ROLT: Wild Week, Wither Lineup Data, and Cavs vs Knicks

This recap, opinion, and live thread covers one of the most vexing weeks of the season, starting with a wild win over over the Mavs, a brutal loss to the Bulls, and a ho-hum victory over the Pistons. It’s fair to say Cleveland won a game they should have lost when Max Strus hit the second longest buzzer beating game winner in NBA history, Tuesday, and lost a game they should’ve won when the Bulls took them down in double overtime. Both contests were brutal collapses that saw Cleveland blow lead with the ball, with less than 10 seconds left. In the Mavs game, the Cavs gave up a would-be game winning layup to P.J. Washington only to watch Max Strus drain his fifth triple of the last four minutes from 59 feet.

Comically, Luka Doncic was guarding either Max or his screener for all five Strus triples in the last five minutes that won the game. It was a game of runs for these two squads. Cleveland gave the game away when a five point lead in the early fourth turned into a 10 point deficit with 4:38 left. J.B. left the bench squad in until the five minute mark, waiting way too long to get a time out, while he watched Georges Niang was bleed points on both sides of the ball. Fortunately, Max Strus and the Jason Kidd led Cavs bailed JB out, with Max canning four triples in just about a minute of game time, and Kyrie Irving and Tim Hardaway Junior collaborating on an inexplicably bad inbounds after a made Cleveland basket.

These are two teams that can’t get out of their own way late in games. I don’t trust Luka Doncic’s D at all. Meanwhile the turnover bug has bitten Donovan Mitchell again. He had three in the fourth quarter against Dallas, and two against Chicago, many of the careless variety. The Cavs played a similar situation on Wednesday when they scratched out a three point lead with 2:14 to go  against Nic Vucevic’s and Andre Drummond’s Bulls who were killing them on the boards. Cleveland was unable to muster a basket for the rest of regulation, with Donovan taking a lot of hero ball shots, and the Cavs blowing an inbounds after Darius Garland was tackled. Only a missed Vuc freebie kept Cleveland from losing in regulation.

Cleveland battled to a stalemate in the first overtime. After Spida split a pair of freebies to give Cleveland the lead 115-112 with 12 seconds left, Jarrett Allen was way too up on professional foul hunter, DeMar DeRozan, who grifted his way into a threebie at the line. Then Mitchell clanked an iso pull-up from 20 feet. Cleveland had nothing left after that, and when we saw the same group come back out for the second OT, we knew the Cavs weren’t going to win this one. Everyone was too gassed. Cleveland went 2-12 in the final five minutes while an exhausted crew just fouled the crap out of the Lawyerball firm of DeRozan, Bitum, and White, who went to the line a whopping 11 times and scored 17 points in the last five.

Wednesday saw a brutal collapse (twice!) with the lead in the closing seconds and was emblematic of an inability to execute offense in crunch time and a tendency revert to hero-ball and “might as well punt” isolation plays. Cavs twitter was all up in its feels, with most of the online community spitting out the sour taste in their mouths. Worst off, everyone is wondering why the Cavs haven’t been bombing away threes like they were before the all-star break, or giving minutes to guys who are clearly worse players than guys who are sitting.

CtB’s Ben Werth was apoplectic.
JB is going to kill us. His obsession with LeVert has driven me about mad.  The best lineup in the entire effing league by a wide margin is Allen, Wade, Okoro, Strus, and DM. When Mobley and DG came back, at least JB still subbed in Wade and Okoro as the first guys. He has since gone crazy by putting LeVert into Ices spot and running Wade out there for three minutes before going to Niang.

Niang has been ok. LeVert has been as ok as he gets. But, the damn team is much worse with the rotation he running out there since the All Star break.
Luka made sure to get Wade switched off of him every time he could. That says something.

I’m glad Strus finally made some damn threes.

Eli Kim:

Niang is going to kill us if he doesn’t shoot 40%+ from three in more important situations. LeVert has been okay in my mind but there’s minimal lineups where Niang is a positive.

Nate Smith:

I’m just baffled by not playing the way that had them winning 18 out of 20. It really feels like JB’s being intentionally obtuse.

Ben Werth: 

It’s abjectly shocking to not use the single best 5 man unit in the damn league.[Mitchell, Allen, Strus, Wade, Okoro – see below]

Also, where is Craig Porter Jr? He gets signed and now he isn’t even on the bench. Is he hurt? what the hell? 

Niang is fun sometimes, but I just don’t understand giving him minutes over Wade. Niang is flashier, but gets torched with his inability to recover on the weakside. 

LeVert at least didnt take as many hope shot slop from 12 feet last night (Bulls Game)… 

All that being said, if Garland and Strus start to find their 3point stroke, this team is going to be very tough. 

Mobley is bumming me out a bit. Great game, but he is noticeably less bouncy now than he was a couple seasons ago. He used to dunk on the way up all the time. He can still get up, of course, but whatever happened to his knee makes me feel like he has lost bit of that bunny quickness. 

Before Strus went nuts in the 4th the other night, you could tell he felt GOOD. His hops in that first half were impressive, especially on that one block… 

JB is holding this team back by not trusting stats. 5 man unit plus/minus is barely an advanced stat. For the love of God, use lineups that are awesome. I just don’t effing get it.

Then Eli gave Chris Fedor a clapback courtesy of the CtB Twitter account (I’ll never call it “X”).

Maybe use any of 5 lineups with a better net rating and at least 50 mins played? https://t.co/gOyaFlp00q pic.twitter.com/nWoa3mOaeD

— Cavs:TheBlog (@CavsTheTweets) February 29, 2024

Meanwhile it was pretty embarrassing to watch Chris Fedor carry the water from this team that has become emblematic of the problem with discourse in 21st century. It sure feels like the Cavs org lives in a bubble where narratives counter to the company line are weeded out and not given credence, no matter how much evidence there is to back them up (and 232 minutes as of Wednesday is a lot of evidence). Dissent feels like it’s actively avoided, and the media is manipulated through access to repeat the organizational line (“we’re doing the best with what we have.”)

Finally, Cleveland played the Pistons Friday sans Mitchell and LeVert. They rode a monster second quarter from Darius Garland to coast to a comfortable, if not particularly focused win against the Pistons. Cleveland led by as many as 26 before relaxing a bit and letting Detroit get to seven before putting the clamps down to make it a double digit close. Sam Merrill finally got some run, and put up 12 points in 25 minutes. It felt like his gravity helped Garland a lot  as Darius the Great went 6-7 from deep on his second quarter heater, to finish with 29/5/4 (with five turnovers)

Mobley put in a nice game (22/17/7) but it feels like he and Allen can net er be good at the same time. The Fro clanged 1-7 in this one. Auser Thompson looked good (15/7/3 with 5 steals) and everyone else on the Pistons just looked really young.

Tonight the Cavs face the Knicks, and while I was hoping it would be a referendum on J.B., it looks an awful lot like Donovan Mitchell will duck the Knicks on national T.V., if for nothing else, to keep J.B. off the hot seat. This is yet another consequence of J.B.’s disaster class in Chicago where he ran an eight man rotation on the second night of a back to back, then didn’t have two of his top guards Friday cause of knee soreness.

I had noted before the game that the Cavs needed to at least look like they’re in the same class as the Knicks for J.B. to keep his job, and this feels like the excuse du jour.

Don’t like the look or the vibes right now, but we’ll see.

Go Cavs.