The LeVert Effect

[Jamaaliver]

NBA Trade Deadline Winners and Losers

Winner: Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavs did their work early, linking up with Indiana on Sunday to land Caris LeVert. You could argue that the price tag for the 27-year-old was a bit steep for a player who can get tunnel vision offensively and has been below league average in shooting efficiency every year since his rookie season. But as a high-volume driver who can score inside, make plays in the pick-and-roll, and hit tough shots, LeVert filled a specific and glaring need on a Cavs team that, since the season-ending injuries to Rubio and Collin Sexton, has been almost solely reliant on All-Star point guard Darius Garland to generate offense.

Trading for LeVert was a bet that the support structure that team president Koby Altman and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff have built in Cleveland—a huge, elite defense captained by Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, a first-unit offense in which Garland can operate at an elite level on and off the ball, a veteran reserve corps featuring Sixth Man of the Year candidate Kevin Love—would help hide LeVert’s flaws and that the Cavs wouldn’t have to distort what’s made them special in order to fit him in. It was encouraging, then, to see Bickerstaff keep second-year shooting guard Isaac Okoro in the starting lineup against San Antonio on Wednesday, leaving intact a quartet (Allen, Mobley, Garland, and Okoro) that has outscored opponents by 12.3 points per 100 possessions this season in favor of working LeVert in off the bench.

There will be growing pains—LeVert needed 11 shots to score his 11 points in 28 minutes off the pine—but he looked comfortable alongside the other four starters in the group that closed out the Spurs with a 13-2 run in the fourth quarter, and he showed flashes of precisely the rim pressure and playmaking that Cleveland needs from him:

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Cleveland’s got size, athleticism, versatility, depth, a good mix of youth and experience, and a defense that can put the clamps down on damn near anyone; all it was missing was a jolt to the NBA’s no. 19 offense. If LeVert can provide it, the Cavs will be an awfully tough out in the Eastern playoffs—this year and beyond.

The Ringer

[Jamaaliver]

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[El Hespiritu]

#NotAPointGuard

Aside that, he looks a better addition I thought at first.

My major concern (defense) still so questionable as always but he tried hard and made up for it.
If he keeps that attitude sure he'll get better while he grows into systems comprehension.
He listened to his teammates to correct his position and tried to be tough in the hustle (tried... something is something).

There is not such a thing as a perfect player so no complaints at all. He tried his best.

He's obviously an offensive boost.
I won't debate that as long nobody has again the absurd idea he can run the team in absence of DG.

Context matters, of course: even if it's just one game safe to say he feels far more comfortable with CLECaus he felt with IND (I can tell just out of his body language).



We know Darius and Laurita will return and J.B. looks less nervous when he's running an 8/9 men rotation at most.
Lots of coaches do.

So...

PG: Garlandas / RRondo / (Ce Dios) / (Goodwin)

SG: Kokoro / Ce Dios / Garlandas / (La Mar) / (Goodwin) / (TweedleDylan)

SF: Mari Karmen / Ce Dios / Amor / TweedleDean / (La Mar)

PF: Moble / Amor / Mari Karmen / (TweedleDean) / (La Mar)

C: Afro JA / Moble / Amor / (EDavis)


Where and when will Cari play?

And how that will change the parenthesis? (Consider parenthesis as someone out from a regular rotation spot in that position when everybody is healthy).




Addendo: Safe to say as well you like Cari very much, Jamaaliver.
Nothing wrong with that... I became a La Mar fanboy and he's not half talented as Cari.

[Jamaaliver]

Addendo: Safe to say as well you like Cari very much, Jamaaliver.
Nothing wrong with that... I became a La Mar fanboy and he's not half talented as Cari.

Caris, when healthy, has continued to impress me.

Beyond that, I'm rooting for the Cavs to make some noise and make a deep post-season run come May.. The CLE fans deserve it and the front office has done a remarkable job the last couple of years.

[ijspeelman]

I'm late to the convo, but when I knew the Cavs were targetting LeVert I was horrified. I started doing some watching and realized he is actually a pretty good secondary playmaker and the advanced stats back that up. The part of Caris that I want is the playmaker not the scorer. If he can back up his pull-up attempts (would love it all the way to zero, but unrealistic) and move more off-ball then I think we have a pretty good piece on our hands. The scoring side of Caris scares me and I do not want our team to fully lean on this part of his game because he is NOT an efficient scorer (except within 10ft and on catch and shoot 3's [39.2% on the season btw https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1627747/shots-dash/?Season=2021-22&SeasonType=Regular%20Season]).

We really need the LeVert and Garland minutes together to have more off-ball movement by whichever guy doesn't have the ball. At the moment, both guys either let the ball come to them or sit in the corner while the offense runs out on the other side of the floor. I would love some Garland LeVert screens mixed in a well. I know a lot of this will just need time, but I hope they can also get LeVert more intertwined into the offense because at the moment some of his possessions are extremely out of sync with what the rest of the guys are doing.

I have faith that they'll figure this out with him, but if it were me I would start LeVert over Okoro and have him do similar things to what Okoro does on offense because they are the looks LeVert could do very well with for both scoring and playmaking.

[JonFromVA]

Here's my early thoughts ... they need to work on cutting down on the ball stopping and hero ball, a reasonable goal as he acclimates. As long as our defense is solid, his mid-range scoring has a place. In a slug fest, you just need to avoid letting your scoring completely stall out.

Which brings me to what I think is the most important thing which is getting him up to speed on our defensive rotations. Again, something that often just takes time, but he can't be that guy that keeps blowing the rotation giving the other team an open shot. He needs to realize how much we help on D and where he needs to be to cover up. It's not just our bigs protecting everyone else, sometimes Caris will have to defend 2 guys on the weakside to let Mobley or Markkenen run over and help in the paint.