Cavs prove they can beat Celtics at their own game
Cleveland’s versatility continues to be their biggest strength.
The Boston Celtics’ ability to make the opponent play their style is their superpower. You won’t defeat the Celtics unless you can beat them one-on-one on both ends while keeping up with their three-point barrage. Joe Mazzula’s rigid system is a calculated bet that their numbers game will win out over 48 minutes.
That’s proven true unless you go against someone who can play that game better.
Two things are clear through four regular season games between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Celtics: The Cavs are good enough to beat Boston at their own game. Also, the Cavaliers won’t get past the Celtics playing how they do against the rest of the league.
This was shown in Friday’s 123-116 win in Boston.
Kenny Atkinson’s team has firmly dispelled the belief that you can’t win with two traditional bigs.
Lineups with both Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen are mopping up the competition. The Cavs are outscoring opponents by a preposterous 13.7 points per 100 possessions (96th percentile) with a 124 offensive rating (95th percentile) and a 110.3 defensive rating (84th percentile). It doesn’t get much better than that.
That lineup isn’t just feasting on bad teams either. The Cavs took down the Oklahoma City Thunder in their home win due to the strength of both of their bigs. Similar things have happened against other top teams like the New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, and Memphis Grizzlies.
The front line is difficult to deal with on both sides of the ball. Especially if you’re a team that does most of your damage at the rim. It’s why Giannis Antetokounmpo said earlier this season that it’s “definitely harder” to go against Cleveland’s defense than even a historically good one like OKC’s.
Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, that doesn’t translate against Boston.
The Celtics thrive on stretching the floor and making you pay from there. Their whole goal is to spread five players behind the three-point line, attack off-the-dribble, and then quickly swing the ball to where the help defense came from. Other teams try to do this, but none are as precise or as regimented in their approach.
This has worked exceptionally well against the Cavs. Allen and Mobley’s instinct is to provide help defense when there’s dribble penetration. When they do, the ball handler sprays it out to a shooter on the perimeter.
This has happened again and again in their four regular-season matchups.
The Cavs have fallen behind quickly in all four games. Starting a lineup that instinctively plays into what Boston wants you to do anyway is the reason why. Unsurprisingly, the Cavs have registered a -34 net rating in the 57 minutes that Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell have shared the floor with the two bigs against Boston. Two-man groups with Allen and Mobley have a -32.1 net rating with a 122.1 defensive rating.
That’s quite the difference from what we’ve seen against any of the 28 other teams.
Atkinson spent the early portion of the season talking about the Cavs as if they were two separate teams. He discussed the spread lineup and the traditional two-big lineup as “different animals.”
The effectiveness of both is what has made the Cavs so dangerous. They can shift up and down in a way that no team other than the Thunder can. That’s made even easier with the addition of De’Andre Hunter.
Hunter isn’t just important because of what he brings to the court from a skills perspective. His main value is the increased optionality his positional versatility provides. Hunter played power forward during all of his second-half minutes. This included a three-minute stretch with Dean Wade at center. Those minutes are where the Cavaliers made their comeback.
As a result, the Cavs registered a 144.4 offensive rating and a 100 defensive rating with Hunter on the floor in the second half. His presence allowed the Cavs to switch everything on defense, have length to bother perimeter shooters, and spread the floor themselves offensively.
In short, they were not only able to copy the Celtics' style. They did it better.
These three-pointers from the smaller lineups (including with Wade in place of Hunter at the four) looked very similar to the type of outside looks Boston was able to generate against the Cavs with their two bigs on the court in the clip shown earlier.
The defensive impact is much more important.
The Cavs were able to make the Celtics a jump-shooting team. But instead of three-point shots, they were contested midrange jumpers.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown often resort to this when they can’t make the defense shift. Even when they fall — as they often do because both are exceptional players — it’s a win for the defense.
This led to Boston taking more shots in the midrange (18) than they did from beyond the arc (13) in the second half. Doing that is how you turn the numbers game against the Celtics.
Meanwhile, Mitchell and Garland took turns delivering daggers by winning their one-on-one matchups on a more spaced-out floor.
Mobley, as the only traditional big, attacked the Celtics’ switching defense and hunted mismatches. That’s something he can’t do when there’s a second center on the court because Allen’s defender can easily tag and recover to nullify the advantage.
The Cavs turned the tables on the Celtics in the second half on Friday. They outscored Boston by 12 from the three-point line while attempting six more triples. Cleveland did this while keeping Boston off the free-throw line and winning the possession game. Simply put, the Cavs beat Mazzula’s squad at their own numbers game.
The best teams have multiple ways they can win. The Cavs showed for the second time this season that they can not only match Boston’s style but beat them at their own game.
The Cavs will likely need to do that four times in seven tries this May if they want to advance to the NBA Finals. That’s a tall task, but one the Cavs have shown they’re more than capable of doing.