Recap: Cavs 90, Spurs 92 (Or, of fractals and fumbles)

Overview: After four hard-fought quarters, the Cavaliers fell short against the defending champion Spurs when LeBron James turned the ball over at half-court with Cleveland down by two and just seconds on the clock. Anderson Varejao led all scorers with 23 points on 16 shots, while James and Kevin Love combined for just 25 points on a combined 10-29 shooting night.

Cavs-Related Bullets:

First of all, let’s take a deep breath and be glad that it’s not 2010 anymore. LeBron has won “the big one,” twice, so the news cycle won’t be dominated by his last-second turnover until the next time the Cavs win a game. We can focus on things like the process, and basketball. That’s good.

What is less good: the basketball that must be talked about.

It is inherently unfair to compare what has been, for the past half-decade or so, the best pure offensive system in the league, run by coaches and players that have been in San Antonio together for years and years, to the Cavs’ system, which is helmed by a brand-new coach and players who are just getting to know each other.

That said, the contrast between the two offenses being run was pretty striking, as expected. The Spurs are always, always, always moving the ball and moving themselves, and with purpose. They’ve got their ball-handler looking to get to the rim, their primary option (the roll man, usually), looking to get to the rim, and then they have a 3rd and 4th option ready to catch the ball if those get shut down and either shoot the ball if he’s open, hit a teammate who got free on the rotation, or put the ball on the floor and start the process anew, with a new screen, if he’s not. If all the options get shut down, the safety valve is a post-up for Tim Duncan on the left block. That’s an offense that wins multiple championships.

One set that I can remember went as follows: Tony Parker came all the way around the baseline, coming off of two down-screens. When he caught the ball, he had a ball-screen set up for him to both his left and his right. He drove, sucked the defense in, and made a quick-hitter pass to Cory Joseph, who had the option to take the open 3 or swing the ball to the short corner for a 3. (Joseph took the worst option, which was to make the help defender bite on the rotation to the corner, take a dribble inside the line, and put up the long 2, but he made it, and again, it’s about the process on a team level.)

The Cavs, meanwhile, are just sort of setting lazy picks and hoping something good will happen. The three players who aren’t directly involved in screen-roll option are just watching the action, and there’s no movement before the primary action to keep the defense from keying in on it. The difference between watching the Spurs and the Cavs run their respective offenses is the difference between watching Peyton Manning clinically going through his reads on offense and Tim Tebow just sort of improvising. There are a lot of reasons to be happy about this game, which I’ll get into, but the process on offense is simply not there.

So, how did this game end up so close? First off, the Cavs showed up to play on defense tonight. The Spurs missed some open shots, but the Cavs did a good job communicating and switching on defense to take away those easy drives and open threes, and were able to force the Spurs into relying on a lot of Duncan post-ups and shots from their alternate options. It wasn’t great defense, but it was more than adequate, and that’s certainly an upgrade at this point.

Second, the Cavs played with a ton of energy and made good things happen with it. Extra possessions, fighting for loose balls, all that good stuff. Pop told his team that “they” (either the Cavs or the Q) thought it was a playoff game, and it really felt like he was right. Chippy game all-around from the Cavs.

Third, the Cavaliers employ a number of very talented basketball gentleman who are good at making tough plays. LeBron knocked down some off-the dribble threes early when the Spurs sagged off of him on ball-screens and in transition, as well as some vintage LeBron attacks of the basket that ended with either a layup for LeBron or a nice pass to Varejao for a layup, and Kyrie did his thing and made some absolutely bonkers jumpers off the dribble.

I do want to make this clear with regards to my earlier point between the difference between the Cavs offense and the Spurs offense — the Cavs’ offense is NEVER going to look like the Spurs’ offense, and it shouldn’t. You could put Pop on the Cavs’ bench tomorrow, magically burn the knowledge of his sets into all 12 guys’ heads, and the Cavs’ offense still wouldn’t look like San Antonio. The primary scorers are just too talented and good at creating in one-on-one situations for an offense that democratic to make sense. To touch back on the earlier metaphor, it would be like trying to put Tim Tebow in a traditional pro-style offense when he was back at Florida. The happy medium is finding a system that keeps multiple options open at all times without limiting what the members of the Big 3 can do individually, and that’s not happening right now.

LeBron and Andy are back in their old rhythms, and he’s by far the closest thing the team has to a true playmaker, but he’s still searching for home-run passes instead of just making a good, safe pass and trusting the offense — if the pass isn’t going to end in a layup or an open three, he’s not making it, which explains the elevated turnover count. I don’t think I’ll delve too deeply into this one for LeBron, because Kawhi and the Spurs really do know how to defend him. Still, I only counted two or three post-ups for LeBron all game, and that’s distressing — Kawhi is one of the few wings in the league that LeBron can’t just bully by backing down from the perimeter, but more Cavs sets should set up LeBron on the block or mid-post as a failsafe option. You know, like the Spurs do.

Kyrie. I’m going to take a lot of heat this season for being too hard on Kyrie, but I’m not seeing it from him right now. He’s not playing like a scoring point guard, he’s playing like the 6th Man of the Year version of Ben Gordon. That’s good, but it’s not a championship point guard. This isn’t about counting assists — he’s not looking to pass when he drives the ball to the basket, and his best plays are those long jumpers off the dribble that fundamentally don’t open up anything for his teammates. He’s not even committing to setting a real pick on the 3-1 pick-and-roll. Even Mario Chalmers could do that. That little action? The one where you get to be the screening option for a 260-pound man who’s a threat handling the ball at the top of the key? That’s not an action most point guards have the luxury of running.

I’m worrying about Kevin Love. He’s invisible. He was basically Samardo Samuels with a few extra rebounds and a sweet full-court outlet tonight. He’ll be better than that most nights, but I should never ever have reason to mention Samardo Samuels and Kevin Love in the same sentence. The threes he got were both what I call “short-rope” threes off the pick-and-pop — he was the primary receiving option, and the defense knew as soon as the ball left the ball-handler’s hand that it was going to end up getting launched by Love. Because he’s not getting clean looks off of good, crisp, multiple-pass ball movement, he’s forcing the three-point looks he can get, and it’s hurting him. The “let’s get the big guy going” stuff the Cavs did early in the third isn’t enough — Love is skilled enough to exploit mismatches created by movement very, very well, but he needs his inside-outside game going to be elite, and that requires the ball to move. It’s gotta start finding him soon.

Poor Anderson. He’s all the way down here despite being the Cavs’ best player of the game, and my whole paragraph on him is about how it’s time to stop patronizing Anderson Varejao. I’m not going to use BIG MEDIA as a strawman here. That isn’t what this is about. Andy isn’t some untalented dude who manages to be a nice player because he hustles and his big silly hair bounces around. He has elite NBA skills that don’t happen to include the ability to dribble the ball, score in the post, or shoot a jumper with his elbow anywhere remotely near where it’s supposed to be. At 6’10-6’11, the ability to catch the ball in traffic is a skill. The ability to catch and finish from all angles at full speed is a skill. The ability to use, yes, that much energy at all times at that size is a skill. “Scrap” and Lactic Acid are not the same thing. The ability to see the floor offensively, know when to cut, and cut hard to the rim in ways that keep pressure on the defense is a skill. Andy isn’t good because he hustles. He’s good, and happens to hustle.

I’m at a weird place with Dion. I actually like the little things he’s doing, but his shooting/scoring game wasn’t working when the Cavs were bad, and it’s not working now that they’re good. He needs to fall in love with the three-ball and working before he gets the ball on offense, and soon.

Well, that is a lot. That’s what happens when you take a recap haitus. We saw good stuff from the Cavs, and we saw good stuff from the Spurs that the Cavs should be doing. Until next time, campers.