying to dribble though a crowd and you can't do that against a team as quick as the Raptors.

5. The Raptors are the kind of team the Cavs should be patterning themselves after in the future. They have five players who average 15-22 points per game. They have a 6'1" point guard who averages 21 ppg (VanVleet), a shooting guard who averages 18 (Trent), two small forwards who average 17-18 (Anunoby and Barnes), and a power forward who averages 22 (Siakam).

I can see Garland in the VanVleet role, Sexton/LeVert in the Trent role, and Allen, Markkanen, and Mobley as a front line that all average 17-22 per game but are bigger than the Toronto front line and better defensively.

The closest thing the Raptors have to a star is Siakam, and I can see Mobley becoming that kind of player in a couple of years.

Kudos to Okoro for turning himself into an outstanding shooter on corner 3's from the right side on long hours of practice. Now he needs to expand that to 3's from the angle.

I really think getting Allen back will create a domino effect with Mobley moving back to playing more on the perimeter that will really improve the defense and rebounding. The Raptors had 13 offensive rebounds last night and several of the them were kicked out for open 3's.

 

[Heat Check]

Because the paint is stacked, its the same issue Garland is having. The other team isnt scared of our corner shooters, most teams try to generate open corner 3's... we are given them

Our corner shooters are fine. Teams are not scared of them because they know we don't move the ball.

 

[buzzdog]

Down 12 so we eat the clock.

It was maddening to watch this happen last night. Between this and our idiotic "hold it for the last shot" strategy where we dribble the clock down to less than 4 seconds, do nothing to get a quality look, then throw up a low percentage prayer as the buzzer goes off, we are dismal in the final minutes.

 

[buzzdog]

Not having JA is like removing one leg from a 3 legged stool. It cripples any advantage we used to have defensively. Guys were able to stick closer to perimeter shooters and help less with both JA and Mobley on the court because they knew if the shooter blew by them into the paint there was a wall to contest and intimidate. Now we over-help even outside the 3 point line which is mind numbingly stupid. A few quick passes and our defense is quickly out of position and in disarray.

Not having JA also badly negates an offensive strength and an ability to create mismatches on that end. Like it or not, JA is a player who can win and convert at a high percentage in the paint. We are completely missing that advantage now. It allows defenses to spread out wider and to put more pressure on the ball and on perimeter shooters.

Without JA, the defensive strategy JB used falls apart, as well as our ability to create mismatches on offense.

 

[Heat Check]

Not having JA is like removing one leg from a 3 legged stool. It cripples any advantage we used to have defensively. Guys were able to stick closer to perimeter shooters and help less with both JA and Mobley on the court because they knew if the shooter blew by them into the paint there was a wall to contest and intimidate. Now we over-help even outside the 3 point line which is mind numbingly stupid. A few quick passes and our defense is quickly out of position and in disarray.

Not having JA also badly negates an offensive strength and an ability to create mismatches on that end. Like it or not, JA is a player who can win and convert at a high percentage in the paint. We are completely missing that advantage now. It allows defenses to spread out wider and to put more pressure on the ball and on perimeter shooters.

Without JA, the defensive strategy JB used falls apart, as well as our ability to create mismatches on offense.

I don't fully agree. Obviously Allen is important to what we do, but all these problems were cropping up when he was still playing. They've just kept getting worse as Garland's dominance has increased and now we're essentially playing with one point guard. Previously, Goodwin was at least able to bring a different mentality to the court to shake things up a bit, but now he's not playing. It's just Darius.

We could still get mismatches if we wanted to. But it's just not a part of this "offense". Lauri is being guarded by bigger people now because he's at PF, but we never try to switch him on to a small guy to receive a pass under the basket. He's parked in the corner to spread the floor like Okoro, because that's pretty much the role of the modern 4. Just an example. There are others.

The extent to which the offense has been turned over to one inexperienced, small combo guard is really incredible.

 

[buzzdog]

I don't fully agree. Obviously Allen is important to what we do, but all these problems were cropping up when he was still playing. They've just kept getting worse as Garland's dominance has increased and now we're essentially playing with one point guard. Previously, Goodwin was at least able to bring a different mentality to the court to shake things up a bit, but now he's not playing. It's just Darius.

We could still get mismatches if we wanted to. But it's just not a part of this "offense". Lauri is being guarded by bigger people now because he's at PF, but we never try to switch him on to a small guy to receive a pass under the basket. He's parked in the corner to spread the floor like Okoro, because that's pretty much the role of the modern 4. Just an example. There are others.

The extent to which the offense has been turned over to one inexperienced, small combo guard is really incredible.

The thing is, with JA on the floor the mismatches were baked right into the cake. Just him being on the floor pushed the size mismatches all down one slot, and it was pretty easy to take advantage because they existed in 3 positions. Say what you will but JA could score one on one at high percentages and efficiency against just about any opposing center. JA and Mobley pretty much figured out on their own ways to exploit their size advantage with some pretty nice high-low action and interior passing, just one different way to attack that we now completely lack.

Now without him we need to do more moving and screening to create mismatches, then have the passing acumen to exploit them. And that seems to be beyond the coaching ability of JB, to even recognize the need, let alone coach the team into executing the kinds of switching and passing it takes.

And that's just offensively. Missing JA on defense completely undercuts what was working well for us with him on the floor.

 

[Cavatt]

They have gotten away from the ball movement that made them so deadly.

Weird because I thought it was coming back at the end of Darius' absence.

Dribbling against the raps doesn't work and they had 3 other games to realize that. Need to move the ball. It was obvious last night. AC kept saying it and they didn't recognize it.

 

[Dr. Claw]

Our corner shooters are fine. Teams are not scared of them because they know we don't move the ball.

and it's so evident that when they DO move the ball, they eat. Mobley finding Okoro in the corner on some Jokic shit is what I want to see.

What I don't want to see is Okoro just sitting in the corner and the ball handler dribbling madly in front of the defender with no chance to get the ball.

 

[buzzdog]

They have gotten away from the ball movement that made them so deadly.

Weird because I thought it was coming back at the end of Darius' absence.

Dribbling against the raps doesn't work and they had 3 other games to realize that. Need to move the ball. It was obvious last night. AC kept saying it and they didn't recognize it.

I see it in very short spurts but we don't stick with it. Instead we make one pass (if even that) and then expect that guy to create off the dribble, either one on one, one on two, or one on three.

Garland is the only player we have with an elite handle and even he is in over his head when we rely so heavily on this means of attack.

We do have players who can pass the ball. If anything we might have some players who shy away from wide open shots to instead pass the ball (and that's a big problem with about 3/4 of our roster). But if we emphasized passing and ball movement the way we did earlier in the season and cut way down on dribbling as the method of attack, we'd look a lot better. And, when someone does attack off the dribble there would be more spacing and lanes for attacking off the dribble.

 

[Jontibs]

There was a point where they got within 5, Garland gets space for a 3 from a nice move, turned it down, back into over dribbling, stripped, easy 2 at the other end. just a momemtum killer and the game was finished as a contest a couple of mins later. Garland has to be better in the moment with his decision making, he is playing like he has Kyrie level handles, and he just doesn't.