Wine and Gold Scrimmage
Scrimmage! A full step up from Summer League basketball. What can we learn? Almost nothing. Who can we talk about? Everyone because they all played!
Lineups: Garland, Okoro, Cedi, Markkanen, Mobley vs Rubio, Sexton, Windler, Love, Allen
In the first four trips down the court Markkanen got 3 open looks from 3 for his squad. One off a Mobley post up, one off an Okoro drive and one from the corner on the backside. Team defense wasn’t really a thing here but he was getting these looks without a lot of motion and without setting screens. They were looking for him, he was there and drilled a bunch of them. He had one dribble drive beating Allen in semi transition for a layup as well and one that was blocked by Mobley. In this low competition setting the Cavs had no issues finding him for open looks.
On the other side, Love played the perimeter as well. I didn’t see a single post up called for him and he was facilitating out there and not looking for shots. I counted three times that he ran a 2 man game with Rubio, a give and go for a Rubio floater, a PnR action that turned into a Love 12 footer and a screen on the perimeter into a Love 3. If the Cavs are healthy that could be your 2nd unit’s offense. Two vets with high end passing skills who are familiar with each other just breaking down teams 2nd unit Ds. Love also had a couple of outlet passes to start transition buckets.
Mobley can pass, and he can get a shot off from his post up moves fairly easily. What he can’t do is bully in the post at all, Allen held his own pretty easily which isn’t surprising but even Dean Wade kept him from his spot. Defensively he was as advertised, he stayed in front of Sexton easily on an early drive and blocked a mid range jumper, and he helped on an LM baseline drive for a block as well.
Okoro needs to get into the starting SG spot. He can defend. On the first possession he stayed with and blocked Sexton’s drive out of bounds and then stayed with him again and either forced a terrible look or got a piece of that one as well. Either way it was impressive D on an actual high end NBA scorer. Offensively there wasn’t a whole lot there, he got an assist early kicking it out to Lauri for an open 3 and had a transition bucket or two.
Sexton was blocked a few times, and didn’t look impressive as a scorer. He did have a couple of nice looks to Allen for easy scores inside. This is obviously not the setting for a Sexton scores 4-5 times down the floor type of game.
Garland had a pair of steals, jumping a pass at midcourt, and a nice defensive read on a called play. Sexton faked a baseline cut from the corner and Love tried to snap a pass as he hopped back out to the 3 pt line. Garland didn’t get suckered and his blind arm blocked the pass which turned into a transition bucket. He wasn’t looking to score, or really even penetrate (though he had a pick and pop for a LM 3) much, just move the ball and get people into position.
Rubio played the veteran ball handler, pass, pass, pass, defer, pass, cut the hoop for 2, pass, defer, pass. Was nice to watch him running the 2 man game with Love.
Allen grabbed a few easy buckets on lobs, beat Mobley inside for position once and and easy deuce with Love assisting and was otherwise un-notable.
Windler and Cedi were pretty invisible. This wasn’t even a full length game and your 5th guy will get buried in those sometimes. The big takeaway was that Cedi wasn’t needed to handle the ball at all even with the Cavs having to field 10 players at a time.
Not much to say about the bench. Pangos hit a 3, Lamar had a pair of buckets that I saw including a drive into an 8 footer and a transition layup, Nembhard had a nice block and Tacko Fall is ridiculously huge.
If this team is healthy and trying to squeeze out wins instead of development they should be in the play-in at least. Their FC is ridiculously deep for the NBA, teams search for stretch 4s to the point of putting SGs with broad shoulders out there at times and the Cavs have a pair of actual PFs who can shoot well at high volume. Not only does this space the floor well but it also means you can keep running the same offense as your personal shifts. Of course this is dependent on Mobely or Allen coming off the bench for as long as the Cavs are fully healthy, which they might not decide to do in favor of accelerating Mobely’s experience.
However if they do decide to start one of Love or Markkanen at PF then I think the inverse of last year’s start will happen. Instead of a surprisingly strong defensive team early on I think they will be above average offensively with a strong chance of being in the 6-10 range. Their 3pt shooting issues greatly diminished last year when Love returned (going from bottom of the league to ~20th in 3pta per game over their last 25 games. The additions of LM, Rubio, Pangos and improvement from Okoro, Sexton and Garland should set them up to be a top 10 3pta team at least ideally, while Allen/Mobely ensure that they should always have a rim threat for their guards as well.
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