On Toughness

In the aftermath of the Cavs six game grindfest against the Chicago Bulls, one thing became abundantly clear to me about this current incarnation of the Cavaliers… these guys are anything but soft. In fact, they may actually be comprised entirely of Cleveland-forged, reinforced sheet metal, held together with rusty nails and covered in the shattered glass shards and detritus from the wreckage of their opponents. Not only does this team bear no resemblance to the sometimes marshmallow-like Cavs playoff teams of yesteryear, they don’t even remotely resemble the relatively soft and slow team they were at the start of the season, which now seems like eons ago.

So far, the crucible of the first post-season appearance for so many of these young Cavaliers (minus LBJ and a few other wily vets) has forged them into a hardened weapon, capable of bludgeoning their adversaries into submission. They have taken an exponential leap in their defensive toughness and intensity, reaching a gear that has propelled them from middle-of-the-pack to the top of the statistical heap amongst playoff contenders.

Yet, it’s more than that. There’s an inner strength that has begun to boil beneath the gritty exterior. A resilience that’s been cultivated over a season of ups and downs, marred with early adversity, spiked with controversy, and more recently threatened by severe injury. A fortitude that’s been built on a foundation of brotherhood and regional pride, stoked by the fires of external doubt and slights, and solidified by an inherent belief in one another and themselves.

Tough Decisions

Earlier this season, there was some question of where this toughness would originate, especially after their one golem of grit personified, Anderson Varejao, broke down once again before the calendar turned to 2015. Andy (when healthy enough to be on the court) is arguably one of the all time Cavalier tough guys, although luck and durability have seemingly never been on his side. He’s been sort of the Roy Batty of this team during his tenure, with his light burning twice as bright but half as long. Injuries have limited Wild Thing to playing in only 172 out of the Cavs last 394 regular season games (roughly 44%), and this year was unfortunately no exception.

Yet, David Griffin responded to the body blow of AV’s torn achilles by bringing in an Iron Curtain of a center, and two tough as nails hitmen from New York. This would cost him the similarly hard nosed St. Weirdo in return, but the gamble would be well worth it (and then some). In what may well be remembered as one of the greatest in-season swaps in Cavs history, Griff’s gambit brought an instant infusion of size and strength that meshed perfectly with the offensive arsenal already in place, and provided David Blatt with the optimal components to (say it with me Riles!) “retool” and upgrade the team’s defensive scheme.

Griff even added one last “in emergency break glass” fire axe in Kendrick “AngrySmurf” Perkins, and not just in case his six fouls and teeth-rattling moving screens could come in handy. No, he knew that Perk also possessed an iron will from his multitude of playoff wars as a Celtic and Thunder. He foresaw Perk sitting in the locker room with the Cavs youngsters gathered round as he pointed to different battle scars and related the stories behind them (Lethal Weapon style). It’s no surprise that Perk was at the center of the pre-game huddle at the start of the Boston series. Toughness oozes from him like magma from a volcano.

Hurtin’ For Certain

However, injuries could have easily been the factor that defined this post-season for the Cavs. What began with the potentially devastating shoulder dislocation that knocked Kevin Love out in Game 4 of the first round against the Celtics, continued with a litany of maladies that befell the wine and gold on a regular basis.

Kyrie has seemingly suffered the most with a variety of lower body afflictions that have robbed him of much of his mobility and explosiveness (I imagine it must be hard to dribble the ball between your legs when they ache with every step, or are too numb to feel any longer). What started with a hip issue that dated back to the end of the regular season, became a right foot injury that apparently occurred in Game 2 against Boston. The right foot was re-aggravated in Game 2 of the Bulls series, and then the whole overcompensation by Kyrie to rely more on his left leg resulted in what was diagnosed as tendinitis in his left knee.

Through it all, Kyrie (who was probably feeling a lot like Uncle Drew in post-getting-buckets mode) amazingly gutted and gritted it out, even turning in a Willis Reed-ian Game 5 performance where he scored 25 points on 9-16 shooting and dished five dimes in 39 grueling minutes. It wasn’t until Game 6, after an unfortunate mis-step on Tristan Thompson’s foot, that his legs finally gave out with a left knee issue. Even then, after a few minutes in the locker room receiving treatment, the young floor general re-emerged and declared himself ready and willing to give it a go if needed. Thanks to the impending SuperDova, however, Kyrie was spared any further risk of damage.

Then there’s Iman and his Shumped up groin. I had a bad groin injury once. I was foolishly playing flag-football in the rain with a bunch of guys back in high school. I went to make a cut and my right leg didn’t go with me. I could barely walk for a week afterwards and it took more than a month before it started to feel normal again. Shump on the other hand, took literally one quarter off to recover from his groin injury. Even though it seemed to affect him over the remainder of the series against the Bulls, he still managed to average 37 minutes per game after the injury, and fought through the pain to continue making life miserable for Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler. Though the injury bug has not been kind to Iman this season (he also missed six weeks due to a shoulder separation during his transition from the Knicks to the Cavs — which likely cost him his place in the starting lineup), he hasn’t let it get in the way of his dedication to lock-down defense.

Even the King himself has been more banged up than usual. Though I’m fairly sure that LeBron is an actual cyborg with replaceable titanium-carbonite parts and joints, the ankle turn in Game 3 and the lower back hit in Game 6 were just the two most obvious physical set-backs he had to deal with.

Much like an iceberg, these issues are only the surface level aches and pains LBJ probably suffers through, as he takes contact nearly every time he drives to the rack or mixes it up defending the low post. Though he missed more games this regular season than ever before, with his imposed fort-night of rest after the holidays, there is no denying that James has been an unquestioned iron man in today’s NBA. Before missing 13 games this season, LeBron had only sat out a total of 44 contests in his previous 11 seasons in the league (many of which were in the final weeks of various seasons for the purpose of rest before the playoffs). You don’t have to be a math wizard to figure out that’s a mere four games per year. And, he hasn’t missed a playoff game, appearing in all 168 in his career. Because of his size, strength and ability, LBJ doesn’t always seem to get the credit for just how much of a warrior he has been and continues to be. He is human, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that.

Through it all, this team has rejected the injury narrative like the man they call Mozgov swats competitor layups as if they were effigy sandwiches created by the Brew Garden. “No excuses” isn’t just a trending hashtag, a pithy team slogan or an oft-repeated mantra. It is etched into the very bones of this gritty group of grinders.

Getting Defensive

Before the season started, the prediction of many would be that while the Cavs high octane offense would score a bajillion points this year, their defense might give up nearly as much. There were doubts aplenty about the ability and desire of guys like Kyrie and Kevin to become at least league average defenders. There were questions about how quickly the team would jell and learn to trust each other on help defense. Many (myself included) wondered what kind of success Blatt, primarily known as an offensive wizard in Europe, would achieve with his schemes to stop his team from getting abused on the pick and roll.

Early returns seemed to provide tangible evidence of these concerns coming to fruition, as Cleveland took up residence in the bottom half of the league in the defensive rankings. The first two months of the season revealed a team that was in desperate need of some toughness and grit. Then the trades happened and things started to change. In early February, roughly three weeks after Griff’s two big trades and the LeBron sabbatical, Greg Swartz at BleacherReport wrote this telling article about the significant turnaround of the Cavs defensive strategy and execution. In their first 39 games, they had given up 100.1 points per game, but in their next 11, they cut it down to just 95.5. By the end of the season, the overall average was down to 98.7, and Cleveland was able to improve from 19th in the league to 13th.

However, since the start of the playoffs, the Cavs have taken their defense to a whole new level. Among the sixteen teams participating in the second season, they are in a dead heat with the last round’s victim Bulls for the top spot defensively. They’re allowing a scant 92.6 ppg, while stingily holding the Bulls and Celtics to a combined 40% from the field and a miniscule 30% from three (only the Warriors have been stingier at 29%).

Regular Season Defensive Stats

Granted, the Celtics and Bulls wouldn’t exactly be mistaken for offensive juggernauts in the first place, however, could you have imagined a Cavs defense as tough and locked in as this group has been when this season began? I’d be lying if I said I could’ve.

Tough Guys

Tyrone was tough

The Cavs have had some hard as stone characters populate their ranks over their 45 year history. Names like Nate Thurmond, Rick Roberson, Michael Cage, Mark West, Bobby Phills (RIP), John Battle, Tyrone Hill, Eric Snow and Delonte West were just a few of the tougher ones. Two names that are destined to join their ranks (aside from LeBron and AV) from this current squad are a pair of hard hats and alley-oop partners known as Canadian Dynamite and the SuperDova.

It’s too bad Tristan Thompson’s parents didn’t bestow on him a middle name that started with an “N” because they missed a golden opportunity to get a head start on letting the world know just how explosive he is. Beyond the endless energy, possession-saving rebounds and grittiness he brings to each and every game, TT is also the Cavs ultimate “Iron Man” having played all 82 games in each of the last three seasons. He is virtually indestructible, surviving even a nasty crash landing in Game 6 off of an incredibly athletic throw down of yet another Delly alley-oop. When Tristan is in the game, he seems to relish the degree of difficulty in stealing an offensive board within a sea of enemy defenders, and in fact dueled the entire Bulls starting front line to a draw in Game 6 with 17 rebounds. Every contender needs a garbageman to do the dirty work and clean the glass with abandon. TT doesn’t just clean the glass… he devours it.

Then, there’s Matthew Dellavedova (who may have to legally change his name to “Hellavedova” or “SuperDova” by the end of these playoffs). All this “too slow,” “too unskilled,” “unathletic” backup Aussie point guard did was go into the United Center (as the “villain” who got Taj Gibson ejected from Game 5 with a leg-lock wrestling move), and despite a chorus of boos from the Chicago fans, almost single-handedly rip their hearts out. Okay, he definitely had some help from LeBron, Iman, J.R., TT and the rest of the gang, but seeing the much-maligned Delly go off the way he did in their building must have been absolute torture for the Bulls and their fans. It’s no secret that there isn’t a charge he won’t take, a 50/50 ball he won’t secure or a single player on the floor he won’t try and guard more closely than an itchy woolen sweater. His hustle and defensive toughness is already the stuff of legend. Even LeBron says so…

LeBron James: "Delly's probably the toughest guy on the team."

— CBS Sports NBA (@CBSSportsNBA) May 13, 2015

But the confidence he displayed in relieving an injured Kyrie on the offensive end, showed the kind of mental toughness Delly also possesses. It’s a trait he shares with the rest of his tough-minded teammates.

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