Three in a row!

 Three in a row, what do we know?  Not a lot from any individual game, Orlando is a bottom feeder, Dallas has been up and down all year and Miami was missing their top two, and the Cavs had some really significant 3pt shooting variance go their way.  However, even regressing the 3pt shooting with some guesses at oreb rates, the Cavs still come out ahead by ~6.2 pp/100, and I could easily justify nudging that up a bit higher for the Cavs having better 3pt shooters than their opposition over that stretch.  So they have looked good against bad opponents which is a good sign.  Other good signs include

The 8- man rotation of Darius, Rubio, Okoro, Cedi, Lauri, Love, Mobley and Allen has played 500 possessions together and is +13.3 in that stretch (all stats here per Cleaningtheglass.com).  The opposition is going to be fairly weak for these possessions because of how injuries have fallen but that is a dominant number, and their 9 man rotations with Windler, Stevens or Wade are +14.8,  +11.7, +6.2, in 592, 592 and 821 possessions respectively.  Every year I do rotation +/- for playoff teams and a +6.2 last season would have put them ahead of the Hawks, Celtics, Heat and Nets (whose regular season wasn’t indicative of their strength), while a +11.7, +13.3 or +14.8 would have put them tops in the East.  ¼ of the way through the season with not even that level of sample size put a ton of caution to those numbers but they are a good starting point:  Lets run through them

1.  The Cavs offensive rating with that 8 man group is 116.2 and my first thought was ‘3pt shooting variance’ especially when I saw a eFG of 54.7% (81st percentile), but it isn’t as they are bang on average shooting the 3 with that rotation, but are absolutely dominant at the rim finishing there above 70% (91st) percentile.  While Garland’s lobs to Allen are a part of this, the real story is that this group is dominating in transition and on the offensive glass.  They are 96th percentile in points added in transition and 97th in points added via putbacks on missed shots (81st percentile on pts added per possession).  If your impression is that this team doesn’t get out in transition that frequently I am with you, and so are the stats:  only 38th percentile in transition volume, but they are finishing those plays at an extremely high rate.  Not too surprising for having three floor running bigs plus the best full court passing big in the game.

2. Defensively the Cavs are dominating via eFG% as well, but this time it is fairly heavily influenced by 3pt shooting variance.  The opposition is hitting 3s at 26.5% and that is unsustainably low (99th percentile outcome).  The Cavs high end rim protection comes through here though holding opponents to 60% at the rim (80th percentile).  The Cavs are good at denying the 3 (66th percentile) but not at denying shots at the rim (8th), though some of that latter number is due to their below average Dreb% and above average foul rate.  

3.  The turnovers are hurting this group the most, as they cut into the oreb opportunities and they also lead to a ton of transition opportunities- they are the bottom of the league in transition opportunities given up off steals but top off live rebounds.  Their long, young, athletic bigs here are clearly playing a role.  

This is all a small sample size so let me take a step backward, a breath and not just blurt out that THE CAVS ARE IN LINE FOR A TOP 4 SEED.  Oh darn it, my silly tongue.  There are still impediments in the way so let’s talk about those first.  The next 5 games come against 0.500 or better teams with 5 travel days and game 6 will be 6 games in 9 days(!) with travel between each game (!!), and even after that the Schedule doesn’t let up until late January.  With Washington, Utah, Milwaukee, and Chicago in this stretch a 2-4 or worse outcome isn’t completely out of the question here, potentially dropping the Cavs to below 0.500 again in short order.  

I’m optimistic that this won’t happen though, Lauri becoming a 3 (post eventually on that later) and not just a big playing out of position, and Cedi playing to (over) his ability has solved the major issue the Cavs have faced since Lebron left and the additions of Mobley and Rubio plus the growth from Garland and Allen have raised the talent level of this team.  Rubio and Love could start for a bunch of teams in the league right now and Cedi would get consideration from a handful making for a very strong bench and the Cavs have weathered injuries from almost everywhere already, though Rubio, Garland or Mobley missing a large chunk of time could easily cause some notable issues.  

It is a great time to be a Cavs fan right now, and after a revenge win against Washington on Friday we should get to see our defense get really tested against Utah and Milwaukee.  Make sure to keep your Evan Mobley hype-o-meter away from children during that Bucks game as well because any sign of him capably slowing Giannis is going to cause that thing to explode.