It’s tempting to wonder what would happen if Kevin Durant just took a pull-up three every single time down the court?
His talent is such that he can get that shot whenever he wants. By having the ball in Durant’s hands all the time and not running any complex actions you would virtually eliminate the possibility of turnovers.
With all his teammates in set positions on offence, the pace is slowed and fast-break opportunities for the opposition are significantly lessened. If Durant made three out of every eight pull-up treys, his team would have the best offence in the NBA.
LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers do not have the best offence in the NBA right now. In fact, they have the worst. Through the first two games of the Finals, the Cavs are scoring at a rate of 92 points per 100 possessions, which would have ranked dead last in the league during the regular season, just below the dismal 76ers.
They’re shooting a dreadful 37 per cent from the floor, 31 per cent from three and 69 per cent from the line.
And yet, without any of the aesthetic benefit, Cleveland is doing a better job of proving the Durant hypothesis than any team we’ve ever seen.
Cleveland’s offence against Golden State has effectively been to clear out the left side and have King James scream “Watch the throne!” every time down the court. He seems to be driving or posting up virtually every possession (his analogous elite skill to Durant’s pull-up three).
James has played 174 playoff games in his career and only three times has he taken 34 shots or more. All three have come in his past four games. His 41.4 per cent usage percentage in the Finals would be the highest in NBA history.
This is not the product of selfishness, it is the product of design. The Warriors are switching the pick and roll, single covering James and forcing him to beat them with his scoring. In a vacuum, Golden State’s strategy seems to be working, because James is shooting a mediocre 39.7 per cent against them. But to focus solely on James’s scoring inefficiency does an injustice to the improbable success of Cleveland’s broader strategy.
Offence informs defence, and by isolating James time and time again, removing the likelihood of turnovers and fast breaks, Cleveland is preventing Golden State’s rapid fire offence from getting a running start. In the regular season the Warriors played at the fastest pace in the NBA, but the Cavs have starved them of opportunities to run in the past two games. In the Finals, Golden State is operating at a snail’s pace that would have ranked 28th fastest in the league. The Warriors come at you in waves, but you can’t ride a wave if it never breaks in the first place.
The real waves in this series have been the ones that the Cavaliers are making on the glass. The added benefit of isolation ball is that the other four players can uniformly focus on two things – transition defence and crashing the boards. Consequently, Tristan Thompson is jumping at the opportunity to attack the glass like JR Smith jumps at the opportunity to commit dumb fouls.
The Cavs have an offensive rebounding rate through two games of 27.3 per cent (which would have ranked fourth in the league during the regular season) and Thompson alone has 13 offensive rebounds – by comparison, Draymond Green has 12 defensive rebounds for the series.
Team offensive rebounding is typically fraught with peril because it implies that players are attacking the boards in lieu of getting back on defence, potentially opening the fast-break floodgates. But the individual dominance of Thompson and Timofey Mozgov on the glass has allowed Cleveland to wreak havoc on the offensive boards without being compromised on the defensive end, which is where they’ve truly prospered.
It’s ludicrous to think that not having two of the 20 best players in the league could make a team better, but with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love out, the Cavs have crafted an elite defence. They’re starting five above average defenders, and in the playoffs Cleveland has a defensive rating of 98.7, which would have ranked second in the league during the regular season.
Somehow, they’ve become a modern-day tribute to Pat Riley’s Knicks, combining an elite defence with one dynamic scorer to prop up a vanilla offence. The difference is that LeBron James is a lot better than Patrick Ewing, and Iman Shumpert has better hair than John Starks.
Conventional wisdom suggests that Golden State will inevitably turn this around. The Cavs’ defence has been excellent but Golden State’s offensive woes are largely self-inflicted. In the Finals they’re scoring with an offensive efficiency worse than what Minnesota, Indiana and the Lakers put up in the regular season – that has to change. They’re missing open shots and have been uncharacteristically stagnant – Golden State averages 303 passes per game in the playoffs but had just 217 in Game 2 against Cleveland.
They’ll get more creative on offence, involve Steph Curry in more pick and rolls, force more switches, and the shots will start falling. LeBron James may not be human, but even no cyborg can put up 39-16-11s playing 50 minutes every night, and that might be what the Cavs need from him to win.
Draymond Green will eventually remember he’s not Tony Allen on offence, and Curry might never shoot two for 15 from deep again in his career. And yet, statistical regression to the mean is a big picture concept, and Golden State are three small games away from losing a title that logic suggests should be theirs for the taking.
In their current injury-decimated incarnation, Cleveland really shouldn’t be competitive with Golden State – by many numerical measures one of the six or seven greatest teams of all-time. But give the Cavs credit. They’re playing the game on their terms, slowing the pace and minimising possessions to increase variance, a concept which always favours the lesser team.
It might be ugly and archaic caveman ball, but’s it’s Cavalier ball, and it just won them home-court advantage in the NBA Finals.
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