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The Roar

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Ranking the threats to Cleveland in the East

The Cleveland Cavaliers might trade Kev Love. (EDrost88 / Flickr)
Expert
3rd April, 2016
9

Has there ever been a less inspiring virtual lock for the Finals than this year’s Cleveland Cavaliers?

The Cavs are the East’s number one seed but they have the league’s fourth best points differential and fourth best net rating, straggling behind the three juggernauts out West. LeBron James and Kyrie Irving are both having their worst scoring seasons since their rookie years, their three-point shots have fallen off a cliff, and the advanced stats show that they’re both having down seasons, inefficient by their own lofty standards.

Meanwhile, look at these two stat lines:

Player X: 17.0ppg, 42.7 FG%, 36.6 3P%, 87.3 FT%, 24.6% usage

Player Y: 15.8ppg, 41.8 FG%, 34.7 3P%, 81.2 FT%, 23.1% usage

You might have guessed it, but Player X is Ryan Anderson, the guy nobody wanted at the trade deadline, and Player Y is Kevin Love, the former MVP candidate.

Love is a better rebounder and passer than Anderson (and a better player), but as a scorer he’s been reduced to a slightly worse facsimile of the oft-injured New Orleans bomber. I’m not sure if that’s an indictment on Cleveland, Love or the universe, but someone has to pay.

The point I am taking my time to arrive at is this: the Cavs aren’t that good. They have three great players but one of them is no longer great, one of them is ageing and physically declining, and the other is having a strangely off season.

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In a more competitive East – say 2010-11, where you had Derrick Rose’s 62-win Bulls, LeBron’s 58-win Heat, Kevin Garnett’s 56-win Celtics and Dwight Howard’s 52-win Magic – this iteration of the Cavs would be an afterthought. They’re there for the taking. The only question is whether or not anyone is up to the task. These are their contenders, from least frightening to most.

“The write-off”

8. Chicago Bulls

It may not have been such a good idea to get rid of one of basketball’s best coaches.

“If LeBron tore his ACL, it would be a 50/50 series”

7. Boston Celtics
6. Detroit Pistons
5. Charlotte Hornets
4. Atlanta Hawks

The Celtics might actually be the best team of this group, but they just don’t have a prayer against the Cavs. They’ve got Jae Crowder to throw at LeBron and an army of thieves to harass Irving (and maim Love), but rim protection is an ongoing issue, and the Cavs proved in the playoffs last year that Iman Shumpert can put the clamps on Isaiah Thomas – Boston’s lone reliable source of late-game offence – when required.

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Detroit are fascinating because they’re a bad match-up for the Cavs, with strengths that exploit Cleveland’s weaknesses. The Pistons are 2-1 this year against the Cavs, with Andre Drummond beasting in all three games, taking advantage of Cleveland’s big man rotation that rotates between being undersized and under-interested. The Cavs have no answer for Drummond, Reggie Jackson gets wherever he wants against Irving, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is one of the league’s best match-ups for Cleveland’s star guard.

The problem though is that Detroit just aren’t that good. They’re 14th and 11th in offence and defence, and there’s a reason why they’re only going to be the seventh or eighth seed. They love to play small, which can hurt the Cavs on offence, but they’re one of the few teams (one of the sweet, last few) vulnerable to Kevin Love by doing so – Love has put up 29, 24 and 19 points against them in three efficient performances.

They can switch everywhere but they don’t have individuals capable of locking down Love or LeBron. And Drummond hasn’t shown he’s anywhere near capable of toppling a team in the playoffs by himself. Detroit are going to be a menace to Cleveland in the coming years, but not this year.

If Charlotte had Michael Kidd-Gilchrist they could have given the Cavs a scare (they in fact beat Cleveland when MKG was healthy). As it stands though, the Hornets just don’t have anyone to block LeBron’s path to the basket, and nobody to provide any resistance when he gets there. Sincere apologies to Nicolas Batum and Cody Zeller.

Charlotte’s ball movement and diverse array of weapons on offence would give the Cleveland’s far from elite defence some headaches, but this sixth ranked Hornets defence has the same smoke and mirrors odour that the last Charlotte playoff team had, a team that was duly swept by LeBron in Round 1.

Ah, the Hawks. Has there been a less remarkable, less spoken about team all season? The Hawks just chug along, in Georgian anonymity. They’ve quietly reinvented themselves as a defensive powerhouse, climbing from what felt like an improbable sixth ranking in defensive efficiency last season up to second this go around.

The problem is that last year’s sixth ranked offence has tumbled to 19th. There is the lingering hope that the gears will fall into place, and Atlanta will remember how to score again. If they do, they might get back to last season’s version of themselves, a version that lost 4-0 the Cavs.

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“The Bad Match-Up”

3. Indiana Pacers

On paper, the Pacers have everything they need to give Cleveland some Hoosier nightmares. Paul George is the best match-up for LeBron alongside Kawhi Leonard and Andre Igoudala. George is the closest thing there is to a facsimile of LeBron, and he’s the East’s best shot at giving LeBron all he can handle on offence, and slowing him down on defence.

George Hill defends Irving and Monta Ellis can be hidden on whichever limited two-guard the Cavs trot out – be it J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert or Matthew Dellavedova. Ian Mahinmi has turned into a capable rim protector, and Myles Turner is a dynamo on both ends who can wreak some havoc.

The problem is everything else. This team plays Jordan Hill, Lavoy Allen and C.J. Miles all more than 20 minutes per game. That’s not good. That’s really not good.

George is a superstar but he’s shooting 41 per cent on the season. The Ellis/Hill fit has always been awkward, and it’s unclear whether Ellis even helps this team in his current role.

The offence is just awful – 26th in the league – and often descends into a wayward firestorm of bricked George mid-range fadeaways, Jordan Hill pick and pops and Ellis reliving his Milwaukee Bucks days.

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Still though, there is a path to the upset. The Pacers have the best defensive blueprint in the East to topple the Cavs. Maybe George gets hot again like he did to start the season, they dominate the boards with Turner and Mahinmi’s size, Ellis and Hill overwhelm Cleveland’s woeful defensive backcourt, and Ty Lawson remembers that he used to be pretty good at basketball.

I can’t envision a scenario where either of the previous five teams beats a healthy Cleveland. I can envision one for the Pacers. In saying that, Cavs in 5.

“The Pretender”

2. Toronto Raptors

The Raptors are 51-25, 6.5 games clear of their closest competition for the two-seed, and flaunting the fifth best net rating in the league, ahead of the Clippers.

But does anyone think they have any shot at toppling the Cavs?

The Raptors missed a golden opportunity at the trade deadline. Their power forward position is a black hole of mediocrity, and finding a Ryan Anderson or Markieff Morris to fill the minutes currently going to Luis Scola, Patrick Patterson and Jason Thompson could have elevated them to ‘legitimate Cleveland threat’ status.

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The Toronto starting line-up has been abominable all season, with the Kyle Lowry-DeMar DeRozan-James Johnson-Luis Scola-Jonas Valanciunas starting five owning a terrible negative 4.8 net rating, good for 27th in the league, worse than the Timberwolves. Replace Johnson in that line-up with Norman Powell as Toronto have been doing lately and that rating plummets to negative 9.0, Lakers territory.

The Raptors have been an elite team thanks to their All-Star backcourt and a stellar bench unit. But Lowry is playing hurt now and the bench will have fewer minutes to dominate opposing second units in the playoffs when rotations tighten. Toronto gets the #2 spot in these rankings out of respect for what they’ve accomplished this season, but the ranking is especially fitting because this team feels destined to always finish second to someone.

“Karma Police”

1. Miami Heat

Everyone talks about how LeBron betrayed Cleveland by leaving them in 2010, but what about how he knifed Miami in the back in 2014? How he left Dwyane Wade as soon as he started showing his age, how he jumped ship on a team that could have been a dynasty, how he talked them into drafting Shabazz Napier (the cruelest of crimes) and then bailed 10 minutes later?

I’ve been to South Beach, and let me tell you, those fans are hard-nosed, gritty, passionate and… wait, sorry, I forgot, they don’t care about basketball in the slightest.

The only person in Miami with a grudge against LeBron might be Pat Riley, but Riles might be the one person in NBA history you don’t want to have sending bad karma and juju your way. And I’m sure Dwyane Wade would take some serious pleasure in exacting revenge on LeBron, even if they’d hug for 17 minutes after the game and go out and get frozen yoghurts together afterwards. I miss the Bad Boy Pistons.

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Could the Heat pull off the upset?

The irony is that they might have a better chance to beat the Cavs if Wade never took the court. Wade’s numbers (19-5-4 on 46% shooting) have been fine but he’s killed the Heat all season. They’re negative 5.0 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, which stacks up with the eye test, because he appears completely uninterested on defence, kills spacing on offence, and regularly hijacks possessions to play hero ball.

What makes the Heat so exciting is the unit sans Wade with Goran Dragic, Josh Richardson, Justise Winslow, Luol Deng and Hassan Whiteside. That line-up has murdered the league all season, crushing teams on the boards and generating turnovers to get out in transition, putting up a +9.8 net rating in over 150 minutes, which is Golden State territory. With Dragic running the floor and pick and rolling with Whiteside, Richardson raining bombs from deep, and Deng and Winslow locking down on defence and cutting to the hoop on offence, the Heat are a beautiful force of energy and movement.

If the Heat had Chris Bosh, the ultimate slide-in-anywhere-he’s-needed player, they’d have an excellent chance of knocking off the Cavs. I might even pick them to beat Cleveland. Without Bosh, the equation becomes much trickier. But there is a world where Wade hands the keys to Dragic, Whiteside overwhelms Cleveland’s troubled frontline, and when the game slows down the old man games of Wade and Joe Johnson are good enough to squeeze out points in the clutch.

But then you remember the real world, the one where the Heat are starting Joe Johnson and Amar’e Stoudemire and it’s 2016.

Drink up, South Beach, and take solace in the fact that once the Cavs make the finals, which they will, they are going to lose to the Warriors or Spurs in five, which they will too.

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