NBA Finals: 3 questions for Game 2
By Ian Levy
2. What does Cleveland’s offense look like?
Cleveland mostly breezed through their half of the playoff bracket with a potent offense, finding soft spots in the defense and picking them apart with precision. In Game 1, their execution was considerably blunted.
Trying to exploit mismatches with the individual talents of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love seemed to take them out of the rhythm and disrupt the synergy they had established in the last three rounds. The Cavs finished 15 different possessions on post-ups after averaging less than eight post-ups per game in the playoffs to this point. After attempting 33.2 three-pointers per game in the first three rounds of the playoffs, Cleveland attempted just 21 in Game 1.
After the game, Tyronn Lue talked about pushing the pace more (h/t Sean Deveney, Sporting News):
“I don’t think we played fast enough. I don’t think we pushed the pace and were aggressive attacking in transition. I think in the third quarter you saw when we were able to get stops and get out in transition, that really opened the game up for us and we were able to go from a nine-point deficit to going up three points by playing faster and being more aggressive in transition.”
According to Inpredictable, the average Cavs’ offensive possession lasted about 16.5 seconds in Game 1. That’s nearly a full second longer than their possessions during the regular season. Intentionally trying to speed up a game against the Warriors is playing with fire, as Golden State thrives when the tempo increases. Running for the sake of running is likely to end badly for Cleveland but they can do a much better job of looking for easy opportunities earlier in the shot clock.
The real key is going to be their efficiency on those longer possessions and re-establishing the flow of letting their stars turn mismatches into easy shots. Too often in Game 1, those isolations and post-ups were surrounded by stagnant ball-watching, which turned into turnovers and easy baskets for Golden State.
Pace, movement, and offensive decision-making are all going to be key to Cleveland keeping Game 2 competitive.
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