Last night showed that when they have to defend more than one top scoring threat, CLE's defense really is as porous as it looked all season.
We lost to CLE in the ECF because our only one elite scorer was injured and then out for the rest of the series.
In the one game he played semi-effectively, we lost because they doubled him and dared the rest of the C's to make shots and they did not.
The one game we beat CLE is the one where all of our shooters (especially Marcus) went insane, shooting 45% on a zillion threes (and Lebron had a rare bad game).
Otherwise, we clearly just did not have the offensive firepower to keep up.
None of this was really new information or a surprise. The 'book' on how to defend the Cs hasn't changed since the prior time we met Cavs in the playoffs. Just swarm IT and dare the rest of the team to beat you. If the rest of the team makes shots, BOS can still win. But that doesn't happen consistently enough. ATL used the same strategy last year. Good teams use it during the regular season. As long as the Cs have only one real scoring threat, that isn't going to change. Danny knows this. He has stated very clearly multiple times that we need another go-to, consistent scoring threat to put alongside Thomas. Thomas said the same thing himself before the season even started.
The Warriors present exactly the solution. They have 3 players on the floor at all times that can create their own shot and almost all their players are good passers and good shooters off the catch. They force CLE to have to defend man-for-man. And that's where guys like J.R. Smith, Love & Irving suddenly get exposed for the sub-par defenders that they are.
CLE also has a powerful, multi-faceted offense, but GSW's guys are mostly all much, much better defenders. Curry is kinda the Warrior's only sub-par defender among their main rotation. So they can at least slow CLE down while CLE can't do anything to stop GSW.
Our makeup is that we have a lot of above-average defenders, but all that serves to do against such teams is to slow them down a little. Unless we upgrade our offense, we can't keep up with their scoring unless we get magic super-hot-shooting days like in Game 3.
If we can add even just one top scoring threat, that alone will nullify the current 'double-team-IT' strategy. If we add or develop another, then that puts us in the same category on offense as these two teams. And obviously, we want to do that without dropping off too much on defense.
I disagree with those who want to just turtle for 3-5 years, waiting for Lebron to get old. Heck with that. Make improvements where it makes sense without compromising the long term. The NBA is a match up league and bad match ups tend to amplify the real differences in talent. We aren't really as far off in talent as the scoreboard results looked. We just match up very poorly.
If we add Hayward and we can get someone like Brown/Fultz to emerge as a real scoring threat then that totally changes how Cleveland has to defend us. And adding some size we can draw upon when needed would also make a big difference. And of course, being healthy for the end-game is a big factor.
The fact that CLE had 9 days of rest and was pretty much 100% healthy at the start of the ECF compared to our team being battered and bruised and having no time to rest was a real factor here that folks aren't really talking about.
Maybe it doesn't all come together by next year. But with a little luck, I think it can very soon after that.
Topic: After Last Night, Does the value of the #1 pick skyrocket? (Read 4003 times)