More words than Levert deserves

 I’m just going to say upfront that I don’t like this move, I didn’t like it a month ago when it was rumored, I didn’t like people who were Levert fans two years ago, I do no like him when he drives, I do not like him when he dives, I do not like his 3pt shot, I do not like his decisions when he gets hot, I do not like Caris Levert, because that guy always seems to be hurt.  

Let’s start out with some non obvious outcomes.  The Cavs, despite starting up to 3 7 footers and having a great rebounder off the bench in Love, are a poor defensive rebounding team.  Not awful, 20th in the league in Drb%, but it is the worst portion of their defense.  This is mostly a result of their style of defense- their bigs are often switched onto perimeter players pulling them away from the hoop and then their rotations often lead to a scramble to close out on a 3pt shooter.  The high activity of their bigs (even Love regularly lumbers out to contest a 3) means their guards/wings have to box out more than is optimal.  If you haven’t noticed, and this hasn’t been mentioned anywhere 1,000 times over the past 3 years, the Cavs guards are small.  Garland isn’t boxing guys out effectively, neither was Sexton.  Rubio was stronger but still not oversized at the 2 when next to Garland, a larger guard at the 2 could alleviate some of those rebounding issues.

Well, that is the theory, but it doesn’t appear to hold up for the Cavs this year.  The Cavs have some bigger bodies that they have thrown in at the 2 spot, both Cedi and Stevens are big for that position and have solid rebounding numbers, but the Cavs Dreb% craters with either of them at the 2 (per cleaning the glass).  I have an initial suspicion and I will put it as a footnote here* because I am not going to be tracking down a confirmation/refutation anytime soon.

Cleveland’s best on/off defensive rebounding players (500+ mins played) so far this season are… Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade, with Kevin Love a distant 3rd.  Raise your hand if you saw those first two coming.  I think this directly points to the issues here being effort/quickness/floor reading more than size issues in the backcourt or personal rebounding rates.  

Levert, to his credit, has the 2nd best margin on the Pacers (again 500+ mins) though that is a smaller margin than our #3 player, and the Pacers are an average Dreb team.  This is a reserving judgment situation, it could improve a weakness for the Cavs or it could exacerbate it.  

That is the Cavs weakness on D, but their biggest strength is their low foul rate.  As a team they are 90th percentile, and it looks like Levert could fit in well there.  Individually his foul rate is acceptable, and his on/off for the Pacers is t-4th best and a modest positive.  The big issue is that the Pacers are 20th percentile in fouls, so good on a bad team might not be good on a good team.  Looking at his numbers the past two years and the team contexts I would have to guess he is slightly above average at helping a team avoid fouls.  As he should be displacing time from Lamar, Rondo and Goodwin primarily that would probably represent a net positive (Lamar being a positive, Rondo neutral and Goodwin poor so far this year).  

Levert’s impacts on TO rates and eFG% are close enough to neutral that they probably don’t carry any large impacts on the Cavs.

Offensively:  The Cavs aren’t particularly good at anything as a team offensively and are bad at avoiding turnovers.  Here Levert probably helps, he individually has high usage, moderate assist and low TO rates.  The Cavs could use some of that on offense, getting shots up before the clock expires and working the ball into their bigs without getting their passing lanes jumped.  The flipside to this is that in this role (>20% usage) Levert’s career high in TS is 53.1%, and that is lower than every current rotation piece for the Cavs this season except Rondo and Goodwin.  That’s right, it’s lower than Lamar Steven’s TS mark by a hair.  

This could be another small net win as Caris is probably displacing Rubio and Goodwin’s shots, but also because of the low turnover rate.  Levert has been a significant positive for his team’s offensive rebounding numbers in 2 of the past three seasons despite having atrocious oreb numbers himself.  The type of guy who can get into the paint and flip up a 43% shot just inside the free throw line can also be the type of guy who lets his roll man get down by the basket and in position for a lot of chances at those rebounds.  He also is decisive and aggressively pulls up for those jumpers.  Now that hurts his TS mark, but also prevents 3 second violations so his bigs can hang near the rim that extra beat for him to get the shot up, and not be stepping out to avoid the call and sacrifice the work they put in.  

On Net this move should be a medium positive for the Cavs- however there is a case for it being a large positive for Cleveland:  Let us lay that one out. 

Darius Garland played 1,000 possessions with Ricky Rubio and as a Cavs fan you should know that they fucking crushed it in that time together.  Net rating of +15.5, just as a reference point Paul George and Kawhi paired together last season had a net rating of +17.8 in 2,000 possessions, so this level of production is the type you get when you look at pairs of all-nba level players, not just solid guys who play well together.  Anyway- the Cavs were better offensively and defensively with those two on, but the big gains came on offense with the Cavs showing a large increase to their free throw rate and a large decrease to their turnover rate**.  

If I had to describe what was happening briefly I would say that the combination of Darius and Rubio prevented teams from hiding their defensive liabilities.  Teams love hiding their weak defenders on corner shooters or the opposing teams defensive specialists but that isn’t an easy task when you have two ball handlers who excel in the pick and roll on the team and who also both work while off ball.  The ‘my turn/your turn’ of the early Garland/Sexton years allowed teams a breather defensively where both poor defenders can hide and a position for natural help can come.  Now with Garland’s improved play both on and off the ball the Cavs have a weapon that can amplify a secondary ball handler’s strengths rather than a weakness that mitigates it.  

Ok- so if you have followed along so far and remember the introduction, why don’t I like this trade?  In no particular order

#1.  Levert is no Rubio as a passer, he profiles much more like Sexton (who may or may not have worked out the issues with him and Garland) as a rim attacker whose passes tend to find roll men and not perimeter shooters.  The flip side to Levert’s decisiveness which helps his offensive rebounders is that he rarely backs out a failed drive and takes the opportunity to attack the new weakness in the shifted defense.  Not doing so means he misses open shooters who have been ditched by help defenders crashing the paint.  Not doing so means that the Cavs don’t just miss on open threes, but miss out on the open perimeter shooters who force a rotation allowing a 2nd, 3rd or 4th pass to finally find the best shooter in the best shot or a open cutter who has knifed through the rotations to an open layup. 

#2.  Levert is an upgrade over Goodwin and Rondo… when he is on the floor.  I am not going through his extensive injury issues, this piece is long enough as it is, but there is a good chance in a month that the Cavs are right where they were two days ago- with a couple of injured guards sitting on the bench while the team has to fight for every possession on offense when Darius isn’t cooking.

3#.  This one doesn’t get talked about but Levert ain’t changing for nobody.  In his first game with both Kyrie and Durant (and Dinwiddie as a 3rd ball-handler) Caris jacked 20 true shooting attempts in less than 25 mins of play (33% usage) with 8 of those shots from mid range.  In game two he had a 37% usage.  This is a player who when surrounded by high gravity shooters, and elite shot creators in Kyrie and Durant (and another great shooter in Harris) still took it on himself and created the exact same shot profile that he has always had.  Even with all that extra gravity he couldn’t turn it into shots at the rim consistently, nor find a way to get a great shooter open looks.  This didn’t change in Indiana either, while they don’t have 1st ballot hall of fame talent on their team both Brogdon and Sabonis are better scorers AND passers than Levert but he led the team in usage by a large margin.

We have seen this archetype of player damage teams before, he is essentially a homeless man’s Russell Westbrook, and attack first think second player.  Prone to highlights and floor raising but he can crater a ceiling as well.  

*The Cavs  might be missing quickness in these lineups and the situations where their bigs aren’t getting their hands on rebounds are long/awkward bounces that get picked up by the faster players, not necessarily the bigger players.  While Cedi and Lamar are strong for 2s they aren’t strong enough to make a significant impact on centers with a mass advantage over Allen/Mobley like Vuce etc.  

**they also didn’t run hot from 3 hitting at a 53rd percentile rate and 47th percentile at the rim.