Previewing the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Chicago Bulls

Jan 19, 2015; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James (23) stands between Chicago Bulls forward Pau Gasol (16), guard Jimmy Butler (21), guard Derrick Rose (1) and forward Taj Gibson (22) in the first quarter at Quicken Loans Arena. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

Key Numbers

Cavaliers rating with LeBron: +7.13

Bulls rating with Rose: +3.68

Building a reasonable rating for the Cavaliers without Kevin Love is a challenge. You cannot simply look at on/off splits with Love because many of those possessions are in garbage time without LeBron or Irving. The easiest thing to do is examine how the team has played when Love has missed a game, but he missed only five games both Irving and LeBron also played. You can add his six minute game to that set and use Kevin Love as another variable in the team rating system, but it’s still not enough for a useful estimate. For what it’s worth, the best estimate valued Love at +0.9 points per 100 possessions.

Turning to lineup data via NBAWOWY.com, let’s query every possession with LeBron and Irving with three from the following group: Smith, Perkins, Jones, Dellavedova, Miller, Marion, Mozgov, and Thompson. In 354 minutes of action including the playoffs, Cleveland was actually outscored by 1 point per 100 possessions. However, it’s because their defense was decimated in that time, as they scored at an elite rate of 113.7 points per 100 possessions; it’s not plausible Cleveland’s defense will fall apart without Love. Curiously, Cleveland was electric with LeBron and without Irving and Love as they scored 116.9 points per 100 possessions and gave up only 97.1 points. They also performed well with just Irving by scoring 118.6 points per 100 possessions and allowing 107.3.

Those are pretty extreme numbers, but if you put those together and assume LeBron and Irving play 32 minutes together and 8 minutes without each other, respectively, you get a team rating of +4.5, which is fairly reasonable. (For those who are wondering, when Love is on the court with those guys with two other players used in the NBAWOWY numbers, the Cavaliers score 119.9 points while allowing 99.7 per 100 possessions – so yes, they did play better with him.)

Table: lineup net ratings via NBAWOWY.com

Going to the numbers, basketball-reference’s BPM metric, which only uses box score stats but includes a few interactions like spacing and usage, rated Love at 1.9, which is on a 100 possession scale. My own metric had him at 1.57, which includes things like SportVU nearest defender defensive stats and charges. If you want to combine the lineup data with the countable stats, you’re basically creating something like ESPN’s real-plus/minus, which rated Love at 3.18. But you need an idea of who will take Love’s minutes, and based on every game he missed when LeBron played James Jones actually plays a lot more often, not power forward Tristan Thompson. Jones played 16 more minutes per game, while Tristan only played 3 more minutes – the Cavaliers needed to replace Love’s spacing with another shooter. You’ll probably also get more minutes from other pieces of bench fodder like Marion and, especially for a series against Chicago, a few more minutes from Perkins.

Putting it all together, I get a fairly modest penalty of 2.5 points per 100 possessions for Cleveland without Love. I’m not entirely confident in that estimate, and I think it makes them more vulnerable versus elite teams because to keep their spacing they have to play smaller and give more minutes to veteran retreads like Jones and Marion. But it’s probably enough to defeat Chicago. However, once you factor in JR Smith’s suspension, the two teams are a lot more evenly matched.

Chicago defeated the Bucks in convincing fashion, but the series could be decided by how the two teams match-up and mix lineups. The team is set on its starting frontcourt of Pau and Noah, but those two big men can inhibit the offense sometimes and you can actually hide smaller players on Noah without fear. Cleveland’s best play is to start someone like Jones and put him on Noah, daring the Bulls to go there; that also means Noah will be guarding the three-point line on defense. Chicago, however, plays very well when Mirotic is at power forward, but he won’t see extended time there without an injury. The Bulls probably can’t even take advantage of the size disparity because Tristan Thompson has destroyed Pau on the glass when they’ve played.

Cleveland went into the post-season banking on the power of their stretch-4 while Chicago grappled with a deep frontcourt that didn’t quite work in some situations.

Now the two teams will have to figure out which lineups to use and when – if they’re willing to adapt.

Odds: Cavaliers 63.6%

(Team ratings are per 100 possessions. The ratings were calculated with ridge regression for better estimates and with one key player in/out of the game. (Playing fewer than 10 minutes counted as being out.) This means every playoff team had two variables. These numbers are used in conjunction with ratings derived from long-term RPM, as seen on fivethirtyeight.com, to calculate the odds.)