Iwasawitness wrote:ijspeelman wrote:Since the turn of the year, I've been watching the Cavs only on the side so I do not have any solid takes, but every time I look over and we are winning by more than 20 I am still shocked. Will the wheels fall off?
Yeah, this is a back-to-back for the Magic and yeah, we've had an incredibly easy schedule. But, great teams don't consistently smack even bad opponents to this level night-to-night. It has been a marvel this last month
Basically, I just want to see this energy transfer over to our fully healthy team
I don't think it's just the energy. Having all this spacing has unlocked Jarrett Allen as a player and he's shown more fluidity in his offensive game. And Sam Merrill breaking out has helped too. You have two guys play at an all star level and a lot of really solid/good roleplayers? This is usually what will happen. THIS version of the Cavs can beat anyone.
Whenever someone brings up spacing it always catches my attention because most of our opponents are still defending us with players waiting near the paint and trying to anticipate what the ball handler will do.
Jarrett had 4 assists in this game and it's usually instructive to look at each one:
#1) Jarrett is holding the ball, Max runs around Jarrett, gets a step on his man, and Jarrett passes it to him for a layup. Donovan is distracting the 3 other Magic defenders by running a screen action on the other side of the floor.
#2) 3 defenders collapse on Allen to keep him away from the rim, he passes it out to CPJ who drives all the way for an uncontested layup. Not sure why Jarrett got an assist here (very generous), and afraid of the lob to Allen or something but WCJ just didn't try to contest Craig. Isaac's man helped off him, but Strus and Niang's didn't, but should have had to with WCJ back. Strus and Niang's shooting meant CPJ only had to deal with two defenders in the paint.
#3) Allen just tossed the ball behind his back to Niang who buried a 3pter. Letting Allen play away from the rim, Orlando's laziness, and Niang's shooting made this happen.
#4) This is a P&R with Strus and Allen. Initially all the off ball defenders are a foot outside the paint, but only Banchero cheating off Isaac bits and waives an arm ineffectively at Strus. WCJ cuts off Strus who tosses a lob to Allen, but Allen can't finish it. He does grab the rebound, though, and with only Dean's defender sticking with him, Allen has Mitchell and Okoro wide open. Don has all day to bounce the ball and nail the shot.
IMO, keeping the player and ball movement should be the first priority, which means not overplaying anyone. Defenses are going to cheat and we can exploit that, but they're going to prefer to cheat off Isaac. If we replace Dean and Isaac with Evan and Darius, it shouldn't change the current dynamic significantly.
In this particular game, we didn't get to see a 4 out let alone 5 out lineup. When we get DG back my hope would be that JBB would find a way to run that some of the time with his bench rotations, but JBB will always be hesitant to compromise his defense.
IMO, we have 5 players who provide a really high 3pt threat level in Don, Darius, Max, George, and Sam so it comes down to how often can we get 4 of them on the floor at the same time. If the opponent's lineup allows it, JBB should be jumping all over it.
If JBB looked for it, I suspect he could find situations he could get away with a Wade/Niang front court too.
