CLEVELAND — There weren’t a lot of good things to take away from the Cleveland Cavaliers embarassing 130-120 loss to the tanking Dallas Mavericks. Max Strus’s 24-point season debut was one of them.
Strus looked like he hadn’t missed a beat as he drained six of his seven threes. More than that, he provided help on the glass and a compete level on defense that this team has sorely missed at times.
“It was a pretty amazing performance after seven months of not playing an NBA game,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said of Strus. “Maybe the best I’ve seen.”
Strus’s brilliant season debut was wasted by Cleveland’s lackadaisical defense.
Atkinson wasn’t shy when talking about what went wrong defensively. He called the defense “permissive,” said Dallas “never felt them,” and that the effort was “inexcusable.”
“It really comes down to guarding the ball,” Atkinson said.
The Cavs didn’t do that. They allowed Dallas to get into the paint whenever they wanted to. And then when they did, the help defense wasn’t quick enough to stop them at the rim. This led to the Mavericks converting 81% (87th percentile) of their shots at the rim.
And the rare time the help defense was there, the rotations weren’t, which led to Dallas connecting on 50% of their threes (95th percentile) and 75% of their corner triples (97th percentile).
“If you don’t contain the ball, it’s a trigger,” Donovan Mitchell said. “When you get beat, then the next man rotates, and now they’re swinging to the corner. You go to the corner, they swing again, and the guy drives. It’s unpredictable basketball, which makes teams elite. … That’s where we got to be better, and it starts on the ball.”
This would be concerning enough on its own. This performance, coming against a team that entered this game 27th in offensive rating while also without multiple key players in Klay Thompson (rest), Daniel Gafford (illness), and Dereck Lively (foot), makes it even more alarming.
“We’ve got to go out there and figure it out as a group collectively,” Mitchell said. “It’s not just the guy on the ball, it’s the next man. Are we getting into gaps? … When they drive, are we there to go help? Are we there for the next close? Are we there rotating? We got to do that over and over and over.”
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Right now, the Cavs have too many holes on the perimeter. The starting backcourt isn’t good defensively. Neither Mitchell nor James Harden is known for providing much resistance. Their wing defense is better, but they don’t have many good options against teams with size.
The Cavs’ lack of bigger wings hurt them in their recent losses to the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic. They didn’t have anyone other than Dean Wade they could put on to contain opposing wings. That happened again on Sunday as Cooper Flagg torched them for 27 points and 10 assists.
Getting Jarrett Allen back — who’s out with a knee injury — would help immensely. He will provide good help defense at the rim upon his return. But no center can truly make up for a point of attack defense that is this poor. That will need to change if they want to be taken seriously as title contenders.
The Harden and Mobley two-man game isn’t working.
Before the game, Mavs head coach Jason Kidd said that it would take up to half a season before he would feel comfortable playing alongside a new big man when he was running point. He mentioned that it took a long time to figure out what his new big’s strengths were and where they needed the ball to be their best selves.
Harden and Mobley can become a lethal duo, but they don’t have the time to work out all the issues they currently have. That showed through on Sunday as they combined to turn the ball over 10 times. More than a few of those were from doomed attempts to get the other involved.
Harden has struggled to find passing lanes to Mobley when they’re running the pick-and-roll.
Mobley isn’t a rim-running big, even when he does set a physical screen. He’s not a vertical finisher when rolling to the basket, even though he can finish lobs off cuts or when he’s standing in the dunker’s spot. This takes away a window for Harden to feed Mobley the ball, which has left him trying to get it to him with the bounce pass. That is a much harder pass to complete, and much easier for a defense to disrupt, as seen in the play below.
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Atkinson has mentioned that the duo has been spending a lot of time watching film together. That will likely keep happening. But as of now, they’re no closer to piecing things together, and they’re running out of time to do so.
This new-look Cavs team is running into adversity after playing so well after the deadline. They’ve now lost three of their last five games, with two of those losses coming against teams below them in the standings. They’ve felt disjointed on both ends of the floor.
It isn’t a coincidence that these three losses have come without Allen on the court. He’s been the glue holding this team together. Even so, there’s too much talent on the roster to justify losing a game like this.
Things need to be cleaned up before the postseason, which starts in a month.
“We haven’t had much adversity with the current group that we have,” Mitchell said. “It was all sunshine and rainbows. It was great, right? We had to kind of go through these moments and figure that out. We have time. We don’t have time to delay this, but I think this is good for us. We’ll figure these things out.”
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