Kyrie and The Crucible

LeBron James has never played with a high-level true point guard before. Dwyane Wade was the closest thing he had to a guy who could function as a high-level creator next to him, but since Wade is secretly a 6’4 power forward without the rebounding, Miami got away with an inverted situation, having LeBron function as the primary creator, Wade slashing to the basket off the ball, and Bosh providing the floor spacing despite being the tallest of the three.

That’s not going to work in Cleveland. This is evidenced by the fact that it is currently not working in Cleveland. It’s early, but the Cavs currently rank 19th in offensive efficiency, 22nd in True Shooting, and dead-last in assist ratio. The defense is a larger issue, as only the Lakers (bless these horrible Lakers) and the Jazz have a lower defensive efficiency than the Cavs. For those of you keeping score at home, the second-worst defense in the NBA held the Cavaliers to four assists last night.

The Cavaliers need to run an honest-to-god offense, and they need to start running it soon. For that, two things have to happen: Kyrie needs to have a come-to-Jesus moment and LeBron needs to find an effective middle gear.

Let’s start with the obvious first: Kyrie and LeBron are not meshing. Much has (rightly) been made of Kyrie’s aversion to passing this season, but here’s something else for you: Kyrie has two baskets off of LeBron James assists this season. Two. And neither has been for a three-pointer. LeBron’s passing and Kyrie’s shooting should be more of a chocolate and peanut butter thing than an oil and water thing, but here we are.

Right now, Kyrie and LeBron are playing as through they have no idea the other one exists. That’s a problem. The easy thing to do here would be to say IT’S TIME FOR KYRIE IRVING TO MAN UP AND START PLAYING LIKE A POINT GUARD, and it wouldn’t be entirely incorrect. However, things aren’t that simple.

Here’s the first problem with Kyrie becoming the point guard the Cavs need him to be: he’s not being asked to cut out a weakness of his game, he’s being asked to cut out what might be his greatest strength. Kyrie Irving is a guy who uses his ball-handling to create open space for himself and either knock down the shot or drive past his man for a basket.

He’s almost a throwback to the Marbury/Iverson/Francis era of combo guards, but he’s a better outside shooter than any of them were, so he actually does his thing at a respectable level of efficiency. The irony is that while everyone feared “overlap” with LeBron and Wade together because they allegedly did the same thing, it wasn’t really much of an issue. Why? Because while Wade, like LeBron and Kyrie, prefers to take his outside shots off the dribble rather than in catch-and-shoot situations, Wade is freaking horrible at it. When LeBron “forced” him to slide into more of a new-age Barkley role by not letting him handle it out on the perimeter as much but getting more opportunities inside, it was like giving an office worker a promotion in exchange for revoking his privileges to use the office hot-plate to cook his ankles.

To make things even trickier, Irving doesn’t have the explosiveness of a healthy Rose or Westbrook or the court vision of a Chris Paul or John Wall — the girl he came to the dance with, ever since college, has been his efficient one-on-one scoring game built around his ball-skills. Now he’s being asked to ditch her.

While I am saying that Kyrie’s decision-making has been understandable, I’m not going so far as to say it’s been acceptable. When you have the car keys for an offense that includes LeBron James, who is coming off one of the most efficient scoring seasons in the NBA, and Kevin Love, the most efficient inside-out scoring big we’ve maybe ever seen, you should not be coming down and launching shots off a screen and one dribble before the offensive action has any chance to develop. Ever.

Good offense is about putting yourself in a position to make good choices while the defense is forced to make guesses. Kyrie’s handle and shooting ability allows him to put the big man on a string in the pick-and-roll. He’s gotta start using that to create options for his teammates. The shot that opens up when the big man doesn’t show hard enough to shut down the jumper isn’t the goal — it’s the safe foundation upon which truly dangerous offensive options, like a catch-and-shoot Love three, LeBron in the paint, or even Waiters in the corner or with enough space to attack a lane before his man is able to rotate back to him off the ball. And when the ball isn’t in his hands, he needs to be roaming the perimeter and waiting to get a look at a clean catch-and-shoot three — good team basketball isn’t just about making your teammates better, it’s about letting them make you better. Right now, Kyrie is doing neither.

That point about letting your teammates make you better leads me to LeBron James. So far, we’ve seen two versions of LeBron — the one who sits back, tries to set up his teammates when he has the ball, and then gets frustrated because nobody is on the same page yet, and the one who says “Okay, fine, I’ll win the damn game” and just grabs the ball and bullies his way around the basket.

Even with the weight taken off, LeBron doesn’t seem to be able to carry his frame around at full speed, or even 75% of full speed, for 38 minutes a night anymore. It might be the back, it might be old age, it might be him getting his legs back after the off-season, I don’t know, but it’s happening. (That LeBron is shooting under 45% in the paint thus far is more than a little terrifying.)

One possible solution? Instead of oscillating between 50% and 100% effort, LeBron needs to find ways to put his mark on the game while giving 75%. When LeBron’s switch is set to “off,” he’s openly blowing off defensive rotations and standing absolutely still 35 feet away from the hoop when he doesn’t have the ball on offense, unless he’s setting himself up for a post entry pass. I don’t know if LeBron fell in love with Lionel Messi’s game when he took his World Cup trip this summer or what, but in basketball, you can’t stand absolutely still for huge chunks of the game and still be its best player.

Let’s see LeBron stand in the corner on Irving/Love PnRs and actually put the catch-and-shoot prowess he’s acquired to good use. Or boxing out his man when the shot goes up, even if he doesn’t have the spring to grab a rebound outside of his area. Or using off-ball screens. Or setting off-ball screens. It’s going to take a while for LeBron, but he’s got to make the adjustment to controlling the game without the ball in his hands the same way Kyrie has to make to controlling the game with the ball in his hands.

(On the bright side — I’m as happy with LeBron’s free throw stroke, which I have obsessed about unhealthily for years, as I ever have been. He’s not thinking on the line — it’s just one dribble and a confident stroke, with the muscle memory doing all the work. Thinking is always the enemy of free throws, and LeBron’s free throw routines have always been on the longer side, which is why you could usually tell after his first two trips to the line if it was going to be a 7-13 or 11-13 night. My favorite example of this theory is Chauncey Billups — he shot 89.4% on FTs over his careers, and he just sort of disdainfully flicked his free throws in.)

Until next time, campers. This will be a process, but that’s all part of the fun, right? Right? I mean, this is kinda fun? In some ways?