The Point Four-ward: They Went Back to Ohio!

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) For all of the deserved praised being heaped upon both LeBron James and Kyrie Irving for their dual 41-point games in a game in which the Cavs were facing elimination, the third member of the Cavs’ Trois Troika (a mongrel nickname that admittedly does not roll off the tongue) had a head-scratcher for the ages.

Love played 32 minutes, more than any other player besides James and Irving, and had as many personal fouls (four) as he had field goals (1 out of 5) and rebounds (three) combined. But, this seemingly invisible stat line also had a twist: the Cavs starting power forward was also was +18 during his time on the court, the second best +/- on the team behind Irving’s +20. That suggests that, while I was certainly screaming at the television for head coach Tyronn Lue to at least try Channing Frye for a couple of minutes, the team played well with Love on the floor, even if it seemed like Love, himself, did not.

While it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time, there were some practical reasons for Lue to stick with Love. The Warriors continue to respect Love’s ability to hit the three and rarely leave him open, which further cleared an already Draymond Green-less (and later Andrew Bogut-less) paint for James and Irving. As long as Love wasn’t getting destroyed on defense — and he wasn’t — Lue was clearly more comfortable playing him over Frye.

Lue probably saw that, while Love was struggling, he was also still hustling. This is backed up by NBA.com’s Hustle Stats, which have Love leading the team with 11 shots contested and finishing just behind Tristan Thompson, James and Irving in total Hustle Stats. The Warriors also shot just 25% at the rim when Love was the primary defender, second to James who played an exceptional defensive game and allowed just 20% shooting at the rim.

With the Warriors never able to seriously crack into the Cavs’ second half lead, Lue likely hoped that keeping Love in the game could end up paying dividends in Game 6. Maybe Love hits a shot or two that helps pry the lid that’s been sitting on the basket for him and that infusion of confidence makes Love more of a factor back in Cleveland. That didn’t happen, of course. But it could have.

At worst, maybe Love got a boost in confidence from his head coach refusing to quickly go away from him when he wasn’t scoring or rebounding. If you’re a Cavs fan, you sure hope so, because Love seemed to stop looking for his shot in Game 5. With the series already going back to Cleveland, a big Kevin Love game would certainly help the Cavs as they look to go back to Cali and a Game 7.

2.) For a little more insight into what could be going on inside the head of the Cavs head man on the bench, I turned to CtB’s own Coachface Killah, Ben Werth, for some thoughts on Lue’s Finals rotations.

Ben: Ty Lue got Herculean efforts from Uncle Drew and King James to push the Warriors to a sixth game. A year after “rookie” coach David Blatt led the Cavaliers to a six game Finals series loss, Lue needed to at least match his predecessor’s success considering the 2015-2016 Cavaliers are at full strength. Perhaps it is a poor way to evaluate Lue’s own success.

Still, with a vanilla offense and questionable lineup rotations, Lue has done little to differentiate himself from Blatt’s perceived weaknesses. Ya know, other than not being David Blatt and, by extension, having LeBron’s support. Leaving the Xs/Os and personality traits out of this conversation, Lue has struggled mightily to find lineups that maximize his players’ strengths against the various death lineups of the Warriors. The beautiful second unit of Delly, Shump, RJ, Bron and Frye has all but been scrapped in the Finals. Lue seems to have zero tolerance for any bad stretch of team play that includes Mathew Dellavedova. Whether it is Shump’s hijacking of the offense, or the referees calling phantom fouls, Lue has blamed any team dip of play on Mathew. When Delly is in there, the Cavs have not used him as a ball-handler, preferring to turn the best PnR player the Cavs have into a corner shooter. Lue went to Mo Williams in the second half of Game 5, cementing the case that he has zero confidence in our favorite Wombat.

Here’s hoping it was an aberration. With Bogut likely out with injury, the Warriors may go to the Death Lineup to start Game 6. We all know that Livingston’s length has given Delly some trouble with the second unit. I would be very interested to see a starting unit of Kyrie, JR, Delly, Bron, and TT against the Dubs Death Squad. Why not put Delly’s strength on Draymond to start the game. Mathew could switch onto Curry in any PnR and he is strong enough to make Draymond take more time with the mismatch in the post. His “annoying” behavior could upset Green enough to get him tossed for a potential Game 7. It could be an answer to an almost impossible question.

Thanks, Ben!

3.) How big of a boost was James bringing his jumper with him Monday night? In Game 5, James hit eight shots from outside the paint. That’s twice as many as he has made in any other playoff game this year (per John Schumann of nba.com) and was a major reason he was such a load for the Warriors. With Green out and his jumper on, the Warriors had to play him for the shot more and, in doing so, couldn’t offer as much resistance against the drive.

The importance of James “now you see it, now you don’t” outside shot was made even more evident to me by this video over at BBall Breakdown:

In it, Coach Nick takes a look at where James has found his offense in the half-court over his seven Finals appearances. The weakest part — and the one part of his game that teams can try to game plan to exploit — is his ability to hit the outside shot. If you’re a Cavs fan, this isn’t exactly news, but it’s helpful to see what advantages James gives to a defense when he’s not hitting outside the paint and, really, how unstoppable of a player he still is when his shot flickers on — if only briefly — and he is able to mix up his game, rather than just putting his head down and driving.

If James hasn’t completely exhausted his reserve of outside shots, the Cavs will be a handful for the Warriors on Thursday, even with Green’s return.

4.) Finally, I’ve been spending these Finals reading David Halberstam’s excellent book Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it, as I do pretty much everything Halberstam wrote. He wrote about basketball — in this and in what is probably my favorite basketball book, The Breaks of the Game — with the same texture and nuance as he wrote about political leaders and pillars of industry.

Early in the book, Halberstam talks about the first time that Jordan came to Phil Jackson and told his coach that he wanted to retire. Jordan told Jackson what he was feeling, but said that he could still be convinced to keep playing. Jackson left the decision up to Jordan, but not without painting for his star player the bigger picture. Halberstam writes:

[He] reminded Jordan of the singular pleasure he would be denying millions of ordinary people when he left the game because his gifts were so special. His talent, Jackson said, was not merely that of a great athlete but transcended athleticism to become an art form. His gift was along the lines of a Michelangelo, Jackson said, and therefore Jordan at the least had to understand that it belonged not just to the artist but to all those millions who stood in awe of the art itself and derived, in a life otherwise filled with the mundane, such pleasure from what he did.

I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot while watching these Finals, especially while watching LeBron. He’s had patches when he’s looked less than entirely transcendent, but overall the talent and will that he’s exhibited during these playoffs has, as Halberstam put it, “transcended athleticism to become and art form.” It’s that art’s ability to dazzle — the pleasure it gives us in its best moments — that I’ve tried to make the focus when I’m watching these games. That’s why his monster Game 5 performance was so satisfying: because a performance like that — or like Irving’s game, or like Klay Thompson‘s first half shooting, or like most of the last two years of Steph Curry — are momentary flashes of a certain type of brilliance that will never be exactly the same the next time out.