Cleveland Cavaliers: Thompson-Nance starting role fluidity is a smart move

The Cleveland Cavaliers will need both Tristan Thompson and Larry Nance Jr. to play significant minutes, and the defensive matchup dictating who starts makes sense.

The Cleveland Cavaliers need to do all they can to lessen the defensive burden on Kevin Love. That means Cleveland needs to have Tristan Thompson and Larry Nance Jr. do the needed dirty work for Love defensively the majority of games, and whoever plays next to Love will depend on the matchup, whether that’s a more interior-based big man or more perimeter-oriented. Love is the lone All-Star on the roster, and with him having a much bigger offensive workload this season, the Cavs need him to be fresh in the closing stretches of games. How they do that is by allowing Love to mainly focus on guarding spot-up small-ball fours, and securing defensive rebounds against those smaller matchups.

Love is not going to be a player that is going to guard post-up or rolling bigs throughout the course of a whole contest, because he’s had a long list of injuries in his career, and the Cavaliers cannot afford Love to miss considerable time this season. They simply are not good enough offensively to sustain an injury to their best and most versatile offensive player.

The aforementioned defensive dirty work will matter more this season than in previous years, due to Love needing to be more of a playmaker from the elbows, more of an offensive focal point as a screener in pick-and-rolls, and with him potentially being more fatigued with Cleveland playing more uptempo. With players such as Cedi Osman, Collin Sexton and Rodney Hood often leading the break, Cleveland will need Love to be trailing the break as a consistent walk-in three-point threat.

When it comes to the defensive matchup next to Love, Cleveland head coach Tyronn Lue revealed that who starts between Thompson and Nance will likely be dictated by the style of bigs they are facing in each given game, per Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor.

"“Well, with Tristan (Thompson) and Larry (Nance Jr.) this season, when we play the bigger guys like the (Joel) Embids and Dwight Howards and (Andre) Drummonds, Tristan will start,” Lue said. “When we play the smaller 5s, Larry will start. Last year it kind of wore Larry down trying to guard those big guys the whole game.“That’s a lot to ask for him to guard Dwight and Drummond and all those big guys, it’s not fair to him, DeAndre Jordan and stuff like that. I talked to those guys before camp even started and kind of told them what the situation was.”"

Although Love is a strong player inside, and even with him being a very good rebounder (with 11.3 rebounds per game for his career), he does get fatigued when asked to defend in the post and against roll men often. Against teams with centers like Drummond and Embiid, you want Thompson in there to help lessen the burden on Love.

With Nance being a better switch-out player in pick-and-rolls, and not being nearly the post-up defender Thompson is, it’s clear that to prevent foul trouble and to keep teams more off-balance, the Cavs should determine who starts between Nance and Thompson as being the opponents’ 5 man. Lue revealed that as being the strategy going into the season (again, per Fedor).

"“The thing about it, I guess I can give you all the game plan. When Tristan’s starting, that means there’s a dominant 5, a physical 5, so Kevin wouldn’t guard those guys, Tristan would. When we start Larry at the 5, we can put Kevin on those centers and Larry can guard the 4s and we can switch it. We’ve got a couple different things we want to look at.”"

Love is strong enough to be a solid post-up defender, but he’s not going to be able to do that all the time, and guarding floor-spacing 4’s is something he could do more consistently, for example. Against really strong and bigger/rolling centers, it’s reasonable for Nance to get in foul trouble early in games, and it’s also reasonable for Thompson to get exposed in switch-outs against perimeter-oriented teams with guards simply being quicker and being able to get more separation for jumpers.

I’m of the opinion that Cleveland needs to start Nance more often than Thompson, given that Nance could be a bigger part of the team’s future, and he’s a player that makes more game-changing plays as a help defender and is a better finisher at the rim. He has 2.0 steals per 36 minutes for his career, and has a defensive box plus-minus of 1.8, compared to Thompson’s DBPM mark of 0.2, Basketball Reference.

Along with that, Nance has converted on 71.1 percent of his career attempts from 0-3 feet from the rim, whereas Thompson has only converted on 63.1, per Basketball Reference. Nance is more athletic and faster as a high-flyer, and he has displayed some respectability in the mid-range game, whereas Thompson is not a jump shooter.

That being said, Thompson is an impact player defensively, and like Nance, he provides value as an offensive rebounder and screener for a team that will have growing pains in halfcourt offense with youth and uncertainty in the pick-and-roll game. Having both getting run with the starters, from a depth and matchup standpoint, isn’t a bad thing, at least to start the year.