Game Thread | 2021-2022 Season | Play-in Game #2 | Hawks @ Cavs | April 15, 2022 | 7:30 p.m. ESPN

[cabs]

That stupid ass lineup with Rondo and Okoro. Just why? Two offensively challenged players.

JBB is a TANK COMMANDER. Nothing more.

Horrific line up, hopefully having Jabari Smith on roster next season will mean no more bad line ups

 

[All4One1ForAll]

Love not playing much made sense to me tbh. He’s a terrible matchup against Atlanta because they have too many shooters and because Trae can just pick on him.

I thought Stevens should have gotten minutes if anything. We could’ve used his energy and unlike Okoro, he can actually punish Trae for resting on defense.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Love not playing much made sense to me tbh. He’s a terrible matchup against Atlanta because they have too many shooters and because Trae can just pick on him.

I thought Stevens should have gotten minutes if anything. We could’ve used his energy and unlike Okoro, he can actually punish Trae for resting on defense.

Stevens not playing but 7 total mins in both playin games will be the off-season biggest mystery to me.

 

[jjvors]

How does Love only play 10 minutes when he’s our most experienced playoff player next to rondo. Just didn’t make sense to me

Yes, I was puzzled by that too.

 

[InBoobieWeTrust]

Love not playing much made sense to me tbh. He’s a terrible matchup against Atlanta because they have too many shooters and because Trae can just pick on him.

I thought Stevens should have gotten minutes if anything. We could’ve used his energy and unlike Okoro, he can actually punish Trae for resting on defense.

Stevens not playing but 7 total mins in both playin games will be the off-seasons biggest mystery to me.

 

[jjvors]

How does Love only play 10 minutes when he’s our most experienced playoff player next to rondo. Just didn’t make sense to me

Yes, I was puzzled by that too.

 

[Mr. Magic]

It’s hard to win play-in game when Markkanen is your best player.

 

[Jscc]

Honestly not sure how you start off hot from 3, have your starting 5, be at home, your opponent loses their second best player mid-game, you know how to shut down their offense, and you still lose.. but wtf do I know.

 

[Heat Check]

Oh well.

After the way JBB coached all season, it was the definition of poetic justice that we lost while not running any offense in the 2nd half. Instead, we trusted two guys who were off (Garland and LeVert) to dream up something, anything, with the shot clock ticking down. You cannot win a game like this when you keep stacking up hopeless late clock 911 shots and 24 second violations.

At this point, there's one major difference between Trae and Garland. Trae always has a plan. Sure, he can and will deviate from it if an opportunity presentes itself... but he has a plan. DG never does. He's counting on his ability to improvise at the last second, and while that more or less kept working for him all season, it's dangerous in a game like this, all the more so because his coach is unable to make any helpful adjustments for crunch time.

In some respects, this game really showed us who LeVert is. The box score says he only had two turnovers, but that's far from being the whole story. He kept putting the ball on the floor, getting nowhere while dribbling in circles, and then hot potato'ed it to a guy who wasn't open, with 2 seconds in the shot clock. LeVert doesn't get hit with a turnover when he does that, but in my book it's the same as throwing it out of bounds. It's almost unbelievable JBB went with this guy at PG for a large part of this game, when LeVert clearly cannot play that position at this level. I guess he was shocked that Rondo was unplayable.

Priority #1 for next season is finding an actual shooting guard with size. Anyone who watched how a 6'5'' Delon Wright was able to shut Garland down and kill his passing lanes can't seriously be thinking about starting Sexton at SG next season. That idea is dead. LeVert is definitely not the answer either, and we all know Okoro won't be starting next season.

Back to the game – some people were saying Love should've gotten more PT, but this was the exact type of game where he was unplayable. When Kevin and Rondo first came in, we lost 80% of the momentum the starters had going. I think it was the last straw when Love laughably tried to draw a charge on 6'5'' Huerter instead of challenging his layup attempt, ending up with an and-1. You don't get cute in a game like this. JBB was bad at managing the game tactically, but I can't fault him for benching Love.

Rondo should retire. That's all I can say about the game he had without puking in my mouth.

Mobley was one of the main victims of the Cavs not running an offense in the 2nd half. We wasted 90% of his hub talents by giving him the ball with 5 seconds in the clock and expecting him to create something 1-on-1 at the perimeter. Ridiculous. Whenever he got the ball at the FT line and there was movement around him, good things happened. But that's been true all season. In this game, we kept giving the ball to Allen instead of Mobley at that hub spot, and JA looked extremely shaky with his passes (which is understandable after a long layoff). I just trust Mobley more there. Next season, the kid should be the clear #1 interior option. What Allen's role is remains to be seen.

It's a shame that Lauri had one of his best games of the season and it had to end like this. For a guy who'd never even sniffed the postseason, he really came to play. The Hawks mostly stayed home on him in the 2nd half (see JBB? That's an actual adjustment) and the open perimeter shots off kick-outs disappeared, but he battled on the boards instead. Almost all of his 2nd half 3pt shots were of the 911 variety, with the ball being hot potato'ed around the perimeter and someone having to shoot it. Felt like he made almost all the shots where he had his feet set.

 

[ice cream man]

I find it laughable how some people think we lost this game because we couldn’t stop Trae Young. We still held them to 107 points. Take away their end-of-game FT’s and it’s even less than that.

We lost this game on the offensive end. Our offense looked like a middle school team where Garland was the coach’s son. Hopefully next year we can run an actual offense like we did at the beginning of this year, but I don’t know how that happens without a new coaching staff or a Ricky Rubio return. Time to unleash Evan Mobley.

 

[KilgoreTrout]

I find it laughable how some people think we lost this game because we couldn’t stop Trae Young. We still held them to 107 points. Take away their end-of-game FT’s and it’s even less than that.

We lost this game on the offensive end. Our offense looked like a middle school team where Garland was the coach’s son. Hopefully next year we can run an actual offense like we did at the beginning of this year, but I don’t know how that happens without a new coaching staff or a Ricky Rubio return. Time to unleash Evan Mobley.

We will run an offense when JBB gets fired or he cedes control to an offensive coordinator with a brain.

 

[Mr. Orange]

Honestly not sure how you start off hot from 3, have your starting 5, be at home, your opponent loses their second best player mid-game, you know how to shut down their offense, and you still lose.. but wtf do I know.

First Cleveland game?

Most of is assumed we would lose. While it stings today and for the next two weeks watching ATL/MIA, we can now look at prospects.

I do like Trae and wish Darius had some more dog in him like Trae. The bottom line is the better team won. The Cavs simply aren’t a playoff team yet.

 

[Prof123]

I find it laughable how some people think we lost this game because we couldn’t stop Trae Young. We still held them to 107 points. Take away their end-of-game FT’s and it’s even less than that.

We lost this game on the offensive end. Our offense looked like a middle school team where Garland was the coach’s son. Hopefully next year we can run an actual offense like we did at the beginning of this year, but I don’t know how that happens without a new coaching staff or a Ricky Rubio return. Time to unleash Evan Mobley.

Well, our inability to stop Young wasn't the only reason we lost, but it certainly was one of the biggest. I'm not saying we could have done much differently -- he was just that good in the second half. That is what superstars do -- they will their teams to victory in the biggest moments. He was hitting 35-footers and dropping floaters left and right. Garland wasn't.

Other factors, in no particular order: We didn't run an offense. Allen clearly isn't 100% -- in particular, he had trouble catching the ball in traffic (which is understandable). We didn't run an offense. LeVert had no shot-clock awareness. We got no breaks from the officials on those calls that could have gone either way, and this was a momentum killer in the second quarter. (To be fair, while close, I thought all of the calls were probably the right ones, other than that it should have been a flagrant on Capela.) We didn't run an offense.

Even though it was only two games and not an entire series, this experience was good for our young guys, and next year should be fun. Hopefully that first round pick will give us a rotation piece. I'm excited to see what our offense looks like with a healthy Sexton. While LeVert and Sexton each do have flaws, they are good players, and we should keep good players. A good coach will figure out how to get the best out of them. I'm not sure Bickerstaff is that guy, but he will have another year to try to show it.

Mobley, Garland, Allen, and Markkanen are all very young and still improving. Okoro is a mystery to me, but he is also very young and I'm not ready to give up on him yet. LeVert is in his prime. Wade is a winner and there is a role for him on a playoff team. Same with Stevens. I think Love can give us another year like he did this year, both on and off the court. Osman I can do without. Windler hustles and is a smart player -- someone has to help him figure out what happened to his outside shot.

If Rubio could come back and be reasonably close to what he was this past year, I'm not convinced we need any more players. We just need to stay healthy and to let the young guys get better in time.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

That waved off 3, the non flagrant foul, and the reversed offensive foul was huge and those were a big part of a momentum shift imo. I dont know if we win if those go our way but man that is just hard to even think about.

Where do you guys think the game started shifting? entire second half? lol

When Young hit a 3-pointer on the first possession of the third quarter to cut the Cavs' lead to 7 I knew it was over.

The Cavs only chance was to have a 3rd quarter similar to their first quarter and push the lead from 10 to 20 points going into the 4th. If it was close after 3 quarters Young was going to take over the 4th. Well, it was tied after three, and that's exactly what he did.

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

I think one of the things that still upsets is having to come to the realization Trae is just a truly dominant offensive player now and that, sometimes, he is unstoppable.

He's so easily hateable as a player and his style can really become a chore to watch that there's a bias built in that we then have to assume that if you weren't able to stop him it's because of something your players or your coach did wrong.

But he's just really very, very good and was the best player on the court tonight by a mile.

It wasn't Lauri's fault or Bickerstaffs fault tonight that he cooked us.

Trae hit a 3-pointer with both feet inside the logo and a couple more that were almost as long. These were not desperation heaves with the clock expiring - he just thought he could make the shot. He was definitely unstoppable, and either scored or assisted on 27 of the Hawks 33 points in the third quarter when they caught up.

Young's heroics notwithstanding, the Hawks as a team only scored 107 after getting 132 two nights ago. Part of that may have been not having Capela in the second half, but this game was lost on the offensive side when the Cavs only scored 40 in the entire second half against a below average defensive team missing their starting center.

"I think more so than anything our offense slowed down,” Cavs coach J.B. Bickerstaff said following the loss. “We weren’t moving as much. There was a lot of isolation and standing still and that gave them an opportunity to get going."

We didn't need 61 points like we got in the first half. Just a normal 50-point second half would have been enough. But the Cavs couldn't finish and that's been one of the main problems this season. According to Fedor, the Cavs led the NBA with 18 blown leads of 10 points or more.

A big objective for next season will be learning to put an opponent away once they get on top.