The Point Four-ward: Letting It Fly

Four points I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) It’s darned near impossible to overstate the importance of the three point shot in the playoffs. In the Cavs most recent six game series against the Chicago Bulls, there were several instances where a player getting hot from deep helped to swing the game. There was Mike Dunleavy’s first quarter outburst in Game 1, J.R. Smith’s three big triples in the fourth quarter of a crucial Game 4 that set up the game winning shot by LeBron James, while Iman Shumpert and Matthew Dellavedova took turns keeping Game 6 en fuego.

There should be no shortage of three pointers attempted during the Eastern Conference Finals series between the Hawks and the Cavaliers that tips off tonight in Atlanta. The Hawks have already attempted 347 shots from distance over the course of 12 games — good for nearly 29 three point attempts a game. The Cavs, meanwhile, have attempted 284 three pointers, but have done so in two fewer games. This means that both teams are letting it fly at almost the exact same rate so far in the playoffs.

The only team to attempt more three point shots per game than the Cavs (27.5) during the regular season was the Houston Rockets (32.7), though the Hawks weren’t far behind at 26.2. The Hawks were second in the league in three point shooting percentage during the regular season at 38%, but the percentage difference only means that it took the Cavs essentially one more three point attempt to get the same number of makes (10 for Atlanta, 10.1 for Cleveland).

2.) During the playoffs, both teams have seen a drop off in their efficiency from downtown, with Atlanta owning the slimmest of leads, 34.3% to 34.2%. So, yes, both teams like to shoot the three and not only do they both do it reasonably well, they do it almost exactly as well.

The Cavs have managed to keep up this production, despite the loss of one of their highest volume three point shooters in Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving’s legs killing his jumper in two games against the Bulls, and James suffering through a spat of miserable shooting so far this post-season. James, as was widely pointed out throughout the course of the Bulls series, is currently shooting just 14.6% from three (7-48). So far, the team has managed to compensate for these blows to their perimeter shooting by getting unexpected production from Dellavedova (39.3% from three in the playoffs) and Shumpert, who has upped his three point attempts in the playoffs to 4.7 per game (up from 3.4 in the regular season) even as his accuracy still sits around the team playoff mean of 34%.

It also hasn’t hurt that James Jones rediscovered his touch. Following a rough shooting series against the Boston Celtics, Jones shot 41.6% from three point range against the Bulls, including games where he went 5-9 and 3-6, both Cavalier wins (Game 2 and 6 respectively).

3.) The Hawks are the much more intact team, but they’re not without question marks. Paul Millsap battled the flu in the series against the Washington Wizards and, prior to that, struggled with a shoulder injury that some suggested is still limiting the Hawks versatile big man.

Of greater concern for the Hawks, though, is the drop-off in production they received from usually light-out shooter Kyle Korver over the final four games against the Wizards. Korver, who had been averaging 10 three point field goal attempts per game over Atlanta’s first eight games in the playoffs, averaged only five a game from Game 3 against the Wiz on. While Korver’s accuracy was still good in the first two games of his mini-slump — going 2-4 in both Games 3 and 4 — even that slowly frittered away. In Game 5 he was 1-5 from three. By Game 6, it was 0-6 (and 0-7 overall).

Give credit to the Wizards defense for figuring out some ways to keep Korver from riddling them from deep like the rapid fire weapon that is his nickname (on a related note: did you realize that one of Korver’s nicknames is “Machine Gun”?) and look for the Cavs to try similar schemes to keep Korver from going off on them like rat-a-tat-tat.

While the Cavs/Bulls series was all about rebounding — the team who won the battle of the boards won every game of that series — Cavs/Hawks may come down to which team has more success calling it in from long distance.

Given some of the shooters on these two teams, that might be just as fascinating a battle as was the ongoing WWE match that was the Cavs series against the Bulls.

4.) One final turn of “fun with playoff stats”:

Wanna guess which team tops the league in blocks per game during the 2015 NBA Playoffs? That’s right, posting a 7.6 blocks per game average (per NBA.com), that leading team is your Cleveland Cavaliers.

For the record, that’s a block and a half better than the next closest team still playing (Golden State) and a full two blocks better than the Atlanta Hawks. It’s also nearly a block and a half per game better than the regular season league-leader, the New Orleans Pelicans (6.2).

Might be time to change that whole “the Cavs lack rim protection” narrative that’s still being trotted out from time to time.