The Point Four-ward: When The Going Gets Tough…

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) Coming into this series, one of my biggest concerns was how the Cavaliers’ toughness would stack up against the Chicago Bulls.

The Bulls, after all, roll out a number of players — point guard Derrick Rose, swingman Jimmy Butler and center Joakim Noah, in particular — who are long, strong and, overall, play a more physical style than their Cavaliers counterparts. The Bulls also feature a deep and talented front court rotation that, along with the 6-11 Noah, include 6-9 Taj Gibson, 6-10 rookie Nikola Mirotic and the 7-0 All-Star Pau Gasol, who is “hopeful” he’ll be able to play in Thursday night’s Game 6 after missing the last two games with a hamstring injury.

But, beyond being physically tough — which the Bulls definitely are — they are one of the most mentally tough teams in the league.

This is the team that hasn’t seemed to quit playing for even a single minute since they hired head coach Tom Thibodeau back in 2010 — the team that endured three injury-plagued seasons from Rose, their front office’s botched attempt at tanking when they traded Luol Deng to the Cavaliers last season (only to still make the playoffs), and friction between Thibodeau and the Bulls management so thick that the over/under on Thibodeau’s firing whenever the Bulls should conclude their postseason run is measured not in minutes or days, but in seconds.

Through all of this, the Bulls just keep playing their game —  a grinding, defensively-focused game that is won in the paint, through rebounds and blocked shots… through effort — and winning.

2.) How tough the Cavs would be in this series, though, was a real question mark.

From a physical standpoint, this is a team that had just lost one of its best players, Kevin Love, for the remainder of the playoffs. Besides taking away Love’s scoring and rebounding numbers — both significant losses — the Cavs lost six feet and ten inches of active player body, precious length that seemed most necessary in matching up with these Bulls.

The Cavs still featured 7-1 Timofey Mozgov and 6-8 Tristan Thompson, but no one was sure how playing those two bigs together would impact the Cavs offense. Besides those two, the Cavs used 6-8 James Jones as a stretch four and would occasionally play LeBron James at power forward, a position where he’s experienced tremendous success, but holds less than tremendous affection for playing.

These Cavs (or, rather, most of these Cavs) are the same ones who seemed overwhelmed by the spotlight in an Opening Night loss to the lowly New York Knicks. This is the same team whose leader, James, seemed distracted in the two games he played against his former Heat teammates in Miami and admitted to playing another — against the Magic in Orlando — in “chill mode.” This is also the same Cavs team that allowed a physical Boston Celtics team to drape themselves all over them, eventually injuring Love and getting into the head of J.R. Smith (if not others, as well) on their way to a four game Cavs sweep.

None of this looked good for the Cleveland team. But, then they played the games.

3.) While so much of the Cavs success comes down to the type of game that James or Kyrie Irving plays on a particular night, what players like Tristan Thompson, Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova bring to this team rivals the offensive outputs of their two brightest stars. Thompson, in particular (and, in this, I agree with the comments our Editor Emeritus John Krolik made in his recap), has been a revelation.

Through the first five games of this series, Thompson has averaged 10 rebounds a game with 3.6 of those coming off the offensive glass. He’s already had one game where he snagged six offensive boards (Game 2) and two where he’s grabbed four (Games 3 and 5). The ability to switch and defend smaller players — never a strong part of Thompson’s game until this season — makes the Cavs defense very fiesty when they go small. Thompson has been playing with a tremendous motor that’s allowed him to be a sneaky contributor on offense, incredible durability for a series in which the injury report seems to grow with every game, and he constantly battles the Bulls bigger bigs down low, all while giving up anywhere from one (Gibson) to three (Noah) to four (Gasol) inches.

James’s intense focus, combined with the physicality of Thompson and Mozgov, the scrappiness of Dellavedova and Shumpert, the swagger of Smith and the gutsy play of Irving as he struggles through his myriad of injuries, has made this Cavs team — at least following a Game 5 win — the toughest Cavs team I can remember watching.

Their particular brand of tough comes with its share of caveats: James could drift back away from the post, where he was so effective and physically dominant in Game 5. Irving’s injuries could worsen, making his defense too much of a liability to keep him on the court. Smith’s intensity could hurt the Cavs rather than help them, as it did in Game 4 against the Celtics. It is a tenuous toughness, for sure.

Still, right now, this Cavs team is showing a character that, coming into the series, I wasn’t convinced they had.

4.) Now a word from the other side.

Writing for the Chicago Sun Times, Rick Telander has this to say about the two coaches in this series:

Blatt’s a moron, as the media already have (conveniently) established. He’s so dumb the Cavs are ready to move on to the Eastern Conference finals without him. Or, rather, with him clinging to the rear bumper, if that’s the narrative you like.

But what of the Bulls’ leader, Tom Thibodeau? Thibs is a driver, a herder. If he were a dog, he’d be one of those Australian sheepdogs, nipping constantly at the ankles of his flock.

In a series that, to Telander, has been all about the ferocious play of James — so much so that all of the harping on Blatt’s Game 4 missteps was unfortunate because it served to obscure the game-winning shot by James — real questions remain about Thibodeau’s ability to make the necessary adjustments to get the Bulls a win in Game 6.

He calls the Bulls coach “a driver,” which is to say that he stays on his players and makes sure all of them are playing as hard as possible. That’s always been viewed as one of Thibodeau’s strongest attributes as a coach, if it has also led to his most constant criticism, that he wears down his players.

With Gasol hurting, Telander argues, Thibodeau relies too much on just continuing to make his players play harder and harder — a style that could contribute to all the injuries we’re seeing — rather than making adjustments (as Blatt did in hiding Irving on defense) that could make the game easier for his players.

We’ll see if Thibs answers the bell for Game 6 or if Blatt has some ringing of his own in store.