Cavs plant seeds for playoff success in sweep of Pistons

The Cleveland Cavaliers completed a sweep of the Detroit Pistons with a 100-98 victory on Sunday night and in doing so, planted the seeds for a successful playoff run.

Last season, it was the Cavs biggest weakness.

This season, it may very well be their biggest strength.

While everything involving the Cavaliers goes through LeBron James, some necessary developments occurred throughout their first round sweep of the Pistons. James was his usual brilliant self, averaging 22.8 points, 9.0 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game during the series but Cleveland didn’t rely on him as much as they did during the regular season and last season’s playoffs.

Now, to be fair, the Cavaliers had no choice but to lean on James to an unhealthy degree last year. With injuries to Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, the Cavs superstar trio was turned into a one-man wrecking ball, which ultimately wasn’t enough.

However, many questioned the extent that Irving and Love could help James this post-season. Irving struggled with an inconsistent jumpshot during the season after returning from knee surgery and Love’s supposedly awkward fit within the Cavs offense was amplified, as he averaged less points and shot lower percentages than his first season in Cleveland.

Those questions have now turned into definite answers, as Irving and Love showed they’re able to provide more than enough assistance for James in big moments.

“For our team, it doesn’t matter who is the leading scorer,” James said, via cavs.com. “We just want to get wins. The fact that [Irving] was in such a great groove throughout this whole series, we rode his coattail, we rode Kev and I was able to focus on some other things. Especially my rebounding, get guys involved, defensively just try and lock in on my individual match-up and I knew if I needed to score, I could have but when you have a guy like this to my left [Irving] and a guy like this on the right [Love], even though he had an off-shooting night tonight, they just put maximum pressure on the defense from game one to game four.”

Earlier in the season, James continued to call Love the focal point of the offense and even mentioned how the Cavs would ride his coattails. Many dismissed this quote as simply a ploy to garner confidence into Love, as it was tough to believe a James-led team not running the offense through the four-time MVP.

In the first round though, this statement held true, as Cleveland went to Love early and often. Love is a confidence player. If you don’t get him involved in the early stages of the game, there is a high likelihood he will struggle to get into an offensive rhythm later in the game.

Throughout the first round series against Detroit, Love averaged 4.8 field goal attempts in the first quarter, putting up 5.0 points and shooting 31.6 percent from the floor. This shows the amount of confidence the Cavaliers had in Love, as they continued to feed him despite his poor shooting to open ballgames.

This is important, as Love was able to touch the ball and get involved early, which opened up the rest of his game. Additionally, the Cavalier weren’t demoting Love to just a three-point shooter, as he was able to get an even amount of inside-outside looks.

On the series, Love averaged 18.8 points and 12.0 rebounds per game, which is exactly what Cleveland needs from him in the playoffs. Love was also able to up his efficiency from beyond the arc, connecting on just under 40 percent of his triples against the Pistons.

Love will always be the third wheel behind James and Irving, so it is vital that he stays aggressive when he isn’t hitting his shot. This was seen when he pulled down nine rebounds in the first quarter of game four, despite shooting 1-of-8 in that same period.

While Love was able to impact the game with his rebounding and aggressiveness when he was missing, Irving simply wasn’t missing at all.

Irving became just the second player (Dwayne Wade, 2011 Finals) to led a team with James in scoring during a playoff series, putting up 27.5 points against the Pistons. This included shooting a ridiculous 47.1 percent from both the field and beyond the three-point line, a reflection of how locked in he was offensively.

Much maligned for being too ball-dominant, Irving was able to get his own while keeping his teammates involved against the Pistons. Sure, he still over-dribbled at times, but for a guy with his mentality, it’s going to happen on occasions. When Irving is hitting the amount of dagger three-pointers and controlling the offense the way he was though, you can live with the occasionally poor possession.

“I just continued daily, in and out, just to continue to prepare, prepare, get my shot right, get in early, stay late and just continue to get a ton of shots up,” Irving said about his playoff preparation, via cavs.com. “It was a great series. When you have guys like this and I’m coming off pick and rolls and they have to live with something and I’m coming downhill or getting in transition, pushing the basketball, we play with an up-tempo pace, it just makes the game a lot easier for each one of us. It starts with me as a point guard, just continuing to get rebounds or steals or something like that to continue to push the pace.”

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As Irving alluded to, the Cavaliers are a better team when they push the pace, and while they didn’t do it a lot against the Pistons, they did it more with Irving on the court as opposed to off it. The Cavs had a pace of 83.70 with Irving off the court throughout the series but the number raised to 90.31 when he was on the floor, which is still a low number, but a major improvement over the alternative.

Irving would also go on to comment on how he focused on ensuring Cleveland had better third quarters in the playoffs, which was an Achilles heel for the team all season long. With Irving averaging 9.3 points in third quarters against the Pistons, Cleveland were able to outscore them 103-81 in the third periods of the series. The Cavs were a much better second half team against Detroit and this started with Irving’s aggressiveness and effectiveness coming out of the locker room.

With Love and Irving on song, it gives the Cavaliers a variety of different options to go in close game situations. No longer do the Cavs need to go straight to a James isolation, which becomes fairly easy to defend. Instead, they can throw a number of different looks to the defense, which makes them a much harder team to stop.

It wasn’t just Love and Irving though. Richard Jefferson was able to provide solid minutes off the bench, Matthew Dellavedova and Tristan Thompson were their usual excellent selves, J.R. Smith was a savage three-point shooter and Iman Shumpert was able to impact the game defensively.

“It was a total team effort,” Tyronn Lue said after game four, via cavs.com. “Delly came in and scored 11 straight points for us, J.R. made some big shots, four threes in the first half and then the big shot at the end of the shot clock. So, I thought it was a total team effort. Our guys withstood their run and weathered the storm.”

While Cleveland weren’t perfect in their sweep, they were able to discover the seeds they need to achieve their ultimate goal in June. Now, it’s time for them to continue to water those seeds and watch them grow.