Sort of a defensive preview, and my face hurts.

 My defensive preview goes like this:  who the hell knows what will happen?  There, can I be done?  No?  Why not, it’s my frickin’ blog and I don’t wanna do it, I had a root canal this morning and I just don’t wanna.  

Fine.  

Did you know Kevin Love graded out as neutral defensively over the past two seasons by Lebron?  Ok, neutral isn’t good for big, but when your reputation is as an atrocious defender you shouldn’t be positive 6 out of the last 7 years.  Allen’s been a positive for all 4 seasons and a solid one for 2 of the past three with this last year regressing to +0.79.  Markkanen a small negative over the past two years (~-0.3).  Mobely is a rookie.  

Where do we take this group?  Ideally Allen/Markkanen/Mobley is very switchy for their size.  Markkanen is a terrible rebounder at the 5, poor at the 4 and fine at the 3.  Allen is Ok at the 5, and Mobley looks to be solid for a 4. Love excellent for a 4, solid for a 5.  

Their backcourt is obviously a serious issue to overcome, Rubio helps with better size, strength, effort, IQ… Ok everything, hes better defensively at everything than the two starters.  

The issue with having THIS PARTICULAR STARTING BACKCOURT is almost everything on defense.  They lack size, so you need rebounding in the FC, they struggle with screens and they don’t generate steals at good rates, including Okoro, so you are limited there.  They do avoid high foul rates and shooting fouls decently, so I guess that is a start?

Thank god we got Evan Mobley.  He’s such a large relief for potentially figuring this out in a positive way.  His ability to switch on guards already means we can start mitigating the screening issues right away.  I don’t think you can survive on that with Mobley as a C though because that will mean a really undersized guard ending up trying to contain the roll man.  Allen and Mobley together can work because Allen can also switch (to a much lesser degree) and you always have a big to come under and help.  With good rotations (hard with a young group) this can work. 

Except if Okoro is at the small forward position too much, he both helps and doesn’t help.  His on ball defense was good for a rookie but one on ball defender is fairly easy to play around, and he wasn’t locking people down either, while he doesn’t rebound or generate TOs which amplify the issues we start with already with SexLand.  

Is LM at the 3 a real answer?  Chicago’s defensive eFG% last year.  Lauri at C 56.6%, Lauri at PF 53.7%, Lauri at SF 51.3%.  

Look, Markkanen might just be a small forward.  Seriously, a good small forward who can play some 4.  Hell looking at the numbers maybe he is just a really stinking tall 2.  In his start at SF against Chicago he had 3 blocked shots 26 mins, he has done that 4 times in 195 regular season games.  Even counting his zero in 7.5 mins vs Indiana that is still close to double his career average per min.  

Damnit my face hurts… I’m sure it’s killing you as well.

How can they make this work?

LM and JA are low foul guys, Mobley majored in not fouling and graduated in one year with full credit in that department, Love doesn’t foul, our guards are decent at not fouling.  This is a start, keeping the fouls down, keeping teams of the line and from getting free points. 

Next we can rebound IF we have a solid rebounder at SF.  LM or Windler work here- or Rubio at point and a passable guy at SF with Love as a big.  Rebounding and not fouling can make you not terrible, if we are semi punting on turnovers then it is denying good shots.  Allen and Mobley challenging at the rim… god damnit its back to Markkanen.  His shot blocking sucks as a big, but as a wing?  As your 3rd best shot blocker… then that is just another angle that the Cavs can get some cheap swat while the penetrator is playing keepaway from the two real bigs.  

Fuck it:  I could have written this preview in 13 words (13s a lucky number isn’t it?)

We have to start Markkanen at small forward and see what it is.  

He obviously unlocks some things offensively, spacing, stretching, forcing mismatches, opening up passing lanes, secondary off ball movement, but it also plugs a couple of specific holes defensively.  On Offense I said this team had top 8 upside if everything clicks, this doesn’t exist here for defense.  Even with everything clicking they are going to give up a few things, most likely lots of 3 pt attempts.  They are still young, they have the legs but not the brains (experience, not IQ) for those types of rotations.  They turn it over on offense a bunch and will be dropping points in transition because of this, Love can’t play the switchy SF like LM can and while he is savvy enough to be a small plus that requires conceding his limitations.  Our guards can still die on screens and don’t make up for it with forced turnovers.