Tuesday’s game was the Cleveland Cavaliers’ first chance to showcase their probable playoff starting five this season. And if this game was any indication, that group has some work to do. The Los Angeles Lakers completely ran them out of the building, defeating them 127-113 in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the 14-point margin would have you believe.
The starting five of James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen looked rough.
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The Cavs were outscored by nine points in the 13 minutes the starters played. They were awful defensively (135.7 defensive rating) and weren’t able to make up for those shortcomings on the other end.
The offense felt stagnant with the two bigs. The guards tried to force the ball inside. This worked as Allen had another impressive game, putting up 18 points on 9-11 shooting, but the shrunken floor also led to turnovers. Mitchell and Harden combined for five giveaways, and the Cavs weren’t able to generate clean outside looks.
It didn’t help that Mobley had no offensive impact. He provided just six points on 2-4 shooting.
This wasn’t a situation where the Cavs’ guards weren’t looking to get him involved. Mobley simply couldn’t take advantage of any of the mismatches he created, which was the exact opposite of his strong showing the night before against the Utah Jazz.
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Mobley was able to force mismatches by getting either Austin Reaves or Luka Doncic switched on to him. Instead of punishing them right away, he waited for the help defense to rotate over, and often wasn’t able to find the open man on the perimeter. This stalled out the offense reminiscent of the beginning of the season.
The Cavs are a top-heavy team, especially when they’re down three rotation players in Sam Merrill (hamstring), Dean Wade (ankle), and Jaylon Tyson (toe). They can’t afford to have one of their top players be this invisible on offense if they want to match up against an elite opponent.
Along those same lines, the Cavs aren’t going anywhere if Mitchell isn’t aggressive offensively.
Mitchell’s downhill attacking is his best offensive trait. It’s rare to find a guard of his size who can completely change the game with their rim pressure. He forces defenses to overload to his side, which creates openings for his teammates.
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However, when that forcefulness isn’t there, there aren’t many avenues for him to create good offense for himself or others. This came through as Mitchell finished the game with a dreadful 100 offensive rating, which tied Mobley for the worst on the team. He supplied just 10 points on 4-10 shooting with six assists.
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Mitchell did come out of the gates strong. He stole the opening tip from Los Angeles, but LeBron James swatted his layup attempt away. That seemed to take the wind out of his sails, as he tried just one more shot at the rim throughout the next three quarters (the starters didn’t play in the fourth) and had just two free-throw attempts.
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It’s not worth making too much of a poor performance on the second night of a back-to-back. Mitchell didn’t have it on Tuesday. Games like this happen. However, it is worth underscoring that even after the Harden move, this offense will only be as good as Mitchell makes it. And when he doesn’t bring the energy, things will look stagnant rather quickly.
The Cavs need their starting offense to be great, considering how bad their defense is.
The perimeter defense was once again poor. There’s no physicality at the point of attack. Los Angeles’s guards were able to get downhill whenever they wanted, which allowed them to create open looks for themselves and their teammates.
The Lakers were efficient in the three best places to score: the rim, the free-throw line, and the three ball. Los Angeles completed 75% of their looks inside (72nd percentile), had a free-throw rate in the 82nd percentile, and knocked down 42.9% of their triples before garbage time (80th percentile).
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The Cavs just aren’t making it difficult at any level of the defense. This has been seen in recent weeks against subpar offenses. Now, we saw just how easily an elite offense can carve up this bad Cleveland defense.
Without Dean Wade, the Cavs have no answer for opposing wings.
Doncic was able to put up one of the easiest 42-point, 12-assist games you’ll ever see. He benefited from the Cavs experimenting with playing more drop coverage with their bigs. Doncic used the space Ayton created off screens to step into easy pull-up threes. But he also did plenty of damage just by beating his man off-the-dribble and creating from there.
Strus is a solid defender, but he isn’t someone who’s going to make a bigger and stronger player in Doncic work for his baskets. And for as helpful as Keon Ellis has been defensively, he also doesn’t have the size to really affect bigger wings too much. That leaves Wade as your only good wing defender, which is a red flag considering his injury history and offensive shortcomings.
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This issue is exaggerated by the poor guard defense. It’s one thing to have to cover for a weak link on that end. Mobley and Allen are more than capable of doing that. It’s another when three players are overmatched on the perimeter.
This is a major concern for a team that will likely be matching up with either the Atlanta Hawks or the Toronto Raptors in the first round. Neither of those teams has a Luka-level scorer, but both have multiple wings that can hurt you offensively. The Cavs simply don’t have a good answer for guys like Jalen Johnson, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Scottie Barnes, Brandon Ingram, and RJ Barrett.
It’s easy to look ahead to a possible second-round matchup. And while the Cavs should still be able to handle whoever they face in the first round, they won’t be able to do so if the defense is this bad. At least not easily.
The De’Andre Hunter trade looks worse by the day. The Cavs have had a massive hole at the wing since LeBron left for LA back in 2018. Trading for Hunter was supposed to solve that issue. And for a time, it did. Hunter was good last regular season and had some positive moments in the playoffs before things fell apart this season.
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Moving on from Hunter at the deadline made sense. And there were reasons to like the move for Dennis Schroder and Ellis. The Cavs needed a backup point guard, Ellis was worth taking a flyer on, and the moves saved them money. However, considering how poorly Schroder has played for the last several weeks and the fact that Ellis hasn’t been able to plug any defensive holes on the wing, that trade isn’t exactly aging great either. And Schroder’s roughly $15 million per year contract for the next two seasons is also looking much less appealing.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the Cavs shouldn’t have traded Hunter to the Sacramento Kings. Instead, I’ll just point out that the initial Hunter move was a dud. The ramifications of that deal are still being felt. And, this will likely be a bigger issue this summer when the Cavs presumably try to move on from Schroder’s contract to duck under the second apron.
No one has more NBA wins than LeBron. This was the 1,229th victory that James has been a part of in the regular season and playoffs, which breaks the record held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It feels appropriate that James did so against his former team.
The longevity that LeBron has displayed is difficult to put into context, and I’m not going to try to do so here. He’s still playing at an incredibly high level, even if it’s in a secondary role (and sometimes tertiary role) for the first time in his career.
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I’ll wrap this up on a positive: Allen was once again great. He was the Cavs’ best player and an absolute force offensively.
Allen had his way with Ayton inside. He did a great job of using his strength and footwork to create easy looks in the paint. The two-man game with him and Harden still looks crisp. And, he was able to score several times off feeds from Mobley, which is encouraging considering the concerns about how the Harden-led offense looks with both bigs on the court.
The Cavs are a better team when they’re getting Allen involved early and often. Even though they lost this game convincingly, it’s good to see that this is still a point of emphasis.
