How good was this team?

[Wham with the Right Hand]

How good were the Cavs this year, really?

They won 44 games, but it seemed like some of their wins against the strongest opponents were “tainted” due to those teams’ top players being out with injuries or COVID. So I decided to take a look. Here are 13 wins against quality opponents that I consider to be “suspect”.

Nov. 5 Toronto 102-101. No Pascal Siakam, who averaged 22.8 point and 8.5 rebounds

Nov. 13 Boston 91-89. No Jaylen Brown, 26.9 ppg

Dec. 1 Miami 111-85. No Jimmy Butler or Bam Adebayo, their two best players

Dec. 8 Chicago 115-92. No DeMar DeRozan or Coby White

Dec. 13 Miami 105-94. Still no Butler or Adebayo

Dec. 18 Milwaukee 119-90. No Giannis, Middleton, Holiday, or Portis

Dec. 26 Toronto 144-99. The entire starting lineup was out with COVID

Jan. 12 Utah 111-91. No Rudy Gobert, Rudy Gay, or Hassan Whiteside (both centers were out)

Jan. 17 Brooklyn 114-107. No Kevin Durant

Jan. 31 New Orleans 93-90. No Brandon Ingraham (22.7 ppg)

Feb. 26 Washington 92-86. No Bradley Beal (23.2 ppg)

Mar. 14 L.A. Clippers 120-111. No Paul George, Reggie Jackson or Marcus Morris

Apr. 10 Milwaukee 133-115. Last game of the season and the Bucks rested all their starters.

So about 30% of the Cavs’ wins were influenced by the opponents’ best player or several top players being out. You can argue the Cavs might have won some of those games anyway. For example, they beat the Bulls by 23 points and may have still won if DeRozan played. But the Cavs seemed unusually lucky this year in catching teams without their top players.

It’s very likely the reverse is true; the Cavs lost some games they would have won if they weren’t missing some combination of Garland, Allen, Mobley, or Markkanen. Not to mention they lost Sexton for 71 games and Ricky Rubio, who was second behind Garland in net on/off, was lost for the last 3.5 months.

I might have to do this again only looking at "tainted" losses this time. There are probably more than 13. But there were some wins against quality opponents that were not “tainted” which show what the Cavs are capable of when fully or mostly healthy:

Oct. 25 @ Denver 99-87. Sexton and Garland started, Love had 22 points in 25 minutes off the bench. Tremendous defensive game against a very good team.

Nov. 1 @ Charlotte 113-110. Sexton started, Rubio was a +23 in 21 minutes.

Nov. 29 @ Dallas 114-96. Post-Sexton injury. Rubio was a +30 off the bench.

Dec. 10 @ Minnesota 123-106. No D’Angelo Russell but I don’t think he’s a great player and the Cavs won by 17 so I didn't put it in the "tainted" category.

Jan. 26 Milwaukee 115-99. Markkanen was out but the Cavs won convincingly against the Bucks’ full roster from their Championship team.

Mar. 18 Denver 119-111 OT. No Jarrett Allen but the Cavs prevailed in OT. Markkanen had 31, Mobley 27, and Garland 25.

Those six games are a good indication of what this team was able to do when everybody was healthy. The Jan. 26 win over the Bucks might have been the most impressive win of the season considering the opponent and the margin of victory.

So the Cavs had 13 wins against good teams missing top players, but there were also six wins where the opponent had all their key guys but the Cavs won anyway.

 

[Ohioplayer00]

Good teams (championship teams) win the games they are supposed to win especially when the other team’s star is out; shows no letdown) This is a very good team and hopefully Koby will continue to build it with good young players and add in some good (not over priced) vets!

 

[2 For The Brew]

IMHO if we had a bit less injuries we make the playoffs sixth seed. We're better than Chicago. I don't think we were going to get out of the first round even with Rubio because of inexperience and not having "that guy" yet.

I think we were a slightly above average team but even with improvement next year I don't see us as a legit contender. We'll still be relatively inexperienced and we've got some holes to fill.

Whether or not JBB is the long term answer I do think he and the team accomplished a lot this season and a better coach would have been worth a handful of wins at most. The goalposts were moved radically forward this season and unrealistically so as I see it.

I feel a LOT better about the team than a year ago but we still have work to do.

 

[MirORich]

Without the injuries to Rubio and Allen, this would have been a 49-53 win team, improving from a 22 win(25 if it had been a 82 game season that year) team the year before, which would have been in the top10-12 for all time win improvement in one season.

They still would have not made it past round two of the playoffs, but by just having Rubio and Allen available for 78+ games and all the other injuries/Covid games the same, it would have been a 49-53 win team.

A lot to look forward to but they do have to find someone like Rubio to be that secondary creator who encourages more movement based assists/offense vs dribble based offense/assists

 

[PIP]

Well it was asinine earlier in the year when folks thought conference finals was a possibility.

I think the Cavs are pretty good and they’re now beginning to open their window and embark on a journey to being an eventual contender. You’re probably looking at 50-53 wins with a healthy squad but even with that number of wins you’re not looking at a legit true contender yet. (Which is why I wanna see Memphis cause they’ve yet to really go through the process)

This will be the first off season in awhile when the Cavs are gonna have expectations moving forward…I believe the jump for Mobley will be substantial and the confidence in him will grow from within the team and the chemistry with Garland will be phenomenal…

Obviously turning the corner from being doormats to a future east contender was all that was needed this season and that was accomplished…

I think this team would have maxed out as a 1 series win team if they were healthy throughout… But I think they finished probably a bit head off schedule with where they did…

If this team would have won 35 games this year we would have probably accepted that and looked to next season to be the season in which they accomplished what they did this season… Cavs are good…With health they have the potential to be great….

Things are good…

 

[Randolphkeys]

Responding to @Wham with the Right Hand on the initial write up. The Cavs approached the fall games early in the schedule like the playoffs already started. No other team felt the urgency the Cavs put on those early season games.

I totally understand why. Let's go through the list:

1. Bickerstaff had never really won as a coach. He had to feel some heat, especially as assistants like Gottlieb left the group for other roles elsewhere.

2. The Cavs had bad injuries stymie the previous season. Getting the whole young group back together and healthy lit a fire under the players internally. It's gotta be hard to convince players to tone down their competitive edge.

3. Ricky stepped in as a locker room leader, coming off the best stretch of play in his career in the Olympics. He approached each minute on the floor like an elimination game, and the young players fed off of him.

So why did that bite them in the ass? Players can't maintain that intensity for a whole season and stay healthy. Coaches can't ignore wear and tear, because other head coaches are pacing themselves for the long haul.

I'm hopeful the Cavs shift to a more thoughtful pace to the season and learn some tough lessons.

 

[The Oi]

Cavs played this season like they were a hired rabbit.

 

[Dr No]

There was a stretch where we played very good basketball, even after Rubio went down on 12/28. But, to my eyes, something started changing in our style of play as we neared the all-star break. The good ball and people movement that was getting people open shots gave way to a more dribble heavy and stagnant offense. We were also not as sharp on d, both in the lane and on the perimeter. Did people adjust to us? Were we fatigued? Did the injuries finally catch up? Combo of all the above and more? I honestly don't know. But back to the original thread question - there were times when we were legitimately good even after Rubio went down (we were 11-4 in January).

 

[sportscoach]

Positives: We have a ton of potential going forward...

Negatives: We lack the depth especially behind Garland and Mobley/Allen that we will need to figure out in 22/23...

Going forward...

We have a young roster and a fair amount of talent. We have a 10ish pick in the 22 draft which should net us some help. Hopefully we can attract a veteran or two with mentor abilities who have some minutes left to help us go from the borderline playoff team to the legit playoff team...

 

[sailfish]

Early in the year, the Cavs looked like they were playing harder and more together than other teams, probably because they were. It seemed like they had spent all offseason playing together while others teams were coming off a long summer away from one another. It also seemed like the Cavs were bound & determined to prove all the doubters & naysayers wrong.

Once people started to believe in them and they started getting respect, they took the foot off the gas, injuries hit, and other teams caught up. It was like they had served notice that they had arrived and they didn’t play with the same urgency. That’s the best I can explain it….

They’re no longer underdogs, so now they need to find something else to motivate them going into 2022.

 

[Rich]

Far better earlier in the year when they were both catching teams by surprise and had Rubio.


I do think part of that was just oddity of the really big lineup in todays NBA. We saw some of that last year too playing a lot of Drummond+Love+Nance lineups, with McGee thrown in.

If you remember, the first like 15-20 games we had the number 1 defense then, too.

So that's kind of a theme.


Even at our best I thought we could get out of the 1st round but were never a threat to get to the Finals due to inexperience.


Our play dropped off, teams figured us out, injuries hit.


But one thing that has to be a focus this summer is conditioning. Two years in a row I feel Allen's play has steadily dropped off as the season wore on. Garland's play did too. Those are the two guys, above all else, who need to work on their conditioning.

And then that goes to JBB too. The rotation needs to expand earlier in the season. Getting guys rest has to be a point of emphasis this summer. He doesn't have freak athletes on this team who can just run and run and run. Mobley..maybe. Not Allen and Garland though.

 

[Heat Check]

To me, something changed when the narratives concerned with individual accomplishments started taking over. Will Garland and Allen make it to the All Star game? Is Mobley ROTY? Is Love Sixth Man of the Year and will he win the ridiculous Most Charges Drawn race?

At the start of the season, this was very much a blue collar team, with no real stars, playing as a unit. But that identity was lost along the way, and it was replaced by more and more talk about a "core" and its "supporting cast". I'm not sure if the guys started reading their own press clippings or what, but I can easily see a young team getting a bit too caught up with that stuff. It's up to the coach to remind them what really matters, and that they haven't won shit yet. Not sure JBB, as a "player's coach", had the balls to do that.

Anyway, there's obviously lots of reasons why the season started going downhill. But the Cavs were a very good team for a while, IMO. It's not their fault the rest of the league hadn't figured them out yet. That's what being good means. But when they did figure us out, we didn't adjust.

 

[2 For The Brew]

A bunch of really good posts on the season. I think early on we were bringing intensity on the defensive end which most trams don't do. Probably many teams were annoyed with us because we were treating games like Delly used to treat practices- no mercy or quarter given.

I agree with @Randolphkeys point but if we hadn't played like that we probably wouldn't have been over 500 at any point anyway.

I think we were roughly and average team to a little above this past season which is quite an improvement.

@Heat Check point about the narrative changing has some support based on outside appearances. Did all the hype a tally impact the team? I'm not so sure. Injuries hurt us quite a bit and Garkand gad to step up. It's like when Sexton had to shoot quite a bit when on the floor with four offensively challenged scrubs. Not really his fault.

Time for Koby to do his thing.

 

[foucault87]

I made a couple long posts about this in the off-season thread, so I won't rehash everything but I honestly think that a fully healthy version of this team would have finished somewhere between 3-5th seed in the East this season. Boston and Toronto came on strong towards the end, but thru about Feb we were comfortably a top 6 seed, even after the COVID stretch and losing Rubio. As it is, this year was a great step forward and I am looking to see where things go next year.

Also not sure why Love is catching strays here. He was awesome all year.

 

[cliffdawg]

I would love to know outside of Chicago (Ball) after the all star break how many times did the projected startling lineup started of the top 10 teams, and I don’t count Ben Simmons he having play all year…..

Someone said at 1 time our projected starters played about 6 games together , that should counts for something, while all the other top teams we’re getting healthy at the right time….