Cleveland Cavaliers: Quick offense is key moving forward

The Cleveland Cavaliers have found success at times this season, and most of their success comes when they get into their offensive sets early.

At 7-7, the Cleveland Cavaliers have received more scrutiny throughout their first fourteen games than most teams receive all season. That said, it has been easy to point out how Cleveland can improve, but it might be a much more simple fix than most think. Recently, King James Gospel’s Anthony Pesta highlighted how the Cavaliers lackluster effort, and now, we will highlight another area of possible improvement.

Although personnel changes play a huge role, the Cleveland Cavaliers getting into their sets and taking shots later might attribute to their -2.7 difference in offensive rating from last season. Here’s how the Cavaliers have performed this season when shooting at differing times in the shot clock. Stats taken from NBA.com.

There are easily a couple of takeaways from this chart. First of all, it’s easy to see the majority of Cleveland’s shots came between 7 seconds and 15 seconds left on the shot clock. Secondly, it’s easy to see the Cavaliers wait until crunch time to shoot the ball with almost 10% coming from within four seconds of a shot clock violation.

However, their best field goal and most effective field goal percentages are still when they get on the break. In my opinion, the majority of the shots with a shot clock greater than 18 seconds are fast breaks. Showing how getting into sets quicker is more effective can be seen when comparing the 18-15 range with the 0-4 second range and through select video clips.

Here’s a play in which the Cavaliers push the ball in transition and end up with a fantastic look for JR Smith. It was all due to the aggressive defense which is one way the Cavaliers can get into their sets quicker and often times with an extra man on offense like in the play below. While pushing the ball isn’t exactly getting into their sets early, it is an exact example of how capable this team can be to push the ball off a rebound and make smart decisions.

Here is a play from the same game where James is double teamed, finds Love, and he drives for the easy layup. Love takes his defender off the dribble, and with the defense not quite being set, he finds little rim-protecting. This is exactly what the Cavaliers need more of. This early offense helps keep the Cavaliers from making poor choices as the shot clutch runs down.

It’s this type of offense that has been most beneficial for the Cavs this season. It’s obvious that this team has been more effective when getting into their sets early. When the defense is set and defending all five Cavs on the perimeter, it is easy for them to help each and get into their defensive sets, just like in the next short clip.

Here is a prime example of how late shot clock play has hurt Cleveland. Although a LeBron James-three-point attempt is never a terrible site, since James took it later in the shot clock, the Milwaukee defender was able to lash out and try to defend him instead of playing the driving lane.

Examples from each of these situations come in the dozens. At the end of the day, the Cavaliers have proven to play better than they quickly get into their sets. Although just 9.4% of their shots came within four seconds of a shock clock violation, the Cavs would likely see their shooting percentages go up and that frequency go down if they began to get more involved quicker in their possession.

Another key factor is defense. In the aforementioned article, Anthony dives deeper into the lackluster defensive effort, but altogether aggressive defense could lead to earlier sets and easier buckets like seen in the first click. The Cavaliers could either push the ball more after a made basket, or they could force the issue and set up their defense.

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Although the Cavaliers’ tempo is often times caught up in the actual play of the game and their defensive effort isn’t always where it should be, this team must be able to beat the weaker Eastern Conference teams, and they can if they continually attack early and often.