Breaking Down The Delonte-less Cavaliers

This week, the Cavaliers begin their west coast swing, starting with tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers. A week ago, this was all set to be a marquee matchup between 2 of the NBA’s top 3 teams, record wise. That’s still true, but for the Cavaliers, this game will be much more difficult thanks to the loss of Delonte West.

The win against New Orleans on Friday night was huge for Cleveland. It gave them a much needed boost of confidence that they could still beat elite teams without Delonte. Watching them sulk on the court during the game against the Bulls after West went out with the stitches and fractured wrist, it was clear they just never regained themselves. So by beating a really good Hornets team Friday, the Cavaliers were able to depart for the west coast with some momentum and confidence.

That being said, though, teams will often have to find new ways to win when they lose a key contributor. By no means are the Cavaliers the only team this year to face tough personnel losses. In fact, the Lakers themselves have had to deal with injuries to Lamar Odom, Sasha Vujacic, Jordan Farmar, and Luke Walton. The key for any team who is missing an important piece is how they adjust and find ways to still win. The Cavaliers will be no exception.   

The problems with the Cavaliers without Delonte West are twofold. First of all, the offense since Delonte West left the game Thursday has completely shut down again. The Cavaliers are back to primarily shooting jumpers with the shot clock running out. Despite being 17th in 3P%, the Cavaliers are 4th in the NBA in percentage of shots from three. Even before Delonte’s injury, 26% of their shots were from three. Now, after losing their best 3-point shooter, it seems their attempts might actually increase. That’s an inverse ratio that makes no sense, and Mike Brown will have to get on the team to improve their spacing so they can run the offense and get some easier shots, because you can bet more and more teams are going to use the “San Antonio Defense” against them and try to force them to keep jacking up long range jumpers.

Not only does the spacing and movement need to increase, but with that, they need to speed up the offense. The Cavaliers’ effective FG% decreases as time ticks off the shot clock. When they shoot in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, their eFG% is .583, within 11-15 seconds it’s .552, within 16-20 seconds it’s .508, and after 20 seconds it’s .455. With Delonte West in the lineup, 51% of the Cavaliers’ shots were happening in the first 15 seconds. Without him, that percentage might decrease based on the way the Cavaliers have played on offense thus far. They cannot allow themselves to keep grinding down the offense and rushing outside shots as the shot clock expires. Without Zydrunas Ilgauskas in the lineup, that problem is magnified as you are missing one of your best offensive rebounders who can get some big tip ins off of misses or can at least give the Cavaliers some 2nd chance opportunities.

It will be important that some players expand their roles. Now is the time for Mo Williams to step up and become an even bigger part of the offense. Nobody is complaining about the way Mo has played this year, he’s been great. But in times like these, it’s not fair to just ask LeBron to shoulder all of the burden. Mo is a phenomenal offensive player, and he can help open some scoring lanes for LeBron by keeping defenses honest. We’ve seen Mo show his skills with his mid range jumper and his floater in the lane. He’s capable of breaking down plenty of guys off the dribble, and he it will be huge if he can get the offense started quicker by attacking right away. Beyond Mo, now will be the time for Daniel Gibson to shine as well. After struggling with his shot earlier in the year, we’ve been witnessing signs of his jumper coming back to him, and that could be huge for the Cavaliers while Delonte is gone.

On defense, the Cavaliers may need to make some adjustments as well. Currently they give up 99.3 points per 100 possessions, which is first in the NBA. One line of thinking may be that by slowing the game down and using more of the shot clock, the Cavaliers can reduce their opponents possessions and thus drive down the number of points they can score against them. However, the danger is that without your best perimeter defender, that defensive rating number might increase, and the Cavaliers could risk compounding their problems. Not only that, but by slowing the game down, it would stand to reason based on those eFG% numbers that the Cavaliers will also be reducing their own point totals.

No longer can the Cavaliers switch Delonte West over to defend quicker PGs, either. So on defense, the Cavaliers will be relying much more on a different tactic. They will be using the size of Sasha Pavlovic rather than the quickness of Delonte West. At 6’7” and with a long wing span, Pavlovic can hassle opponents in different ways. However, if other teams are going to use their quickness to get around Mo and Sasha, then the frontcourt must be ready to rotate and cut them off from the lane. What this means is that their defensive rotations must be quicker than ever, or else they will start giving up some easy baskets underneath. The Cavaliers were a great defensive team before Delonte got here, and I suspect that, if the New Orleans game was any indication, without him the defense will still be able to hold its own. They will just have to focus even more on their help rotations and can no longer afford to have stretches where they aren’t paying attention to their rotation assignments.

Another interesting thing we saw the Cavaliers do on Friday night was use much smaller lineups than we have ever seen before. For the first time in my memory, the Cavs used a lineup in which LeBron was the tallest Cavalier on the floor, thus by default playing “center”. Even when he plays the 4, or now the 5, LeBron doesn’t play with his back to the basket very often, so it gives the offense a very different dynamic. That worked well with Delonte on the floor, and it worked well enough against a smaller New Orleans team, but against a big team like the Lakers, this tactic probably won’t be quite as effective.

What this means is that it’s time for Anderson Varejao to show up again and stop getting into foul trouble by committing bad fouls. After playing well for a few games in Big Z’s absence, AV has completely disappeared in the last few games. Friday night he played 23 minutes and had 4 points and 1 rebound. One rebound. In 23 minutes. That is completely unacceptable play. Even Thursday night against the Bulls, AV played 39 minutes and had just 4 points and 5 rebounds. And the game before that, against the Grizzlies, he played 30 minutes and had 7 points and only 4 rebounds. If Varejao is going to keep playing like this, it means that not only are the Cavaliers without Big Z and Delonte, but they might as well be without AV as well. And when combined with the fact that Ben Wallace is never a threat on offense, it can really put the team in a bind and add a lot of unneeded strain on the offense.

This stretch without Delonte is going to be a tremendous challenge for the team. There is no doubt that they can win without him. They’ve done it before, and they can do it again. But it won’t be easy. When Delonte was playing, the Cavaliers were playing like the best team in the NBA. That level of play is surely going to drop, but the question will be how far. If they make some smart adjustments on offense, if they can keep themselves moving off the ball, if AV can get himself reacquainted with the offense, if the defensive intensity increases even more, and if LeBron can remember to keep attacking the basket and not fall in love with his jumper too much, the Cavaliers can sustain their high level of play and come out of this road trip in good shape and head toward the All-Star break as one of the top 2 or 3 teams in the East. If they don’t adjust, though, this next month could be a long and excruciating one for Cavaliers players and fans alike.