It's an interesting matchup, because in a lot of ways they are very different teams (Cleveland and Washington).
Positives with the Cavs matchup:
1) We can hide IT on Smith. Washington has really big, offensively-talented guards that can iso and post-up IT to death. Smith isn't that kind of offensive weapon, and I think we can successfully hide IT defensively on him, just like we did with Oubre the first game.
2) The Cavs are a much worse defensive team than the Wizards. The Wizards aren't a stellar defensive team, but they're young, long, and athletic, which translates to times of lockdown D that just can't be penetrated. They also can play sound team D in spurts.
Cleveland is not really like that. They are largely comprised of offense-first and older players that do not have the length, athleticism, or defensive-prowess of the Washington perimeter players. Their team D is also very fundamentally unsound and can be picked apart. If AB, Crowder, Brown, and KO all move without the ball, they should receive plenty of open shots from poor defensive rotations.
3) The PnR is going to work really well for IT with these lax defenders. Particularly, the IT/Al PnR is going to be unstoppable with Love in the game, who simply can't guard it. Thompson isn't that effective out there either, though he's probably on par with the Wizards' bigs. IT should have a really big series against the Cavs. And if he doesn't it will be because the Cavs have decided to trap and double team him off of every screen, which will just require our role players to make them pay for that, just like they did tonight.
4) Similar to Washington, though probably not as bad since the playoffs have started, the Cavs really crater when Lebron goes to the bench. Expect to see him play 42+ minutes a night in the series.
5) When they go to their "death lineup," Kyrie, Deron, Smith/Shump, Lebron, and Love, we matchup really well with them by going with IT, AB, Smart, Crowder, and Al. They'll have a much tougher time guarding us with that small lineup than we will them.
6) Though decent rebounders themselves, they're not in the realm with Washington with offensive boards and total boards. Al and Amir should have a much better time on the boards versus TT and Love, though they still need to pay attention to it.
Negatives with the Cavs matchup:
1) They have Lebron. And that's a big one, especially with how he's playing (and shooting) right now.
2) They're a much better shooting team than Washington, and they're not as reliant on fast break basketball. They can score in both the halfcourt and open court settings. You're still going to have to play tough, fundamental D in halfcourt sets.
3) Though Wall is the overall better player, Kyrie is usually a harder cover due to his shooting ability and his ability to score in a plethora of ways. So Cleveland has two guys capable of getting isolation buckets (or at least decent shot attempts) whenever they want.
4) Cleveland has much more parity in their game on the road compared to Washington. There's not near the drop-off in play from Cleveland at TD Garden as Washington has shown.
5) They're simply more talented as a whole, even if our pieces fit together a bit better to form a complete two-way product.
6) It's yet to be seen how well Horford can keep up with Love out on the perimeter. He seems to have stepped up his perimeter D quite a bit in the playoffs, but several times during the season Love ate him up due to Horford's inability to stay with him out there.
They have other advantages over us, too, but you get the point. Overall, if we want to compete with this team, it starts on the defensive end. We're not going to "out-offense" the Cavs. We'll give them fits with our perimeter D and three point defense, which works well against their perimeter offensive attack.
If we make it hard on their shooters and don't give them clean looks, then our improved offense and shooting this year should have no problem scoring against their lackluster D.
In a lot of ways, outside of Lebron, who is a pretty major advantage by himself, we matchup really, really well with this team. But Lebron is just so good and draws so much defensive attention that he more than makes up for it.
EDIT: Oh, and people should really focus more on the Indiana series than the Raptors series. The Raptors series was just as much of the Raptors crapping the bed and criminally underperforming as it was the Cavs beating them down. They still have significant defensive problems that haven't been fixed or tested, especially by a high volume three point shooting team with stretch bigs like the C's.
Topic: Celtics vs Cavs: how do we match up? (Read 10832 times)