Cavs Player Grades: Caris LeVert inconsistent as second banana

Cavs Player Grades for Caris LeVert: Defensive Impact

Parents, you may want to shield your children’s eyes while reading this next section. Caris LeVert, a wing with good size and strength and insulated by good defenders behind him on the back line, should have been able to at least hold up defensively. Instead, his work on that end of the court was an unmitigated disaster.

In the 567 minutes that LeVert played in Cleveland the defense gave up an extra 7.5 points per 100 possessions. For reference, that was the difference between the No. 1-ranked defense (the Boston Celtics) and the 25th (Washington Wizards) this season. That insanely negative impact by LeVert ranked in the fifth percentile of all players; that is, only four percent of players were less damaging on that end than LeVert.

We cited on the last slide that when LeVert and Garland shared the court the Cavs scored at a league-best rate; unfortunately, their shared defensive rating in such minutes was 116.0, which would have ranked 27th in the league, just ahead of the Indiana Pacers.

LeVert gets caught on screens easily, he doesn’t generate many turnovers and he rarely succeeds in boxing out his man, especially when he is playing at the 3. He was barely an inconvenience to opposing scorers; when LeVert was the primary defender opponents shot 3.8 percent better than expected, overall hitting 50.5 percent of their shots against him.

There isn’t anything good to say here. The Cavs largely swapped out defense-first wings in Isaac Okoro and Lamar Stevens to give minutes to Caris LeVert, who simply swung the pendulum in the other direction.

Grade: D