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Hollinger's column is in The Athletic (pay wall) so I'll copy and paste the portions corcerning the Cavs. It's worth the time to read, IMO. He discusses what went wrong for the Cavs and Grizzlies - two similar teams that were bounced quickly in the first round, and how do they fix it. I bolded a few parts.
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Defense wins championships, right?
Well, not if you’re Cleveland or Memphis. The Cavaliers and Grizzlies were the top two defenses in the regular season, and each had strong resumes entering the playoffs: 50-win seasons, elite point differentials and home-court advantage for at least the first round, if not further.
And yet they won three playoff games … combined. In 11 games these two teams were outscored by 72 points. These weren’t some flukes as a result of plucky underdogs playing out of their minds. They each got their butts kicked by the No. 5-seeded New York Knicks and the No. 7-seeded Los Angeles Lakers that had won 47 and 43 games, respectively.
I wrote yesterday about the lessened predictive power of the regular season in this season’s playoffs, and I want to continue that theme with two teams that seemed to underscore that problem.
The Grizzlies and Cavs had awesome defenses anchored by lineups with two bigs: NBA Defensive Player of the Year winner (Grizzlies’ Jaren Jackson Jr.) and a top finalist (Cavs’ Evan Mobley, who finished third). Both teams also featured small guards who were responsible for most of the scoring and shot creation, and situations on the wing that were offensively iffy. One might add that they’re also young teams on the rise, with limited playoff experience.
That formula was workable in the regular season, when the Cavs and Grizzlies finished eighth and 14th, respectively, in offensive efficiency. There were differences under the microscope: Cleveland had more shooting, while Memphis was more dependent on offensive rebounds and turnover avoidance.
Nonetheless, the broad outlines were similar for their first-round playoff opponents: ignore the non-threatening forwards, crowd the guards and profit.
Both teams mostly lived up to the defensive billing....[Memphis discussion excluded]
Similarly, Cleveland did its job on defense almost flawlessly … at least the part until the shot went up. The Cavs held New York to a ghastly 52.4 True Shooting mark, the worst of any team in the first round. And the Cavs lost in five! A big reason was that the Knicks just got the ball back and shot again any time they missed: New York’s 34.9 percent Offensive Rebound Rate for the series was almost comical, especially against a frontcourt that started two bigs.
And yet, even with their inability to rebound, the Cavs held New York to a 109.3 Offensive Rating. Again, that’s not amazing, but it should have been more than enough to win the series — or at least, you know, stay competitive in it — had the offense shown up.
(Narrator’s voice: The offense did not show up.)
Unfortunately, the Grizzlies and Cavs were the second- and third-worst offenses in the first round. Only a Brooklyn team that was grandfathered into the postseason thanks to wins banked with the long-gone Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving fared worse.
Cleveland produced a meager 104.0 points per 100 possession, according to basketball-reference.com, while the Grizzlies yielded an ugly 103.4. This wasn’t just worse than other playoff underperformers, but worse by a large margin. The 12th-best playoff offense, Minnesota, still scored 109.7 points per 100 possessions — nearly a touchdown better than Memphis and Cleveland.
The league average was 113.2, putting both teams nearly 10 points below the norm. Yikes: Ten points below is 2011-12 Bobcats territory. Yes, this is different because it’s a small sample and a single opponent and all that, but yeah … not great.
So, what happened here? I’ll start with the micro and then bounce back out to the macro farther down.....
In Cleveland’s case, it’s a similar scenario. Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland each had poor series, because, of course, they had poor series. While those two had more ability to run away and launch 3s than, say, Morant, they faced the same problem of facing thickets of help defenders, blitzes and record-scratch kick-outs to non-shooters.
See if this story sounds familiar: Mitchell went from a 22.9 PER on 61.4 True Shooting in the regular season to 15.9 and 51.8 in the playoffs; Garland from 18.8 and 58.7 in the regular season to 13.5 and 56.6. As with the Memphis guards, both saw their paint attempts dry up.
Mitchell has owned up to his playoff failures, but I don’t think his starts with him. Cleveland got absolutely nothing offensively from its two big men, Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Unbelievably, neither averaged double figures for the series. When they weren’t getting punked on the defensive glass, they were clogging things up for the guards on offense. In theory, Allen is the rim-runner while Mobley is the player who keeps defenses honest, but Mobley is a 23.2 percent career 3-point shooter on 192 attempts. He attempted one 3 the entire series and missed it.
Making matters worse was that the Cavs also got little from the small forward position and the bench. Theoretical starter Isaac Okoro was proven unplayable almost immediately, and Cedi Osman was unthreatening on the perimeter (not to mention savaged by Jalen Brunson at the end of Game 1). Inserting Caris LeVert was essentially an offensive move, as he was the only other dependable source of points.
Whatever the starters did, the bench was even uglier. As mentioned, Osman was underwhelming. Ricky Rubio had a particularly disastrous cameo in Game 1 and finished the series scoreless. And desperation insertion Danny Green played exactly like a 35-year-old guy coming off knee surgery might.
Instead, the Cavs repeatedly allowed the Knicks to guard one man with two. The record scratches where Okoro would turn down an open corner 3 were the most glaring example, but the bigs’ inability to space the floor only compounded things.
The most hilarious episode came in the first quarter of Game 5 when Garland drove to the cup only to find his entire team milling about in the lane already.
He kicked to Allen lounging 10 feet from the hoop on the baseline, who slowly loaded up for an uncomfortable jumper that was swatted to smithereens by Mitchell Robinson. (Side note: We may need to retroactively delete Allen’s 2022 All-Star selection, like when a college team has to vacate wins.)
In retrospect, the decision to bench and then buy out Kevin Love isn’t looking so hot. Love didn’t fit Cleveland’s vision of defensive domination, but he could have answered the need for both floor spacing and rebounding. His theoretical replacement, Dean Wade, was invisible after the All-Star break (41.1 TS%) and spent most of the playoffs in witness protection.
So, circling back to the big picture, there’s a common theme here: scheme versatility. The Cavs and Grizzlies only had one gear offensively, one style that worked. When opponents mixed things up, they had zero capacity to hurt them in different ways.
The good news for both teams is that they have cards left available to deal with the issue. It is much easier to win in the market for a fifth-best player and some bench guys than it is to find an All-Star. That both teams have their core pieces and are still fairly young leaves them in a great position to build on that.
Yes, there are potential hiccups for both — Mitchell’s 2025 free agency for Cleveland and Morant’s off-court issues for Memphis — but let’s assume those get ironed out for a minute.
Unlike some of their free-spending brethren, both teams are in great shape concerning the luxury tax and in a position to upgrade the rosters in the offseason.
Let’s start in Cleveland, which only has three players under contract for more than $10 million and enters the offseason roughly $35 million below next year’s projected tax line. The Cavs should be able to re-sign LeVert, use both its midlevel and biannual exceptions for additional depth, and still comfortably avoid the handcuffs of the new CBA’s tax apron.
Additionally, the expiring or quasi-expiring contracts of Osman and Rubio (Rubio has a partial guarantee in 24-25) are an opportunity, giving the Cavs roughly $13 million in expiring money to put into a deal for more wing upgrades. While Cleveland has limits here because of the future picks it traded to Utah — the Cavs have no future firsts to trade due to the Stepien Rule (speaking of Cleveland) — the team could take on longer money that another team doesn’t want. That’s especially true if said money expires in 2025, which is right when Mobley is due for a rich extension...
Nonetheless, it seems that Memphis is at an inflection point. Much like Cleveland, the Grizzlies can keep playing this way and rack up regular-season wins. But without more scheme versatility when it matters, they have a subway tunnel-hard ceiling in the spring.
Overall, the struggles of Cleveland and Memphis underscore the limitations of both the regular season as a predictive tool for the postseason, and of hoarding defensive talent when it isn’t paired with enough floor spacing to make opponents sweat. Work remains to be done for each, but the good news is both teams are in a solid position to come back next season with a far more threatening postseason roster. They have young cores in their 20s, good coaches, cap and roster flexibility and some fresh battle scars from what happened in 2023.
The lesson: Yes, defenses may win championships, but only when a team also can threaten the opponent’s defense.
[The only quibble I have is that the Knicks may have been a 47-win team, but after acquiring Josh Hart they were 20-8 except for the last two games where they rested starters. If they had Hart the entire season they would have been a 58-win team or thereabouts. The good news is the Cavs are in better shape than I thought to improve the roster, or should I say, balance the roster. And the Knicks made it very apparent what needs to be done].
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Defense wins championships, right?
Well, not if you’re Cleveland or Memphis. The Cavaliers and Grizzlies were the top two defenses in the regular season, and each had strong resumes entering the playoffs: 50-win seasons, elite point differentials and home-court advantage for at least the first round, if not further.
And yet they won three playoff games … combined. In 11 games these two teams were outscored by 72 points. These weren’t some flukes as a result of plucky underdogs playing out of their minds. They each got their butts kicked by the No. 5-seeded New York Knicks and the No. 7-seeded Los Angeles Lakers that had won 47 and 43 games, respectively.
I wrote yesterday about the lessened predictive power of the regular season in this season’s playoffs, and I want to continue that theme with two teams that seemed to underscore that problem.
The Grizzlies and Cavs had awesome defenses anchored by lineups with two bigs: NBA Defensive Player of the Year winner (Grizzlies’ Jaren Jackson Jr.) and a top finalist (Cavs’ Evan Mobley, who finished third). Both teams also featured small guards who were responsible for most of the scoring and shot creation, and situations on the wing that were offensively iffy. One might add that they’re also young teams on the rise, with limited playoff experience.
That formula was workable in the regular season, when the Cavs and Grizzlies finished eighth and 14th, respectively, in offensive efficiency. There were differences under the microscope: Cleveland had more shooting, while Memphis was more dependent on offensive rebounds and turnover avoidance.
Nonetheless, the broad outlines were similar for their first-round playoff opponents: ignore the non-threatening forwards, crowd the guards and profit.
Both teams mostly lived up to the defensive billing....[Memphis discussion excluded]
Similarly, Cleveland did its job on defense almost flawlessly … at least the part until the shot went up. The Cavs held New York to a ghastly 52.4 True Shooting mark, the worst of any team in the first round. And the Cavs lost in five! A big reason was that the Knicks just got the ball back and shot again any time they missed: New York’s 34.9 percent Offensive Rebound Rate for the series was almost comical, especially against a frontcourt that started two bigs.
And yet, even with their inability to rebound, the Cavs held New York to a 109.3 Offensive Rating. Again, that’s not amazing, but it should have been more than enough to win the series — or at least, you know, stay competitive in it — had the offense shown up.
(Narrator’s voice: The offense did not show up.)
Unfortunately, the Grizzlies and Cavs were the second- and third-worst offenses in the first round. Only a Brooklyn team that was grandfathered into the postseason thanks to wins banked with the long-gone Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving fared worse.
Cleveland produced a meager 104.0 points per 100 possession, according to basketball-reference.com, while the Grizzlies yielded an ugly 103.4. This wasn’t just worse than other playoff underperformers, but worse by a large margin. The 12th-best playoff offense, Minnesota, still scored 109.7 points per 100 possessions — nearly a touchdown better than Memphis and Cleveland.
The league average was 113.2, putting both teams nearly 10 points below the norm. Yikes: Ten points below is 2011-12 Bobcats territory. Yes, this is different because it’s a small sample and a single opponent and all that, but yeah … not great.
So, what happened here? I’ll start with the micro and then bounce back out to the macro farther down.....
In Cleveland’s case, it’s a similar scenario. Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland each had poor series, because, of course, they had poor series. While those two had more ability to run away and launch 3s than, say, Morant, they faced the same problem of facing thickets of help defenders, blitzes and record-scratch kick-outs to non-shooters.
See if this story sounds familiar: Mitchell went from a 22.9 PER on 61.4 True Shooting in the regular season to 15.9 and 51.8 in the playoffs; Garland from 18.8 and 58.7 in the regular season to 13.5 and 56.6. As with the Memphis guards, both saw their paint attempts dry up.
Mitchell has owned up to his playoff failures, but I don’t think his starts with him. Cleveland got absolutely nothing offensively from its two big men, Mobley and Jarrett Allen. Unbelievably, neither averaged double figures for the series. When they weren’t getting punked on the defensive glass, they were clogging things up for the guards on offense. In theory, Allen is the rim-runner while Mobley is the player who keeps defenses honest, but Mobley is a 23.2 percent career 3-point shooter on 192 attempts. He attempted one 3 the entire series and missed it.
Making matters worse was that the Cavs also got little from the small forward position and the bench. Theoretical starter Isaac Okoro was proven unplayable almost immediately, and Cedi Osman was unthreatening on the perimeter (not to mention savaged by Jalen Brunson at the end of Game 1). Inserting Caris LeVert was essentially an offensive move, as he was the only other dependable source of points.
Whatever the starters did, the bench was even uglier. As mentioned, Osman was underwhelming. Ricky Rubio had a particularly disastrous cameo in Game 1 and finished the series scoreless. And desperation insertion Danny Green played exactly like a 35-year-old guy coming off knee surgery might.
Instead, the Cavs repeatedly allowed the Knicks to guard one man with two. The record scratches where Okoro would turn down an open corner 3 were the most glaring example, but the bigs’ inability to space the floor only compounded things.
The most hilarious episode came in the first quarter of Game 5 when Garland drove to the cup only to find his entire team milling about in the lane already.
He kicked to Allen lounging 10 feet from the hoop on the baseline, who slowly loaded up for an uncomfortable jumper that was swatted to smithereens by Mitchell Robinson. (Side note: We may need to retroactively delete Allen’s 2022 All-Star selection, like when a college team has to vacate wins.)
In retrospect, the decision to bench and then buy out Kevin Love isn’t looking so hot. Love didn’t fit Cleveland’s vision of defensive domination, but he could have answered the need for both floor spacing and rebounding. His theoretical replacement, Dean Wade, was invisible after the All-Star break (41.1 TS%) and spent most of the playoffs in witness protection.
So, circling back to the big picture, there’s a common theme here: scheme versatility. The Cavs and Grizzlies only had one gear offensively, one style that worked. When opponents mixed things up, they had zero capacity to hurt them in different ways.
The good news for both teams is that they have cards left available to deal with the issue. It is much easier to win in the market for a fifth-best player and some bench guys than it is to find an All-Star. That both teams have their core pieces and are still fairly young leaves them in a great position to build on that.
Yes, there are potential hiccups for both — Mitchell’s 2025 free agency for Cleveland and Morant’s off-court issues for Memphis — but let’s assume those get ironed out for a minute.
Unlike some of their free-spending brethren, both teams are in great shape concerning the luxury tax and in a position to upgrade the rosters in the offseason.
Let’s start in Cleveland, which only has three players under contract for more than $10 million and enters the offseason roughly $35 million below next year’s projected tax line. The Cavs should be able to re-sign LeVert, use both its midlevel and biannual exceptions for additional depth, and still comfortably avoid the handcuffs of the new CBA’s tax apron.
Additionally, the expiring or quasi-expiring contracts of Osman and Rubio (Rubio has a partial guarantee in 24-25) are an opportunity, giving the Cavs roughly $13 million in expiring money to put into a deal for more wing upgrades. While Cleveland has limits here because of the future picks it traded to Utah — the Cavs have no future firsts to trade due to the Stepien Rule (speaking of Cleveland) — the team could take on longer money that another team doesn’t want. That’s especially true if said money expires in 2025, which is right when Mobley is due for a rich extension...
Nonetheless, it seems that Memphis is at an inflection point. Much like Cleveland, the Grizzlies can keep playing this way and rack up regular-season wins. But without more scheme versatility when it matters, they have a subway tunnel-hard ceiling in the spring.
Overall, the struggles of Cleveland and Memphis underscore the limitations of both the regular season as a predictive tool for the postseason, and of hoarding defensive talent when it isn’t paired with enough floor spacing to make opponents sweat. Work remains to be done for each, but the good news is both teams are in a solid position to come back next season with a far more threatening postseason roster. They have young cores in their 20s, good coaches, cap and roster flexibility and some fresh battle scars from what happened in 2023.
The lesson: Yes, defenses may win championships, but only when a team also can threaten the opponent’s defense.
[The only quibble I have is that the Knicks may have been a 47-win team, but after acquiring Josh Hart they were 20-8 except for the last two games where they rested starters. If they had Hart the entire season they would have been a 58-win team or thereabouts. The good news is the Cavs are in better shape than I thought to improve the roster, or should I say, balance the roster. And the Knicks made it very apparent what needs to be done].
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