Cleveland Cavaliers: What does Drew’s career say about his style?

A four-year head coaching run

Drew took over a 53-win team that had under-performed its Pythagorean win-expectation by a game and only won 44 games, despite returning nearly the same roster. However, Drew out-performed his win-expectation by five games.

Several things changed under Drew versus Woodson, most notably the offense fell from #2 in points-per-100-possessions to #21, shedding five points a game while only slowing the pace by less than a possession a game. The Hawks’ defensive rating went essentially unchanged, according to NBA.com. However, that disguises larger changes.

Over the next three years Drew would become an early adopter of the NBA’s present run-and-gun fascination. He took over an iso-heavy (but successful) offense and created one heavy on screens and motion. Drew greatly improved the team’s after-timeout plays, even winning the approbation of prominent NBA writer Zach Lowe.

In his first season, the Hawks’ offensive rebounds decreased by 20 percent (dropping from a 5th-best offensive rebound rate to #29) and the number of free throws they took decreased by nearly 10 percent as they gravitated toward more jump shots. Probably the most damning issue and biggest reason for their drop in offensive efficiency was that Atlanta went from the lowest turnover rate in the league to #18.

They made it to the second round again, this time losing to the Bulls.

It’s worth noting that while the Drew-led Hawks surrendered an additional point and a half of points off turnovers as a result, they compensated by improving by 1.8 points on opponents points off fastbreaks (yes, it’s true Cleveland Cavaliers fans!) and by 1.2 points on opponent second chance points, thanks to much improved defensive rebounding. Oddly their ability to force turnovers took a massive hit in Drew’s first year going from middle of the pack (#18) to bottom-dweller (#29), before bouncing back the ensuing year.

It appears to be an anomaly caused by the changing defensive scheme because the following year the Hawks would possess the sixth-best defensive rating and the sixth-highest forced-turnover rate. While the Hawks only won 40 games in 2011-2012, that was a strike-shortened year, and that equates with a 50-win regular season, though they then lost in the first round to the Celtics.

The following season Danny Ferry became the general manager and traded away Marvin Williams. Drew changed his approach, emphasizing the three even more as the Hawks added long-range sharpshooters like Kyle Korver, Lou Williams and Anthony Tolliver. Atlanta would shoot threes at the fourth-highest rate in the league and the pace picked up from 22nd to 12th, while the defense slid a bit from sixth to 10th.

They won 44 games (one over expectation) but again lost in the first round, prompting Ferry to not renew Drew’s contract and replace him with Mike Budenholzer. Drew landed on his feet (sorta) taking over a rebuilding Milwaukee Bucks team. Then-assistant coach Les Connor explained Drew’s philosophy to the local Milwaukee paper, and it sounds very similar to Ty Lue.

"“[Drew’s] style is one of being able to push the basketball in transition,” Conner said. “When we had Marvin Williams, Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and Al Horford, we would do a lot of switching on defense… As our team started to evolve, we had to speed up the game. We wanted to push the ball up the floor and there was not a lot of isolation stuff.”"