RealGM

The two weakest NBA finalists of the last decade, teams that basically proved to be a waste of time and robbing us of more interesting matchups

Which WTF Finalist was worse?

The one man gang or Jimmy and 9 undrafteds?

I'm gonna say Cavs were worse because they couldn't defend worth a damn. Both teams could get hot shooting the 3pt shot but Heat are much better on defense.

The Heat are a more complete team

Djoker wrote:I'm gonna say Cavs were worse because they couldn't defend worth a damn. Both teams could get hot shooting the 3pt shot but Heat are much better on defense.

They defended well against Boston but they had some clear weaknesses defensively with older Love/Smith/Hill/Green/Korver. Cleveland did win series without being scorching hot, which was both the Pacers series and the Boston series, which was a majority of their series on the way to the Finals.

The Miami Heat were hot in all 3 ECF series.

Were you thinking about the 2017 Cavaliers?

The 2023 Heat are better in a vacuum but the 2018 Cavaliers had Prime LeBron James, which allows them to beat a vast majority of teams in NBA History. I think the Cavaliers had a higher ceiling because of this.

2023 heat outside of Jimmy played quite well (Jimmy got hurt aft GOATED first series), 2018 cavs outside of lebron were 10 members from this forum

Colbinii wrote:

Djoker wrote:I'm gonna say Cavs were worse because they couldn't defend worth a damn. Both teams could get hot shooting the 3pt shot but Heat are much better on defense.

They defended well against Boston but they had some clear weaknesses defensively with older Love/Smith/Hill/Green/Korver. Cleveland did win series without being scorching hot, which was both the Pacers series and the Boston series, which was a majority of their series on the way to the Finals.

The Miami Heat were hot in all 3 ECF series.

Were you thinking about the 2017 Cavaliers?

The Cavs with a similar roster of shooters were insanely hot from 3pt land in 2016 and 2017 and in the Raptors series in 2018.

The 2018 Cavs were a horrible defensive team. I don't know how you can spin that. Lebron himself was a huge reason why they were poor on defense too.

2018 Cavs were okay-average on defense in the playoffs when it actually mattered. They just really sucked against the Warriors. They actually held the Raptors and Celtics pretty far below their regular season ORTGs.

Offensively they were insanely inconsistent, I'd argue they were probably better on defense than offense. The regular season numbers for this team don't matter at all, the rotation not only completely changed during the season but they clearly didn't take most of the regular season seriously.

Are they better than the 2023 Heat? I'd say probably not but I think it would be a tight series. Both teams have a ton of variance in how they can perform.

Djoker wrote:

Colbinii wrote:

Djoker wrote:I'm gonna say Cavs were worse because they couldn't defend worth a damn. Both teams could get hot shooting the 3pt shot but Heat are much better on defense.

They defended well against Boston but they had some clear weaknesses defensively with older Love/Smith/Hill/Green/Korver. Cleveland did win series without being scorching hot, which was both the Pacers series and the Boston series, which was a majority of their series on the way to the Finals.

The Miami Heat were hot in all 3 ECF series.

Were you thinking about the 2017 Cavaliers?

The Cavs with a similar roster of shooters were insanely hot from 3pt land in 2016 and 2017 and in the Raptors series in 2018.

Sure, but they weren't hot against 2 out of the 3 teams they played in the 2018 Eastern Conference Playoffs and weren't hot in the Finals either.

The 2018 Cavs were a horrible defensive team. I don't know how you can spin that. Lebron himself was a huge reason why they were poor on defense too.

I agree, Lebron had an incredibly large offense load which was a trade off with defense.

That series goes 7 for sure. To be honest though I have to lean HEAT.

Lebron was a “reason why” the Cavaliers had a bad defence in the sense that he was by far the team’s most important defender but was not committed to any heavy-lifting on that end.

As always I am sure people are very sincere in their expectations for a roster with a primary rotation of JR Smith, Kevin Love, old Kyle Korver, and Jeff Green.

AEnigma wrote:Lebron was a “reason why” the Cavaliers had a bad defence in the sense that he was by far the team’s most important defender but was not committed to any heavy-lifting on that end.

As always I am sure people are very sincere in their expectations for a roster with a primary rotation of JR Smith, Kevin Love, old Kyle Korver, and Jeff Green.

JR Smith was washed like crazy and even Love was not the same player.George Hill(who was old too) was one of the most important player of that team in the playoffs after LBJ,it was crazy bad!

Lebron basically needed to average a 40 point triple double in their wins in round one with bad spacing lol

They all forgot how to shoot

2023 Heat.

Bam + Miami remembering how to shoot that postseason makes them better

Weren’t the ‘18 Cavs basically the ‘24 Mavs with the better #1 and worst #2-8, except both #1s from each team were each the major offensive driver for their teams, the Mavs’ was still significantly worse defensively?

PistolPeteJR wrote:Weren’t the ‘18 Cavs basically the ‘24 Mavs with the better #1 and worst #2-8, except both #1s from each team were each the major offensive driver for their teams, the Mavs’ was still significantly worse defensively?

The mavs were much better on defense and at the 3 points line that the 2018 cavs.The cavs were 29th on defense

Heat, J.R's incompetence will lose Cavs at least one game.

Homer38 wrote:

PistolPeteJR wrote:Weren’t the ‘18 Cavs basically the ‘24 Mavs with the better #1 and worst #2-8, except both #1s from each team were each the major offensive driver for their teams, the Mavs’ was still significantly worse defensively?

The mavs were much better on defense and at the 3 points line that the 2018 cavs.The cavs were 29th on defense

I agree the Mavs generally speaking were significantly better on defense as a unit, in addition to the other things I raised.

The 2024 Mavs had a -7.4 rDRtg in the playoffs. The 2018 Cavs had a +0.8 rDRtg.

Djoker wrote:

Colbinii wrote:

Djoker wrote:I'm gonna say Cavs were worse because they couldn't defend worth a damn. Both teams could get hot shooting the 3pt shot but Heat are much better on defense.

They defended well against Boston but they had some clear weaknesses defensively with older Love/Smith/Hill/Green/Korver. Cleveland did win series without being scorching hot, which was both the Pacers series and the Boston series, which was a majority of their series on the way to the Finals.

The Miami Heat were hot in all 3 ECF series.

Were you thinking about the 2017 Cavaliers?

The Cavs with a similar roster of shooters were insanely hot from 3pt land in 2016 and 2017 and in the Raptors series in 2018.

The 2018 Cavs were a horrible defensive team. I don't know how you can spin that. Lebron himself was a huge reason why they were poor on defense too.

Eh, Cavs shot the three well vs. the Raps in 2018, but not “insanely” well, but that’s not why they had a historic offensive series. 41% on threes is nice, but it wasn’t massive volume. They made 46 threes over 4 games —Raps made 38.

The primary reason they had the historic offensive series was James’s individual scoring (marred by poor free throw shooting and missing some open threes) and how he protected the ball while creating for everyone else. The Cavaliers only had 28 turnovers over the series with LeBron basically playing almost all the minutes with the ball almost always in his hands and had three in that LeBronto game two, a game in which LeBron had 14 assists and one turnover (45 assists to 8 turnovers the entire series).

That’s what led to the historic offensive series.

rORtg in playoff series (series team ORtg - opponents’ regular season DRtg)

2016 Cavs vs. Hawks, +21.5 rORtg, Cavs made 55 threes in 4 games, 46.1%
2018 Cavs vs. Raptors, +21.4 rORtg, Cavs made 46 threes in 4 games, 41.1%
2017 Cavs vs. Celtics, +20.0 rORtg, Cavs made 75 threes in 5 games, 43.6%
2014 Heat vs. Pacers, +18.7 rORtg,Heat made 58 threes over 6 games, 40.8%

It’s not easy to post these type of relative offensive ratings. For example, here are the highest relative offensive ratings in playoff series, Michael Jordan.:

Bulls 1991 vs. Pistons, +17.0
Bulls 1992 vs. Heat, +15.8
Bulls 1996 vs. Heat, +15.2