Cleveland Cavaliers Blog

  In day 1 of training camp Darius, Ricky and Kevin Pangos had a shooting competition that Pangos won, prompting Darius to proclaim that he is coming back for his title. This is a nice little sequence for TC, showing the competitive nature of one of the Cavs young guys, and also the skills of a newcomer.  Not laden with meaning but a nice story while we wait for the season to begin, but it also brings up one question for me.  Why the hell is Pangos on the Cavs?   Let me make this abundantly clear, this question is not being asked - why would the Cavs sign Pangos- as those answers are obvious.  He’s cheap, he has a clear skill set that if it translates will work on or off ball and complements other players, and he was very good in a 2nd tier league making it reasonably likely that those skills will translate.   The question also isn’t why would Pangos take less money to come to the NBA at this stage in his career as I think the drive to compete at ...

  The past two seasons have seen the Cavs actively avoid clearing cap space, they sent expiring contracts out with minor draft compensation for Andre Drummond, and this past year added Markkanen, and re-signed Allen to deals that fill it next season barring a Love dump that doesn’t include salary coming back.  Instead of bringing in Lauri they could have traded Nance for a draft pick and an expiring contract, and then attached that pick to the last of Love’s deal to open up perhaps $40 million in space.  But why do that?  Or conversely why not? The why not is that cap space is difficult to roll over, and for the Cavs doubly so.  Starting in 2022 they have 4 straight seasons in which they hope to have a rookie deal expiring with that player deserving a large extension.  Sexton’s cap hold this summer is $20 million, Garland’s in 2023 will be a few million more than that while the rookie deals of Okoro and Mobely will be adding a few more each year as well....

  Playoffs?  We talkin about playoffs?  Yeah, why not, as fans of  a rebuilding team we often only get to talk about playoffs between the end of the finals and around week 8 of the regular season, so let's talk playoff potential. Three factors in where you end up in the standings relative the year prior, how much better your team got, how much better teams behind you got and how much worse teams ahead of you got or will get.  The Cavs already have two of the three going for them, between a pair of decent acquisitions, young players improving and likely fewer injuries they should be substantially better than last season, while the two teams that finished worse than they did last year are both avoiding adding to many wins for another shot at a top pick in a stacked draft.  I’ll continue working toward the upside potential that the Cavs have leading into the season, but this is about the downside of the rest of the East.  Some factors  Injuries....

  Warning:  This is an optimistic post, I’m not going to fill it with qualifiers. Warning:  I will be implying positive things about Kevin Love. Using Cleaning the Glass’ numbers (which drop garbage time) the Cavs got worse last season from ‘19/20 going from -7.8 to -8.7 per 100.  This seems really bad at first blush, their young guards were a year older and played better individually, they traded for Jarrett Allen- their expected long term C- and got 1,500 mins from him and they went into the season hoping that their FC rotation could keep them in playoff contention.  That didn’t happen but there are some good long term signs, lets run through some numbers and then discuss what they mean.  Garland plus Sexton went from -10.1 to -6.5 together. Garland plus Sexton plus Okoro was -3.9 together Garland plus Sexton plus Love was -0.6 together (420 possessions)  Garland, Sexton, Okoro plus at least one of Wade or Love was +4 (700 possessions). Last season’s...

  What did the Cavs do poorly last season?  Well pretty close to everything, which is why they stunk on offense and defense and why they project to be bad this year.  Where might they improve due to their youth and new acquisitions?  Well that narrows it down a little. Major problem number 1:  Finishing.  The Cavs were 29th in eFG% last season, thanks to being 30th in 3pt% and 26th in 2pt%.  They were also 28th in 3ptapg so even if they pushed up their 3pt% that wouldn’t have an outsized impact alone.  On 2pt shots they were poor at finishing at the rim and generating transition buckets.   Potential fixes here: A:  Lauri Markkanen replacing Larry Nance:  Nance was a poor finisher last season, a departure from what was a strength in previous years.  The point forward position he was pressed into led to more shots away from the rim (career low 38% of his shots there) and a career high TO rate.  His PSA* was 1.10, a sub ...

  What are the Spurs doing?  To grade a teams moves you have to understand their attempted timeline.  Its not hard to look at a teardown and know they are looking 2-5 years out and its not hard to look at a team like the Bulls this offseason and know they are trying to go as deep as they can this season but the Spurs aren’t following any template as far as I can tell. They have gone ‘young’, losing all their 30+ veterans over the past year, but they didn’t go young the way teams normally do, by unloading vets for future picks.  They managed 1 in the DDR S&T but considering Gay, Mills, DDR and LMA are gone now that isn’t much value and isn’t much rebuild equity.  They also didn’t stay young, the DDR trade brought back Thad (33) and Aminu (31), they signed McDermott (30), Forbes (28) and Collins (23).  The Collins move is the only ‘rebuilding through youth’ move and its not a pretty one, signing a frequently injured center who hasn’t shown anything impres...

What do the Cavs look like next year with no other moves? Guards: Garland, Sexton, Rubio, Okoro, Windler, Dotson.   SexLand combined for ~66 mpg when the team was healthy, maybe even a bit less.  Sexton had some high min stretches (37+) when the team was thin but the Cavs haven’t made it a priority to max their mins (nor should they).  Rubio was in a similar situation last season between Russell and Edwards as the 3rd guard and averaged 26 a game, that probably was more like 24 when Russell was healthy.  I assume that 3 guard lineups are going to make it onto the floor as well, but that is always hard to ball-park.  It looks like Minny was using them about 6 mpg when they had all three.  That basically leaves 12 mpg at the guard spot when all three are healthy and if they miss a total of 30 games between them at 30 mpg that is ~ 11mpg over the season.   Okroro was playing the 2 ~12 mpg as it was last year but with lots of guard injuries, mayb...