Last night, the Cleveland Cavaliers shocked the world and beat the LeBron James and the Miami Heat. They were able to win by having success knocking down jumpers in Spot-Up situations. According to Synergy, the Cavs scored 39 points out of 25 spot-up situations (1.56 PPP) on 69.6% shooting, including 70% (7-10) shooting from three.
This success was unexpected because the Heat are usually one of the best teams when defending agains Spot-Ups. According to Synergy, the Heat are the 2nd best defensive team in Spot-Up situations, holding opponents to 0.907 PPP on 36.3% shooting. So what happened against the Cavs, and what allowed them to have so much success against Miami? It is pretty simple, the Heat closed out very poorly:
On this play, LeBron James is in help position (preparing to help on the roll man) as the Cavs run a pick and roll. As Davis makes the pass to Alonzo Gee in the corner, James turns in the wrong direction, basically circling around before closing out. By the time James gets out to the corner, it is too late and Gee knocks down the shot.
Last night against the Indiana Pacers, the Cleveland Cavaliers had a chance to do something they haven’t done in a while, win. However, the Cavs inability to defend the three point shot (something that they are historically bad at doing) cost them this game. With 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter, the Cavs found themselves up two points. In those remaining 5 minutes the Pacers hit 3 shots from the field, and all three were three pointers off of defensive mistakes:
Three 1 – Slow Rotation
As the Pacers run their offense, Christian Eyenga is covering Danny Granger on the weakside. Eyenga does what he is supposed to in terms of help for the most part, but once Mike Dunleavy Jr. gets the basketball on the wing, Eyenga starts to ball watch a little to much. So when Dunleavy Jr. pump fakes to Roy Hibbert on the block, Eyenga bites a bit on that. That split second delay is what gives Granger that space to take and make the three pointer.
A team’s performance after a timeout may be the best way to judge a coach’s Xs & Os knowledge, and his ability to draw up plays. The Clipboard Awards is a competition where I choose the top three post-timeout plays each night, adding up the scores over the course of the season.
Play #3 (1 point)- John Kuester/Detroit Pistons
For the third place play, the Detroit Pistons ran a very quick hitting play that was designed to open up Ben Gordon. The play worked, and it forced the defense’s hand, leading to an open basket.
The ball gets inbounded from Ben Gordon to Tayshaun Prince in the post. Once Gordon inbounds the basketball, he gets a backscreen from a Piston big. Gordon uses that backscreen to flare out to the high post.
D.J. Augustin gets caught up in the screen, leaving Gordon wide open. This forces the defense to step up and close out hard on Gordon, who has been shooting very well this game.
The Cleveland Cavaliers are a very bad team, there is no real question about that. When trying to figure out why they are so bad, you have to look at the defensive end, where they have a Defensive Rating of 108.6 points allowed per 100 possessions. More specifically, you have to look at their ability to defend the three point line. So far this season, the Cavaliers have allowed opponents to shoot 42.2 percent from the three-point line, ranking them dead last in three-point defense. In fact, according to SI.com’s Zach Lowe, that would be the worst mark in NBA history.
There is no real individual at fault here. Instead, this is all due to bad team defense. Where Cleveland seems to get beat the most for threes is in spot-up situations, as opponents have have made 207 threes (the Cavs have given up 348 three-pointers so far this season) out of this situation. Another indication of the Cavaliers’ poor help defense is their opponent assist numbers. 61.9 percent of opponents’ baskets are assisted (third-worst in the NBA).
Over at the Point Forward (seriously, a must read NBA-blog), Zach Lowe looked at how poor floor balance from the Golden State Warriors allowed the Miami Heat to get out in the open court and run the floor. Well, tonight the Cavs were playing the Heat, and again poor floor balance was responsible for a Miami Heat fast break:
As Mo Williams picks up his dribble, the floor is balanced. What I mean by floor balance is that the offense has at least one player (usually a guard) out near the top of the key behind the three point to prevent a fast break in the case of a miss or a turnover.
From now until the start of the NBA season later this month, we are going to be running our season previews. Each day, we are going to look at two teams and talk about one thing they did well last year and one thing that they did poorly last year. Then, we are going to talk about the chances of maintaining what they did well/changing what they did poorly. In this edition we will look at the Cleveland Cavaliers.
One Thing They Did Well
Using Off Ball Screens
The Cleveland Cavs were incredibly efficient on offense, and a lot of it had to do with LeBron James. The Cavs were most effective were when they were using off the ball screens. According to Synergy, the Cavs were 2nd in the NBA in terms of PPP when working off of screens while shooting 43.2% from three.
The main reason why the Cavs were so effective in this area was LeBron James, even though he wasn’t the one doing a bulk of the scoring off of screens. However, he was the one setting everything up. In the above clip, every defender has their eyes focused on LeBron, this allows for the screener to get into position, getting a solid one set for Anthony Parker.
The Wizards’ buzzer beater against the Hornets wasn’t the only game winning shot of the night. In the other gym, Pooh Jeter and the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to get a game winner of their own. Unlike the Wizards’ winner, the Cavs were able to get their best shooter a wide open look for a game-winning three:
When the ball gets tossed to the trigger man, Pooh Jeter comes down and set a brush screen for Marquis Gilstrap. Gilstrap come out can receives the basketball from the inbounder Aaron Jackson. After the quick screen, Jeter floats out towards the corner.
In Game 6, Kevin Garnett scored 22 points on over 50% shooting. You could shrug your shoulders and say that’s just a great player being great, but you’d be wrong. This one’s on Cavs coach Mike Brown. Mike Brown made an adjustment for Game 6 that resulted directly in Kevin Garnett going off. He took Antawn Jamison off of Kevin Garnett and put Shaquille O’Neal on him. In fairness to Coach Brown, Jamison was getting killed by Garnett on the inside and a switch had to be made. But why Shaq? My guess is that Mike Brown saw Jamison getting punished inside and thought, “Hey Shaq’s big. KG won’t score inside now!” almost forgetting that KG has an outside game.
Realizing the new mismatch, the Celtics went to KG early and he scored 6 of the first 12 Celtics points.
Something LeBron did a lot of during Game 5 was standing on the wing or in the corner, just looking uninterested. I was sitting there waiting for LeBron to make a cut off the basketball, get the ball going full speed, and slamming it home. After seeing the ball go in, LeBron would start making jumpers and the Cavs would come back and get the win. That never happened though, LeBron just continued to stand there.
Kelly Dwyer just put out a fantastic article on what LeBron needs to do in Game 6, what I want to look at is what the Cavs can do to get LeBron going. In my opinion, it’s all in the playcalling.
Pick and Roll As A Decoy
While watching game 5, I was so shocked that the Cavs didn’t call this play. I was waiting for it and waiting for it, but it never happened. That’s funny, because the Cavs seem to run this play once or twice a game and it seems to always work:
I am not going to look at LeBron’s poor game in detail, because let’s face it, a lot of writers/bloggerswho arebetter thanme havedone it already, with my personal favorite being Kevin Arnovitz’s look at it. What I was looking for when I rewatched last night’s game was whether or not there was anything wrong with LeBron’s outside shot. I noticed a couple things that looked a little different last night vs. when he has things clicking from the outside.
On The Catch
In my opinion, LeBron did two things you don’t normally see him do on the catch. He wasn’t stepping into/through the basketball, and he was bringing it down on the catch.
In the third quarter, the Cavs really tried to get LeBron going. They started setting off-ball screens for James and had him running off of them. Here, LeBron runs along the baseline, getting a screen from Antawn Jamison.
