Reaching the NBA Finals will be no simple feat for the Cleveland Cavaliers as the franchise hopes to rectify their standing across the league.
Three years of Playoff embarrassment has the Cavaliers tip-toeing the line between contender and pretender. For many, Cleveland is hardly even a pretender. The Cavs have made bold moves over the last year, adding 11-time All-Star James Harden to the core in exchange for Darius Garland. Cleveland shipped De'Andre Hunter to the Sacramento Kings for Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis just one yeaer after adding Hunter to the ranks.
Cleveland feels the pressure to break through the second-round ceiling and elevate Donovan Mitchell past his former limits in the Playoffs. That strategy is finally on the testing grounds with the Cavs entering the Playoffs for the fourth consecutive season, holding a 2-0 series advantage against the Toronto Raptors so far in the first round.
At the onset of the Playoffs, the path to the Finals looked tumultuous but doable. The New York Knicks, while fearsome, are not an unstoppable force and have plenty of flaws to exploit. The Detroit Pistons rely on physicality and rugged defense but fall apart on offense if Cade Cunningham cannot save the day. The true test was the Boston Celtics, even without Jayson Tatum. Tatum's return seemingly guaranteed a return to the Finals for the 2024 champs.
Game two of the Playoffs gave the Cavaliers a glimmer of hope, though, as the Joel Embiid-less Philadelphia 76ers won a game in TD Garden, overcoming the Celtics 111-97. Philly not only beat Boston. They kept one of the most efficient and effective offenses under 100 points in a Playoff setting.
How Philadelphia broke Boston
No matter what the Cavaliers do, beating the Celtics will be a dog fight. Boston's head coach Joe Mazzulla is notoriously a basketball sicko in all the best, and worst, ways. The Celtics rely on high-volume three-point shooting from every player, taking shots in the face of tight closeouts. That sort of risky offense is often both the reason for a win and the reason for an ugly loss.
Somehow Mazzulla and the Celtics have largely ignored that fact.
What the Sixers did was not a miraculous, one-time gimmick. Philly's head coach Nick Nurse orchestrated a fine-tuned defense that capitalized on Boston's confidence and team-centric play. Forcing an obvious pass for an easy basket allowed the Sixers' young, jumpy squad to leap into passing lanes, deny entry passes and get Boston out of rhythm.
In that game, Philadelphia's backcourt duo Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe combined for 59 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists. One of the Celtics' greatest attributes is their perimeter defense. Derrick White, Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard never seem to lose track of their coverage, but the Sixers forced enough interior collapse and gravity to get clean looks on the arc.
With the departure of Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford in recent years, Boston's frontcourt pressure is far below what it used to be. Tatum is still a versatile defender and can pressure big men into stupid mistakes or missed shots, but a shifty, quick-footed guard can navigate into the paint and get an easy lay up around Luka Garza.
Once Maxey and Edgecombe got hot, that energy and confidence became contagious. Kelly Oubre, Jr. tallied 12 points, hitting clutch threes down the stretch. Paul George showed glimpses of vintage PG-13 days, dropping 19 points and showcasing terrific defense.
The amalgamation of hot shooting, active defense, split-second decision making and elite guard play were enough to overpower the Celtics at least once. Unfortunately for the Sixers, Boston shot a dismal 26 percent from deep and will probably bounce back hard. For a team like the Cavaliers, though, there's something replicable in that performance.
If Philly can win one time, the Cavs can win four times
As aforementioned, any attempt to win four games in seven tries against the Celtics is not simple math. Philly showed it's not rocket science, either.
When the regular season opened, the Celtics were seemingly entering a reset year without Tatum. In the offseason, they traded away key players like Jrue Holiday to maneuver their luxury tax positioning. Most of that money that departed was in the frontcourt, leaving Boston lacking in the post. The acquisition of Nikola Vucevic presented Boston a better offensive center, but it did little to resolve defensive shortcomings.
Cleveland's backcourt duo of Harden and Mitchell can replicate what the Sixers' guards did but amplify it to a new degree. The Cavs not only have two veteran, battle-tested three-level scorers in the backcourt, but the big man duo of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen can continue the interior assault whenever necessary.
Philly did not have to grind and fight for every point in the paint the entire game. Once they penetrated Boston's defense to open up the arc, they sent a volley of three-pointers and kept shooting until they hit. Mitchell and Harden can manipulate the tempo, rhythm and flow of the game masterfully by knocking down tough threes, forcing fouls and throwing lobs to a cutting big.
Adding a myriad of two-way wings like Dean Wade, Keon Ellis, Max Strus, Sam Merrill and Jaylon Tyson into the mix, the Cavs have the bodies to throw at Boston to overwhelm them to the point of exhaustion.
The Celtics are the favorites to win the Eastern Conference Finals for a reason. They have the pedigree as former champions, and many other contenders in the conference have glaring flaws. That pedigree might be forcing onlookers to ignore the obvious weakness in Boston, though. Their roster was built for a reset, not a championship run. Vucevic was a mid-season pivot move - an imperfect one.
Defensively, the Cavs need to challenge wings like Ellis and Tyson to linger in between assignments and take chances to intercept passes. The entire Association knows that once any Celtics player has the ball in their hands, they are liable to score. Cleveland's opportunity is in stopping the pass, not contesting the shot every time. Ellis' defensive playmaking will be paramount in a Boston series. The young wing is the example of this defensive scheme, always covering multiple zones regardless of the defensive set.
The quartet of Harden, Mitchell, Mobley and Allen need to integrate everything the Sixers did to win game two against Boston. If the Cavs want to reach the Finals, they will almost certainly come head-to-head with the Mazzulla-led Celtics. The Sixers offered an incomplete and rough sketch of the blueprint to beat Boston.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to finalize the gameplan Philadelphia initialized. Harden was brought to The Land for that very reason.
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