David Blatt on Kyrie Irving’s injury: “Progress has been slow”
June 2, 2015The Similar Sagas of Sizemore & Daugherty
June 2, 2015Before the Eastern Conference Finals, WFNY’s Jacob and Kyle played a game of “The Cavs Will Win If …” for the team’s matchup with the Atlanta Hawks. Well, the Cavs swept the 60-win number one seed in the East, obligating Jacob and Kyle to run it back once again, unwilling to tempt fate in the case that the Cavs will win if … Jacob and Kyle write a “The Cavs Will Win If …” post. You never know with these things. Also, Kyle hasn’t changed his underwear since Game 4 of the Bulls series.
Kyle: Well, here we are again. We were right about a lot of things last time around and wrong about a few things. Superhero LeBron had his cape on and heavily involved his teammates (he was only three assists away from averaging a triple-double), the Cavs won despite allowing Jeff Teague to ride roughshod on them (he penetrated at will and averaged over 21 points), and Tristan Thompson was a hellion on the glass (grabbing 11.0 rebounds per game and over four offensive rebounds). But I was correct a little more, so the score right now is roughly 1005-to-17 in my favor. Don’t ask how the scoring works, Jacob … it’s a little convoluted. You’re free to appeal the present score, but I’m also the head (and sole member) of the T.C.W.W.I. Appeals Board, so it’s your call. Shake It Off, Jacob, maybe you’ll close the gap in the Finals. But I’ll lead off.
The Cavs Will Win If … Timofey Mozgov can play more than 25 minutes per game. I know what you’re thinking: Kyle, you used that T.C.W.W.I. in the Conference Finals. Kyle, you just want an excuse to talk about Timofey Mozgov, with whom you have a strange and inexplicable obsession. Kyle, I don’t appreciate you presuming to have the faintest understanding of my brain’s inner workings and mimicking my internal dialogue. And to those complaints I would say: Yeah, because Mozgov is awesome; Probably; and If that’s the case, then how do I know you’re thinking about tacos right now? But I would also add that Mozgov played 26.6 minutes per game in the Eastern Conference Finals, the most of any series thus far in the playoffs.
The reason the Cavs will win the Finals if Mozgov plays more than 25 minutes per game is less causation and more correlation than the previous series. Andrew Bogut, the Warriors’ Mozgov-ian counterpart at the center position, is every bit the rim protector that Mozgov is: they’re both holding opponents to less than 41 percent shooting at the rim and blocking over two shots per game. The Cavs need Mozgov on the floor to be a great help defender and defend the rim (I would argue that Mozgov’s done better than Houston’s Dwight Howard did this postseason in both those areas). Mozgov and Bogut will likely play each other to a draw, which is a win for the Cavs because LeBron James is on their team.
If Mozgov isn’t on the floor for 25 minutes, though, then that means the Warriors are going small for long stretches. Though the Cavs small lineups have been effective since the midway point of the Bulls series, the Cavs will probably not outscore the Warriors in a game of small ball. Small ball means a faster pace (page one on the Warriors’ “Script for Success”), and (for the Cavs) a lot of James Jones, whom the Warriors will torture on defense. More Mozerati means that the Cavs have been successful enough at small ball to play traditional lineups, with which they’re more comfortable and which will keep their rim protector and luxury performance vehicle on the court.
Jacob: The Cavs Will Win If … LeBron James continues his historic play. So, neither of us are saying anything really ground-breaking for these first two points. You went with your usual Mozgov rant, and here I am on how the Cavs need their best player to be incredible. Real creative points from each of us. Kudos to us unoriginal ones. But it’s pretty simple: LeBron hasn’t played very well in the NBA Finals in his career and he hasn’t played very well in playoff road Game 1s. This is compared to his usual other-worldly baseline, of course. And there is some obvious overlap in those two statistics, with three of his five previous NBA Finals appearances starting on the road. But both of those facts need to change if this team is going to have a legitimate chance to beat the all-the-time-great Warriors.
Another look at LeBron career playoff road game 1s and NBA Finals stats. Note the FTA, TS% and A/TO. pic.twitter.com/OeJLhKouZm
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) June 1, 2015
Recall that LeBron had his highest usage rate in the Hawks series of any of his 32 career playoff series. Recall that LeBron had 42-5-11 in the Cavs home victory over the Warriors back in late February, a game that also featured an efficient 16-8 performance from Kevin Love. In order for the Cavs to take down this juggernaut of an opponent, they’ll need LeBron to be at his most efficient self. That means heading to the free throw line 8-10 times per game. That means not falling prey to the dribble-off-his-feet-every-quarter bug that’s plagued him all season. That means busting out of his drawn-out shooting slump from the last two months. That means that we’ll easily see the best NBA Finals performance of his career. That’s essentially what it will take to really have a chance here.
Kyle: So LeBron James is important? Yadon’tsay? But in all seriousness, there’s not really a counterpoint to that. LeBron’s going to need to be spectacular for the Cavs to have a shot. Here’s the thing … why can’t it happen? Whenever I start to look at how the teams match up, I go back to James’ dominant game against the Warriors and February and ask, “Who’s going to guard him?” If the answer is Harrison Barnes, that’s probably the wrong answer. If it’s Draymond Green, then … well, The Starters’ Trey Kerby summed up that conundrum thusly:
If it's Cavs-Warriors, who guards LeBron?
Draymond, you say? OK, then who boxes out Tristan Thompson?
Uh oh. This might be close.
— Taco Trey Kerby (@treykerby) May 27, 2015
And the most important thing that seemingly everyone in Western Hemisphere seems to be forgetting: NO KAWHI LEONARD. How do you feel about not having to go against the best perimeter defender in the league, LeBron? And could you tell us with the weirdest gesture possible?
The Cavs Will Win If … The Iman Shumpert/J.R. Smith combo can slow down Klay Thompson. Although there are a lot of reasons the Cavs qualified for the NBA’s championship-deciding series (most of which begin with “the Eastern Conference,” and “LeBron Raymone James”), one of the biggest is the superlative play of refurbished New York Knick castoffs Shumpert and Smith. They’ve both been defending at an extremely high level in the playoffs, causing the players they’re defending to shoot 7.2 and 11.6 percent below their average on three-point field goals, respectively. They both chased Hawks guard/shooting assassin Kyle Korver around before he suffered his ankle injury in Game 2, and the two of them together defended Hawks point guard Jeff Teague — Atlanta’s best offensive and best overall player in the series — over 20 percent of the time.1
Klay Thompson, unlike Stephen Curry, isn’t an offensive dynamo — he’s just plain really good. Good perimeter defenders can frustrate him, force him into taking bad shots, and render him offensively inefficient. In the Western Conference Finals, Klay averaged an underwhelming 17.8 points, 2.6 rebounds, and 3.2 assists with a mortal 34.1 three-point shooting percentage. Memphis’ Tony Allen harassed Klay in the second round and Thompson struggled against every competent defender on Houston, especially Trevor Ariza and James Harden.2 Smith and Shumpert have also been excellent on offense, shooting the three well (45.4 percent combined in the playoffs), attacking defenders they perceive as beneath them (they destroyed Korver and Kent Bazemore against the Hawks), and saving Cavs possessions with their great isolation play (a combined offensive rating of 113.5). Curry’s going to get his points, but forcing Klay to bust his ass on both ends would throw a gorilla-sized monkey wrench in the gears of this finely tuned Warriors machine.
Jacob: The Cavs Will Win If … They can out-shoot Golden State. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be writing much, much more on Klay Thompson by the end of the week. I owe that to Golden State fans based on my Nylon Calculus shooter profile that I wrote before the season started. But I’m flipping the switch here from defense back to offense. The Warriors were the No. 1 offense and defense this season, and I think most folks have forgotten that second fact because they also had the fastest pace. That inflates per-game team stats, since their games featured about 4.5 more possessions than the NBA average, according to the estimates on Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com/stats. So yes, the Warriors had the best defense in the league despite allowing 99.9 points per game, the 15th-lowest in the league.
What makes the Warriors defense great? They ranked No. 1 in effective field goal percentage allowed (.470, compared to the league average of .496), which is helpful preventing points on a per-possession basis. They were just very, very good at holding teams to lower shooting averages than expected. But in their 18 losses including the playoffs, their opponent eFG% was .531, compared to a staggeringly impressive .457 in wins. That difference — .074 — was noticeably greater than the difference in their offensive eFG% between wins and losses (about .053, with .549 in wins and .497 in losses). So one might be able to say that opponent shooting is a slightly more important bellwether for Golden State’s success.
This then comes down to the money area: Three-point shooting.3 In the effective field goal percentage formula, threes are worth more than twos — as they should be. And for the Cavs, that means having efficient shooting performances from not only LeBron, but also from J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Kyrie Irving, et al. I’m left with one point that I made on Twitter yesterday:
Teams with 66+ wins and 39-2 home records are insanely difficult to beat once, let alone four times! It'd require something extraordinary.
— Jacob L. Rosen (@JacobLRosen) June 1, 2015
It’s going to be very difficult to beat this Warriors team. They’re 79-18, for goodness’ sake! And they were far more dominant than the 2008-09 Cavaliers by just about any advanced metric. This means it might require something reminiscent of Rafer Alston-Mickael Pietrus shooting magic for the Cavaliers to pull this off. I’m not all that optimistic. But this would be a key to potential success.
Kyle: The Warriors are (and should be) favorites, but I’m a smidgeon less bullish on them than most people, so I’ll close with this: The Cavs Will Win If … They continue to play as hard as they have all playoffs. Let’s not forget that since January, when the Cavs finally started playing hard together as a team (and cough, brought in Mozgov, cough), the Cavs have been just as good as the Warriors. The Cavs are 46-11 (.807) since January 15, while the Warriors are 48-13 (.787). The Cavs also have better offensive, defensive, and net ratings in the playoffs. We all know the Western Conference is better than wretched East, but come on! the Warriors dodged the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Clippers — the best non-Cavs or Warriors teams in the league. I, for one, choose to believe in the Cavs.
- Based on the number of field goals Teague took when Smith or Shumpert were the closest defender, based on NBA.com’s shot logs. [↩]
- Yes, you read that correctly. Klay made only 3-of-14 shots when James Harden was the defender closest to him. He was 12-of-28 against Ariza. Klay struggled against everyone on the Rockets not named “Josh Smith” and “Jason Terry.” [↩]
- Interjection from Kyle: $$. [↩]
9 Comments
I have no ability to do advanced analysis, but I’ll say this – everyone says Cavs are much bigger than GS. Isn’t the bigger team supposed to win in basketball? Before it starts, this series reminds me a little of OSU/Oregon, where everyone hyped up Oregon’s unbelievable offense, and then OSU just punished them with superior size.
Cavs frontcourt led by LBJ vs Warriors backcourt after that it’ll be the intangibles IMO like does someone else step up for either team and which head coach makes the better adjustments quarter to quarter and game to game.
“The Cavs are 46-11 (.807) since January 15, while the Warriors are 48-13 (.787). The Cavs also have better offensive, defensive, and net ratings in the playoffs.” This pretty much says it all to me. Warriors should be favored because of home court, but it’s not a huge advantage. I expect the cavs to win in 6.
Better offensive and defensive net ratings in the playoffs do not adjust for the level of competition. Golden State has had a “tougher road” than the Cavs.
Analytics out the window in this series for me; it’s sheer intangibles. Bron has been here, multiple times. While Steph and Klay are worried about handling tickets to the games LBJ has his troops focused and mentally prepared for what’s about to happen.
But all that aside, I’m with you, Cavs in six.
You’d have a stronger point if Love was available. But without him, the Cavs have only two effective big men (Mozgov and Thompson) and how they manage their minutes will be an interesting subplot. They can only play two bigs together so much now (and Mozgov can’t really be left on Draymond Green).
I touched on this at the start of the Bulls series, and will have some data on lineup breakdowns soon.
https://waitingfornextyear.com/2015/05/cavs-need-to-go-big-or-go-home/
Actually, the Cavs have been better after adjusting for competition. According to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton, anyway.
https://twitter.com/kpelton/status/605389194651942912
I SAID ANALYTICS BE DAMNED KYLE.
Thanks for the correction; and now the “sheer intangibles” I mentioned earlier along with those stats mentioned make me feel even MORE warm and fuzzy.
Cavs in three.
We will win if we can force them to play our style of basketball (the assumption being that Kyrie remains healthy enough to be effective). To make that happen we should do the following;
1) Defend the three point line like our lives depend on it. Force them to take two point shots without committing unnecessary fouls.
2) Slow down their transition offense. This is best done by reducing our turnovers, not over-committing to offensive rebounding (ie: let Tristan battle for it while everyone else gets back), also getting back after a made shots, and never complaining to the refs during live play.
3) Attack them with our own transition offense. Bogut is a great rim protector but is also incredibly slow. It’s to our advantage to get a shot before he’s set. Also, attack Bogut and try to get him into foul trouble. Without him their #1 defense collapses.
4) Use LeBron effectively. Don’t allow LeBron to pound the air out of the ball and take poor jump shots.
Instead, post him up. He should have plenty of mismatches and GS cannot consistently prevent him from either getting an easy look or dishing out from a double team for a wide open 3 or a layup/dunk to a cutting player.
Painting with the broadest strokes, the Cavs can win this if each guy continues to play as fearless as they have to date, and some important Golden State cogs do not. I don’t know why no Cavs are playing tight but it’s an unusual thing. When they start slow and fall behind there’s zero panic; when the opponent make a late game run, same. And they’re coming out of half times with good energy and adjustments.
If GS plays just as loosely I think we lose; their rotation is too deep and we’ll really feel the impact of not having Love to produce points. But if GS gets nervous and starts pressing, we have The Dragon – there haven’t been too many players in NBA history with LeBron’s combination of talent and winning playoff experience. Let’s see who blinks.