The Cavaliers should be more sound defensively this season

The past two seasons featured an atrocious Cleveland Cavaliers’ defense that had a number of issues. This year should have more consistent results with a younger core.

It’s not as if the Cleveland Cavaliers just didn’t have effort on defense the last two years. They were simply an offensive-oriented team.

Recently, Cleveland went how LeBron James (and to a large degree Kyrie Irving before last season) went. If they weren’t outstanding (they usually were), the Cavaliers would likely lose. Defense was not as much of a focus for the team, though.

Cleveland’s rotation consisted more of sharpshooting combined with dazzling isolation scoring, and on the other end of the floor, there were often breakdowns due to an often rapidly changing roster and starting lineup.

This year, that shouldn’t be the case as much, with a younger group of players getting more run and players being more comfortable with head coach Tyronn Lue’s defensive system.

Rookie guard Collin Sexton should be able to pressure opposing primary ball-handlers better than recent Cavs have these last few years.

Irving’s combination of a huge offensive workload and injury history didn’t generally bode well to being a consistent plus defender. Players like the a slower and aging Jose Calderon and the tiny (by NBA standards) Isaiah Thomas were simply at a disadvantage nearly every night.

As other KJG writers have touched on, Sexton’s ability to guard 1 to even some 3’s with an undeniable intensity (I’m pretty sure you’ve seen the Summer League defense video at this point) should allow Cleveland to stay home more often on shooters.

Combined (at least to start the year barring a trade) with George Hill’s quality perimeter defense — when healthy — and 6-foot-9 wingspan, along with similarly sized wings in Rodney Hood and Cedi Osman, Sexton’s defensive potential should help Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr. and others contribute as help-side defenders and alleviate the pressure on interior defenders.

Only six teams had a higher frequency of possessions in defensive isolation than the Cavs last season and Cleveland graded out as the worst in the league in that category, per Synergy. In addition, Cleveland graded out as the fourth-worst against opponent spot-ups and was the worst in defending opponent scoring rollers (again, per Synergy).

The Cavs had an unusually high amount of roster and rotation shake-ups last year, so it’s understandable that there were a number of defensive problems.

This season, with younger, healthier players and a full offseason to get acclimated to each other, they should be better equipped — at least in theory — to not have to rely on older players such as Kyle Korver and Channing Frye to play lockdown defense.

That sort of thing was all too familiar last season and it’s on Lue to fix that moving forward with a younger core.

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Everyone will always be grateful for what LeBron did for the Cavs and Northeast Ohio as a whole, particularly in his hometown of Akron. What people won’t exactly miss with James, though, are his business decisions on defense (like consistently failing to closeout on shooters and too often not rotating at all to help in rotations).

He wasn’t the only one doing so all the time, however.

With a player in Osman — that should be playing big minutes, if not starting, this season — who can legitimately match up 1 through 4 defensively being a shining example of defensive effort, that sort of lackluster defense will have no excuse now.

Nance is more than capable of switching onto primary and secondary ball-handlers. Hood and to some degree, Love and Jordan Clarkson, should be capable off-ball defenders. Hill and Korver’s basketball IQ enables them to get their hands in passing lanes at a fairly high rate.

It’s not as if Cleveland is suddenly going to be a great defensive team; they are going to have young players playing key roles in crunch time and that is often a crap-shoot, with defensive mistakes a commonality for due to their inexperience. However, they have a team that can complement each other in ways former Cavs teams didn’t.

Clarkson and Hood, for example, have never been plus defenders in their careers. However, the Cavs have a younger core focused on grinding their way through games. In addition, with Love potentially having less of a target on him defensively with Nance shouldering more of the switching load this year, those two offensive-minded players should be expected not to significantly affect the team’s defense in a negative way.

They’re both athletic with solid length on the perimeter and, with Osman and Sexton’s defensive tenacity allowing them to guard the opposing team’s best on-ball players, Clarkson should be able to model the Korver style of instinctive team-defense, deflections and sheer hustle leading to winning plays.

Cleveland’s calculated aggression this year defensively on the perimeter should create more live-ball turnovers and lead to the youngsters flexing their muscles in transition.

Last season, only four teams forced less turnovers per game, according to nba.com. This year, that won’t be the same story.

With likely less roster turnover and more youth on the floor, there should be more defensive cohesion. That said, Cleveland shouldn’t have to blitz pick-and-rolls as frequently, as they often have had to the last two seasons.

This Cavs’ youth movement will bring more defensive energy and that could be the main reason they return to the playoffs.

Less blitzing means Cleveland should have less Nance foul trouble and Love will have more energy to get buckets on the other end.

Cleveland won’t be just outscoring people anymore and that’s okay. Defense matters in the progression of young players, too.

Cleveland can be more than just marginally more competent in that area but they should be significantly better than the near-cellar-of-the-league teams next season in terms of defensive efficiency.