Cavs vs TrailBlazers preview

 New coach, new scheme, new leading scorer, same old Blazers.  Dame is struggling to hit shots, draw fouls, and score in general.  PP100 would be the lowest since his rookie year, TS would be by far the worst of his career and still the Blazers are #6 on offense, and #22 on defense.

This isn’t a surprise, Portland has committed to 3 guard lineups with the 6’3 Powell (6’10+ wingspan) starting at the three, and the 6’4.5 Nassir Little (7’1+ wingspan) playing the three/four off the bench.  Now length can cover a multitude of sins and along with Covington (7’1+), Nurkic (7’2) and Nance (7’1+) they definitely have wingspans without massive height.  But wingspans don’t cover everything, and Portland has been below average for the past 6 seasons in 3pt% against and 20th or worse in 5 of those seasons.  There is 3pt variation against you, but there is less than a 2% chance at an average team running below average for 6 straight seasons and well under that for finishing in the 20s for 5 out of 6 seasons based on chance alone.  

One thing wingspan doesn’t cover for is standing reach.  We don’t have official combine stats for all of the three Cavs bigs but their standing reaches are likely all 3-6 inches higher than Norman Powell’s, and up to 4 inches higher than Covington’s, and will greatly exceed those of their starting guards in the case of switches.  

Starting lineups vs starting lineups:  This is strength vs strength here.  Portland’s starting lineup is 98th percentile in avoiding TOs while the Cavs is 98th percentile in forcing TOs.  Portland’s defensive rebounding is 98th percentile and while Cleveland’s oreb rate is 65th percentile they have been much, much better over the past 6 games only being limited against Phoenix.  Neither team has been earning or giving up free throws with these lineups.  

Can the Cavs keep their legs?  Their road trip isn’t over, they get a home game with a day off, but that still means a travel day and they have been using a short rotation.  This is the first game this year where they conceivably have a home/travel/rest advantage with Portland playing their 3rd in 4 nights, 4th in 6 and will have played in 4 different cities over those 4 games.  They just lost to a 76ers team sitting Simmons (obviously), Embiid and Harris.  Point Drummond ate them up (14/15 with 7 assists, 5 steals and no turnovers).  Losing 2 in a row this way could flip a switch and have Dame shake off the new ‘system’ and go into domination mode.  That is a risk and without Okoro again the Cavs will need their bigs to provide back end help at a high level.

This one comes down to will the Cavs actually hit their open shots?  Portland has to help inside, and Lauri especially should continue to get open looks.  He is still taking 10 per 100, and has managed to draw some fouls inside to compensate for the 72% of his threes he is missing.  Garland is the other one, Portland gave up 10 attempts to Curry the lesser, 19 to the Rozier/Ball combo, 23 to Reggie Jackson in the two games vs LAC, and 50 across the entire Grizzlies team.  Lauri has been a homecourt shooter for his career, going 37.4% from 3 at home vs 35.1% on the road, with almost a full attempt more per game at home.  

Home court, a road tired team trying to get by with length but not size.  Cavs have real chances here.