Recap: Pacers 113, Cavs 104 (or, The Creative Chaos of Andre Drummond)

Recap: Pacers 113, Cavs 104 (or, The Creative Chaos of Andre Drummond)

2020-05-06 Off By Adam Cathcart

[Editor’s Note: Adam Cathcart is back to recap another lost gem, the Feb. 29th loss to the Pacers, a definite breakout game for Andre Drummond. You can watch the full game on league pass, here. Enjoy!]

In an academic paper entitled “The Automated General Manager: An Algorithmic System for Drafts, Trades, and Free Agency that Outperforms Human Front Offices,” Philp Haymin broke down the 2014 trade that brought the Cavs Kevin Love and sent Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Between the blocks of data tables that characterise the NBA analytics industry, Haymin made a passing but remarkable nod to two things around that Cavs trade: the human factor of player desire in ‘lame duck’ seasons, and former overall number 1 pick, Anthony Bennett’s ‘historically terrible rookie season.’

It was a good reminder that the element of joy of the game still remains important, even in the middle of the monetization of just about everything and the massive pressure to perform. Anthony Bennett never had any fun, and he was miserable, whereas Kevin Love ultimately found a kind of enduring joy in Cleveland, which was badly eroded at times by everyone from LeBron James to John Beilein, but he seems to be recapturing his own love for the game and enjoying his own redefined role.

As Kevin Love knows better than most, fitting in new pieces to a ballclub can be tricky. Egos can be as sensitive as they are outsized, and in a league where individual performance is privileged (ranging from the statistical to the attention one receives from media and fans), prioritizing the team and forging meaningful bonds with one’s teammates is difficult.

Enter Andre Drummond, who, as February ended, was finishing off his first month (and sixth game) as a Cleveland Cavalier. In the eight-game stint he played with the Cavs, the team went 4-4. In his final game against the Pacers this season, Drummond was an agent of chaos who whirled through in the Indiana defense but whose improvisations, along with bad matchups at the guard position, ultimately doomed the Cavs to take the L.

Ian Leavy noted this in Fansided’s “The Whiteboard” column Tuesday, where he tracked NBA Chaos and the metric of STOCKTOS (STeals, blOCKs and TurnOverS) per 100 possessions this season.

Andre Drummond: 10.5 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions
Drummond is a chalice for chaos, incredible size and agility allows him to disrupt the intentions of opponents, shaky ball-handling and touch make him just as disruptive to his own team. If we were to split things further though, Drummond may slide down the list a little bit as more than half his turnovers were of the dead-ball variety — traveling, offensive fouls, knocking the ball out of bounds, etc.

The Cavs landed in back home on Leap Day, with Drummond having taken a couple of games off. Rather than coming out lugubrious from their loss the prior night in New Orleans, the Cavs were also buoyant with a certain freewheeling, improvisatory sense one associates with the Louisiana river city. While the Pelicans had held most of the cards in that game — whether it was Zion Williamson, spotting the Pelicans an 18-point lead at the end of the first quarter, or David Griffin’s massive brain — in the home game against the Pacers, it was the Cavs who had an ace up the sleeve in the form of a fresh Andre Drummond.

First Quarter

From the opening whistle, the Cavs were getting into their offensive sets quickly, showing no signs of fatigue. The approach was simple: Plan A was to feed Andre Drummond, with Plan B following close behind, ‘let Drummond do whatever he wants once he gets the ball.’ Drummond sank a pretty scoop shot, made two successive layups over double-teams and arced in a hook shot over Turner. Four possessions in a row down low, and four Drummond baskets.

In spite of scoring every time they went down the court, the Cavs failed to build an early lead. The Pacers’ T.J. Warren poured in the first of his game-high 30 points with a corner 3 when Drummond and Kev both got stuck down low, until Drummond got around to contesting the shot. If there is a lingering image of frustration from this season apart from Kev’s infamous on-court dodgeball explosion, it is of Kevin Love refusing to close out on a corner three, then pounding the rock after the rebound instead of zipping an outlet to a guard.

On the next Pacers’ possession, Drummond gambled for a steal on the perimeter and gave up a three, but not for lack of effort. The Cavs’ new big man seemed to take it all personally since on the next possession, after generously allowing Garland to miss a finger roll, Drummond shot a three — which he bricked.

At this point the reader might recall that the Cavs already have a big man under contract who can shoot threes, namely the $145 million dollar man, Kevin Love. (I first got wind of Love’s contract extension when I ran into his uncle Mike Love, of the Beach Boys, in the green room of a BBC studio in Manchester on June 12, 2018, who told me a $150 million deal was in the works.) Drummond and Love go way back, but in this game Drummond never quite got the memo that his being triple-teamed might mean that Love would occasionally be open on the perimeter. Drummond was enjoying the dominance in the paint, but the Cavs were showing no interest in becoming some (non-juiced and van Gundyless) version of the 2009 Orlando Magic and the 3-ball magic never materialized.

For the first six minutes of the game Love was functioning primarily as a decoy, or just setting screens at the top of the key and then watching the rest of the possession. However, he stayed engaged on the defensive end, going chest to chest against Myles Turner down low, forcing two misses, ripping a long board and then knifing a long pass to Cedi (something like a first down pass rather than a touchdown pass). The Turkish small forward streaked to the hoop, tying the game.

While Love was stout defensively, Cleveland’s guard play was an exposed achilles heel. Darius Garland, momentarily lost watching a rebound, got back-doored by a Malcom Brogdon cut from the baseline. The Cavs came out with some backcourt harrying (if not a true full-court press) of the Pacer guards, but then never returned to the strategy later in the game when Olidipo and Brogdon were clearly getting comfortable. Maybe even youth has its limits.

Limitations in the Cavs’ stripped-down offensive approach then became apparent as Cleveland slowed down the tempo. Garland and Sexton tried to run some two-man action, and it didn’t go well; Sexton got funnelled into the whirling scythes of Turner’s arms who blocked the shot out of bounds. With the Cavs down 13-10, Garland got a decent look at the hoop on the inbounds play, but missed.

At this point, Cavs had run zero plays for Love and the all-Drummond offense had ended up settling into a rhythm of stagnant possessions alternating with crazy athleticism by Drummond. Dre then ignored the guards and ran the ball up himself, and hit a neat bank shot over the rubbery Pacers center Myles Turner. Nothing else was working yet, but Andre Drummond was ebullient.

Things reached peak absurdity on the next possession, when Drummond nearly drained a step-back triple. That particular shot had been set up by Cedi, who decided to pull back after another ‘first down’ pass from Love. To say that that it was an absurd play is not necessarily a bad thing: we watch basketball for the unlikely things and are willing to be astonished by the new wrinkles in the game. If Drummond is going to develop a 3 point shot and be a core member of the Cavs starting unit, maybe a season where the Cavs are going to top out at 19 wins is the time to try it.

With 6:30 to go in the quarter, Love was looking frustrated and Bickerstaff finally intervened with a time out and having a word with Drummond out on the floor, giving the first sign that something resembling an offensive system was going to reassert itself.

If the Cavs are able to hang on to Drummond next year, the preceding six minutes of basketball may be worth remembering, both when fans are simultaneously cheering and laughing their asses off at the ridiculous moves Drummond puts on opposing defenses, and the occasional attack of frustration and hair-pulling when he inexplicably hijacks the offense.

With Drummond at center, LNJ at power forward, Cedi small forward, and guards Garland and KPJ, the Cavs had another glimpse of a possible future. They continued to feed Drummond, who obliged by dropping in a mid-air bankshot from the paint. Perhaps Bickerstaff had truly gotten into his ear on the timeout, because Drummond finally started passing. When he isn’t looking for his own shots, he’s a deft passer and has tremendous grace. He made a nice hook around pass to Garland who converted on his own bread-and-butter shot, a floater.

Kevin Porter, Jr. needed a minute to wake up on the offensive end and was immediately targeted by an opportunistic defensive gambler, Victor Oladipo. KPJ got stuck picking up his dribble on the baseline, and shortly thereafter threw a bad pass inside (again it was Olidipo with the dellyesque hustle play).

After his initial mistakes, KPJ performed really well. Most of all, he immediately adds some steel to the Cavs’ defense (perhaps ‘LTV’ would be another decent nickname if he keeps it up?). Porter is big and recovers quickly, fights through screens, and got right into Brogdon and Olidipo along the perimeter, denying them penetration or shot attempts. KPJ then proceeded to reject Sabonis, and run down court to bury the Cavs’ first triple of the game and tie the score 19-19. He then had some nice action with Kevin Love that led to a rollicking rookie dunk.

Defensively, KPJ then made multiple efforts on a single possession, nearly forcing a 24 second violation but instead seeing Turner bail out Indiana with an off-balance heave off the square. KPJ was providing the perfect sixth-man spark, and the Cavs could not grab the lead, he was keeping them close.

When McMillan called an Indiana timeout with 3:31 left in the quarter and sent in his second unit, the Cavs offense basically had to reboot with Drummond out, a task left to Matthew Dellavadova, who broke out Plan C: Feed Larry Nance or Kevin Love down low.

Bickerstaff seemed content to punish the Pacers inside, in part because Indiana (usually Sabonis, who played 42 minutes) consistently crowded Love at the perimeter and denied him enough space to work. Although Love has statistically gotten the better of Pacers’ power forward Domantis Sabonis over the years, Sabonis is younger and seems to be on the upswing in his career. (He is also a Lithuanian, and like Kevin Love, has Oregon roots, an NBA father, and ties to the Trail Blazers.) With Sabonis taking a breather, Love started working again in a familiar spot, the post, making his money with two successive possessions where he pump faked and sank shots, including an and-one.

Sexton decided to up the tempo and did one of his patented 1-on-3 rundowns and hit the lay-in against the Pacers scrubs finishing the quarter, resulting in his lone highlight in he frame. True to form, his offensive flames were matched by defensive slip-ups. As the First waned, Sexton was a step late around a screen to allow a Pacers corner 3, then allowed another weakside baseline cut by Brogdon for an easy point-blank bucket inside.

In spite of Sexton’s mini-funk, a gorgeous sequence of passes from Love to Nance and then to Porter ensued, and KPJ’s side-stepped 3 finally got the Cleveland team a one-point lead to end the quarter 31-30.

Porter’s splash reason to cheer, but on the stat sheet the Cavs were neither prolific nor efficient from three-point range: 1 for 4 on three point attempts all quarter – Drummond step-back, Osmon from range, and the last on a last-second heave of sorts from Love. (The squad would end the game 5-22 from range.)

Meanwhile Pacers just kept clawing out points, largely long twos, and the former Phoenix Sun TJ Warren would notch 15 in the first half.

The second quarter begin with K Love continuing his pump-faking torture of Pacers’ backup big Justin Holliday inside, drawing a foul on the third Holliday brother played by the Cavs in the last two days.

Sexton must have used the stoppage of play to fantasize about his next offensive moves, since he was again on autopilot defensively and outsmarted by former 76ers sparkplug, backup point guard TJ McConnell, allowing Doug McDermott a straight line for a feed under the basket in spite of Delly flailing at him. When the Wombat flails it is usually when someone else has screwed up.

Sexton promptly ignored a truly Herculean K-Love screen in which Love took out two defenders. Sexton seemed confused by Love’s awesome feat and hesitated on pulling the trigger on a three, instead backing up and then realizing it might be a good idea to feed Love the ball after all, which means he then fed a bad pass defense that had had time to recover. Shortly after this sequence, Sexton again turned it over trying to feed Nance inside. Maybe the Cavs are better when he just runs to straight to the hoop every time?

Delly then asserted himself, muscling into the paint amid some double screen action of Nance and Love. Love couldn’t take advantage of a his height mismatch on McConnell on the perimeter but was finally getting into a rhythm, getting clear looks at the bucket and heaving a long touchdown pass to Kevin Porter Jr.

KPJ has no known connection to Bruce Lee, but there was something like a kung fu brawler about him for a stretch that started about three minutes into the second quarter. KPJ was absolutely everywhere, for good and ill. The rookie took a charge, got burned gambling for a steal in the backcourt, got rejected by McDermott, then caught another long pass from Nance and got fouled; he notched a fantastic block on Sabonis, blocked a point-blank Turner dunk attempt and fed Cedi for a streaking dunk.

After a signature Youngbull drive to the hoop, the Cavs had managed to drive the lead to five (39-34) against the Pacers’ second unit plus Sabonis.

The Cavs continued the trend of prioritizing feeding Drummond inside after his return for some apparently effortless buckets over Turner; but a Delly alley oop went awry and the Pacers started whittling away at the lead via the guard matchups again. Drummond must have smelled fear, though, since took it straight to the hoop on a 1 on 5 break and got the and-one, foul on Turner, giving the Cavs a 51-48 lead.

Myles Turner promptly sat down, giving fans at Rocket Morgtage Field House a chance to see backup center Jakarr Samson in his sole two minutes of action. With no disrespect to a fine league, Samson’s play was about at the level of of a washed-up big man in the Chinese Basketball Association. He got lured on a Kevin Love pump fake to give up three free throws and then went over the back and landed on Love on the other end. Sampson was therefore personally responsible for Love’s 5 points and probably a sore back. (Love ended up 1-4 from range but 7-8 from the charity stripe.) Jakarr’s lack of control made the viewer appreciate the smooth quality of Drummond’s chaos.

Sexton took over in the last minute of the half by giving fans the microcosm of a one-on-one battle with Victor Oladipo, his opposing franchise guard. Sexton drained a 3 and then airballed another around two Oladipo buckets. Meanwhile Love knew full well he wasn’t on Sexton’s radar and just watched the possession with a half-hearted clearout and the Cavs ended the half up 58-56.

After the halftime horn, an interview with Andre Drummond moved the surreal meter to new heights. Asked why the Cavs were winning, Drummond, who had hijacked multiple possessions in the half, said ‘We are moving the ball.’

As the third quarter commenced, the Cavs came out of the locker room with intensity — another nice change from the Beilein tenure. Kevin Love was particularly active getting into young players, talking on defense and educating instead of fuming during Pacer free-throw shots. He even showed support for Sexton by shouting some variant on ‘Ball don’t lie’ after a Pacer missed free throw resulting from a bad call on Youngbull.

In spite of his applied fervor, Love still had a hard time getting it going from outside. Whenever he touched the ball at the top of the key, Sabonis was immediately crowding him outside of the arc. Fortunately, Cedi Osman was not so draped in Pacer limbs and nailed an early long trey.

The return of the Drummond show got off to an unpromising start when the new center barrelled into three defenders, flipped up a wild shot and got called for the charge on a collapsing Oladpio. Dre’ also offered little resistance on defense as the Indiana guards began heating up.

Since this ended up being Darius Garland’s last game of the year, his performance in the second half bears noting. In the third quarter, Garland lost two straight bad passes meant for Drummond inside, but immediately got the points back with some especially shifty manuevers, making two straight buckets by approaching the hoop laterally, then canning a mid-ranger.

On defense, Garland appears to be different from Sexton in that he seems at least to have a plan. In one-one D on Olidipo, he played heavily to the Pacers’ star’s left, cutting off passes to Sabonis and daring him to drive to the hoop to challenge Drummond. Garland seems to have more full-system awareness than Sexton; he is also capable of full court pressing, snapping up steals here and there. He is hardly invisible on defense; at one crucial stretch in the fourth quarter when the Cavs could not buy a stop, Garland took a charge.

But what is the point of Darius Garland if he shoots no 3s? He was 0-2 from range in this game. Although his ceiling for threes was a game in Milwaukee in November in which he hit five of seven, he seems to average only about 3 or 4 attempts per game. If Drummond and Sexton remain true to form and fixated on the hoop, Garland is going to end a lot of possessions open but ignored in the corner.

Early in the third, Garland finally got the ball via a granny pass from Sexton, but the possession was garbled and the shot clock waned. The rookie tried his best Kyrie Irving impersonation and got absolutely swallowed by a predatory Turner. If there is a Cav who needs to develop a deadly step back, hopping outside of the arc, it is Garland.

At this point, it was 69-66 Pacers, and fans accustomed to Cleveland collapses might have expected Indiana to pull away. Instead some of the best most watchable basketball of the year ensued. After a Love-Sexton, Sexton-Love exchange and hoop, there was a Drummond touchdown pass to Love streaking down court, followed by a Love to Drummond touchdown pass – the best sequence of the game. “Are you not entertained?”

Love sat at 4:15 left in the quarter, and the Cavs immediately cooled offensively. Drummond got obliterated by Turner on a break. Shots fell short; Turner bothered Sexton. Delly came in to settle things down, and although the unit didn’t have much cohesion — Bickerstaff went with Sexton, Delly at the guard spots and Drummond, Nance and KPJ in the frontcourt — it was just enough to keep up while the Pacers just kept grinding away.

At the end of the third, it was the Pacers’ turn for had a series of cold possessions, and the Cavs then had a chance to go up. Sexton slowed things down then proceeded to demonstrate his limitations by running into the defense with no plan, hoping for a foul call, and he was called for steps. Tie game, 86-86.

For all of the Cavs’ marketing and for all of Sexton’s slashing strengths and developing outside game, it is fair at the end of his second year to ask Sexton to show signs of competence down the stretch in games. It might bear recalling that Kyrie Irving was not uniformly brilliant closing out games. (Although every Cavs fan has taken an oath of silence about Kyrie’s crazy solo drive in the last minute of the finals after “the Shot”.) Perhaps we have set our standards artificially high.

In the fourth quarter, things got chippy — Delly set a thunderous screen on Sabonis, but Sabonis decided to contest Love on the perimeter by essentially trying to jump over Delly, who got pinballed between Sabonis and Nance.  KPJ bailed out the Cavs by sinking a corner three.

Drummond entered the game about three minutes into the quarter, with mixed results. Instead of driving in and punishing Indiana’s defenders or kicking out to a perimeter shooter, Drummond rolled the dice and shot a three, because, hey, why the hell not? Clank. Maybe there is a reason he is wide open out there.

Drummond proceeded to foul a shooter 18 feet from the basket, an important foul since it made him more passive against mid-range shots down the stretch. Andre stayed with the game, though, and quickly junked the Pacers’ next two possessions with steals, one from Sabonis and another in the passing lane.

Drummond had help on the defensive end. Nance had an awesome steel, plucking a pass out of the air with his enormous mitts. Delly kept the Cavs in it through a dry offensive spell with a few plays that didn’t end up on the stat sheet, like when he bodied TJ McConnell under the backboard for what was essentially a blocked shot.

Bickerstaff finally went full Youth Movement with Garland and Sexton at the guards, Drummond at center, and Nance and Porter at the forwards. Nate McMillian countered this possible preview of the Cleveland future — call them the Three Amigos and and the Two Juniors — with his starters, who he would ride most of the way to the end and whose mid-rangers would kill the Cavs in spite of KPJ caroming around screens with abandon.

Offensively, the Cavs again cleared out and let Drummond go to work on Sabonis. If the stakes had been higher, would Drummond have been more focused? For some reason the Cavs’ new big man decided it was a good time to start working the refs. He got bodied out of the paint and flopped a bit after missing his shot, and ambled back up the court complaining to the officials.

A little later after another mini-flop on a missed put back, expecting a whistle, Drummond started jawing at the baseline referee. This meant he was stationary and facing in the wrong direction when Delly jarred out a gift for him of a  loose ball in the backcount. It was a classic case of a new employee needing more time to work through the company memos, or having a clash of personal marketing (‘And One!’) with the company slogan for the year (‘Be the Fight’). Maybe Andre had such a great time in the first quarter that he forgot to work the refs early.

After a couple of minutes of action in which the Cavs could not buy a stop and Brogdon and Oladipo were doing the full Carmelo Anthony and racking up mid-range points, Garland finally stepped up and took a charge, giving the fans in injection of belief.

But this wasn’t followed by further stops. The next minute or two were decisive in a game with very little separation throughout and the Pacers were suddenly looking very loose and in control. Indy, and especially T.J. Warren, kept swishing from mid-range. Warren would go on to post 30 in the game, meaning there had either been no halftime adjustments on his coverage or they didn’t manifest themselves in the box score.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EKjfUt0z0

With 3:30 left in the game and the score 104-99, Bickerstaff called a rage time out. But he was more exercised about Drummond having been hacked at the opposite end the floor than getting into his team. Bernie flirted with a technical for defending his new big man, but he just sternly shook his head as he handled the clipboard and muttered into his increasingly Gandalfian beard.

The Cavalier lineup remained constant, and Bickerstaff productively channeled his fury into a nice little gem of a play call. A Love curl around fed Drummond for a dunk coming out of the timeout. But Drummond positively loafed on the next offensive possession, clearly disengaging and not appearing concerned at all about the state of the scoreboard.

The Pacers took advantage of Drummond’s sloth to get a 4-2 break against Sexton and Garland on D. The Pacers could have scored easily against the Cavs’ guards but Olidipo chose to burn some clock instead since Pacers had been getting whatever they wanted, and what they wanted were mid range jumpers. Which, in spite of Drummond finally coming back to fill the lane, they got another one of.

It felt like the game effectively ended here, but then the PA hype man said, ‘there’s still a lot of time left in this thing, let’s start believing,’ but he could have just shouted ‘Give Kevin Love the rock, behind the arc,’ since the Cavs’ ultimate distance specialist finally showed up and drained a 3.

This put the Cavs within 4 with two minutes to go. Horror ensued as the Pacers’ hottest shooter TJ Warren was left wide open for a 3 and Love stared him down but refused to budge, leaving close-out duties to anyone but him — but finally Warren missed.

Having snared the rebound from the Warren shot, Drummond commandeered the offense again, taking the ball downcourt before Indiana could set the defense. But he failed to slash or distribute; Love was calling for it wide open on the wing, but Drummond slowed it down, surveyed the scene, then finally swung it to Love.

If the Cavs were going to win at this point, they needed a gift from essentially random basketball gods, but instead luck burned the Cavs.

Love hoisted a three, and then a screwball series of events then ensued that, if this had been a playoff game, might have been given Zapruder film treatment — the 3 went off the rim at an odd angle, the ball caromed off of a scrambling Pacers player and went flying back out of bounds toward Kevin Love. Love went up in what felt like an impossible vertical, getting his hand around the ball and spiking the ball off of Turner. Since the game was ultimately all about the enigma of Andre Drummond, naturally the ball did not fly out of bounds for a Cavs possession but ended up caroming to the big man. Drummond could have just picked it up, reset the offense, and walked back upcourt, but instead he panicked and ‘saved’ the ball toward the middle of the floor, leaving Olidipo to  scoop it up with a clear run at the undefended Cavs’ basket. Because he is a basketball savant, Drummond recovered and, with a little help from the blur that is Colin Sexton, chased down Olidipo and blocked the shot. But the Pacers kept possession and Turner hit a three after the inbounds play –revenge being the last laugh on Drummond — and the game was over.

Drummond ultimately put up a team high 27/13/4 line with four steals and that final emphatic block, but he was also a game low -18 in a very close contest. Chaos, indeed. But 40 minutes of Andre? One has to wonder if, assuming winning was the purpose of the game, Larry Nance should have gotten more run. Kevin Love complemented with 20/12/7 night going 6-9 from the field overall, but the touches Dre and the youngsters took away from Kev meant the champ never got going in earnest. Garland, Sexton, and Porter combined to shoot 17-42 from the field including 3-11 from downtown. The Pacers went 8-23 from deep while the Cavs shot 5-22, and that’s the difference in the ballgame. Drummond was still talking six weeks later about his triples for the Cavs, but in this game, his 0-3 showing meant joy for him and empty possessions for Cleveland.

The Cavs let Indy shoot 54% this game, and Brogdon (22/1/8), Sabonis (18/13/9), and Olidapo (19 points) all had big games. Myles Turner only scored 10 and got positively steamrolled by Drummond for most of the game, but had four big blocks and the dagger at the end.

There were many positives in this game. The Cavs posted a whopping 30 assists, many coming from the bigs, to only 13 turnovers, and although they were burned by a lot of mid-rangers late (T.J. Warren’s 30 point explosion providing ample evidence of that), they did keep Indiana subdued in the paint and held them to 8-22 from three. There was growth this game.

Despite beating Indy in the home opener, the Pacers represented a difficult matchup for the Cavs. Drummond at least offers the Cavs some major advantages in a multi-game series with that team. If Cleveland is going to make a run at a low seed next season — whenever that season actually occurs — the Cavs need to be able to beat a better balanced team than many in the East, at least at home. The Pacers tend to be dominant against the Cavs in their building irrespective of who is playing — one reason that, a very long time ago, they took the Cavs to seven in a first round series. But for Andre Drummond, none of that history matters much, as he continues his improvisations.

This penchant for chaotic freelancing has to be what finally prompted Detroit to close the book on the Drummond era, and what makes him so maddening amid the flashes of excitement. For as talented as Andre is, he sometimes can’t stop wasting possessions. If the Cavs are to sneak into the playoffs next year with Drummond on the roster they have to channel this chaos into more harm (for the other team) than good. No easy task, but it should be fun to see if he’s capable of enhancing his on-court chemistry with Kevin Love and ‘Being the Fight’ along with Cleveland’s young core.

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CategoryRecaps
TagsAndre Drummond Cleveland Cavs 2020-21 season collin sexton Darius Garland J.B. Bickerstaff Kevin Love Kevin Love trade Kevin Porter Jr. Larry Nance Matthew Dellavadova
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bw..

7,8,9
Really dislike most of the rest. I’ve grown on 3 because they were wearing the black uni’s when they won it all… but I didn’t like them at the time.

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Nate Smith

I did 3 8 9 for that reason.

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