Cleveland Cavaliers: Larry Drew is an improvement on Tyronn Lue
By Chris Parker
Stats Dive: Slower Pace, Improved 3-point D, Better Shots
As Lue only coached six of the twenty games so far this season, any look into the team’s stats must be accompanied with a small-sample-size warning. It’s not a lot of data to be basing hard judgments on (so try to stay on the “soft conclusions” side of the line).
One of the biggest differences between the two is that the Cavaliers are 7.5 points better defensively. That’s the same distance between the Boston Celtics’ second-ranked defense and that of the 22nd-ranked Chicago Bulls.
Larry Drew's gotten much better 3pt shooting than Ty Lue did (38% to 32%), but whether limiting opponent corner 3s, pushing more shots away from restricted area or reducing foul rate, Drew's gotten MUCH better D (+7.5 pts, w/o firing #Cavs Asst Coach Mike Longabardi). pic.twitter.com/aIi0vG4BeE
— Chris Parker (@CRS_1ne) November 29, 2018
A lot of that defensive improvement comes from better defense at the three-point line, but three-point shooting is notoriously variable. Looking deeper, you find that the Cavaliers have cut the number of corner threes they allow in half from 15 to 7.3 a game.
Indeed, they haven’t gotten much better at defending them (45 percent to 41 percent), but have forced a lot more of opponents threes out above the break (ATB), into the frontcourt. Now Cavs opponents are missing those ATB threes, going from 41.5 percent beyond the arc to 30.7 percent (4th-best in the NBA since Drew took over), according to NBA.com.
The Cavaliers remain one of the worst teams at defending the rim (or restricted area, aka RA, the three feet in front of the rim bounded by a half-circle). But Drew’s gotten the team to push more shots further from basket, cutting the frequency of restricted area shots by 3.6 percent (from 37.7 percent to 34.1 percent), pushing those shots into the non-restricted paint area (+2.9 percent) and into above the break triples (+2.3 percent).
They’re creating modestly more deflections (12.1 to 10.8), a sign of greater defensive activity, but they aren’t doing any better at contesting opponent shots and they have the worst defensive net field goal rate in the league (tied with the Washington Wizards). (It means that Cavs opponents are shooting 2.7 percent better than you’d expect from where they’re shooting.)
So while the defense has improved in some metrics they remain the worst in the league in others. It’s a steep grade, without doubt.