LeBron Finally Getting Help from Cavs, and Other Tuesday NBA Playoff Takeaways
When we look back upon the 2018 postseason, the Cleveland Cavaliers' supporting cast will invariably be used to centralize what this team couldn't do.
LeBron James couldn't do it alone. The Cavaliers couldn't win a title with this kind of backup. And perhaps most harrowingly: They couldn't hope to re-sign their king with so little help around and behind him.
Cleveland's supporting efforts will be a problem again. It will happen. But during its 113-112 overtime victory against the Toronto Raptors in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals Tuesday, it wasn't an issue. Not a constant one, anyway.
The Cavaliers instead gave LeBron something they seldom have: enough help.
This game was far from a picture-perfect contour of a Cavs team figuring out all of its issues. For most of the night, it was objectively ugly and only mildly encouraging. Cleveland didn't lead until overtime, falling behind by as many as 14 points, and James looked—dare we say—merely mortal en route to a triple-double.
Oxymoron much? Maybe. James tallied 26 points, 13 assists, 11 rebounds and two blocks, and the Cavaliers outscored the Raptors by five points with him on the floor. But he shot an uncharacteristically brutal 12-of-30 from the field, including 1-of-8 from three, with a few too many longer-than-long balls and questionable half-court decisions down the stretch.
James' final 17 minutes weren't pretty. He played every second of the fourth quarter and overtime, through which he shot 3-of-15 (1-of-6 from three). He was 3-of-10 during the final 10 minutes of play.
Give the first-round Cavaliers that version of James and they'd lose, without question. They bent to the Indiana Pacers while riding far better versions of him, most notably in Game 3.
These Cavaliers, meanwhile, stayed afloat even though James wasn't in deity mode.
Kyle Korver pumped in five threes on 12 attempts—with the help of negligible Toronto defense—and his usual number of hustle plays. JR Smith dropped in five threes on just six attempts while flinging a few nifty passes and holding his own in Cleveland's half-court defense.
Jeff Green verged on masterful. We repeat: Jeff Green verged on masterful.
Green did a little bit of everything, from attacking the basket and drawing fouls to making quicker decisions with the ball (three assists) and posting a team-best plus-10.
Kevin Love eventually showed up after a terrible first three quarters. He never did find his offensive groove, but he was good enough from the middle of the fourth quarter onward, grabbing eight rebounds over his final 14 minutes while netting a pair of buckets.
Tristan Thompson was Cleveland's second-best player. He didn't get the starting nod because Cavaliers head coach Tyronn Lue is a sucker for surprise unveilings, but he made the most of his 26-plus minutes on the court, finishing with 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting and 12 boards.
Thompson proved irreplaceable late in the second half. Cleveland's other bigs don't share his capacity to switch when defending the pick-and-roll and live not to regret it. He grabbed six offensive rebounds in the second half alone—and nine (!) in total for the game—and he salvaged a few blown possessions with his trademark frogmarching around the hoop and some atypical solo buckets in the paint:
Chalk up some of Cleveland's good fortune to the Raptors. They imploded. More ink will be spilled on them in a bit, but they shot a disastrous 19-of-41 around the hoop, missed a bunch of high-quality looks from deep and deviated from their free-flowing offensive constructs a tad too much as the game wore on.
The Cavaliers aren't cured, either.
Rodney Hood has a dual doctorate in passivity and disappearing acts. Jordan Clarkson must think a "pass" is something you pay for to skip the lines at Six Flags.
Lue remains a blank-staring wild card all his own. His rotations are equal parts unpredictable, inexplicable and unnerving. Larry Nance Jr. didn't see the light of day when Jonas Valanciunas was in his bag without Thompson in the game, and it seems as though he's still in the business of experimenting with wonky combinations on the fly:
"A reminder that Jeff Green is now playing the 2 again for some odd reason.
— Mike Zavagno (@MZavagno11) May 2, 2018"
Smith-Green-James-Love-Thompson has played 5 minutes together all season
Is now playing critical playoff minutes
Constantly playing from behind will take its toll. Cleveland cannot count on a host of standout helping hands to get by in the 11th hour all series. The first-round matchup against Indiana proved as much.
The Raptors are going to be better in subsequent tilts, and the Cavaliers will find themselves lamenting the absence of continuity beyond James, as usual.
Still, Cleveland's supporting cast is overdue for some success. Players not named James shot 38.8 percent in the first round. And the Cavaliers canned just 34.1 percent of their wide-open treys against Indiana, more than eight percentage points worse than their regular-season mark (42.3 percent).
Among everything that could retreat to reality in the coming days and weeks—Green's perfection, Smith's defensive switch, Lue's acknowledgment Thompson exists—Cleveland draining more of the bunnies James routinely sets up isn't one of them. That fundamental consistency isn't a given, but it isn't fleeting, either.
Plus, James doesn't need assistance-by-committee every night. He'll be better. He settled for so many blah jumpers in Game 1, only a few of which warrant a shout-out to OG Anunoby. He's gassed. You can see it. And the Cavaliers should expect it. He played nearly 86 percent of all possible minutes in the first round.
But he's LeBron. He will inevitably default to wire-to-wire transcendence. And when he does, he won't need this much help. With the exception of some crunch-time moments in Game 7, he dragged a mostly lifeless Cavs squad from the first round into the conference semifinals.
Getting anything more than the bare minimum from anyone will make his job far easier. It will also ensure the Cavaliers are something more than just the facsimile of a contender.
Playoff Beef, Medium Rare
Resident Cavaliers sideline-chair tester Kendrick Perkins and Drake exchanged some heated unpleasantries at the end of the first half:
And then they met again after the final buzzer:
Don't you just hate it when two mogul visionaries fight?
No Moral Victories in Toronto
Speaking as someone who picked the Cavaliers to win this series in six, the Raptors did not emerge from Game 1 emanating hopelessness.
Toronto hustled its way to a 14-point lead in the first quarter. DeMar DeRozan put up 22 points on 10-of-20 shooting, seven rebounds and five assists, even coming up with a handful of big defensive plays. Valanciunas torched the Cavaliers for 21 points and 21 rebounds.
Kyle Lowry didn't dictate the pace of play too well toward the end, but he bobbed and weaved his way to 18 points and 10 assists. Anunoby didn't look overmatched on defense. The Bench Mob played Cleveland to a relative stalemate to end the first half.
Even as the Raptors came undone, shooting 8-of-32 through the fourth quarter and overtime, they did so by their own hand. They controlled the glass for most of the game and only deviated from their reinvented offense for small spurts:
Certain misses will fall next time around. They won't go Mr. Freeze around the rim, on second efforts and from beyond the arc all at the same time. Fred VanVleet will find nylon on wide-open threes in the clutch if he's healthy.
The Raptors eventually should be fine.
The thing is, they don't have that kind of time:
The Cavaliers have the Raptors' number. They swept Toronto in the second round last year. They dispatched them in six games during the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals. The Raptors are now 7-18 against the Cavaliers through both the playoffs and regular season in the second LeBron James era.
This time around is supposed to be different. But it doesn't feel like it. The Raptors' collapse seems more mental than not:
They missed easy looks. They overreacted—along with the Cavaliers, mind you—to almost every call. Something just appears off.
At best, the Raptors must wait another game before deconstructing the LeBron barrier that's been in their way for almost a half-decade. At worst, Game 1 is a symptom of their larger inability to ever successfully match up against James.
Steph Back
Heading into Tuesday's Game 2, Stephen Curry had played once since March 8.
He quickly made his impact felt against the New Orleans Pelicans.
In his grand return as a super-duper sub for the Golden State Warriors, Curry scored 28 points in just over 27 minutes on a tidy 8-of-15 shooting (5-of-10 on triples), including an immediate welcome-back three:
Steph coming back and looking like Steph is huge for the Warriors. Whereas they likely would have lost another game or four before hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy in mid-June, they're now on track to remain undefeated for the rest of the postseason*.
(*This is an intentional exaggeration and most definitely not a prediction. It also isn't impossible.)
Playoff Rondo vs. Everyday Draymond
Draymond Green was mic'd up for Game 2 against the Pelicans, which means the NBA totally has audio of his squabble with Rajon Rondo:
So, NBA, could we maybe, possibly, pretty please get an MP3 of this? You know, just so we have the option of turning it into a ringtone or electronica remix or something?
Also, gross:
This is like when Metta World Peace used a towel to wipe his face that Steve Nash had just used to clean his sweaty armpits. Except it's worse, because it wasn't done accidentally and because opponents aren't supposed to share perspiration.
New Orleans: Wistful for Whistles
Remember when Anthony Davis and Jrue Holiday attempted free throws Tuesday night?
The Pelicans don't, either.
Davis played around 43 minutes. Holiday logged—cleans off monocle—well north of 46 minutes. The two of them combined for 48 shots and...zero free-throw attempts. And yes, that's significant:
Blaming this 2-0 hole on the officials would be wack, but the Pelicans appear to have a valid gripe:
New Orleans has now attempted a total of 20 free throws for this series compared to Golden State's 59. That discrepancy is massive, particularly when the Pelicans cannot expect to match the Warriors' three-point firepower make-for-make on a regular basis.
Free throws specifically were the difference in Tuesday's 121-116 loss. The Pelicans were a minus-15 at the charity stripe despite shooting 7-of-9, and they have now been outscored by 30 points at the foul line overall.
Again, that is untenable.
The Pelicans can live with the Warriors out-sniping them. They've decided to invest in pace, which plays right into the reigning champs' wheelhouse. They run the risk of being blitzed by a barrage of extra possessions and transition opportunities. (Granted, they demolished Golden State on the break in Game 2.)
Getting beaten at the foul line, though, is tough to swallow and even harder to overcome. If New Orleans doesn't bridge this gap in the coming games, it figures to bow out without stealing a single victory.
Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com or Basketball Reference and accurate leading into games on Wednesday.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale) and listen to his Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by B/R's Andrew Bailey.
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