Live Thread: Cavs @ Heat

Happy Sunday, Cavs fans. Evan Mobley returns to the fold for Cleveland, while Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Dean Wade, and Ty Jerome remain out. For Miami, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Duncan Robinson, Kevin Love, Tyler Herro, and Josh Richardson remain out. For Cleveland, success lies with Darius Garland and whether he can return to the form that he showed in his all-star season, or whether he will become a toxic asset who can’t play winning basketball and justify his max contract.

The question with Garland, is “can he play his basketball without a high iq offensive player next to him?” I had an extended discussion with some Cavs fans on Twitter, and a lot of Garland’s issues to me, is the Cavs’ unwillingness to coach him. As I noted, Garland needs to be coached. Last game, JB let him run around like a chicken with his head cut off for the whole third quarter when it was obvious they had zero game plan on offense and Garland’s head wasn’t in the game. When the Wolves scored on eight straight possessions, maybe take a timeout on the fifth straight score and sit Darius down, coach him, and put him back in.

Of course, I found the Cavs’ entire offensive game plan versus Minnesota poorly conceived. JB said post-game that they needed to get the ball inside to generate looks for shooters, which is just not a smart game plan against Minny. I counter this notion that the Cavs need more guard penetration (something Garland has been less effective at than recent seasons).

LeVert has been Cleveland’s best penetrator, and he’s good but not great. Garland has really regressed and just hasn’t been good at hitting weak side shooters which, means if you trap or send help on him he’s likely to put up a bad shot or try to force the ball through traffic. One of Garland’s biggest problems is that he tries to make home run passes instead of making the open pass and staying in motion. Once the ball is gone, Garland often watches instead of staying in motion. He also doesn’t always keep himself ready to shoot all the time which means if it does come back to him he’s often dribbling again, even if he’s open for a shot.

Ricky Rubio was the master of always being in motion and running the play through to completion even on a cut he where knows he’s never going to get the ball back. He moves the defense with that and opens stuff up for everyone else. Cavs should have been using screen action and motion to generate outside looks against to force Rudy to defend in space and draw defenders to the perimeter. And against that d you likely need to hit some mid-rangers to punish the drop which Cleveland is flat bad at

Their off ball screen game is lazy and they refuse to run pick and pop in an effective way (DG and to a lesser extent Caris always hold the ball too long in pick and pop). The only guard who plays a good pick and pop two man game is Merrill and he’s even lazy about it when screening with Garland and LeVert cause he knows he’s not getting the ball back.

So the real question with Garland is, “Will he learn to read defenses and respond appropriately?” Can he do anything but pick-and-roll or mediocre iso ball? Do the Cavs need a new coach to get through to him? We shall find out. Hopefully it starts this game. Go Cavs.