The Point Four-ward: Statist-Icky Thump

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) LeBron “The Leader” James went back on the offensive, questioning his team’s toughness after a second straight loss. After reportedly ripping into his teammates following Saturday’s double-overtime loss to the Bucks in Milwaukee, James called out his troops in the wine and gold after they let a 13 point third quarter lead slip away on Tuesday night, eventually losing to the Detroit Pistons in the Palace at Auburn Hills 104-99.

“We’re too relaxed and too nice,” James said.

By including himself in the critique, at least nominally, by saying “we,” James told it true. While plenty of other Cavaliers contributed their fair share to Tuesday’s loss, it was James who set the tone with some sloppy play in the game’s opening moments that the team was more than willing to revert to as the Pistons made their run in the fourth.

James has coughed the ball up plenty more on other occasions. In fact, he was only charged with four turnovers on the night. But these were not turnovers caused by aggressiveness. They were the kind caused by James and his teammates not being on the same page.

James and Love were particularly out of sync. Just after the opening tip, an awkward bit of James/Love miscommunication led to James turning the ball over. Minutes later, while leading a break, James attempted to thread… well, he just made “thread a brick wall” an expression by trying to force feed a connection with Love that was essentially walled off by Pistons jerseys. Then, in crunch time, he (finally) drove aggressively into the paint only to kick the ball back out to where Mo Williams wasn’t (but maybe should have been?) and cause a crucial turnover.

2.) Of course, there was plenty to like from James in this game. On a night that saw him pass Jerry West for 19th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, James showed that reports about the death of his jumper were (hopefully) premature. For the game, James was 11-21 from the field, including 4-7 from three and an astounding (considering his recent struggles) 4-5 from the free throw line. Oh, and he had a pair of shots like this one where he makes it look easy… despite not even looking at the basket!

Overall, though, whether it’s the turnovers, the slow starts or the entire team’s struggle from the free throw line, the Cavaliers have to play better, smarter, more focused basketball… and James, as the leader, is no exception.

3.) Now that the Cavs have hit the 1/8th point of the season (or, y’know, maybe just because…) there’s finally some context when looking at how the statistics they’ve piled up on the way to their 8-3 start stack up against the rest of the league. Not surprisingly, having one of the NBA’s best records tends to reflect favorably in the league rankings and the Cavaliers are near the top of the pack in several categories.

Prior to Tuesday night’s game, the Cavs ranked fifth in the league grabbing 47.5 rebounds a game. With a talented and rebound-hungry front court featuring the likes of Love, Thompson, Timofey Mozgov and James — who is a great rebounder from the small forward position (as though that’s news to anyone) — the Cavs should be ranked this high… and should continue to be one of the league’s top board snatching teams for the rest of the season. Even in the event of an injury to one of their regulars, they can lean on one-time rebound monger Anderson Varejao (a DNP-CD on Tuesday) and still be able to rebound at an above-average clip as a unit.

The Cavs’ other top-five rank was less expected and has been one of the bigger storylines of this young season. They were ranked fourth in assists, notching 24 per game, behind only the league’s beauties of ball movement: the Golden State Warriors, Atlanta Hawks and San Antonio Spurs. The 24 assists have come with the team averaging 38.3 field goals, meaning that they are assisting on over 62% of their made baskets, up from 58% last season.

In spite of some recent evidence that suggests maybe the team has starting to pull back on their ball-slinging ways, the assist numbers have stayed strong. Outside of Friday night’s slog against the New York Knicks in which the team managed just half their season average in assists (12), the team averaged 23.3 assists for the rest of the week in games against strong defensive teams in the Bucks, Jazz and Pacers. [Update: they recorded 21 assists against the Pistons, continuing a week-long, if slight, trend back toward ISOBron.]

With the team still not at full strength or playing their best basketball, this is a league rank where the Cavs should look for continued improvement over the course of the season.

4.) A few other league rankings to make with what you will:

The Cavs are a nice, if not dominant, defensive team. They ranked a solid 10th in opponent FG% (42.7) and 15th in opponent 3PT% (33.8) but have managed to parlay that — based on other factors, like their pace of play — into a fourth overall ranking in points allowed per game at 95.6. They’ve did this while being a bottom third team in both blocks (ranked 23rd with 4.3 per game) and forcing turnovers (25th at 13.6 per game).

One thing that jumps out of this jumble is that, while they may have been ranked fourth in points allowed, the fourth place in that category is a pretty significant drop-off from the top three. The Cavs were allowing nearly four points per game more than the league’s third-ranked team, the Utah Jazz, and five points more than both the top-ranked Miami Heat (90.2 points allowed) and the Spurs (90.6). Put another way, the distance between the Heat and the Cavs here is the same (5.4 points) as between the Cavs and the sixteenth-ranked Orlando Magic, which indicates that the Cavs are just as close to teetering into the league’s average as they are to its elite.

Of course, statistics this broad aren’t always the clearest indicators and can even be downright misleading. Still, there the Cavs sit with an 8-3 record and  were third in the league in +/- with a +7.2. That, of course, pales compared to Golden State’s league-best +16.3… but the Warriors have a lot of the league looking pale so far this season.