It was a goaltend. As the final seconds ticked off the clock in Game 5 between the Pacers and Cavaliers, Victor Oladipo drove past LeBron James and craftily twisted the ball so that it would angle into the basket for the go-ahead bucket. The only problem was, LeBron blocked it.
It didn’t matter that James had obviously blocked the shot after the ball touched the backboard--by rule a goaltend that would’ve awarded the 2 points to Indiana--as the referees blew the call and Cleveland got the ball back with a chance to break the tie. Shockingly, the Cavs inbounded the ball to LeBron, who hit a top-of-the-key three-pointer (shades of a shot he hit vs. the Magic) to win the game. At that point, there was just no way that James, the best player in the world, would let the Cavaliers lose the next two games. Cleveland won on Sunday afternoon to take the series in seven games and will now face the top-seeded Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
Although Cavs fans may be feeling confident now, the series against the Pacers exposed everything wrong with the Cavaliers. With all their glaring weaknesses combined with Toronto’s exceptional strengths, I think that this series will be over in five, maybe six games. There’s no way that LeBron singlehandedly pulls this one off.
Where to start? How about the fact that the Cavs didn’t even deserve to beat the Pacers. Consider this: The Pacers actually outscored Cleveland by 40 points in the seven-game series, which, according to Kevin Pelton, is the largest margin that the losing team in a series outscored the winning team in the last 33 years. In fact, the four games that Indiana lost were by a combined 14 points. What's more, the Pacers played like they were the superior team. They spaced the floor better, passed the ball more frequently, trusted one another, and never quit on any game. They had a nice 8-9 man rotation where the scoring was pretty spread out--obviously the exception was star guard, Victor Oladipo, who averaged 22.7 PPG in the series. Conversely, LeBron scored 241 of the Cavs’ 664 points in the series, or roughly 36% of Cleveland’s offensive output. Even for a guy that averaged a 35% usage rate (% of the team’s total offensive attempts including field goal attempts, free throws, assists, and TO’s) in the regular season, this is simply an unsustainable percentage that will not work against a more talented, deeper team in the Raptors.
The Cavaliers also struggled on offense, despite the absurd 40+ point performances from LeBron in multiple games. As opposed to the regular season, where they ranked 3rd in eFG% and 5th in offensive rating, the Cavs rank 11th and 13th (out of 16 playoff teams) in those respective categories thus far in the postseason. A clear explanation for this is how stagnant their offense looks. Often times, especially in the fourth quarter, LeBron has the ball for the entire possession with no movement from the other four players on the court. To be fair to him, I wouldn’t trust a streaky J.R. Smith, an injured Kevin Love, or washed-up players like Jose Calderon and Jeff Green either. But whatever the case may be, Cleveland has to move the ball better and frankly get more assertiveness out of everyone other than LeBron, particularly because they don’t have home-court advantage now. They’re also going up against a team that ranked 3rd and 5th in the NBA in opponent eFG% and defensive rating in the regular season and has amazing defensive depth--Toronto’s top three defensive lineups in defensive rating feature Fred VanVleet, Delon Wright, and Jakob Poeltl, three guys who come off the bench.
Even if they begin to play like a team and fix their recent offensive woes, the Cavs are still awful defensively. They ranked 29th and last in the regular season in defensive rating and opponent eFG%, and it hasn’t been much better for them in the playoffs (11th and 14th in those categories). Furthermore, the Raptors are a team that has a balanced scoring attack even when their stars aren’t on, something that I explain in a recent blog. Plus, they ranked top-6 in both offensive rating and eFG% in the regular season, areas that they’ve continued to excel in during the playoffs.
From the offensive deficiencies from the Cavs to the Raptors great overall play, Cavs fans should not expect to win this series and should foresee a departure from King James early this offseason. By the same token, if James finds a way to pull this one off, he deserves all the credit he’d receive.
(Stas via Cleaning the Glass and ESPN)
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