5 Things We Learned About LeBron James, Cavaliers in Series Sweep vs. Raptors
LeBron James is Eastern Conference Finals-bound for the 10th time in the last 12 seasons. The Cleveland Cavaliers are following his lead for the sixth time of that stretch.
King James and Co. completed their semifinals sweep of the Toronto Raptors on Monday night with a convincing 128-93 wave of their broom. LeBron again took care of the heaviest lifting with game highs in points (29), assists (11) and rebounds (eight).
Ho-hum, right? This is what happens every year—at least, it must feel that way north of the border.
But even if James makes lengthy postseason runs appear as clockwork, this isn't as simple as flashing his annual ECF badge and getting chauffeured to the pre-championship round.
How do we know that? Because we're still learning new things about James and these Cavaliers. With the latest postseason series victory in the books, let's examine five takeaways for LeBron and Cleveland from this tidy, four-game triumph.
Most of Midseason Pickups Are Afterthoughts
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It's a good thing Cleveland's trade-deadline shopping included the acquisition of George Hill. Because the other supposed reinforcements barely budged the needle this series.
On good nights, Rodney Hood can look like the third scorer this roster lacks. But his hot stretches come too few and far between, and the Cavs are apparently tired of waiting. After making one start and averaging 18.8 minutes during the opening round, he played just 38 total minutes of the second while never getting off the bench in Game 4.
Larry Nance Jr. was completely passed over in Games 1 and 3—the only close contests of the series. He entered Game 2 at the 2:34 mark of the fourth with the Cavs leading by 18. When his name was finally called again in Game 4, Cleveland had a 25-point advantage with less than six minutes remaining.
Jordan Clarkson at least logged double-digit minutes during each of the four tilts. But he was a net-negative for the series—minus-9 in 56 minutes—and his numbers say he's lucky he didn't fare any worse. He shot an abysmal 8-of-27 from the field (3-of-11 from range) and contributed fewer assists (four) than turnovers (five).
Luckily, Hill was rock-solid. He had the third-best plus/minus of the series (plus-50), shot 53.3 percent from the field and tripled his four turnovers with a dozen assists.
Still, if there's reason to gripe after a series sweep, this is the one. All of these players looked exciting upon arrival because the Cavs clearly needed more depth. It's not like JR Smith, Tristan Thompson and Jeff Green are models of consistency. Apparently the non-Hill newcomers might be even less reliant.
Tyronn Lue's Flexibility Is an Asset
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If playoff series are chess matches, Cavs coach Tyronn Lue's performance this round would have impressed even the late Bobby Fischer.
It wasn't necessarily that Lue stayed two steps ahead of his counterpart, Dwane Casey, but rather that Lue consistently provided the perfect counterpunch to Toronto's attack.
Sometimes it was size over skill, like when the LeBron James-Kevin Love-Tristan Thompson frontcourt battered smaller defenders inside. Sometimes it was skill over size, with the LeBron-Love twosome exploiting the limitations of Serge Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunas, whose role was reduced over the series until he managed just 16 reserve minutes in the finale.
This was Lue at his lineup-scrambling best. Because so much of his system is LeBron-centric, there's often a lot of shuffling around his star. As The Ringer's Jonathan Tjarks wrote, that pliability can be invaluable this time of year:
"Lue can quickly change his team's identity and adjust to a matchup in a particular series. In the 2015 Finals, when he was the lead assistant to David Blatt, an undermanned Cavs team slowed the pace to a crawl in unlikely victories in games 2 and 3 behind a supersized frontcourt of Thompson and Timofey Mozgov. When Lue was the head coach in the 2016 Finals, he morphed his team into a replica of the Warriors and beat them at their own game."
Lue might not always pull the right strings, but the fact that he's willing to try different things—seemingly on the fly—can make it hard to keep ahead of Cleveland in a seven-game series.
Kevin Love Belongs at Center
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There's long been talk about whether Cleveland could get Love back to his Minnesota Timberwolves form.
Lue had a different take on the discussion. Rather than working Love back into his inside-out power forward mold, Lue has helped him evolve as a floor-spacing 5. When Love came to Cleveland, he'd logged 65 percent of his career minutes at the 4. That number is down to 46 percent with the Cavs, who deployed him as their starting center throughout this series.
The result might be Love's most productive—certainly his most important—three-game stretch of the campaign. Over the last three outings, he averaged 25 points on 54.2 percent shooting and 11 rebounds. He also tallied at least one block in three straight games for only the second time this season.
That doesn't mean Love suddenly views himself as a center. But Lue does, and that's all Love needs to know, as he told ESPN's Dave McMenamin:
"My entire life and my entire pro career—this is going to be my 10th year—I've spent the majority of my time at the 4 position and the power forward position.
"But he sees something out there in me at the 5 spot, and I guess, especially on the offensive end when I have my game going, he wants me to take full advantage of that."
This is the Love that Cleveland needs to keep its Finals streak alive—not a replica of his Minnesota model, but rather one repurposed in a way that provides his current club maximum support.
LeBron Is the King of Clutch
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For anyone still clinging to that years-old (and always faulty) notion of LeBron lacking the mythical clutch gene, let his former running mate, Richard Jefferson, bury that with a single quote.
"For you to criticize Bron and people did, like 'He didn't take that shot.' It's like 'Shut up,'" Jefferson said, per Cleveland.com's Chris Fedor. "Those are for people that have this stupid idea that your (guts) are supposed to be bigger than your brain."
James twice snatched Toronto's soul with late-game back-breakers in this series.
He scored the final four points in regulation of Game 1, forcing an overtime period Cleveland won 8-7 with six of those points off his assists. Then in Game 3, he went the length of the floor before kissing an off-balance floater off the glass as time expired to seal the Cavs' 105-103 win.
"I've seen him shoot that shot countless times at shootaround when he's just like messing around," Kyle Korver said, per ESPN's Brian Windhorst and McMenamin. "He'll shoot all these crazy shots all the time. And you're like, 'Man, when would he shoot that shot?' Maybe to win a playoff game, apparently."
The bucket was James' seventh make in 15 tries on go-ahead shots in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime in his playoff career, per ESPN Stats & Info. That's more daggers (7-5) on a better percentage (47-45) than Michael Jordan delivered in the postseason.
East Still Runs Through Northeast Ohio
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Maybe this was never in question. As long as LeBron had a playoff pulse, you'd have been hard-pressed to find an Eastern Conference club prematurely celebrating the exit of their biggest roadblock.
But admit it—that rickety first-round performance at least scattered the seeds of doubt, didn't it?
Maybe it came during the opener, when James suffered the first Round 1, Game 1 loss of his career. Perhaps it was the Game 3 defeat, when Cleveland couldn't capitalize on a 5-of-15 shooting performance by Victor Oladipo. Or maybe that 34-point drubbing in Game 6 was the tipping point that made you think the Cavs were scouting area lakes ahead of a win-or-go-fishing Game 7.
If your faith never wavered, congrats—you bet on the NBA's best player and won. If it did, well, you learned the same thing as Casey's crew—all championship routes east of the Mississippi must still travel through the Buckeye State.
As Casey relayed before Game 3, per McMenamin, James' grip on the conference has a familiar suffocating feel:
"It reminds me of back in the days of having to get over the hurdle of (Michael) Jordan. At some point you've got to get over that hurdle, you've got to knock it down, you've got to knock the wall down. It's a similar situation we are with Cleveland. I always go back to how many years is this with LeBron going to the Finals, eight? So there's lot of other teams that have gone through this gauntlet."
In the last seven seasons, no team has successfully broken through that barrier. Based on what we just witnessed, James will ensure that brick wall is formidable as ever.
Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are from Basketball Reference or NBA.com.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @ZachBuckleyNBA.
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