2015-16 NBA Preview: Cleveland Cavaliers

CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

It’s title or bust in Cleveland. The team was built to win now, hemorrhaging huge amounts of luxury tax payments and sending out a number one pick for an All-Star to partner with LeBron James. Even a Finals appearance by itself is not acceptable. As LeBron ages, so does the team’s chances at breaking through and beating a Western Conference team. With a weakened slate of “top-tier” opponents in the East, the Cavaliers will cruise through the regular season and hopefully rest their best guys to ready for the playoffs.

2015 in review:

The Cavaliers had a long, strange season, and it’s one that shows the importance of timing. With a slow start including an uncharacteristically inefficient LeBron, an ailing Kevin Love, and a torn Achilles for Anderson Varejao, panic had started in Cleveland. LeBron took a two week vacation[3. The LeBattical was about a year-and-a-half shorter than Michael Jordan’s baseball odyssey at about the same age, for what it’s worth.] and Cleveland made a couple moves to bring in Timo Mozgov, Iman Shumpert, and JR Smith. Once LeBron came back and combined powers with his new teammates, the team found a groove and tore through the league like people had expected. Via basketball-reference, after the new parts came in the team scored at a ridiculous 114.4 points per 100 possessions rate to end the season with a respectable defensive rating of 105.3.

Rotation players in: Mo Williams, Richard Jefferson.

Rotation players out: Dion Waiters, Shawn Marion, Mike Miller.

The Cavaliers made few changes, which makes sense since they made it to the finals and won a couple games even while being hampered by major injuries. Mo Williams is coming back to Cleveland. In a previous stint with the team, he inexplicably made an All-Star team. Richard Jefferson is playing the role of aged NBA wing. The Cavaliers have lost basically no one, as Waiters was shipped off mid-season and Marion and Miller were non-factors.

2016 Projected

If there’s no surprising Atlanta Hawks-esque team out of the gates, Cleveland may very well coast through the regular season and gear up for the playoffs, hopefully at full strength. Just recently, Kevin Love was cleared to play his first game in six months in preseason action after recovering from a dislocated shoulder, but his two All-Star buddies weren’t available. There’s no timetable on his return, but he probably won’t play in the season opener and with his penchant for missed games, anything over 2500 minutes for the regular season would be quite optimistic. LeBron, who may or may not be the NBA’s first cyborg and has limbs made of a titanium alloy, received an anti-inflammatory into his back, which is what he had during his two-week sabbatical last season. What’s troubling is that an ailing back is a lingering issue and Cleveland relies on him so heavily it’s tough for him to get extended periods of rests without their record going into the tank.

Tackling the first player mentioned, Kevin Love is coming off an injured season and is two years removed from a now underrated season with an exceptional combination of scoring, passing, and rebounding. Since Minnesota just barely missed the playoffs, and were definitely a better team than several playoff teams in the east, he was marked unfavorably, and his down season in Cleveland was used as evidence of his incompetence and false stats. But little was mentioned of his back issues and a shooting slump that lifted after a few months, as he shot 34.5 from the 3PT line before the all-star break and 40.9% afterwards. He’s not going to be as valuable as he was in 2014, but he likely won’t be as ineffective as he was last season — reasonably, of course, he’ll probably be somewhere in between. And he wasn’t even bad last season either; he was a big plus on the court, especially when healthy.

Irving’s injury is distressing, but it’s also par for the course: he even missed extensive time in his lone college season. He’s young enough, and the Cavs are probably patient enough right now, that he’ll likely fully recover. But for the good news, he finally had an excellent on-off differential — Cleveland’s offense was borderline historic when he was on the court and lackluster when he sat. Adjusting for who else was on the court, and his plus/minus is lot less impressive but all Cleveland needs is a blitzkrieg offense when he’s sharing the court with the other stars and for him to shoulder more of the offense when LeBron sits.

Using the invaluable NBAWOWY.com, when LeBron was off the court Irving’s usage rate surged to a Kobe-esque 35.0 with excellent efficiency. But it sank to a mortal 22.4 with LeBron. Yet what’s key here is that Cleveland was just barely outscoring its opponents without LeBron as Irving didn’t have the same positive effect on teammates as LeBron, despite the jump in his individual stats. But there’s some hope by chopping up the data into a smaller slice: some of those stats are from the pre-trade/pre-rest period. For example in the 285 minutes Irving played with Mozgov but without Lebron, the Cavs outscored the opposition by nearly 10 points per 100 possessions. Certainly Small Sample Size Theater, but it’s encouraging because Cleveland will need some good LeBron-less minutes to get through the season[4. Unfortunately, Irving is not entirely all that different from when he first entered the league. Amusingly, his BPM (basketball-reference’s player metric) has stayed nearly constant his entire career year-by-year: 3.3, 3.3, 3.2, and 3.3 last season.].

With Kevin Love, there should be enough information out there that we can skip ahead and past a few tired arguments: yes, he’s not a great defender, but he’s not as bad as most people think; he’s a bit of a rebound stealer but still a big plus overall; and, yes, despite his athleticism, he’s a good, versatile scorer.

The question is how he’ll be used this season. He’s best used directly in plays on offense, from being a triple threat playmaker at the elbows, spotting up from distance, or even just as a screener. But LeBron and Irving are ball handlers, and Mozgov or another big get the screens, at least because Love can be used to space the floor, which Mozgov cannot do off-ball during a pick and roll. The Cavs will need more secondary actions where Love is directly involved and can make a move and shoot when there’s an opening or be used as a gravity well to open up lanes for their other players. You don’t need LeBron pounding the ball for ten seconds and then bullying his way inside every play — he can run off the ball and catch a pass from Love. It’s tough telling how a future Hall of Famer should play, but with LeBron’s fatigue problems and Love’s talents that should at least be a small part of their offense.

Elsewhere, the nation knows the strengths of Mozgov, JR Smith’s gunslinging, and even Dellavedova’s peskiness. The pieces fit pretty well together now, as long as there’s enough shooting on the court. Varejao will be a bonus this season because the Cavs can let their giant Russian get enough rest. Reports from preseason show that he’s recovered well and has shown his usual hustle.

And, of course, I should mention Tristan Thompson, that absurd 90 million dollar contract his agent wanted, and his value. No, I don’t think it’s wise to spend that kind of money for a backup power forward for a frontcourt that will likely be just fine without him, and yeah, I know the Cavs don’t want to lose him for nothing, but that’s unlikely now anyway. Yes, they play better with Love and Love is a better player, even in a down season. As a last note, Tristan’s greatest skill, offensive rebounding, declines pretty much immediately upon entering the league and doesn’t age well, and let’s wait to see if his defensive prowess, if it existed at all, can last for an entire season before he gets paid for that. For now, both sides are playing chicken, but let’s hope this gets resolved without anything crazy happening.

Quick statistic/graph

One could devote a thick tome to articles and numbers praising LeBron James, and the anti-LeBron pieces are usually frighteningly reactionary or steeped in unsafe levels of nostalgia, so let’s take a different route and offer an intelligent counter-piece: one of LeBron’s signature skills is overrated. As was shown in the New York preview, with a regression model you can get a measure of how well a team rebounds with a player on the court versus off it. Thus, after adjusting for an individual defensive rebound rate, since the more rebounds you take the fewer are available for your teammates, you can generate a list of players ranked by their rebound stealing tendencies. At the top of the list is, surprisingly, Jordan Clarkson, but he’s a rookie with roughly 1500 minutes — LeBron’s second and it’s a three-year model. Plus, LeBron ranked high on the rebound stealer scale in a similar seven-year model. The table below is filled appropriately with noted rebound hogs like DeAndre, Drummond, Hickson, and a few wing players who snatch easy rebounds from teammates so they can race up-court. LeBron’s a once-in-a-generation talent, but his rebounding powers are overstated.

Table: rebound stealers, 2015 (1000 MP min.)

Summary

With a conservative minutes projection, Cleveland’s rating doesn’t suggest a team that can topple an entire league, but there are few challengers in the east and many injuries on the roster. The Cavaliers understand they need LeBron at his best in the finals, not mid-season, and the other two stars are coming off of major injuries that take months to heal. There’s a strong possibility that, if healthy, the Cavaliers will post one of the greatest offensive seasons ever, but all eyes now are on June and the ultimate trophy.

PBP-Metric[2. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 56.3

PT-PM: 58

Nick‘s[3. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 56

Nathan Walker’s[1. Methodology coming on Friday!]: 57