Recap: Cavs 108, Sixers 94 (or, Catching Up on the East)

Recap: Cavs 108, Sixers 94 (or, Catching Up on the East)

2020-08-31 Off By Adam Cathcart

Adam Cathcart continues his recaps from J.B. Bickerstaff’s tenure as head coach of the Cavs, linking the Sixers’ fall out of the Orlando playoffs with a look back at a great Cavs win in February. 

Recap: Cavs 108-Sixers 94 (or, Catching Up on the East)

It was a brutal fall. The Philadelphia 76ers were not simply swept out of the 2020 playoffs in the first round, they depart in poor health, in a mental malaise and having already begun a new process of demolition.

On health: Tobias Harris had an awful series (shooting 14% from three) and a horrific fall in Game 4 which required stitches. Ben Simmons played seven games in the bubble before leaving for knee surgery; his recovery time is not yet known. Joel Embiid was statistically spectacular in the playoff but was knocked out of at least two bubble games with injuries and has some well-documented durability issues. The coronavirus appears to have left the players unscathed, at least, meaning that Embiid’s glib yet ominous prediction about his teammates not accepting bubble restrictions (“some guys like adventure”) did not come true.

On the mental malaise: Pandemic ball wasn’t good for Philadelphia. The team that was thunderous and damn-near invincible at home (29-2) in the regular season was awful on the road all year. In the Orlando cage matches, Embiid’s tendencies to play-act like some WWF wrestler and involve the crowd had no outlet. Brett Brown gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug with respect to the crowdless experience. In total in the bubble, the Sixers went 4-8. They lost the chance to pass Miami (Spo’s forces went an unremarkable 3-5 in the seeding games) in the standings. Had they been able to muster another win or two, they might have actually survived the first round by facing Nate Macmillan’s Pacers rather than Brad Stevens’ Celtics, not a trivial distinction.

Their road woes and poor performance in the bubble might be part of the same problem. This further bodes poorly for the team in the unpleasant (and likely?) event that there is no COVID-19 vaccine and the 2020-21 season or some portion thereof is strictly fan-less.

On demolition: The 76ers wasted no time at all, removing head coach Brett Brown practically before the team had even cleared out of Orlando. Talking heads are talking about trading major pieces. One rival GM thinks Embiid needs to go so that Simmons has a creative canvas to work with and can essentially become the current version of the Miami Heat. There was even a “Simmons to Cleveland” trial balloon. Get ready for a long autumn of this stuff, and brush up on your 2001 NBA finals Tyronn Lue memes if the former Cavs champion coach is hired to fill Brett Brown’s shoes.

The recap below has a few more thoughts on the Sixers’ role players in the light of their matchups with the Cavs, some reflections on the Cavs’, lineups, overall effort and coaching.

In the eleven games he led after taking control of the Cavs’ head coaching position, J.B. Biggerstaff did not quite crack .500 (going 5-6), but he managed to win two games against playoff teams in the East – the Sixers and the Heat — and grab a deuce of W’s in the West against the Spurs and Nuggets.

If the Cavs are going to be a playoffs squad next year, they can burn most of their games against the West but they have to be more competitive in their division and in the Eastern Conference generally. The goal in the short term would be to be more like Orlando – this is pretty humble stuff and essentially there is very little likelihood of advancing, but merely getting into the first round and winning a single playoff game would be a big achievement – not least because Sexton et. al need the experience, and Kevin Love and Tristan Thompson need to show they can lead a non-LeBron James team to the postseason. And, not getting swept is an art.

The Recap

When Brett Brown’s 76ers arrived in Cleveland in late February 2020, the Cavs were without their new big man, Andre Drummond. He would rest instead of trying to contain Joel Embid or extend their beef (see here, here, or here for past examples of the Embid-Drummond discord, all quasi-comedic). Ben Simmons sat for the Sixers, who were on the second night of a back-to-back, having won the prior night vs. Atlanta.

In their three previous meetings in the 2019-20 season, the Sixers had beaten the Cavs across the board. In their first game against the Sixers, John Beilein’s Cavs had put in a good effort and nearly pulled out a victory in their first meeting in Philly, no less. (Kevin Love missed an open three in the final seconds.) But in their next meeting the Cavs “got clobbered” in Cleveland (as recapped by Nate), and, then without Embiid in the lineup, the Cavs got absolutely stomped (as recapped by a perplexed Evil Genius) 141-94 in Philadelphia. Expectations were therefore low for their final game of the year — but, after all, the Cavs had had a coaching change and some new cohesion.

The Cavs came out with a burst of energy in the first quarter, outhustling Philadelphia from the tip. On the Sixers’ first offensive possession, it was a clash of the de facto franchise players, and the Cavs won. Sexton went straight for Embiid, ripping the ball out with his talons and not looking back as the Philadelphia big man tumbled out of bounds. It was a fitting symbol for the evening and a good reminder of why Embiid is so mercurial; he showed no signs of being the dominant player who had dropped 49 points the night before.

Embiid wasn’t completely disinterested. He later returned the favor to Sexton by tracking him down under the hoop for a big block. But apart from that single flash of dominance, Embiid’s first quarter consisted of some turnovers, a missed free throw, some missed shots and an shoulder injury from banging with Zizic that forced him out the game with 50 seconds left in the frame.

After the game, Al Horford tried to make some excuses about what happened next: “Obviously, we play through [Joel Embiid] and once he was out, we didn’t really know what was next…We didn’t quite know how to play. We have to figure out how to play without him.”

The problem with this is that Embiid’s absence wasn’t the key thing that lifted the Cavs in the game; they were also dominating when he was in the lineup.

From the jump, the Cavs were active on defense. Cedi was showing loads of energy on both ends of the floor, which got him into some foul trouble but set the tone. Love was taking care of the glass over Horford while the Cavs’ guards got to work running the offense.

Garland and Sexton got off to a roaring start in this game, notching the first ten points for the orange-and-blue, including a behind-the back dribble by the Alabama alum that sent Heat transplant Josh Richardson tripping over himself in a cartoonish fashion.

https://twitter.com/cavs/status/1232821984062590978

Love then shot a couple of blanks from distance, inaugurating of a mini-series of bad 3s by the Cavs, including an airball from Garland and a brick from Tristan Thompson. Fortunately the Sixers responded some equally bad basketball, wasting possessions and letting Tristan sideslip some nominal blocking out in order to dunk an acrobatic Sexton miss.

Love then reestablished the Cavs on the offensive end with his “old man at the Y” pump fake to get his man in the air and 2 free throws.

At 6:30 left in the quarter, Bickerstaff then brought the Two Juniors — Kevin Porter, Jr. and Larry Nance, Jr. – into the game. Without Sexton or Tristan on the floor, the Cavs offense got a little garbled. Needing to create something, Garland threw up a wild shot with shot clock running down. LJ looked like he needed to warm up again, missing an unconstested midrange jumper and booting a clever pass.

Then the collective tempo of the game sped up. Nance got into the flow and hit a nice 3 from Porter; Porter froze Embiid with a herky jerky move, having taken notes on how the big man had blocked Sexton’s more direct attacks.

Delly entered the with 4 minutes left in the quarter and promptly harassed Horford into giving up the ball in isolation and tossed a fantastic full-court pass to Nance for a dunk.

In their sole quarter against Embid, Horford, and Tobias Harris, the Cavs had a balanced attack and solid defense. (TV commentator Mike Fratello might have gotten carried away by calling the D ‘sensational’  but it was good.)  The Cavs had an 11 point lead at the end of the frame.

In the second quarter the role players came into better focus. The Cavs started off by looking to Kevin Porter, Jr., calling two straight offensive plays that started with him in the corner, working a two man game with Zizic. When Zizic screwed up the first iteration by getting called for a moving screen, Bickerstaff told them to simply run it again the next time down the floor — simple enough. Porter Jr. then took his turn to make a mistake, turning the ball over on a bad pass to Z. Bickerstaff clearly wants to see the young guys get some reps.

Tobias Harris took advantage of the Cavs’ missteps to finally bury a three in a game in which he was mostly invisible (ending with just ten points). Probably Harris’ most successful play of the game was in a shrewd acoustic maneuver, when he managed to confuse Collin Sexton by making a load of noise on the wing while Delly was calling for the ball.

Three role players on the Sixers were worth watching in this game. The first one should be no surprise to Cavs fans: Alec Burks. The Sixers sixth man, resident journeyman-microwave, a slightly older vintage of Jordan Clarkson, was both limber and aggressive in this contest. Burks ought to be comfortable in Cleveland. Indeed, he has the distinction of having hit probably the most exciting Cavs basket of the 2018-19 campaign with an ingenious behind-the-back improvisation and slam in Brooklyn. Is it possible to relive this moment too many times?

Burks, should you have lost track of him amid the weltering league transactional traffic, arrived at Philadelphia (and back in the Eastern Conference) after having been traded in the deal that helped the Cavs get the pick that became KPJ. Alec then moved on to the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors.

In a conscious homage to his skills, Cleveland packed the paint on Burks’ drives to the hoop, with all five players collapsing in spite of Delly having him pretty well wrapped up.

The second Sixers role player to watch was Furkan Korkmaz, a sharpshooter from Turkey who has had an up-and-down experience with Philadelphia. At times he has been up. In November 2019, Brett Brown said he had now witnessed “the emergence of Furk”, and the Sixers started dusting off packages for him on the perimeter which they had devised for J.J. Redick. Korkmaz spent 25 minutes on the floor against the Cavs, went 4-11 from three, and ended up with 14 points.

Korkmaz was one of the better players in this game, and is an interesting counterpoint to his countryman Cedi Osman. Just watching this game and looking at his stats, you wonder if he might be a good fit for the Cavs in a world where more outside shooting is needed. The dude is shooting 40% from three for the season, is an unrestricted free agent, and working for the veterans’ minimum, certainly value for money. But he got very little burn in the Sixers’ bubble playoff matchups against the Heat and ended up not hitting a single shot in four games, notching a single depressing point on a free throw for the entire series.

The third Sixers role player that made this a fun game was Kyle O’Quinn, who had an almost comical game-within-the-game battle with Tristan Thompson. TT outrebounded him 13-2, getting the best of all the flexing.

In the second quarter the Sixers went through a spell where they could get absolutely nothing and you started to wonder if the Liberty Ballers commenter on this game who wondered out loud “Does this team smoke too much weed on the road?” was on to something (as opposed to being “on something”). Horford, ever the responsible adult, entered the game again and promptly hit a three.

The Cavs went through their own sloppy stretch but again Bickerstaff elected not to switch things up. After a timeout, he put in the same lineup as prior — Delly and Sexton at the guards, with a KPJ-LJ-Zizic frontcourt. The Cavs were shooting 60% at this point but could not hold on to the ball, with 8 turnovers midway through the quarter. (About half of these miscues seemed involve Zizic, although he was credited with only two turnovers in his 7 minutes of time on the court.)

When he next shuffled the cards with the Cavs up 39-29, Bickerstaff put in Tristan Thompson, Kevin Love, and Darius Garland. Delly continued to run the offense, getting a floater to drop and going absolutely frenzied on Korkmaz on the perimeter, denying him so much as an entry pass. It was as if not only had Delly been watching film, he had an intention of putting that scouting into practice. Garland picked up on the Wombat energy and showed some defensive chops, feeding Shake Milton into Tristan who gobbled up the ball with a huge block. Delly then skied up for a tip-out over two taller players, ricocheting the orb over Porter, who swung it to Tristan for a shot over his old playoff rival Al Horford.

Unfortunately Delly couldn’t lock down Korkmaz indefinitely; the Turkish swingman was hungry for shots. KPJ took too wide of an angle in fighting around two screens, and “Furk” drained a three. The young first-round pick seemed to take it all personally, using the next possession to try to return the favor to Korkmaz. Thompson helped clear the way with a screen on Korkmaz, but KPJ’s vengeance was empty, as he shot an airball. Garland and Love then missed successive wide-open corner threes. Fortunately the Sixers were cold and didn’t gain any ground.

Bickerstaff took a timeout to counsel his squad not to switch up anything in particular, but to tell them not to let the Sixers back into the game with threes. Perhaps he could have called a play as well for Kevin Love, who was quiet from the field. He had no baskets from the field in the entire half, but was distributing freely, giving up shot attempts to Garland and ripping down rebounds. When he talks about giving the younger players experience and reps to get better, it isn’t just pro forma talk; or so this game would appear to indicate.

With the Cavs up 55-44, Sexton had a chance to drive the dagger deeper just before the half ended, but we went up in mid-air without a plan and threw it away. Not exactly a major clutch situation, and while Sexton had a fantastic night with 28 points and a statistical feast, he still has stuff to work on in pressure situations.

As the third quarter commenced, it became clear that the Sixers had made zero adjustments and were just going to roll out with the same Horford/Harris and assorted shooters approach. As one of the Cavs’ TV commentators said of Philadelphia’s limited options, “Jimmy Butler ain’t walking through that door.” The longed-for jolt from role players like Richardson and players not named Korkmaz was also not arriving. Nevertheless, the Sixers would make a run to make the game competitive.

The Cavs continued alternating possessions of solid offense and turnovers, helped out occasionally by mental mistakes by the Sixers.  Case in point: fouling Tristan Thompson on a three-point attempt. (Note to NBA teams scouting the Cavs: Probably not a good idea to aggressively close out Tristan when he shoots threes.) Love and Sexton showed some good transition D, and Love can still move his feet quickly if need be in a scramble. Love finally sank his first field-goal with 6:27 left in the third quarter, naturally, a triple. It put the Cavs up, 70-50, and sent some Sixers fans into a tailspin. Losing by 20 to Cleveland when Kevin Love’s offensive weaponry is just getting warmed up, well, this is not the mark that things are going your way.

If that all sounds too easy or too good to be true, it was: the Sixers countered with an 11-0 run. Bickerstaff inserted Nance and Delly but this didn’t help much. Tristan Thompson carommed a side-step three off the top of the backboard with one second left on the shot clock, which probably says it all about the quality of Cleveland’s shot selection at that point. At 70-61, Bickerstaff called a timeout, and went to LNJ at center, who hit a pretty bank shot to get the Cavs’ offense back on track and snuffled up a bunch of rebounds (he ended the game with 15 rebounds, 13 of them defensive, in 31 minutes of play).

With Nance cleaning the glass and Garland hunting Richardson on the perimeter, the Cavs defense managed to keep the lead at 9.

In the fourth quarter, Shake Milton shucked off his own rust and started hitting three-balls, pulling the Sixers to within five or six points. Like Sexton, Milton is a second-year guard from a southern school (Southern Methodist University). Shake ended up leading the Sixers in scoring in this game, ending with 20, going 4-6 from beyond the arc. But Sexton kept the Cavs’ scoring going with his mid-range game. The wine-and-gold went 6-6 to open the fourth, including a nice Delly steal lob to TT, and their offensive efficiency helped them to weather the Sixers’ suddenly hot shooting. Sexton and Delly combined to encumber Milton on the defensive end.

Down the stretch, Bickerstaff sat Delly and went with Sexton and Garland at the guards, TT, LNJ and KLove in the front court. (Kevin Porter, Jr., didn’t log clutch minutes in the contest. He wasn’t particularly bad, ending with 5 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 turnovers and a block.) The guard play was surprisingly consistent, helped by active defense by Tristan Thompson on the perimeter, and Garland and Sexton managed the clock well even as the scoring on both sides dried up.

Burks broke the scoring drought with about four minutes to go in the game, greasing past Garland to pull the Sixers within nine. But then Love and Sexton then had back-to-back triples to put the game out of reach for Philly. Love found a gap in the 76ers zone defense and when Sexton splashed his three with 2:41 left in the game, making it 101-86, it was effectively the game.

But, since the Cavs are the Cavs, they quickly surrendered six points. Again it was Burks who was the disruptor — he stole the ball from Sexton and dunked, giving the last 90 seconds a bit of drama.

This set up probably the most absurdly athletic play of the game. As has been explained, Kevin Love had a complete if understated game up to the fourth quarter, but his three point shooting in these meaningful minutes was tremendous. With 1:12 left in the game Love did a Ray Allen 2013 NBA Finals Game 6 impersonation, gathering up an unlikely bounce from a long offensive rebound along the baseline, backing up with balletic footwork and draining a corner 3.

The final result was a great win that set off a number of comments about improved effort and team chemistry and commitment since the coaching change. A Cavs fan account in France took the long view in writing about KLove: “The defensive energy and attitude of Kevin Love since the departure of Belein has become a great pleasure to watch. It’s just a shame that this [expletive] didn’t try like this all season, but better late than never.” What would the fan experience be without some lingering trauma, after all?

The momentary bitterness aside, it was very clear that Kevin Love was enjoying himself more and taking more satisfaction in the progress being made by his teammates.

Bickerstaff had some comments after the game about his young core and the defensive intensity. Hail to the chief.

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia coach took a few more steps to the end of the gangplank, implying that management hadn’t amassed the right combination of talent.

And let the calls for the firing commence:

And now let us speak of departed coaches: Less than two months into the 2019-20 season, John Beilein explained to reporters how he had reached out to Brett Brown in search of advice about how to approach a young, rebuilding team. Brown gave Beilein, the losing coach, a single sentence after a game, but Beilein seemed to think it was really significant, and he explained that he had texted Brown in the hopes of having a longer conversation about the mentality he needed to have to succeed in the NBA with his new young core. Aside from the basic jarring fact that these kind of conversations might have taken place prior to the season, or as part of Beilein’s thought process of entering the NBA, there was a whiff of decay and desperation about the whole thing.

J.B. Bickerstaff didn’t need any excuses when his team took on Brett Brown’s, and, unlike his predecessor, he is not still waiting for a text from the now-former 76ers coach. Rebuilds and processes can go upside down but it seems the Cavs have the right man for the job.

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CategoryRecaps
Tags76ers 76ers pandemic Ante Zizic Ben Simmons Cavs Brett Brown Brett Brown fired Cavs coaching change Cedi Osman Cleveland Cavaliers Joel Embiid Joel Embiid injury John Beilein Kevin Love Kevin Love attitude Kevin Porter Jr. Korkmaz Larry Nance Jr. Matthew Dellavadova NBA Playoffs Orlando bubble Tristan Thompson
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Nate Smith

Nice cap, Adam! I really enjoyed it. Gotta say none of this is on Brown who was saddled with a terrible roster that made no sense last summer or in the bubble. The Horford signing was inexplicably bad, especially when they could’ve gone after players like Richaun Holmes or TJ Warren for a fraction of the price. Put me in the group that thinks Embiid needs a tougher coach and better conditioning.

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Simmo

Cracking stuff.

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Jason Wilder

CP3 > Harden (still). CP3 >>>> Russ (always).

Embiid & Simmons are not top shelf guys yet. Not even close.

For me the top shelf is Bron & Kawhi. KD & Steph if the come good after the injuries. CP3. Dame. Davis is close. Tatum might be getting close.

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MikeO

Nothing to do with this game (and good writeup),but I was shocked the Sixers were giving so many playoff minutes to Burks against Boston. He’s a decent bench guy, but no way I’d want him as a primary scorer on a playoff team. Just goes to show how flawed that roster is, with Simmons or not.

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