16 takeaways from Cavs 55-point Game 4 beatdown

The Cavaliers have rebuilt something far more sustainable than Miami ever did in their post LeBron-era.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have a significant talent advantage over the Miami Heat. They won 27 more games in the regular season for a reason. The Cavs were supposed to come out and show that they were the better team in the first round, and they did.

Cleveland completed the sweep by beating them into submission for a 55-point victory in Game 4.

Let’s get into the takeaways from this one.

This was absurd. Even though the Cavs are significantly better, you aren’t supposed to win playoff games like this. You aren’t supposed to go into Miami and defeat an Erik Spoelstra-led team by so much in both games that Donovan Mitchell only registered three combined fourth-quarter minutes in Games 3 and 4.

There wasn’t an area of the game that the Cavs didn’t thoroughly control.

Winning the possession game is so important. This has been a point of emphasis for head coach Kenny Atkinson leading up to the playoffs. He wasn’t happy with how they handled things in Game 2, and the Cavs responded well.

Cleveland won the turnover battle 19-12. This led to an astounding 18-point advantage in points off turnovers. They also won the second-chance points battle 19-16. In total, that’s 21 extra points due to valuing possessions.

Usually, playoff games are won around the margins. The Cavs have been winning around the edges in these two games in Miami, and also have significantly more talent. That’s how you get these last two blowouts.

Cleveland has real shooters. They have guys who can hit open shots. And they have guys who can consistently hit with a hand in their face.

Mitchell, De’Andre Hunter, and Ty Jerome knocked down some tough threes. Their teammates converted some easier ones. This led to Cleveland going 22-47 (46.8%) from beyond the arc. They hit 12 more threes than the Heat, which gave them a 36-point advantage from beyond the arc.

The best teams are the ones that consistently generate and hit outside shots. There’s a reason the Cavs have been the top offense in the league all season.

Mitchell has been consistently good in closeout games. He was phenomenal in Game 6 against the Orlando Magic last year. Mitchell nearly dragged the team to victory with 50 points in a game that no other Cavalier had it going. He then followed that up with 38 points in a Game 7 comeback victory.

That trend continued in the third closeout game he played as a Cavalier. Although the numbers aren’t as impressive (22 points and five assists), his start energized the team. He provided 13 points and three assists in the first quarter. The 20 first-quarter points he accounted for through points and assists were more than Miami had as an entire team (17).

Mitchell’s fast start helped Cleveland roll to their lopsided victory.

Tristan Thompson matched Tyler Herro’s scoring output.

Miami’s best offensive player didn’t have the same success Mitchell did. Herro had a tough time getting anything going and seemed to quit on the game. He put up just four points on 1-10 shooting in Game 4. That was as many as Thompson did in garbage time.

Herro did a lot of talking to not show up when his team’s season was on the line.

Atkinson shrunk the rotation for Game 4. He decided to go with an eight-man lineup in what he likely thought would be a tough road closeout game. That meant that Isaac Okoro didn’t see minutes until garbage time officially began at the end of the third quarter.

We’ll see if Okoro is the odd-man out in high-leverage games going forward. Atkinson has insisted that he wants to stick with a ten-man rotation in the postseason. He didn’t in Game 4.

Javonte Green made the most of his garbage time minutes. He tried to dunk over multiple Heat players at the end of the third quarter and then threw down a monstrous dunk at the start of the fourth.

If you’re only getting garbage time minutes, you might as well make the most of them.

Atkinson doesn’t care about your feelings. He used a challenge while up 98-53 in the third quarter. It’s preposterous that he did that, but it also points to the kind of competitor he is.

This challenge was successful, just like everything else the Cavs did during their brief vacation in South Florida.

Jarrett Allen is putting past playoff failures behind him. He missed the second half of last season’s first-round series against the Magic with a rib injury. Although he was well on his way to moving past the playoff failures of 2023, he wasn’t able to fully vanquish those demons.

Allen took steps towards doing that in this series. The Heat are a bad team, but he took care of business like you’d expect. Allen played with a force that Miami’s frontcourt couldn’t match. That included his impressive start today, where he let the Heat know early on this wasn’t going to be their night.

Evan Mobley’s confidence continues to grow. It was an under-the-radar solid game from Mobley. He knocked down a few threes while being phenomenal on the defensive end. That’s worth mentioning in a game that so much else happened.

Cleveland’s bench scored 73 points. That’s a statement that would’ve seemed impossible last postseason or the one before. It’s also just ten fewer points than the entire Heat team had.

Everyone Atkinson brought in, including the garbage time unit, was ready to go. Monster games from Jerome and Hunter also contributed to that incredible performance

Having Jerome come off the bench is such an advantage. Few teams can bring in guys who can consistently create for themselves and others like Jerome can. His self-creation gives him such a high floor. And on a night where he’s hitting half-court threes, you can see just how incredibly high his and the team’s ceiling is.

I’m not sure how you stop the Cleveland’s offense when Hunter is rolling. Ideally, defenses would need to send extra attention his way to stay connected off-ball, but you can’t do that when some combination of Mobley, Mitchell, or Darius Garland (who missed Game 4) is on the floor with him.

We know Hunter isn’t the most consistent player night in and night out. That’s okay. Because when he’s playing well, this team can feel unbeatable, like they’ve been the last two games when he’s been on.

This was the kind of beatdown that sends your franchise into an existential crisis. What’s the point of winning two Play-In Games if you’re going to get annihilated like this?

I’m sure some version of that thought went through Pat Riley’s head as he watched the team he constructed lose by 122 combined points in four games. In case you’re wondering, that’s the largest series point differential in NBA history.

The Heat don’t have a clear direction from here. There aren’t any promising young players on the roster. And while Herro and Bam Adebayo are good pieces, neither are guys that can lead a competent playoff team. At least not one with this supporting cast.

Oh, and they don’t own their first-round pick for this upcoming draft.

These two franchises will always be linked by LeBron James. He split his prime between Miami and Cleveland. Both built championship teams around him. Both have since had to pick up the pieces when he left.

The Heat have had more success without James than Cleveland. They’ve gone to two Finals through trying to win around the margins and attract stars to Miami.

Meanwhile, the Cavs have tanked, built through the draft, and traded for a superstar who didn’t ask to come to Cleveland. The road was rocky, but they’ve built a 64-win team. That’s a number that Miami hasn’t come close to touching in the over a decade they’ve been without LeBron. The most they’ve accumulated since his departure is 53.

This Cavaliers team has work to do before they make it to the Finals like Miami has. But unlike the Heat, they have a solid foundation built around a team that’s greater than the sum of its parts. A team not centered around one star player, but a deep, 10-man rotation where each player complements the other in a way that highlights the group.

Miami is supposed to be that team. They’re supposed to have the culture that makes the whole greater than the sum of their parts. But that has never been the case for the Heat despite their forced marketing campaign.

When they had LeBron, they were as good as he was. When they had Jimmy Butler, they only succeeded when he did. Now that they don’t have any superstars, they’re just another rudderless, middle-of-the-road team that has no clear path forward and no assets to get there.

Koby Altman deserves his flowers. The Cavs haven’t accomplished much yet, but they have a phenomenal core under contract that is set up to succeed for years to come. Winning championships is the goal, but you can only do that with a core in place.

Cleveland has that because Altman stood strong on the idea that two undersized guards and two centers could play together. He filled out a roster around those four that complemented them. And then he hired the perfect coach to squeeze the most potential out of this group.

Things move quickly in the NBA, especially under the new CBA. Nothing lasts as long as you think it would. Maybe this team has a smaller contending window than we suspect. But we do know that they have one.

That is something worth celebrating for a franchise that has only been able to say that a few times in their history without LeBron.