Cleveland Cavaliers: Lessons from the Cavs first win over the Raptors

Lesson No. 1: The Cavs defense has a switch, of sorts.

The defense was abysmal once again. But, that’s somewhat understandable considering the players that are out of the lineup. What isn’t so understandable is the Cavs continued use of their blitzing defense.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that this defense doesn’t work for this team. It only results in open three after open three. Especially when they aren’t trying at the start of the game. There’s a reason Toronto went 12 of 18 (66.7%) from distance in the opening half.

Also, mental lapses like this from LeBron don’t help much either.

The defense didn’t change much in the second half. Cleveland still ran the same style of defense, they just showed effort and Toronto wasn’t making every three. As a result, they were able to hold Toronto to a 104.3 rating in the second half.

Plays like this chase down block from Jeff Green on DeMar DeRozan exemplify this perfectly.

This game shows why it’s so incredibly difficult to predict how the Cavs’ defense is going to look. Their pick and roll coverage is awful, but that probably won’t be the one they run in the playoffs. Besides that, they simply go long extended periods of games without giving the necessary effort.

Hopefully, we’ll get a better idea of what the defense is going to look like once their players return from injuries. There’s hope that everyone besides Cedi Osman will be back as early as next week.

It’s impossible to tell what kind of defense the Cavs have until they show consistent effort while having consistent rotations. Unfortunately, we may not get that until the playoffs.

However, it is fun to see how they can tighten the screws a bit when they want to. That’s what happened Wednesday night.