Were the Cavs settling for the wrong threes in Game 1 loss to Pacers?

Cleveland couldn’t buy a basket, but the overall process wasn’t as bad as the results would lead you to believe.

The Cleveland Cavaliers couldn’t make an outside shot in their Game 1 loss to the Indiana Pacers. Their 23.7% three-point shooting performance was their second-lowest percentage of the season.

Was this a case of Cleveland taking the wrong shots? Or did the right shots just not fall?

I tried to figure that out. I grouped Cleveland’s three-point shots into two main categories: pull-up and transition threes. From there, I divided them further into whether or not they were good or bad shots.

The determination of whether a shot was good or bad is purely subjective. Reasonable minds can differ on some of them, especially some of the pull-up threes. Those shots are a lot about rhythm, and that’s something you can’t really tell from a video clip.

I figured this would be a better exercise than trying to rely on NBA.com’s shot quality data, which can sometimes seem a little arbitrary.

Additionally, I didn’t categorize anything from the last two minutes when the outcome was already decided or any of Donovan Mitchell’s end-of-quarter heaves. This wiped six three-point attempts off the board. All of which would’ve been considered bad if not for the circumstances.

Pull-up threes

Pull-up threes are the most inefficient type of three-point shot. However, it’s one that the Cavs have been good at. They knocked down a league-leading 36.3% of their 13.8 pull-up threes per game.

They connected on just 3-12 (25%) of their pull-up triples in Game 1.

Head coach Kenny Atkinson said postgame that his team’s three-point quality was “average.” When he said that, it’s likely that he was thinking of the number of pull-up threes they took.

Not all of these shots were bad. I categorized seven of the 12 shots as good, or at least ones that you would live with. These generally came off of screens where the ball handler had enough room to step into a three.

This is a shot that Indiana’s defense typically gives up in their drop coverage. These shots just didn’t fall as Cleveland went 1-7 on these.

The Cavs did, however, hit two of the five pull-up threes that I categorized as bad. These shots were mostly forced and didn’t need to be taken. Any frustration with the shot quality likely came from this second group

It’s easy to look at these shots overall as being selfish or out of the flow of the offense. But these are shots the Pacers are willingly giving up and ones that the Cavs have made all season.

You take what the defense gives you, especially if it’s a somewhat high-percentage look for Mitchell (34.3% on pull-up threes in the regular season and 45.5% in the playoffs before Game 1) or Ty Jerome (42% in the regular season and 53.3% in the playoffs before Game 1).

Catch-and-shoot threes

There’ve been conversations about the Cavs' offense not moving the ball and Mitchell hijacking the offense. There is some degree of truth behind that, but the Cavs still generated premier offense with ball movement.

However, when the shots don’t go, you don’t remember the good things that created the misses.

Catch-and-shoot threes are high-percentage shots and ones the Cavaliers want to create. Twenty of their threes fall broadly into this category. The Cavs knocked down only five of them (20%). That’s well below their season-long average of 39.3% on 27.5 attempts per game (fifth highest percentage).

I categorized 15 of these attempts as good. They hit just four of the good ones. These were the result of moving the ball around the perimeter like the Cavs have been doing all season. You would expect a much higher percentage of these to go, given who the shooter was and how much space they had.

The five bad attempts were mostly due to Indiana’s defenders doing a better job of reacting and contesting than the offensive player anticipated. The initial play was there, but it took too long to develop.

There were also four pick-and-pop threes worth highlighting (there isn’t video of the De’Andre Hunter first quarter miss, so the highlight only shows three of them). This is a shot type that the Pacers are willing to give up with their drop defense.

This created A+ looks for both Sam Merrill and Max Strus, they just didn’t consistently knock them down. It’s also notable that they didn’t have any of these shot types in the second half. It’s a shot I would’ve liked to have seen them continually hunt, even though they didn’t go down in the first half.

Overall, this leaves you with 22 three-point attempts that I would label as good shots, or at the very least, ones that you’re satisfied with taking at the end of the possession. They only hit five of those threes (22.7%), which is how you get a game as frustrating as this.

The best teams are the ones that consistently create and hit open threes. The Cavs have consistently done that all season. It’s why they finished with a conference-best 64 wins.

The overall process was good. They generated the shots they wanted. Sometimes they don’t fall. That’s just how basketball works.

But the law of averages suggests that this cold slump shouldn’t last if they keep creating quality looks like this. We’ll see what happens in Game 2 on Tuesday.