The Cleveland Cavaliers lost Game 1 to the Indiana Pacers at home, and fans and media analysts alike are firing off their takes. The right response should be to stay calm, because nothing happened in Game 1 that should scare the Cavaliers.
The result of the game is certainly not what the Cavaliers or their fans hoped for. After turning the Miami Heat into dust in a four-game sweep, Cleveland faced the Indiana Pacers and had a much tougher time of it, ultimately losing 121-112 to fall behind 1-0 in the second round series.
The overreactions write themselves. The Cavaliers lost and Darius Garland missed the game, so they are in terrible trouble as long as their All-Star point guard is sidelined. His return would certainly be a positive, but a few days ago they had the greatest two-game beatdown in NBA playoff history without him. That prompted us to write this piece, which asked the question whether the Cavs were better without Garland.
Another approach would be to look at the box score. Evan Mobley was a team-worst -20 for the game, and the Pacers scored 121 points, so the Cavaliers' defense must have been horribly exposed. The 5-out approach of Indiana broke a Cleveland defense with too many weak spots. Yet the Pacers shot a merely fine 53.2 percent from 2-point range, and only 57.1 percent at the rim. Mobley and company also cleared the glass well, holding the Pacers to only four second-chance points throughout the game.
Or you conclude that this series will be decided by who has the best player, and Donovan Mitchell needed 30 shots to score 33 points. He was -19 for the game and shot a frigid 1-for-11 from 3-point range. Obviously if Mitchell had shot a better percentage from 3-point range he would have had a better game, but he didn't play poorly other than the missed shots.
From 2-point range Mitchell was a strong 12-for-19 for 63 percent, including 8-for-12 at the rim. He also drew nine free throws as he relentlessly attacked the rim.
If none of those easy overreactions are the right response, what can the Cavaliers and their fans take away from the loss? Simply this: the Pacers were hot, the Cavs were not.
The Cavaliers should not overreact to the loss
The Indiana Pacers were on fire in Game 1. Postseason star Andrew Nembhard shot 5-for-6 from deep. Fellow starting wing Aaron Nesmith was 4-for-6. Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and Bennedict Mathurin all hit multiple triples. Myles Turner was 1-for-3 but that included a halftime buzzer beater from the corner. As a team, they shot 19-for-36 from deep, a scorching-hot 52.8 percent.
Cleveland, on the other hand, couldn't get anything to drop. As previously mentioned, Mitchell was ice-cold from deep, hitting just one of his 11 attempts. Max Strus was 2-for-8, while Ty Jerome was only 1-for-4. De'Andre Hunter shot 1-for-2, but that was far too few attempts for him. As a team they were only 9-for-38 from deep.
The Cavaliers are not a poor shooting team; in fact, the nine made 3-pointers were a season low. This was the league's best shooting team all season, and they just went super saiyan on the Miami Heat. The Pacers, for their part, are a good defensive team but not the kind of unstoppable lockdown unit that could single-handedly cause the Cavs to miss every shot.
The concern would come if the Pacers not only outshot the Cavaliers but had significantly better shot quality. That is a measure of what an average player would shoot on each of their shots based on shot location; shooting results are descriptive, but the shot quality is a little more predictive.
The Pacers were expected to have a 54.8 effective field goal percent on their shots, while they actually shot at 64.5 percent when you balance the value of the shots into the percentage. The Cavaliers would love to force the Pacers off of their spots more and decrease the expected shot quality, but they can't help all that much if the Pacers shoot the lights out on those shots.
Here's the interesting part: the Cavaliers had better expected shot quality than the Pacers. An average team would have shot 57.3 percent EFG on their shots, but they instead shot 50.5 percent. As we discussed above, the vast majority of that underperformance came by getting cold from deep.
The Cavaliers played the Pacers well; not perfectly, but well. They did enough to win. If the two teams had simply shot at a league average rate, the Cavaliers would have won. More so, if they had shot as they did in the regular season, the Cavaliers won have won by even more. Instead, the Cavs went cold and the Pacers got hot, and that was the ball game.
There is no reason to think that the Cavaliers suddenly forgot how to shoot. Things should regress to the mean as the series moves on, and Cleveland has no reason to think they are not still the better team. Sometimes it's a make-or-miss league, and you shrug and move on.
Fans should do that too. There is nothing to see here, everyone. Game 2 is on Tuesday.