Should we be worried about Cavs late-game offense?

Dissecting what went wrong with the Cavs' disastrous fourth-quarter offensive attack.

The Cleveland Cavaliers ended up defeating the San Antonio Spurs 114-113, but they tried their best to give it away after being up 23 in the second quarter. Harrison Barnes had a point-blank look at the buzzer to win the game that he should’ve knocked down.

The defense was bad, but it was the offense that let them down against a Spurs team with an awful 122.2 defensive rating without Victor Wembanyama.

The Cavaliers scored just 23 points in the fourth quarter with only seven of them in the final five and a half minutes. That isn’t going to be good enough most nights, even against bad teams with nothing to play for.

During that stretch, the Cavs had four missed threes, two missed layups, and four turnovers. Still, not everything was bad over the last five and a half minutes. Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good

The Cavs often live and die by the three. They were on fire throughout the game as they went 22-51 from deep (43.1%), but hit just one of their five attempts in the second half of the fourth quarter. However, two of those looks were the result of great offensive execution.

The first was a Sam Merrill attempt off of a great feed from Max Strus. Mitchell’s hard pass to Strus made the defense rotate. Strus did a good job of patiently surveying his options and got the defense to rotate away from Merrill with a pump fake toward De’Andre Hunter.

This was an A+ look and sequence.

The same is true for the Cavs' one three-point make during this stretch.

Darius Garland is lethal when he’s moving off the ball. He’s so quick with his cuts that it’s difficult to stay with him.

Here, Garland went to set a screen for Strus in the corner, but slipped it before making contact with Strus’s defender. Garland’s defender (Julian Champagnie) waited to switch the action with Chris Paul and was left flat-footed when Garland darted to the top of the arc. A screen from Evan Mobley gave him the extra room he needed to get the shot off.

Again, this is great stuff!

The Cavs have a phenomenal offense. Even when they’re going through a rough patch like they did in the fourth, they still found a way to produce quality possessions.

The bad

The Cavs' two worst possessions were also their two most important ones. That is easily the most concerning part of the fourth-quarter collapse.

First, Mitchell dribbled the shot clock down in a four-point game and then settled for a step-back three. That’s his go-to shot and he had it working on Friday. That said, it’s not a difficult shot to contest when the defender knows you’re going to it after you’ve dribbled the air out of the ball for 20 seconds.

As we’ve seen countless times, this move is deployed best when Mitchell is a threat to do something other than take an off-the-dribble three.

The other worst possession came right after.

The Spurs were in a 2-3 zone for Cleveland’s final offensive possession. The Cavs didn’t seem to notice this. All four players without the ball were below the free-throw line when Mitchell started to make his move.

This made it easy for San Antonio to both cut off the passing lanes and provide numerous bodies at the rim for Mitchell to finish through.

Strus and Garland ended up in the same corner, which essentially took an offensive player off the floor for this drive. Mitchell also couldn’t get the ball to Mobley in the dunker’s spot due to the defenders in the way. Hunter occupied his man in the strong-side corner, but this left three other guys for Mitchell to finish through.

Unsurprisingly, Mitchell’s layup was blocked. Garland got a three-point attempt off just before the buzzer, but it never had a chance of going in.

This was the Cavs' worst clutch-time possession this season from an execution and schematic perspective. It’s clear that the play call wasn’t expecting the Spurs to be in a zone. The lack of ability to recognize and adjust to this by the players on the court is concerning.

The ugly

As disastrous as the final two possessions were, the Cavs wouldn’t have been in that position if they simply hadn't turned it over four times down the stretch. The three turnovers that weren’t shot clock violations were due to a lack of concentration.

First, Garland thought he had a window for a dish to Mobley, but there was never a chance he could’ve gotten it to him. The other two were the result of slightly off-target passes that the receiver still should’ve corralled. If caught, they would’ve led to clean looks for Hunter and Mobley.

The offensive results weren’t good down the stretch. There’s no denying that. But I didn’t see anything here that is too concerning, outside of the final offensive possession where the Cavs failed to recognize that the Spurs were in a zone.

This felt more like a game where the Cavs lost concentration. Most of their errors seemed to be from an inability to focus late in a game they were firmly in control of until the final few minutes. I wouldn’t anticipate this lack of attention carrying over to the playoffs.