How Cleveland Cavaliers Can Stop the Early Season Bleeding After Slow Start
Four games into the 2014-15 campaign, the Cleveland Cavaliers are in a dogfight.
But the NBA's newest superpower isn't battling with the league's other 29 teams; rather, the Cavs are dealing with a far more difficult opponent: themselves.
Chemistry figures to be hard to find for a team that returns only five players from last season's roster, has a rookie head coach manning the sidelines and bears the heavy burden of a 50-year championship drought.
But Cleveland's challenge already looks greater than the basketball world could have imagined. The Cavs have one win and myriad question marks to show for their first four outings.
Despite appearing lost at sea, this team can right the ship by adhering to some of the game's most basic principles.
Share the Basketball
Between Blatt's ingenuity and the playmaking abilities of LeBron James, Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving, this offense has prodigious potential. Yet it also owns the NBA's 12th-worst efficiency rating.
There's an obvious disconnect here, which is an unfortunately apt description of this attack. Cleveland's offensive weaponry has been rendered nearly useless, as none of its players seem to be battling on the same front.
"An offense that was supposed to showcase a lot of movement has been beset by confusion and one-on-one play," wrote Bleacher Report's Stephen Babb.
The Cavs are currently a collection of individual players—not a team. That became painfully clear during the team's 102-100 loss to the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, a contest in which Cleveland connected on an anemic six assists, four of which belonged to James.
"Of the Cavaliers' 30 made baskets, only 20 percent of those were assisted on," ESPN Stats & Information observed. "That is the lowest percentage ever in a game played by a team with LeBron James."
As Jody Genessy of the Deseret News quipped, Jazz swingman Gordon Hayward dropped more dimes than the Cavs:
So, too, did New York Knicks scoring savant Carmelo Anthony, per ESPN's Arash Markazi:
But even more unsettling than the woeful assist total itself was Irving's reaction to the performance.
Cleveland's All-Star point guard played nearly 44 minutes, attempted 23 shots and didn't register a single assist. Afterward, he blamed the goose egg not on himself but on his teammates for failing to make shots.
"No, no, no," Irving said when asked if he was concerned about the stats, per ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin. "... We gave guys ample opportunities; guys just weren't hitting."
The numbers do not agree with his assessment. The Cavs had 276 passes in the entire game, per NBA.com's player tracking data, while the Jazz racked up 442 passes and 26 assists.
And this isn't a new issue, either.
Cleveland has the NBA's lowest assist percentage at 47.8. Irving has 15 dimes on the year compared to 72 field-goal attempts, the latter of which he has converted at only a 40.3 percent rate.
The ball is sticking far more than it should, and the Cavs had tried addressing that problem multiple times before Wednesday's tilt. That game came only hours after Blatt had stressed the importance of Irving getting his teammates involved, a source told the Akron Beacon Journal's Jason Lloyd:
"David Blatt tried to establish the Cavs’ food chain during Wednesday’s film session and team meeting. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Blatt essentially told the players that LeBron James and Kevin Love eat first and that it’s Kyrie Irving’s job as point guard to feed them. Irving can then find his own rhythm after the first two guys get going.
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Irving's zero-assist night also reportedly came on the heels of a verbal exchange between he and James following Tuesday's loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.
ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst shared the details of that confrontation:
"LeBron James and Kyrie Irving exchanged words in the Cleveland Cavaliers' locker room following the team's 20-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night, and it led to Irving leaving quickly without speaking to the media, multiple sources told ESPN.com.
The discussion was seen as healthy, sources said, with the veteran James voicing concerns about the direction of the Cavs' offense.
... James addressed Irving to discuss the way he'd been dominating the ball in the early going of the season.
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Now, this isn't an Irving-specific problem.
No one on this team has averaged even five assists a night, and James is the only one clearing four per game (4.8). The Cavaliers have generated only 36.5 points off assists a night, per NBA.com's player tracking data, which is by far the league's lowest total (Sacramento Kings are next at 41.4).
But as the point guard of this team, the on-court extension of this coaching staff, it's Irving's responsibility to take advantage of all the weapons around him. That should not be as hard as it has looked, although he has cemented himself as an All-Star by being a score-first guard. It might take some time to get out of that mindset.
"There's been a lot of losing basketball around here for a few years," James said recently, per ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst. "... But there's a lot of bad habits, a lot of bad habits have been built up over the last couple of years, and when you play that style of basketball it takes a lot to get it up out of you."
Of course, the fact that it is difficult does not make it optional. Not with this much firepower going unused. And certainly not when this team is facing even greater problems at the opposite end of the floor.
Commit to Playing Both Ends
Even amid the hysteria surrounding James' return and Love's arrival, there were concerns about this defense.
Suffice it to say, none have been alleviated through the early going.
On paper, the Cavs are light on both perimeter stoppers and rim protectors. Those are frightening vulnerabilities, to be sure, but they could be masked by the right amount of effort, hustle and intensity.
As Grantland's Jason Concepcion noted, Cleveland is nowhere close to finding that concoction:
"Cavs players consider defense a thing to be endured until they can try and score again
— netw3rk (@netw3rk) November 6, 2014"
The Cavs have surrendered 109.7 points per 100 possessions, the league's third-worst defensive rating. Only once have they held an opponent under 100 points (the New York Knicks), and only once have they faced a team that finished last season with a top-10 offense (the Portland Trail Blazers).
Cleveland must find the heart, desire and will to make significant strides on that side of the ball. Even if this offense catches historic levels of fire, history says a leaky defense could still douse this team's title dreams.
ESPN Insider Tom Haberstroh (subscription required) explained:
"How good do the Cavs have to be on defense to contend? Recent history says top 10 is the barometer. Every championship team since the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls have ranked in the top 10 in defensive efficiency with the lone exception of the 2000-01 Lakers, who placed 15th. While the 2009-10 Lakers and 2007-08 Celtics ranked outside the top 10 on offense, none of the past 13 champs have fallen outside of the top 10 in points allowed per possession.
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The Cavs are worlds removed from that level of execution. They have to be quicker to the ball, sharper on their rotations and simply more engaged on that side.
Unless they find some external help, they could be weak on the interior all season. Love, Tristan Thompson and Anderson Varejao averaged 1.5 blocks between them in 2014-15. All three allowed opponents to shoot better than 54 percent at the rim, per NBA.com's player tracking data.
If interior defense is going to be Cleveland's Achilles' heel all season, the Cavs have to stop teams at the point of attack. That would not only better protect this frontcourt but could also frustrate opponents into taking bad shots or attempting risky passes, both of which can fuel the Cavs' fiery fast-break offense.
But, again, that style demands an unwavering commitment. This defense may never be great, but it's only going to be as good as these players allow it to be.
It is possible that getting more players involved offensively could spur a better effort at the opposite side. Players, especially those coming from losing backgrounds, can sulk if they feel they aren't being featured correctly or often enough on offense.
It's hard playing consistently good defense, and rarely any fun. But if these players buy into the big picture for themselves, their teammates and their city, they should discover rather quickly how important it is to bring the right level of intensity inside the lines.
Support the System and Each Other
The NBA's 82-game schedule is a grind, and the Cavs have ample opportunity to correct their early season issues.
James, a four-time MVP and two-time champion, knows this as well as anyone. That is why he has eased out of the gate (by his standards, at least) in order to allow his teammates to grow around him.
But it's a high-wire act, as the Cavs need both his production and the development of their young pieces.
"Is winning the ultimate thing—us being the best team we can be, or winning one game?" James said, per USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt. "It's something that's going on in my mind right now. I'm trying to figure [it] out. It's a fine line."
This team needs an identity, a blueprint to fit these puzzle pieces together. Players must learn and embrace their roles even if they aren't the ones they would have chosen. And Blatt has to give them a platform for success to ensure this team lets nothing go to waste.
A lot of this comes down to trust and understanding. Both should grow organically over the coming weeks (or months), but the Cavs can speed up the process by putting more faith in Blatt's vision and their teammates' ability to execute that plan.
These are talented players, but this is not yet a talented team. That's not to incite any panic, only to reflect the amount of work still to be done.
The Cavaliers can—and very well may—be great this season. But they'll need to focus on the little things to become good first.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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