Cavs offense finally looked mortal in loss to Pacers: ‘It happens’

For the first time this season, the Cavaliers didn’t look like a historically good offense.

Nothing happens in isolation on the basketball court. Every move has an action and reaction connected to it. That was seen in the third quarter as the Cleveland Cavaliers fell apart because of the full-court pressure the Indiana Pacers were applying which led to the 108-93 defeat.

“We can’t let it affect us,” said Donovan Mitchell about the Pacer’s full-court press afterward.

The issue was, it did.

The Cavs turned it over seven times in the third quarter alone with four of them in the backcourt. This led to six easy Indiana points and 12 points off of turnovers in the third alone.

More importantly, it got the Cavs out of their offensive flow.

“[They were] just trying to speed us up, trying to get us out of rhythm,” said Darius Garland.

The time and effort it took to get the ball up the court made it so the Cavs couldn’t get much more than their first action before having to settle for a high pick-and-roll or isolation attack. In many ways, the offense looked reminiscent of the past two seasons.

“We did not handle their pressure well,” Atkinson said. “And that kind of bleeds into your defense, right? You start turning it over, you’re not taking good shots, and they’re an elite transition team. ... Their pressure was a big part of their success tonight.”

The Cavs were playing outstanding defense before things fell apart in the third quarter. They registered an impressive 85.1 first half defensive rating due to their second efforts and quick rotations. That focus and attention to detail deserted them once the offense went haywire.

“We missed open [shots], and then we didn’t guard,” Mitchell said. “So it compounds and compounds. And so that’s a tough one, but you know, if we don’t make shots, we got to be able to guard and we didn’t do that.”

“What disappointed me was our first half was phenomenal defensively,” said head coach Kenny Atkinson. “And then the second half we fell off so we couldn’t sustain our defense. ... I think they had a 134 offensive rating in the second half.”

It’s easy to hyper-fixate on the third quarter Cleveland lost 37-18, but the issue was the offense looked ordinary outside the third quarter as well. They failed to crack 100 points for the first time all season and were held under 25 points in three of the four quarters. That wasn’t entirely due to the ball pressure.

“This was the first time of us not making shots,” Garland said.

As easy as it would be to overanalyze how poorly the Cavs handled the pressure, it really does come down to the makes and misses. They simply missed decent shots as evidenced by going 11-41 (26.8%) from three.

“[Our shot selection was] good but not great,” Atkinson said. “We just looked at it, it was in the 80th percentile. Usually, we’re in the 90s in terms of shot quality.”

The Cavaliers have shown to have a historically good offensive team. This game doesn’t mean that they don’t. It also doesn’t mean that they can’t handle offensive pressure because they’ve shown they can do that as well in their win over the Oklahoma City Thunder last Wednesday.

But no team is immune to having a let-down game like this.

“It happens,” Garland said. “[The season is] super long. So some days you have one of those games. I mean, we went an entire month and haven’t lost so I mean, we was due for one. I just didn’t know when it was going to come. But tonight is the night. Yeah, we play them again Tuesday. They got to come see us again.”