Cavaliers roasted Tyler Herro on the court (and kept going afterward)

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a simple game plan against the Miami Heat.

Miami has a really good defense; they ranked ninth for the season in defensive rating, one spot behind the Cavaliers. Their midseason trade sent out an inconsistent defender in Jimmy Butler (more by choice than ability) and brought in three good defenders: Andrew Wiggins, Kyle Anderson and Davion Mitchell.

There are not a lot of weak points in the Heat defense, therefore, so the Cavaliers needed a plan to attack and generate good looks -- especially without turning the ball over and handing a shaky offense high-percentage looks in transition.

Cavaliers All-Star guard Darius Garland was asked about the team's approach after the team's Game 2 victory, and he kept it simple: pick on Tyler Herro.

The first-time All-Star for the Heat is their only consistent generator of offense, so he almost has to be on the court for big minutes. The drawback, however, is that he provides a weak spot for the Cavaliers to attack. As we detailed after Game 1, Herro has nowhere to hide matching up with a potent Cleveland rotation, so someone capable will have the advantage matchup to attack Herro.

The Cavaliers are picking on Tyler Herro

The Cavaliers have not stopped targeting Tyler Herro -- and it is working. The NBA has a simple metric called "Defensive Win Shares" which combines how well or poorly you perform on defense with your volume of minutes. Herro is last in the entire league in the playoffs with -1.5 defensive win shares, even worse than most players who have played in three games.

28 players are defending at least seven shots per game; most of these players are either wing stoppers or rim protectors. That makes sense -- they are either matched up on opposing stars or defending a high-volume location like the rim.

Of those 28 players, Tyler Herro is dead last by allowing opponents he is directly guarding to shoot 63.6 percent from the field. No. 2 Franz Wagner is at 59.5, closer to seventh than he is to Herro in first. And even when you factor in what those players would normally shoot, Herro is allowing opponents to shoot 16.4 percent better than usual. Wagner is second at 13.3, and no one else is above 7.1.

The Miami Heat cannot help but play Tyler Herro, but they are going to lose the series because of him. He is a really good offensive player, but the Cavaliers have been able to throw multiple different defenders at him -- elite wing stopper Sam Merril is not -- and not feel the pain too much because they have made it back on the other end, and then some.

Sometimes the Cavaliers are roasting Herro to drive into the defense and gain an advantage. Other times they are losing him on the perimeter to get up a shot. When Herro is the primary defender, the Cavaliers are shooting 46.7 percent from deep. That's not sustainable for Miami, especially because Cleveland is forcing Herro to defend 7.5 such shots per game.

The Cavaliers are embarrassing Tyler Herro on the court. It's obvious that they are hunting him, and it's obvious that he can't do anything about it. Yet what is worse is that Darius Garland -- not an elite defender himself -- just came out and put Herro on blast. The very first words out of his mouth when asked about their offensive gameplan were "pick on Tyler Herro."

Herro may use the slight as motivation. Erik Spoelstra might play that clip in the locked room. Udonis Haslem may come in to light a fire under the team as the series returns to Miami.

None of it will likely matter. Herro has been a poor defender for his entire NBA career, and if he was going to significantly improve, it would have happened already -- you don't languish in your development playing for the Miami Heat organization. This is a structural flaw, and while Miami has a number of good defenders, they don't have the elite ones needed to make up for Herro's shortcomings, not like the Cavaliers do with Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen and Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade.

The Cavaliers have their game plan; now it's up to Miami to try and find a counter. If they don't, the embarrassment -- on and off the court -- will continue.