The Cleveland Cavaliers’ regular season didn’t go as planned, partially thanks to late-season struggles. But this year was always going to be judged on postseason success. That time is now..
Even with a 12-17 finish to the regular season, the Cavs did enough to secure home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. That, in a vacuum, isn’t exactly a success.
The opportunity was there for the Cavs to climb up the standings, but the team lost to the Charlotte Hornets last Sunday, replacing their starters with seldom-used bench and G League players in the fourth quarter while being outscored 18-2 in the final minutes of the game. Winning that game would have meant facing the Indiana Pacers in the first round and avoiding the top-seed Boston Celtics until the Eastern Conference Finals, the third round. Instead, a series win over the Magic would likely mean seeing Boston in the second round, a series in which the Cavs would be heavy underdogs.
To get to that point, the Cavs obviously must take care of business in the first round against the Magic, something that’s far from a guarantee. The Cavs and Magic played four times during the regular season, with each team winning twice.
Three things to watch for in the first round against Orlando.
Donovan Mitchell’s health
The Cavaliers haven’t been a good basketball team in the second half of the season. There’s not a nice way of saying that. After the All-Star Break, the Cavs were 12-17, as compared to 36-17 before the break. A big reason for the post-break slide was the health of Donovan Mitchell.
Mitchell started dealing with knee soreness just before the break, according to The Athletic. After the break, he played in just 11 of Cleveland’s 29 games. Part of that was attributed to a fractured nose, but the knee has been the real issue. When Mitchell has played, his numbers haven’t been great. In the 11 games he played after the break, the All-NBA guard averaged 19.5 points per game compared to a mark of 28 points per game beforehand. That’s partially due to a decrease in attempts, as Mitchell averaged 20.4 field-goal attempts before the break and just 15.5 after, but he also shot the ball at a much better percentage earlier in the season, coming into the break at 47.2% and shooting just 40.4% in his past 11 games. That’s a rather significant dropoff. He also drew fouls at a lesser rate after the injury, attempting 4.1 free throws per game compared to 6.2 per game before.
Some of those numbers can immediately be traced to his ability to get to the basket. The biggest difference for Mitchell in the frequency of shot attempts came inside the arc. He struggled to blow past defenders and attack the basket. Before the injury, Mitchell was attempting nearly 12 2-point shots per game and drawing 31.6% of the fouls for the Cavs. After the break, those numbers dropped to 7.1 2PA and 26.6%.
All of those things add up to not being enough to carry the Cavs the way Mitchell had all of last season and for the first chunk of this year.
The reason for optimism? In Mitchell’s final two regular-season games, he started to look a bit more like himself. He was able to get to the basket more frequently last Friday against Indiana. In nine of his first 10 post-All-Star Break games, Mitchell attempted more 3-pointers than 2-pointers. On Friday night, Mitchell took 27 shots (and a post-break high seven free throws), with 17 of them being 2-pointers. Nine of those were in the painted area.
He had only two other games since the break with nine or more 2-point attempts.
With more than a full week between games for him, the hope has to be that his knee will feel better than it has in a while.
Rebounding
Since the Cavs often play with two big men on the floor in Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, one would think that they would be one of the best rebounding teams in basketball, right?
You would be wrong.
The Cavs collect the 17th-most rebounds per game in the NBA, and on paper, that looks better than the Magic, who rank 25th in total rebounding per game. But digging a bit deeper uncovers that there could be an issue here for the Cavs.
While the Magic’s raw rebounding numbers aren’t that great, they don’t tell the whole story. During the season, the Magic recovered 51.5% of the available rebounds during their games, meaning that they routinely out-rebound their opponents, even if they aren’t collecting huge globs of rebounds. That’s the fourth-best mark in the NBA. The Cavs rank 15th in that category, collecting 50.1% of the available rebounds. That’s a disappointing number, even if the Cavs did play without Mobley for a significant amount of the season due to injury.
To win this series, the Cavs need to be much better at rebounding than they were in the playoffs last year against the Knicks. In that series, New York out-rebounded Cleveland 227-186. If that happens again, an early playoff exit could be in the cards.
Darius Garland’s offensive ability
One of the things that hasn’t gone right for the Cavaliers this season has been the play of point guard Darius Garland. He missed six weeks in the first half of the season due to a fractured jaw and hasn’t been the same player since. There have been times when he’s looked tentative or indecisive during games. The offense hasn’t had the type of flow one would expect with Garland leading the way. What might be the most interesting trend about Garland is that he hasn’t been more aggressive with the basketball during the second half of the season, while Mitchell has been in and out of the lineup.
Before exiting the lineup with his jaw injury, Garland was attempting 16.1 field goals per game, despite sharing the floor with Mitchell in 16 of the 20 games he played. Since Garland’s return, only 20 of 37 games he’s played have been with Mitchell on the floor. Common sense would lead you to believe that Garland’s numbers would rise, but he’s taking two shots less per game in that time. Instead of taking over while Mitchell was out, Garland wasn’t aggressive enough. Yes, he needed to play his way back into shape after losing several pounds while unable to consume solid food for several weeks, but things just haven’t seemed to click for Garland this season.
When Garland has been on the floor for the Cavs this season, the team has scored 115.8 points per 100 possessions. If you alter that to only include minutes when Mitchell has been off the floor, the number drops to 115.1 points per 100 possessions. If Mitchell is on the floor and Garland is off, the number jumps up to 117.3 points per 100 possessions.
This season has been one to forget for Garland, but a strong performance in the playoffs can completely flip that narrative.
Prediction
This series could look much like the first round did last year between the Cavs and Knicks. That series wasn’t the most beautiful basketball anyone has seen, with none of the five games seeing both teams score 100 points. With both these teams ranking in the top seven in the NBA defensively (Orlando is third, Cleveland is seventh) and the bottom half of the league offensively (Cleveland 16th, Orlando 22nd), points are going to be at a premium. Expect this series to be low scoring and played at a slow pace.
The thing that is different for the Cavs compared to last year’s playoff failure is that last season, many of the players on the Knicks had been there before. Guys like Jalen Brunson, Julius Randle and Josh Hart had all been in big playoff moments. Few guys on the Cavs could say that. This year, the Cavs bring the experience and scars of last season’s loss to a series against an Orlando team that brings just a combined 91 games of playoff experience to the table – with Joe Ingles accounting for 50 of those. The roster for the Cavs has combined to play in 359 playoff games, with Tristan Thompson leading the way at 94 appearances.
There’s not a concrete stat that can be pointed to proving just how much that matters, but it’s something that almost everyone agrees is important. It mattered last postseason.
Prediction: Cavs in six games.
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