Nylon Calculus: Rebounding helped keep the Cavaliers close
By Ian Levy
The wild final few moments of regulation have provided all the necessary talking points for Cleveland’s Game 1 loss, but it’s worth taking a moment to recognize what put them in position to win. Obviously, LeBron’s 51-points, eight-rebound, eight-assist masterpiece drove the Cavaliers all night, but their work on the glass was also a key factor in keeping things close.
The Cavaliers scored 114 points despite not shooting particularly well, and making just 10-of-27 3-pointers. The key was turning so many of those misses into second shots — Cleveland finished with 19 offensive rebounds and six different players contributed at least a pair on the offensive glass. Those rebounds helped produce 21 second-chance points.
You can see from the Sportradar visualization, courtesy of NBA Advanced Stats, below that the Cavaliers work on the offensive glass was the reason they ended up with 12 more shooting chances than the Warriors did.
You can see from the Sportradar shot track graph below, also courtesy of NBA Advanced Stats, that the Cavaliers generated some great looks off their offensive rebounds. They were able to put up several quick shots in the paint, but also leverage some good 3-point looks on the perimeter as well.
The Cavaliers clearly tried to leverage their size in Game 1, playing Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love together for 19 minutes. It wasn’t entirely successful — outscored by 8.5 points per 100 possessions — but it worked better than many of the Cavs other combinations. It was also a slight increase from the rest of the playoffs where the Cavaliers have used Love and Thompson together for just about 15 minutes per game, on average.
A few years ago, the most common plan of attack against the Warriors small ball was to try and beat them with size. As teams repeatedly came up short, more and more teams have pivoted towards plotting to beat the Warriors at their own game (or at least variations of it). The Cavaliers may be looking to turn back the clock.
In the 2015-16 Finals, Thompson and Love averaged nearly 18 minutes a game together, during which the Cavaliers held the Warriors to just 99.9 points per 100 possessions, outscoring them by 8.0 points per 100 possessions. Offensive rebounding was key, with Cleveland grabbing 28.7 percent of their own misses and scoring 19.1 second-chance points per 100 possessions.
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Obviously, this strategy presents a tenuous path to keeping the Finals competitive. For starters, it’s uncertain if Love and Thompson will even be available for Game 2 — Thompson was ejected for throwing an elbow at Shaun Livingston in the final moments of Game 1 and Love was seen onscreen stepping onto the court during the shenanigans. The other key point is that a pairing of Thompson and Love is vulnerable defensively and has to be able to perform at that end to make sure whatever value they add on the glass isn’t wiped away by the Warriors offense.
It may be too painful for the Cavaliers to be looking for bright spots right now, but as Game 2 approaches it should be at least a little bit heartening that they had success in Game 1 with something that worked well in the one series where they were able to break the Warriors.