The Cleveland Cavaliers are facing an Indiana Pacers team with a deadly advantage: their 5-out spacing. If the Cavs do not have a plan ready defensively, they could find themselves in a playoff battle.
The Cavaliers are flying high after an easy four-game sweep of the Miami Heat. Their offense played at all-time levels, making their defensive performance less critical. That will not be the case against an Indiana Pacers team with a bevy of solid defenders, from Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam in the paint to Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith on the perimeter.
Indiana is also a much better offensive team than the Heat, so Cleveland will need to have a defensive game plan in place to strategically slow them down. That includes being ready to face the Pacers' lethal 5-out spacing, something the Heat tried and failed to replicate.
In four games, Heat center Bam Adebayo took 21 3-pointers, or an average of 5.3 per game. That was up significantly from the regular season, when for the first time in his career he began launching more than one per game -- yet only to 2.8 attempts per game. Adebayo shot just 33.3 percent on those 21 attempts against the Cavs, however, and at no point did they ever feel they needed to change their defensive principles to prevent Adebayo from getting off 3-pointers.
The same went for the Heat's backup center, Kel'el Ware, who shot 3-for-11 from deep in the series. This meant the Cavaliers could at all times have size at the rim, because the Heat were doing nothing to scare the Cavs into moving their bigs out onto the perimeter to prevent 3-point attempts from the Miami bigs.
The Pacers have true 5-out spacing
The path ahead for Cleveland is now manned by teams with stretch bigs. The Boston Celtics rotate a pair of shooting centers, while the New York Knicks have the league's best pure shooter at center in Karl-Anthony Towns. Whoever is waiting in the Eastern Conference Finals will be launching from all five positions.
To get there, however, the Cavaliers need to find a way to defeat the Indiana Pacers. Myles Turner has been this team's starting center since midway through his rookie season in 2015-16, and by 2019-20 was launching at least four 3-point attempts per game. This season he took a career-best 5.5 triples per game and shot 39.6 percent, also a career best. His 3-point shot is truly a weapon.
Unlike many stretch bigs, however, Turner is also a strong rim protector. Twice in his career he has led the league in blocks, and this season he swatted two shots per game. He is not the level of rim protector anymore that Evan Mobley is, but he won't get played off the court on that end.
That means the Cavaliers will need to have a plan to deal with him. They have been a team comfortable with switching, and that's the approach many teams have taken against the Pacers. Turner is not going to take a smaller player down onto the block and post them up, so it seems fine to switch smaller players onto him. That would reduce the number of open pick-and-pop 3-pointers he can take.
The problem is the other side of the equation, where suddenly a larger player is defending a Pacers guard, likely Tyrese Haliburton. Watch the highlights of Indiana's closeout Game 5 victory when they came storming back in overtime to take down the Milwaukee Bucks; Haliburton got Giannis Antetokounmpo switched onto him and roasted him multiple times to get to the rim, including for the game-winning basket.
The Cavaliers are better equipped in such a scenario, especially in their base defense, because they will have a second rim protector on the court at all times. If Allen is on an island and gets beat, Mobley can rotate into the paint and prevent Haliburton from getting an easy shot. That may motivate Kenny Atkinson to give more minutes to Dean Wade, who can provide that weakside rim protection as well over De'Andre Hunter or Max Strus.
Cleveland could also not prioritize shutting the water off to Turner, hoping he won't get too hot and prioritizing preventing Haliburton, Nembhard and TJ McConnel from getting into the paint. While Turner shot extremely well from 3-point range this season, his career marks are closer to average.
Whatever approach the Cavaliers take, they need to be ready to execute, and ready to adjust if it's not working. The Cavaliers have a good defense, but it's largely built on a combination of scheme and their big rotation. If Indiana forces them to abandon their scheme and pull their bigs out of position, things change quickly.
If the Cavaliers are not careful, they could find themselves stumbling to a team that would like nothing more than to return to the Eastern Conference Finals.