Cleveland Cavaliers: Quick offense is key for Cleveland in Game 4

It wasn’t a fluke that the Cleveland Cavaliers won Game 3 by 30. They did so by moving the ball and creating quicker offense within their sets.

There were two facts about Game 3 that went unnoticed in the midst of the Cleveland Cavaliers offensive onslaught.

First of all, LeBron James and George Hill both exceeded their postseason average in both passing frequencies and passes completely. Hill and James were both evidently more aggressive from the start, combining for 23 of the Cavs 32 first-quarter points.

For Hill, he took more than double the number of threes that he’d taken in Games 1 and 2 combined. He forced the issue offensively and repeated the rewards.

On the same note, JR Smith was actually under his normal amount of passes. While at first, that might not strike you as a good thing, Smith being less passive might actually lead to him shooting better. Smith was 3-for-4 from deep and shot without hesitation when he caught the ball.

On top of passing the ball more frequently, the Cavs passed it with pace.

Almost 56% of the team’s shots came within two seconds of getting the ball. On those shots, they shot 58%.

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However, when the Cavs decide to play more isolation ball, they struggle. In Game 3, a fifth of their shots came after 6+ dribbles by a single player. They shot just 18.8% on those shots.

For the common player, isolation isn’t ideal, and although LeBron James in isolation has been necessary for some moments throughout the postseason, in Game 3, it was all about playing as a team. And, moving forward, playing with that mindset is all the Cavs need to worry about.

While that trend seemed like a novel idea to the Cavs, if implemented sooner, it might have caused them from this heartache in the Conference finals. In their first two games, Cleveland wasn’t playing as a team and about 45% of their shots came after 6+ dribbles.

Even when a team like the Rockets play as a complete unit instead of five individuals, they take down the reigning champs Golden State, as illustrated in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals.

Basketball is a team game, and it all boils down to getting others involved.

The Cavs Game 3 rotating and lack of selfishness directly resulted in better shot selection throughout the game.

The Cavaliers shot fewer than 7% of their shots with a Celtic defender tightly guarding them. At the beginning of the series, the Cavs, who shot just 15% from deep, weren’t making the C’s pay for this type of defense.

In Game 3, that changed.

Is it a coincidence that the Cavs playmaker passed more, their shooters passed less, and that correlated with players not standing around watching James play hero ball?

Like JR Smith said, the Cavs needed to give James help. They needed to let him take a rest from being the hero, and with six players in double figures and Clarkson nearly making it seven with nine points, they did just that.

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Quick offense and rotating the ball to the shooter is the key to success for Cleveland, and if these numbers are identical to that of Game 4’s, then we might have another blowout in store.