The Cleveland Cavaliers are flying high. Two nights after righting the ship and beating the Charlotte Hornets to improve to 4-4 on the season and end their 5-game road trip with a winning record, the Cavs returned home and beat the explosive Portland Trail Blazers 107-104. They are now 5-4, good enough for eighth-place in a crowded Eastern Conference.
Portland is ostensibly a better team, but so were Atlanta, Denver and the Clippers. Wherever you deem Cleveland’s true talent level to be, they are proving capable of taking on any opponent and hanging tough. Only once in nine games have they been beaten before the start of the fourth quarter, and even in that game (Phoenix) they made a run to make it much closer by the end of the game. The Cavs can compete with, and beat, anyone.
The Cavs got another impressive win Wednesday night, beating Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers. What stood out from the 107-104 victory?
This win was a true team performance. The defense stepped up in a big way against a high-octane foe. Damian Lillard dropped 26 points, but it took him 27 shots. On key possessions late both Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen switched out onto him and forced a miss.
Speaking of Allen, he would be the “second stud” from the night. In addition to forcing a miss on the final possession he was dominant inside and on the boards, scoring a team-best 24 points and pulling in 17 rebounds. Dylan Windler entered the rotation with Lauri Markkanen in health and safety protocols and went 3-for-3 from deep.
Let’s look a little closer at 1 stud and 1 dud from the Portland win, starting with the best game of the season from Darius Garland.
Cavs: 1 stud from win – Darius Garland
Line: 19 points, 10 assists, 5-of-6 on 3-pointers
Darius Garland has had something of an inconsistent start to the season given that he missed two games due to an ankle injury and took another game to get his legs under him. Outside of that trio of games he has been one of the Cavs’ best players, elevating their play even when his shot wasn’t falling.
Wednesday night his shot was falling, and it was electric to watch. Garland was nailing 3-pointers, including a couple of tough looks off-the-dribble. Only four players in the entire league have had a better shooting night on as many attempts or more — interestingly enough, one of those also coming against Portland when Luke Kennard went 6-for-7. Check out his fearlessness to close the third:
COLD. BLOODED.. pic.twitter.com/BERgmbZkJa
— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) November 4, 2021
The Cavs have struggled from 3-point range this season (more on that later) and then they reset their season standings in one hot night, hitting 15 of their 30 3-point attempts on the night. Garland was a significant part of that, setting up teammates and drawing the defense to himself with the threat of pulling up at any time.
This was the third time this season that Garland has had double-digit assists, lifting his season average to 7.9 assists per game. In all of last season he hit double-digit assists just six times, and just once as a rookie. His growth as a passer and playmaker is palpable and it’s why he looks poised to be the other pillar of this franchise alongside Evan Mobley for years to come.
This was Garland’s best game of the season, and it came at the perfect time, against a counterpart in Damian Lillard who is currently where Garland hopes to be. On this night, it was Darius Time.
Cavs: 1 dud from win – J.B. Bickerstaff’s tight rotations
One of the narratives emerging from the early season is J.B. Bickerstaff’s tight grip on the rotation, playing just eight guys outside of crunch time in the majority of games. Given that his eighth man has usually played just a handful of minutes, he has really been leaning on seven guys on a nightly basis.
He did that again last night, playing only seven guys in the absence of Lauri Markkanen and Kevin Love due to health and safety protocols. That meant he rode Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley specifically hard, playing them each 40 minutes, and Garland another 36. That might be fine for a single game, but it’s a trend now, and those minute totals will run this team into the ground. A few wins now is not worth a season of fatigue and injury.
The other downside to such a tight rotation is that it is keeping helpful players off the court. Dean Wade and Dylan Windler played last night presumably only because Markkanen and Love were out, and it’s reasonable to conclude that Windler would have seen few or no minutes if Isaac Okoro was healthy.
That’s a mistake. Windler has the best two-way upside of this limited wing group, and he was excellent Wednesday night in hitting all three of his triples and playing solid defense on the wing. As good as Cedi Osman has been to start the season, Windler has to get regular minutes, both to evaluate whether he is a long-term piece for this team and to alleviate the minutes load on the rest of the team. Markkanen is probably not the long-term starter at the 3, but Windler might be, and the team has to figure that out. If the goal is winning, that’s also a reason to play Windler.
This was an awesome win for the Cavs, and a true team effort. Our “dud” for the night was really just saying that everyone was awesome and that Bickerstaff should use them all. This team is showing surprising depth and a will to win, and the next 73 games could turn out differently than we thought before the year. At the very least, they have one more encouraging win under their belt after triumphing over Portland on Wednesday night.