In their first three playoff outings, the Cavaliers have been matched up against a very physical Detroit Pistons team. Getting caught up in the Pistons’ physical play is something the Cavs do not want to do.
During last season’s first round playoff matchup, the Cavaliers squared off against the seventh seeded Boston Celtics. At the time, the Celtics had no all-stars on the roster, they were just a young team who fought their way into the playoffs.
In the series against the Celtics, the Cavaliers, led by their big three, were put to the test. At times, things got physical, which was evident when J.R. Smith was suspended two games for punching Jae Crowder, and Kevin Love got tied up with Kelly Olynyk, which ultimately ended his season.
The scrappy play from the C’s put the team’s long-term playoff success in jeopardy, which is something they don’t want to repeat this season. The last things the Cavs need is another key player to go down with an injury or a suspension due to hot tempers early in the playoffs.
With two play playoff games out of the way thus far, the Cavaliers have found themselves in a very similar position as they did last season.
The two sides have been taking shots at each other all series, Stanley Johnson being at the forefront of things.
“He jabbers, he moves his mouth some time,” Johnson said via cleveland.com. “The whole team does like they’re little cheerleaders on the bench anytime you walk in the right corner. They’re always something like they’re playing basketball in the game. Only seven or eight players play for them. I don’t see why the others get talking. They might as well just be in the stands.”
The 19-year-old rookie also had a run-in with Cavs all-star forward LeBron James during a first quarter timeout, which led to a post game attack on James from Johnson. “It’s (fake) as hell,” Johnson said of James’ bump. “He was walking away and I was walking in a straight line. He didn’t bump me, I just didn’t move my direction, so we hit. I don’t know what you take from that. I don’t take anything from it but a cheap shot, a cheap bump.”
Despite Johnson “being in his head”, James finished the game with 27 points on 12-18 from the field, and LeBron seemed to not be fazed by the Pistons, which is something the rest of the Cavaliers should strive to do. Head coach Tyrone Lue would agree.
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“The biggest thing for me is to continue to tell my team we have to play through the officiating and play through the physicality,” Lue said via cleveland.com. “They’re going to try to junk the game up as much as possible and we have to keep our heads and keep playing. We can’t get caught up in all the roughhousing and if we get a couple of bad calls here and there we have to continue to play through it.
“We can’t get caught up like we did last year with the (Jae) Crowder incident and J.R. Smith getting suspended for two games. That took a toll on us. We have to be smarter than that. We’re playing for much bigger things and we have to be smart.”
The last thing the Cavaliers need is Matthew Dellavedova running the show next to LeBron against the 73-win Golden State Warriors in the finals for a second year in a row. Meaningless horseplay in the first round must be held to a minimum in order to prevent that.
Hopefully for the Cavs, the Pistons can talk-the-talk, but can’t walk-the-walk.