The Cleveland Cavaliers are having their best season in five years. Let’s lead with that fact. They have already won as many games (22) as they did all of last season, and even with their recent slump of losses they boast the best net rating in the Eastern Conference.
That is all true, but Sunday night the Cavs looked like a team that couldn’t compete with a true title contender in the Golden State Warriors. In a night that was all about the return of Klay Thompson, the Cavs couldn’t muster a return to the blueprint that took them to four-straight NBA Finals against the Warriors.
In the Klay Thompson return game, the Cavs lost to the Warriors in a low-scoring affair. What worked and what let this team down?
The final score was 96-82, an incredibly low-scoring affair where neither team could hit from outside (29.2 percent from 3 for Cleveland, 23.8 for Golden State). Thompson scored 17 points in his return but needed 18 shots to get there. It was a slugfest, and the Warriors came out on top.
In telling the store of this game, it doesn’t make sense to include the offense. The Cavs had a number of brutal performances, with Darius Garland shooting 3-for-12 (he was a game-worst -22), or Kevin Love and Cedi Osman combining to go 2-for-13 off the bench, including 0-for-6 from deep.
Lamar Stevens had his best game of the season as he led the team (yes, you read that right: Lamar Stevens led the team in scoring) with 17 points on 8-for-11 from the field. Rajon Rondo went 3-for-3 from deep and scored 15 points. Yet when the team musters just 82 points it doesn’t seem right to praise any scorers.
Instead, we’re going to focus on the other end of the court, which is where this game was decided. What stood out for better or for worse from the defensive side of the court?
1 stud in Cavs’ loss to the Warriors: Half-court Defense
The Cleveland Cavaliers have finished 25th, 30th and 30th the last three seasons in team defense, which makes this season’s jaunt into the Top 10 that much more remarkable. Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen and company have locked down opposing teams, walling off the paint and throwing a variety of looks at teams. J.B. Bickerstaff has prioritized defense in the starting lineup, favoring Isaac Okoro and now Lamar Stevens over offensive options.
It’s working, as the Cavs have the third-best defense in the league behind only Golden State and Phoenix. They wielded that defense like a club, completely shutting down one of the Top 10 offenses in the league. Golden State couldn’t get to the rim with consistency (outside of that nasty Klay Thompson dunk) and were cold from outside.
Mobley was everywhere, Stevens was a lockdown matchup for whoever he faced, and Dylan Windler was solid off the bench. The Warriors shot just 40.2 percent from the field and 23.8 percent from the 3-point line. Cleveland did this without fouling, sending just four Warriors to the line all game for a total of 10 free-throw attempts.
The Warriors clearly wanted to get Thompson involved in the offense, and the Cavs did a great job of snuffing that out. Stephen Curry in particular had five turnovers, two of which were attempted passes to Thompson that the Cavs jumped on for a steal.
The Warriors were held to just 96 points, but even that is overselling how they performed against this nasty Cavaliers defense. Cleveland’s defense put itself in position to steal a game on the road against a title contender.
1 dud in Cavs’ loss to the Warriors: Defensive Rebounding
The Cleveland Cavaliers start three 7-footers (Jarrett Allen is technically 6’11”) to form a unique but effective jumbo lineup. With Allen, Evan Mobley and Lauri Markkanen the Cavs easily have the tallest frontcourt in the league. They played against an opposing frontcourt made up of a 6’9″ center, a 6’6″ power forward and a 6’7″ small forward. In other words, the Cavs had over a foot of height advantage across all three positions.
Classically that height advantage should give the Cavs two key strengths: interior defense and rebounding. The defense held up its end of the bargain, as detailed above. Unfortunately, the Cavs defense was completely hamstrung by this massive front line’s inability to clean the glass after stops.
The Warriors pummeled the Cavaliers for 22 offensive rebounds, again and again keeping possessions alive. The only way this Warriors team was going to find enough points to win was if they got extra bites at the apple, and the Cavaliers simply opened the gate to the orchard in this one. The Warriors had a 39.3 offensive rebound percentage in this game; the Memphis Grizzlies lead the league with a 29 percent mark in that category.
Kevon Looney was a particular problem for the Cavs. Going against smaller, longer bigs he consistently got into position and bodied the Cavs’ rebounders out of the way, drawing in nine total offensive rebounds in this game. All season long a single player has grabbed at least nine offensive rebounds only seven times.
What was the simple impact of Cleveland’s annihilation on the defensive glass? The Cavs and their struggling offense got up 75 shots; the Warriors got up 97. That’s how you lose a game, and lose it badly, where you outshoot the opponent by a significant margin.
This inability to clean the glass has been a problem for the Cavaliers all season despite their size. Cleveland is third in total defense, fifth in effective field goal percentage against, and second in free throw rate. The problem is that they are just 18th in defensive rebounding percentage, which is inexplicable given their size. Teams with much smaller frontcourt are embarrassing Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley and company.
This was a winnable game, a chance for the Cavs to spoil the return of Klay Thompson, to shut down the party from one of their recent nemeses. Instead, an anemic offense and a shameful showing on the defensive glass led to a 96-82 defeat, one of the more stinging losses of the season.