Cavs incredible offense allows them to win games they deserve to lose
There’s nothing normal about this Cavaliers team.
To say the Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t have a good showing against the Toronto Raptors would be an understatement. The Cavs played one of their worst defensive games of the season a day after their emotional win over the Oklahoma City Thunder the night before. If it wasn’t for a 40-point performance from Darius Garland, they would’ve lost this one. And honestly, that would’ve made more sense than what’s been happening lately.
“I thought tonight was going to be that game,” said Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson postgame when asked whether he thought this was going to be a letdown game. “I was already preparing my speech to you guys. ‘Well we had a stinker, you knew it was going to happen and we did it.’ And I’m going to say we didn’t handle this one well in terms of maturity.”
That showed through on the defensive end. The Raptors came into this one with the 24th-ranked offense due to their inability to create threes and protect the ball. They’re a team with few on-ball creators and even fewer complimentary pieces to play off-ball, but you wouldn’t have known that if you just watched them play against Cleveland. The Raptors scored their fifth most points (126) and finished with their best field-goal percentage (59.6%) in a game this season.
“We’re lucky as heck to get this win,” Atkinson said. “That’s why it’s so hard to go 33-4 because with a normal team, you have a bunch of these games.”
That’s the thing, the Cavs aren’t a normal team. Normal teams don’t post 130+ points seemingly every night while winning nearly 90% of their games.
“I don’t want the guys to think that’s the only way we’re winning,” Atkinson said about the offense. “[To think] that’s the way to push this thing to a championship level.”
While that’s fair, their offensive process is so finely tuned that they can put up remarkable offensive numbers even when they’re on autopilot and missing their top scorer.
The variety of ways the Cavs can beat you separates them from even other dynamic offenses like the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. They can switch styles and problem-solve so quickly that you can’t possibly take everything away. Trying to stop them is an endless game of Whack-A-Mole. As soon as you take one thing away, two or three more issues pop up.
In these last two games, it was their bigs’ ability to continually play make and beat mismatches that made the difference combined with Garland’s ability to run the offense.
“To be honest with you, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley,” said Garland when asked why this team isn’t normal. “Our centerpiece is definitely our two bigs, the two best bigs in the league. They’ve been doing it all year. Seeing it on a big stage last night, then [to] come back, do it again tonight was really huge.”
The question has gone from ‘Can the Cavs play with two bigs?’ to ‘How do you stop these two bigs?’ very quickly. The rim pressure, screening, and skills as passers are unique in a league that’s trying to just space the floor with their frontcourt. This is a credit to both for how they’ve rounded out their games so that they’re more than just play finishers at the rim.
The frontcourt’s versatility creates such a wide decision tree that is difficult to defend. In many ways, it’s a good representation of the offense as a whole that’s built on constantly reading and adjusting to what they see from the defense in a way that looks like controlled chaos.
“I think Kenny does a great job of putting us in situations to be successful,” said Caris LeVert. “This group is very versatile. We got guys who can shoot it. We got guys who can put it on the floor, pass it, and we play very unselfish. ... I just think Kenny just puts us in great situations, great opportunities to just be successful and be ourselves out there.”
This has all added up to one of the most efficient offenses in league history.
Thursday’s win against Toronto wasn’t one where the Cavs built championship habits on the defensive end. You simply can’t beat great teams with that level of focus. Conversely, the offensive habits they’ve cultivated in their first 38 games seem to never go away no matter the situation. That is why they’re on a 73-win pace.
You’re supposed to lose games when you have a D+ level performance. But when you have the offensive baseline the Cavs do, that simply doesn’t matter. Even their stinkers are victories.