Cleveland Cavaliers Blog

  That was… much better.  Still not good, but a W so lets focus on the positives to start, don’t forget its preseason and it doesn’t mean anything unless later it turns out it does.  Free throw attempts (FTA):  Per game (I don’t have per 100 for preseason games to compare to) the league leader in FTas last year was Washington at 26.2.  The Cavs have 35 and 30 in their two games, so that is a hell of a lot per game, and Free Throws are really valuable.  Evan Mobley. He’s going to be good defensively.  Really stinking good.  Offensively he is intriguing, he can beat guys off the dribble or on a quick move but out of sets he isn’t productive.  Catch and shoot or post ups aren’t his forte, but he can pass (though his judgement on how much space his length gives him seems to be off in the NBA, that should just be experience).  The last three seasons the Cavs have played a bad rookie as a starter, this year it looks like they have a good rooki...

  An ugly game with few bright spots.  Lets run through the things that the organization claims it wants in public  Try to play with more pace:  Check.  Early on the Cavs were pushing and got some easy transition buckets (early being late in the 1st quarter).  However they didn’t have the correct approach when in semi-transition.  Semi transition is when your transition doesn’t lead to an open look but the defense still isn’t set and a full half court possession isn’t necessarily in the cards.  The Cavs weren’t pushing this advantage properly, their guards would often attack in iso for (I assume) pace reasons, but what you need is a quick action to take advantage of the confusion.   The attempts at pace (plus youth, plus unfamiliarity) lead to a ton of turnovers, 20 for the game but most (I think the announcers said 15 at the end of the first) in the first half.  This was a large problem last year and can’t continue if we are going ...

  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 ca...

  In day 1 of training camp Darius, Ricky and Kevin Pangos had a shooting competition that Pangos won, prompting Darius to proclaim that he is coming back for his title. This is a nice little sequence for TC, showing the competitive nature of one of the Cavs young guys, and also the skills of a newcomer.  Not laden with meaning but a nice story while we wait for the season to begin, but it also brings up one question for me.  Why the hell is Pangos on the Cavs?   Let me make this abundantly clear, this question is not being asked - why would the Cavs sign Pangos- as those answers are obvious.  He’s cheap, he has a clear skill set that if it translates will work on or off ball and complements other players, and he was very good in a 2nd tier league making it reasonably likely that those skills will translate.   The question also isn’t why would Pangos take less money to come to the NBA at this stage in his career as I think the drive to compete at ...

  The past two seasons have seen the Cavs actively avoid clearing cap space, they sent expiring contracts out with minor draft compensation for Andre Drummond, and this past year added Markkanen, and re-signed Allen to deals that fill it next season barring a Love dump that doesn’t include salary coming back.  Instead of bringing in Lauri they could have traded Nance for a draft pick and an expiring contract, and then attached that pick to the last of Love’s deal to open up perhaps $40 million in space.  But why do that?  Or conversely why not? The why not is that cap space is difficult to roll over, and for the Cavs doubly so.  Starting in 2022 they have 4 straight seasons in which they hope to have a rookie deal expiring with that player deserving a large extension.  Sexton’s cap hold this summer is $20 million, Garland’s in 2023 will be a few million more than that while the rookie deals of Okoro and Mobely will be adding a few more each year as well....

  Playoffs?  We talkin about playoffs?  Yeah, why not, as fans of  a rebuilding team we often only get to talk about playoffs between the end of the finals and around week 8 of the regular season, so let's talk playoff potential. Three factors in where you end up in the standings relative the year prior, how much better your team got, how much better teams behind you got and how much worse teams ahead of you got or will get.  The Cavs already have two of the three going for them, between a pair of decent acquisitions, young players improving and likely fewer injuries they should be substantially better than last season, while the two teams that finished worse than they did last year are both avoiding adding to many wins for another shot at a top pick in a stacked draft.  I’ll continue working toward the upside potential that the Cavs have leading into the season, but this is about the downside of the rest of the East.  Some factors  Injuries....

  Warning:  This is an optimistic post, I’m not going to fill it with qualifiers. Warning:  I will be implying positive things about Kevin Love. Using Cleaning the Glass’ numbers (which drop garbage time) the Cavs got worse last season from ‘19/20 going from -7.8 to -8.7 per 100.  This seems really bad at first blush, their young guards were a year older and played better individually, they traded for Jarrett Allen- their expected long term C- and got 1,500 mins from him and they went into the season hoping that their FC rotation could keep them in playoff contention.  That didn’t happen but there are some good long term signs, lets run through some numbers and then discuss what they mean.  Garland plus Sexton went from -10.1 to -6.5 together. Garland plus Sexton plus Okoro was -3.9 together Garland plus Sexton plus Love was -0.6 together (420 possessions)  Garland, Sexton, Okoro plus at least one of Wade or Love was +4 (700 possessions). Last season’s...