Cavaliers vs. Raptors Game 2 – What lineups will the Cavs use?

Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals is in the books. It … could have gone worse for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who welcomed the Toronto Raptors into their building by promptly punching them in the face. Let’s not start booking flights to Oakland for a Finals matchup with the Golden State Warriors quite yet (who are in the thick of a 1-1 series, themselves), as the Raptors have survived to this stage after botching Game 1 in their previous two series. But, knowing what we know (or at least thinking what we think we know) after the series opener and the first two rounds of the playoffs, what lineup rotations can Cavs fans expect master tactician/Samuel L. Jackson impersonator Tyronn Lue to deploy against the Raptors going forward? Consider this your Game 2 pre-tip nerd-out.

The table below summarizes how often and how successfully the Cavaliers utilized several different lineup combinations throughout the season and the first two rounds of the playoffs. Most numbers should be taken in context: the Cavaliers handled the Hawks thoroughly overall, so a high number of +10.2 per 48 minutes (such as when LeBron James and Matthew Dellavedova were on the floor together during the series) isn’t that impressive when the Cavaliers as a team outscored the Hawks by 12.5 points per game. There are a lot of numbers, and the table is basically gobbledygook if you try to swallow it in one big gulp, so I’ll do my best to summarize what insights I took from it, and break it up it digestible chunks that I’ll regurgitate like a mother bird for your consumption.¹

Here are my primary observations:

• The Cavs’ starters are taking care of business. Slice it any way you want, the Cavs are whomping opponents with the lineup of LeBron James-Kevin Love-J.R. Smith-Kyrie Irving-Tristan Thompson. Obviously, this is encouraging against any opponent because teams lean on their starters heavily in the playoffs. The starters had a plus/minus of +5 in Game 1 against the Raptors, which prorates to +13.3 per 48 minutes (which is good).
• The biggest revelation in the playoffs for Coach Lue (other than using expletives to motivate his team) has been playing Kevin Love and Channing Frye together. After basically never playing together in the 28 games Frye was wearing a Cavalier jersey, Love and Frye were on the floor together for 15 percent of the Hawks series, outscoring Atlanta by nearly a point per minute, the best of any two-man lineup that played more than 20 minutes in the series. Whether this success was unique to the Hawks remains to be seen (I’ll discuss this more in a moment).
• The Cavs aren’t great without LeBron James. (Surprise!) Obviously, this information is not going to blow anyone’s mind. But the disparity between the Cavs with and without LeBron is stark, and borderline alarming. The disparity is especially pronounced when the Cavs throw a pile of shooters out there without James to act as maestro.
• The Cavs have had varying degrees of success with bigger lineups (think Thompson and Love together) and small lineups (think either Love or Thompson, with James and some guards). This might hint at some offensive versatility, with the matchup dictating whether they’re better off going big or small. For instance, should the Cavs get to a Finals with Golden State, could the Cavs counter the Warriors’ deadly small-ball lineup with a big lineup, or counter Oklahoma City’s big lineup with Enes Kanter and Steven Adams with a small lineup should they play the Thunder?
• The potent James-Delly combo fell back to earth in the Hawks series. Was this a result of Delly’s erratic shooting (3-of-15 in the series), or something more? James+Delly has been the best two-man lineup in the league in the playoffs among qualifiers,² outscoring opponents by an astounding 32.6 points per 48 minutes, and teams are on pace to score less than 80 points per game against lineups with James and Dellavedova. One of the few lineups with a decent sample size to out-perform the James-Delly Special? Channing Frye and Kevin Love.
• James and Love have been playing fantastic together, especially of late, and doubly so with small lineups in which James is at the four and Love is at the five, something many “basketball people” have talked about as being a post-season wrinkle that could make the Playoff Cavs scarier than Regular Season Cavs.

So how will the Cavs use this information to attack the Raptors going forward? Some thoughts, supported with what we learned from Game 1:

• With a sidelined Jonas Valanciunas, a source of inspiration for the Raptors and their most consistent player in the playoffs, I expected the Cavs to play big, using Love and Tristan Thompson to own the boards, and Love and Frye to unleash an aerial three-point assault. Bismack Biyombo has been great for the Raps in the playoffs, but the Cavs could use Love/Thompson to combo him on the glass, or Love/Frye to yank him away from the basket and mitigate any effect he has on defense. This wasn’t really the case in Game 1, as the Cavs went small for 15 of the 33 pre-Mozgov minutes, a 35.7 percent rate that was above their regular season numbers.
• If and when Valanciunas returns, the Cavs will play small if their three-point shooting successes continue, hoping to nullify any problems Valanciunas gives them inside by making him a liability on defense, and forcing him to chase Love or Frye (playing the five) on the perimeter.
• Coach Lue discovered the not-really-that-complicated concept of playing one of the Big Three at all times in the Detroit Pistons series, but got away from it for whatever reason against the Hawks (not that it mattered). Expect him to stagger their minutes so one of them is on the floor at all times against the Raptors. This strategy was most evident with one specific lineup, as mentioned in the upcoming bullet point.
• LEBRON PLUS SHOOTERS. In the first half of the second quarter, Coach Lue gave Love and Irving a rest, putting James on the floor with Dellavedova, Frye, Richard Jefferson, and Iman Shumpert (who counts as a “shooter” when he’s on the floor with LeBron James). That lineup outscored the Raptors by 13 points in only six minutes, making six of their seven field goal attempts. Surrounding James with shooters has been successful all season, and it’s an overwhelming proposition for the Raptors’ second unit to go against. Will Dwane Casey make sure that either Kyle Lowry or DeMar Derozan are on the floor to start the second and fourth quarters to compensate?
• Will Casey have Bismack Biyombo defend James? Jeff Van Gundy mentioned this during the Game 1 broadcast, and it makes sense. Patrick Patterson, DeMarre Carroll, James Johnson, and Terrence Ross all did little to nothing to slow James in Game 1. Why not try Biyombo, at least while James is taking 90 percent of his shots in the restricted area. Make James shoot some jumpers.
• The Cavs will lean on Delly more in this series than they did against the Hawks. The Cavs can win this series by outscoring the Raptors if they want — but the Raptors cannot win this series without Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan each having monster series. The Cavs have struggled defending Lowry on more than one occasion; I think Coach Lue will ask Delly or Shumpert lock Lowry down, and then try to crossmatch Kyrie Irving with someone like Cory Joseph.
• To follow up on the last point, the Cavs may use a lot of three-guard lineups with a combination of Irving and Delly-Smith-Shumpert, with Smith/Shumpert to defend DeRozan so LeBron James doesn’t have to, allowing James to play his “free safety” role by sagging off DeMarre Carroll, Terrence Ross, or James Johnson. Iman Shumpert was superb in Game 1 (if only “OK” defending DeRozan), so expect Lue to toss Shump like a bucket of cold water at a hot Lowry or DeRozan.
• Can the Raptors get the Cavs in foul trouble early? That might be their best strategy to steal a game.

To summarize, the Cavs have a lot more attack options, both offensively and defensively, than the Raptors do; especially with Jonas Valanciunas out. The Cavs will plan to outpace the Cavaliers with lots of Frye and Love together if the three-point shelling continues, and may retreat into a small/switch-friendly unit with Delly, Shumpert, James, and Thompson if the shots aren’t falling early, forcing Lowry and DeRozan to come up with the points to beat them. I suspect Games 2 and Beyond won’t be as easy as Game 1, but the Cavs have a lot of options and counters to attack the Raptors.

1. All stats derived from data on NBA.com. It’s important to note that regular season numbers for “all qualifying lineups” only includes the top 250 lineups in the regular season, because those are the only ones on which NBA.com has data. These 250 lineups accounted for 3808.4 minutes of the 3971.0 total minutes the Cavaliers played this year, or 95 percent of the total minutes. But, this explains why the +6.7 per 48 minutes shown in the table does not match the resulting +5.9 for all minutes played in the regular season. I expunged values with one or less percent of time played in the playoffs, because the sample sizes were small, and the resulting per 48 minute numbers were wacky because of it. Feel free to tweet at me if you’d like more information on my methodology, as it would require a couple hundred words to explain how I classified some of the lineups.  [↩]
2. Nearly 90 minutes of playing time are required to make the cut. [↩]