2025 NBA PLAYOFFS East Semifinals: #1 Cleveland Cavaliers vs #4 Indiana Pacers (IND leads 1-0)

[JujitsuFlip]

Oof, Ernie just said if it was the regular season, Garland would be listed out for 2 weeks.

I don't love Merrill in the starting line-up but Kenny likes keeping Ty, Hunter, and Wade together off the bench.

[uncleduck13]

How big of an upset would this be for Indiana?

[Nuntius]

A couple of scattered thoughts that I wanted to get out before game 1:

1) The Cavs won 64 games for a reason. Throughout the season, they were one of the most dominant teams in the league and one of the 3 top teams in the league. Cavs, Boston and OKC are in their own tier above the rest.

2) The above makes the Cavs the undisputed favorite in this series. I am expecting the Cavs to win the series but I do want us to see it pushed to 6 games. I want us to be competitive and, unlike last year's series against the Celtics, actually win some of those close games.

3) What makes this series even harder for us (other than the Cavs being one of the top teams, of course) is also how damn similar the two teams are. Oikosnomos talked about it earlier in this thread and he was correct. The two teams do things very, very similarly. Neither relies on a big superstar that is expected to carry a major load and will them to victory. We both take a more egalitarian and balanced approach.

What does that mean? It means that we will not be able to tire the Cavs out with our depth. Just like we weren't able to tire the Celtics out with our depth last year. Our high pace, our full-court pressing, our constant motion on offense are all conducive to tiring our opponents out. That can be a very big advantage against a team with a short rotation. Even if their top-end talent is better than ours, if we can tire them out, we have the advantage over a long series. Against the Cavs, we cannot have that advantage. Their depth matches our depth. We will still play our game, of course, and do all of the things I mentioned before but it won't result in the same advantages that it resulted against teams that weren't as deep.

4) One of the differences that the two teams do have is in the way that its shooters behave. Cleveland's shooters (and especially guys like Strus and Hunter) have zero issue taking and making contested 3s. You're not going to run them off the 3-point line as easily. They are able to shoot over people really well which limits the impact of close-outs. Our shooters do not do that. Our shooters will attack close-outs instead and try to press that advantage gained into finding an even better (and more open) shot. That's a good practice overall but it can backfire at times. It can lead to overpassing and eventually result in a worse shot instead of a better one.

5) I saw a comment earlier in the thread about how the Cavs will attempt to target Haliburton on defense like they did Herro. And I do agree that the Cavs will attempt to attack Haliburton. He's the weakest perimeter defender of our starting 5 so it only makes sense to target him. But Haliburton isn't Herro. Haliburton's problem on defense is that he's not a good point of attack defender. He's bigger than your average PG and he lacks the lateral mobility to keep up with smaller and shiftier players. But, unlike Herro, Haliburton has a good wingspan at 6'7.75. For a comparison, Herro's wingspan is only 6'3.25. This difference in length along with Haliburton's basketball IQ and awareness allows him to be a lot more impactful defensively than Herro could be. Haliburton is a pretty good off-ball defender, able to get into passing lanes, and a good help defender as well, able to use his length to poke balls away and even get some blocks in. In fact, in that game 5 against the Bucks, Hali had 3 blocks and 3 steals a piece. I'm not claiming that he's some kind of great defender or anything, of course, and we will definitely still hide him on Strus/Merril/Hunter/whoever shooter is out there, but he's not as easily exploitable on that end as Herro was.

Anyway, the game is about to begin in 10 minutes. Cannot freaking wait

[KazuoOda]

Should be able to win this even without Garland

[Doranku]

Oof, Ernie just said if it was the regular season, Garland would be listed out for 2 weeks.

I don't love Merrill in the starting line-up but Kenny likes keeping Ty, Hunter, and Wade together off the bench.

It's already been 11 days since the injury.

[Eightnineborn]

If Don drops 30, he’ll be the only player with consecutive 8 game 1s with 30+, currently tied with MJ.

[Wolfgang630]

Probably the least talked about semifinals of the 4, but I think we can get a great series from it.

[KazuoOda]

Oof, Ernie just said if it was the regular season, Garland would be listed out for 2 weeks.

I don't love Merrill in the starting line-up but Kenny likes keeping Ty, Hunter, and Wade together off the bench.

It's already been 11 days since the injury.

They're talking about from this point on. So an additional 1-2 weeks on top of the 11 days

[JujitsuFlip]

Oof, Ernie just said if it was the regular season, Garland would be listed out for 2 weeks.

I don't love Merrill in the starting line-up but Kenny likes keeping Ty, Hunter, and Wade together off the bench.

It's already been 11 days since the injury.

That's what Chuck said and Ernie said from this point it would be 1 to 2 more weeks if the regular season. I guess if Cavs start to get down in the series, he's going to have to test it one game.

[Doranku]

Oof, Ernie just said if it was the regular season, Garland would be listed out for 2 weeks.

I don't love Merrill in the starting line-up but Kenny likes keeping Ty, Hunter, and Wade together off the bench.

It's already been 11 days since the injury.

They're talking about from this point on. So an additional 1-2 weeks on top of the 11 days

Ah okay, that's somewhat concerning then. The door is open for the Pacers if Garland is unable to play in this series imo.

[Tracymcgoaty]

Anybody played AC shadows?

My god what a horrible waste of time that game was.

anyways go Cleveland. We want a Cleveland-boston ECF

Releases from American studios in the past year have been garbage. I wouldn't play that game for free.

I played the game for free and i still want my money back.

[RB34]

Not going to lie that Cavs promo with “dream on” was awesome

[Wizop]

My main worry remains Cavs rebounding bigs not their guards.

[JujitsuFlip]

It's already been 11 days since the injury.

They're talking about from this point on. So an additional 1-2 weeks on top of the 11 days

Ah okay, that's somewhat concerning then. The door is open for the Pacers if Garland is unable to play in this series imo.

Especially because Mitchell still isn't 100% from his ankle injury, we'll probably still see him limping around tonight at some point.

Kenny gotta figure it out though, gotta find a way.

[scrabbarista]

This series should be awesome, unlike the one with the garbage can trash Knicks and the excellent Celtics.

[basketballRob]

Somehow, the dirty Orlando Magic injured Garland's toe, and they didn't even play.

Sent from my SM-G998U1 using RealGM mobile app

[Riverwalk2021]

I think this going to be the best series of the POs when all is said and done. Lots of offense.

[Nuntius]

This is an annoying camera, TNT.

[___Rand___]

Why does it look smokey in there. Is it fog or fireworks they set off?

[Chuck Everett]

Cross matching between the bigs. Mobley's so f'n talented.