Recap: Cavs 112, Hawks 111 (or, ‘Oh-ho-MY! Lamar Stevens!’) + LT

Tonight, the Hawks are at home and on the back of a four-win streak with Nate McMillan, their granite-hewn new coach, a man who has lived through several years of working for Larry Bird in Indianapolis and knows a thing or two about beating the post-LeBron Cavs. The last time McMillan coached a team against J.B. Bickerstaff, the Cavs were led by the enigmatic Andre Drummond, Kevin Love played 37 minutes, McMillan took a blowtorch named T.J. Warren to Cleveland, and his Pacers came away with a win.

Tonight, the Cavs are coming off of a horrific return to work after the All Star Break, having shot a load of bricks against Stan Van Gundy’s motivated crew in the humid air of the Mississippi delta. But, as they say, it’s a long season, and Kevin Love should be back in the lineup tonight, testing his wind further, jacking threes, and being a legit non-Sexton source of shooting for Cleveland. Darius Garland also looks like he will play. “Meaningful games” indeed.

#Cavs Darius Garland is “good to go,” I’m told.

— Chris Fedor (@ChrisFedor) March 14, 2021

As the Cavs get ready to take on the Hawks in Atlanta, a fuller recap of the last (and Love-less) time these two teams met is in order, so, since the Cavs: the Blog community has demanded it, here it is.

In the Cavs’ February 23 matchup, Darius Garland was the immediate target of a number of defensive tactics and schemes by the Hawks. Garland’s main assailant was none other than Trae Young, who was swiping at him from the half court. The Hawks would occasionally supplement Young’s flurry at Darius by throwing an occasional double-team on the Cavs’ point guard at the hash mark. Garland accordingly started the game with a bad pass to the inside, a mistake which set the tone for his performance for the entire half.

In the first quarter, Garland jacked five shots (they all missed), missed a free throw, dished an assist, snared two rebounds, and racked up two turnovers. He also made some statistically invisible mistakes where poor clock management left the Cavs empty. As Nate Smith said in the game live thread, Garland was going one on three way too often and looked gassed. Garland finally seemed get things moving in the right direction in the second quarter after settling down, lofting a nice assist to McGee on a Statue of Liberty dunk, followed by a pretty scoop shot.

In the second half Garland ultimately showed more confidence on the offensive end, converting on a couple of floaters. But his the Hawks second phalanx of guard-versatile players – Rondo, Mays, Snell and Huerter– gave him problems. Kevin Huerter, the 19th overall pick in the 2018 draft, had his way with Garland on multiple possessions, hitting a turnaround and a three right over him, tipping his passes and outrunning Garland along the full length of the court in a fast break.

Trae Young did not have a superior first half by any means, but he was the center of the storm for the Hawks. The Hawks lost ground when he was out at the beginning of the second quarter. Love him or hate him, Young is kind of a relentless and very active figure. Unlike Sexton he doesn’t seem to take a lot of possessions off — or at least he did not in this game. Young also managed to get Sexton in trouble with three fouls within a short span in the second part of the second quarter.

Cleveland dodged a bullet in the first quarter because the Hawks’ power forward John Collins was came out absolutely on fire, starting the game with a breakaway dunk, followed by a leakout dunk, and then a 3. The Cavs were countering Collins with bad passes and turnovers – fortunately an aggressive Sexton led Collins to fouls, where the Young Bull’s  offensive zeal finally led to good things on the defensive end. Collins later got an inadvertent elbow to the skull and went out with a concussion, and left the game in the third. He was was just a wrecking ball at the beginning, and, while his facial expression looks permanently fatigued, he is still just in his third year in the league and was just dominating in the first frame.

Dean Wade had a good opening sequence showing great opening frame showing good defense inside on Capela, showing multiple efforts, not giving up after a single block. He also made some pretty flick passes inside which has a real area of turnover peril for the Cavs. Wade showed good chemistry with Jarrett Allen in his limited but effective minutes. Wade also moves the ball quickly along the perimeter; it never sticks with him.

Sexton racked up the most Cavs points in the first half, at one point having scoring ten of the Cavs’ first 18. He had a wonderful double clutch dunk over Gallo and was pairing for some minutes with Lamar Stevens in the backcourt, although at the end of the first quarter, Sexton dumped it to Stevens as the shot clock was running down so that Sexton could preserve his 3-point percentage.

Score: Cavs 28, Hawks 27

The decision to go with Stevens over Damyean Dotson was a good one in this game, and this became clear in the second quarter. Lamar Stevens kept things focused — there was a beautiful sequence in which, knowing Collins would leak out after a Cavs miss, Stevens raced back and basically blocked an alley oop attempt alone. He was reading the Hawks offence and Collins very well, and the fact that Stevens was totally locked was important in this game as some of the other members of the second unit started to fade. JB obviously took note of this, and as Allen and Sexton came back in, Stevens stayed in the game, meaning that Dotson did not see the court in the first half. Stevens made for a stronger presence on the defensive end and he had several Ben Simmons-esque moves and dunks in this game,  knowing when to cut and playing strong defense.  At the same time, Lamar’s stat line was slightly inflated through a buffet of Hawks errors — two of his steals were occurred when Hawks players literally threw the ball straight into his chest.

Danilo Gallinari was the definition of ineffective, and Stevens and the Cavs outclassed the Hawks’ second unit from Hill to Rondo. McGee, Windler and Osman did some nice perimeter passing and handoffs leading to buckets. Windler also had some really good minutes, netting a couple of threes in the first half, along with his now-customary scrambling on defence.  So much for the would-be triumph of treacherous and experienced journeymen vs. fresh-faced and inexperienced youth.

Sexton kept pouring it on in the second quarter, partly because he has roots in Atlanta (the Hawks commentators harkened back to his wave-making high school days) and partly because the defense was giving him the space. However, the Hawks still managed to pull more or less even at the half. One reason the Cavs did not extend the lead at the end of the second was some organisation issues — two possessions in a row with Garland dribbling into traffic deep into 24 second clock, going sideways away from the hoop with few seconds left in the shot Clock throws it to Allen and the possession ends with an Allen mid range missed jumper — not his preferred shot or place. Another garbled sequence ensured for the final possession of the quarter — JB was directing that again the full 24. There was confusion between Allen and Okoro about a series of screens and Sexton ended up shooting kind of cold tree from the perimeter which missed. Both Allen and Okoro seemed a bit frustrated and the half ended with Allen and Sexton walking out off the court and talking to one another the whole way back about what went wrong.

We have to ask about sort of JB’s management of these kind of situations and if there’s something his staff can do to help him with this sort of thing. This was a situation where a good team would push to extend the lead further, since the Hawks were in a funk for most of this half. The Cavs might have been up 10 at the half but instead they went into the locker room very lucky to have a lead at all because Tony Snell, the corner sniper, happened to clank a longball just before the buzzer.

In terms of the big men, Jarrett Allen had had an excellent first half. As for JaVale, there was one moment where he was temporarily possessed by Andre Drummond — having dunked on the prior possession, McGee tried a fadeaway turnaround jumper from 12 feet. Which is to say the offence started to stagnate, in spite of Windler moving with desperation to lap the halfcourt twice on a single possession.

Okoro had a pretty competent frame in the first half; he blocked a Trae Young attempt (which Young, being relentless and never wholly ethical in his pursuit of points, then went on to score anyway) but he was generally effective. Ike/Ice/Isaac showed no hesitation in taking making a couple of big moves to the hoop off the dribble and initiating offence as well as distributing.

Score: Cavs 58, Hawks 55

In the third quarter, we were reminded that Gallinari had a very gad game. Well before his game-losing non-rotation to allow Stevens in for the winning dunk, Gallo was showing more passion in working the refs than playing the game, and at one point lost his shoe. For this writer, it felt like a very long time ago watching him destroy the Spurs with a surprisingly entertaining team in Madison Square Garden in the early post-Linsanity Knicks era. You’ve come a long way, Gallo!

Score: Cavs 84, Hawks 84

In the 4^th quarter, the Hawks role players started showing up. Solomon Hill was never meant to play big minutes for this team, but injuries have put him into a more prominent role. Although his cameos for the Miami Heat in last year’s bubble NBA Finals are receding into memory, Hill hit a couple of contested threes and turned up the heat on Sexton as the Cavs’ shooting guard tried to advance up the floor. Tony Snell lumbered up and then camped out in the corner and hit a few threes. While he was mostly invisible otherwise, this kind of mistake-free but unspectacular contribution is why the Hawks brought him on. However, as was pointed out on the Cavs: the Blog podcast, Snell’s defense on Sexton and Garland shows his limits. He has a big size and wingspan advantage over the Cavs’ guards, but he got torched more than once, particularly showing an inability to jump to defend against a crucial Sexton mid-range stop jump shot with 1:12 left in the game.

Although he was a marquee signing for the Hawks and got the better of Celtics starting center (ahem) Tristan Thompson in his next outing, Clint Capela was not locked in for the final quarter of this game. He picked up some fouls against McGee, and in his minutes against the Cavs younger center, Allen won the matchup overall. (Incidentally if anyone would like to write a deep dive on why the Cavs should try to sign McGee on for another year, I would gladly read that.) Capela’s out-of-sorts night culminated as he missed two free throws with less than 3 minutes to go. While he got an alley-oop with two minutes left from Trae, he was not able to anchor enough defensive stops down the stretch.

The Hawks had multiple cracks at the basket in the final couple of minutes, but could not score, even after Trae got his own rebound with about 45 seconds left in the game. Solomon Hill contravened the tenth commandment of veteran free agents (“Thou shalt not ball hog and make a major error in the final minute of regulation”) when he drove halfway to the basket, curled up into the fetal position, picked up the dribble and looked out to the 3 point perimeter for anyone to bail him out. It was, to put it kindly, a colossal brain fart that a rookie might have made. Hill might have been looking for Huerter on the perimeter, but a simultaneously frenetic and mindful Darius had cut off precisely that passing lane. Yes! Darius playing good defense in crunch time. Trae was then forced by Windler into a pretty but short and uncomfortable scoop shot. With the Cavs swarming the paint, Allen swatted it away from Capela, Windler got the rebound, and Cavs had the ball with 35 seconds left and the full shot clock to work with. JB could have called a timeout but did not.

When Darius got his pocket picked by Huerter on his way to setting up the go-ahead shot, it looked like the game might be over. Huerter flicked the ball to Trae, telling him to move it forward with a flick of his hand downcourt. It was a gesture of command, and supreme confidence. Darius hung his head for a second and ran to catch up. For a few seconds it felt like the end of the game, and proof that Huerter was the superior player than Darius that night – longer, faster, better 3s, more aware.

When Trae crossed half court there were 24 seconds in the game and 17 left on the shot clock. Capela was on Allen, Darius trying not to buckle under the pressure of Huerter, Sexton vaguely watching Snell (as ever, lurking in the corner), Windler on Hill, and Okoro on Young. Windler read the Hawks perfectly and forced Young – trying to lose Okoro around a Hill pick – right, where Young seemed to step out of bounds, but somehow the Hawks had burned a final time out.

After the inbounds, Trae forced up a bad shot without having burned the whole shot clock, giving the Cavs time to move quickly up the court and watch Sexton probe at the scrambled defense. J.B., to his everlasting credit, again did not call timeout. Solomon Hill got spooked and starting chasing Sexton as the Youngbull moved left (he never caught up), Sexton fed Lamar Stevens the rock, which he pounded into the basket with both hands to essentially end the game, and probably also Lloyd Pierce’s tenure as Hawks coach.

Final score: Cavs 112, Hawks 111

The Cavs playcall is worth revisiting in its full glory:

10 seconds to go – it’s Sexton – Sexton, chased by Hill — off to Stevens — oh HO, MY! — Lamar Stevens, the rookie out of Penn State! — no timeouts left for the Hawks — Trae Young — and it’s over! [as Kevin Love emerges from the sideline with his arms up a la June 2016]

LAMAR STEVENS WITH THE GAME WINNERpic.twitter.com/3tAYxYNxrI

— Barstool Penn State (@PSUBarstool) February 24, 2021

LAMAR MF STEVENS ‼️‼️‼️

— Larry Nance Jr (@Larrydn22) February 24, 2021

Sigh …

Trae shot with six left on shot clock, two guys ran at Sexton for no reason, Huerter couldnt get around JAllen, Gallo never rotated, and Hawks gave up an uncontested dunk with 4 seconds left to lose to Cleveland.

— John Hollinger (@johnhollinger) February 24, 2021

Can't be understated what a baller play that Stevens dunk to win the game was: making himself available, the recognition, the aggression to take it right to the rack, and the confidence to make it. Great job by Collin trusting him out of double teammate and Allen screening low.

— HoopsDogg (@oldseaminer) February 24, 2021