The Wood Shop: The King’s Assists, Defense, and Finals Thoughts Edition

When I think of a wood shop, I think of a place people go to contemplate things. Wood working happens in them for sure, but it’s really just a convenient hobby. It takes a long time to complete even a small piece of wood work, which means many trips to the shop to really examine the intricacies of life. This article is part of a continuing series where I take some aspect of this Cavalier team into the wood shop and hang out with it for a thousand or so words. My own personal Cavs Wood Shop.

The Finals are here, and the Cavs are in them. LeBron James was a big part of them getting there. A little more than a month ago, I wrote about how LeBron had really found himself in March. He was dribbling less, cutting to the rim, taking more high percentage shots, moving more efficiently, and hunting for plays in transition. Well, LeBron never stops improving. He has figured out how to take his assist game to the next level. It was already awesome during the regular season, but he has tweaked ever so slightly to become otherworldly.

The Assist Game

Note Taking of a Mad Man

There are a number of ways the King can get assists. He can do it off the dribble, as a roll man, from isolation, on drive and kicks, and in transition. The list could go on for days. I started looking at how the King gets his assists after watching some NBA.com videos of his dimes from the playoffs. The first three that came up were from the Detroit series. Each time the King caught the ball, he stood still before methodically finding an open man. He didn’t dribble at all.

In my head, I had this idea that the King drove and kicked the rock for the majority of his assists, and I really started to question that after watching those first three Detroit dimes. And, after all, he absolutely murdered Toronto’s chances for a game seven from the elbow, which I thought was sort of a new development for the Cavs.

Being the inquisitive man I am, I grabbed my laptop, set it on my coffee table, opened a beer (grabbed several others as backups, so I wouldn’t have to get up for a while), assumed a cross legged position on the floor, and broke out a technique I learned in the first grade as I watched assist videos: the tally mark system. I made a crude chart on some paper (see above), and wasted hours of time classifying the King’s dimes.

Being a popular man, as well as inquisitive, I had to limit my dedication to this project. There’s people I gotta see, food to eat, and tv shows to binge. I watched all 98 of LBJ’s assists in the playoffs, and all of the 99 (at least the 91 ones that would load on NBA.com) assists he had in March. I picked his assists from March to examine because that’s really when the King was at his peak during the regular season. That was the platonic ideal of LeBron, except real. He put up 25.6 points (9.7-18.1) on 53.8% shooting to go along with 8.2 rebounds, 7.1 assists, and 1.1 steals. By picking March, the data really showed that LeBron has tweaked his game just a little to get to where he is at now.

The Results

The charts I came up with certainly have some errors. They’re unintentional, I’m human and my categorizations are subject to interpretation. For the transition category, I only marked it down if the opposing defense was still recovering and unset when the assist occurred. For a play to be a drive and kick, the King had to penetrate and then dish the ball just outside of where his feet were stationed when he made the pass. ISO plays were only marked when it was a clear dribble drag down of the offense.

Moving Off the Ball and Getting Closer to the Hoop

As you can see, the way the King gets his assists didn’t change drastically between March and the playoffs. He was already pretty good at passing, so there wasn’t a ton to change.

-He started to dribble a little less. 2.44% more of his assists in the playoffs happened when he didn’t dribble at all. He’s also dribbling .24 less times a touch now.

-The King started to work below the arc more often too. 4.24% more of his assists originated from inside the 3-point line, which makes sense because he’s getting more touches at the elbow now. Before the playoffs, in March, he had 4.6 touches at the elbow per game. For the season, he averaged 3.5. Now, he’s getting 4.9.

-The King is a master floor reader, and it requires almost zero effort for him to do. After watching all of his assists, this really stood out, especially on ones where he didn’t dribble. When the King doesn’t dribble, you see his head scan the floor like a robot. It moves left to right, calculating which way every defender is leaning, and which way his teammate is going to go for space. He then whips the ball to the exact place it needs to be.

-Look at this play. The King sets a soft screen for Kyrie near the right hand corner. He quickly rolls and gets the ball, while headed to the rack. That sucks a defender away from Tristan Thompson (to stop James from dunking) and then Kevin Love‘s defender rolls over to TT to prevent a drop off pass. The King knows this is going to happen. He catches the ball barreling to the hoop, takes his steps to keep the Raptors defense crashing down on him, and then finds Kevin Love in the corner for an open 3-ball. James didn’t dribble at all in the play and caused three defenders to look his way.

-In the play below, LeBron receives the ball at the elbow from Kyrie. Kyrie then tries to screen for Richard Jefferson, which he hopes will result in a DeMar DeRozan switching onto him. It doesn’t work, so Kyrie begins to act like he’s heading back to the 3-line to get the ball back. Cory Joseph leans towards the 3-line. At that point, RJ has started to head to the right corner. DeMar is following him. Kyrie then cuts to the hoop. LeBron sees this and immediately throws a bounce pass. He releases the ball right as DeMar has stopped and CoJo is behind the play. DeMar’s momentum is heading the wrong direction as he turns around to try and interrupt the play. Kyrie then gets the easy layup. LeBron hasn’t moved more than twelve inches the whole play, pass included. His wrists did all the work.

-ISO ball just isn’t for playmaker LeBron. Just four of his last 197 assists resulted from Le-Iso action.

-Playoff LeBron has looked to push the ball much more in the post season, 2.75% more of his dimes are coming in transition . However, after watching all of the assist videos, it’s apparent that he’s looking to push even more than the stats show. There were numerous plays where LeBron would be running the floor with the ball and get into the paint with the opposing defense still running back. If he didn’t have a good shot, he just pulled the ball back out and waited for something else to develop.

-It flummoxed me that the King has actually drove and kicked the ball out more in the playoffs than in the regular season, especially since he is now dribbling slightly less. This, however, may just mean that he’s becoming much more efficient when he chooses to drive. He’s going to the rim with a plan.

-It’s also surprising to see that he doesn’t get many assists from rolling to the hoop. Many of us at the blog called for LeBron to act as a Draymond Green type outlet pass roll guy when Kyrie Irving was doubled. The stats show he did that more during the regular season. Although, he might just be darting to the hoop more now for his own points. In the regular season, he rolled to the hoop just 3.6% of the time. In the playoffs, he’s doing so on 8.2% of his possessions and scoring a little more each time.

-The NBA is very lenient in calling something an assist. Look at this. Kyrie made that shot on his own several seconds after catching the pass. He even used an LBJ screen.

Talking Defense

Some people have brought up the fact that the Thunder and Cavs have had similar defensive ratings during the playoffs. The Thunder have a rating of 103.2. Cleveland has a rating of 102.9. The Thunder have played a much tougher playoff schedule, so their number is more legitimate.

The other thing to consider is the fact that the Cavs have a bad habit of giving up open shots. The Cavs are in the bottom three of all the playoff teams when it comes to the number of field goals they have defended each game. They’ve defended 78.1 shot attempts per game (opposing teams make 35.2 of their defended ones against them). And, opponents actually hit .7% better than their average when the Cavs covered them.

The Thunder, on the other hand, have defended 85 shots a game. Opponents have hit 37.9 a game. Opponents shoot 2.6% lower than their average field goal percentage when defended by them.

Keep that in mind when thinking about the Cavs’ defensive numbers. The Warriors feast when they have open looks. Let’s hope the Cavs are just getting lazy covering mid-range shots and not 3s.

(Final) Finals Thoughts

Jerry Springer used to have a segment at the end of his show called the Final Thought (he still might if he’s on) where he would give some parting words of advice to his guests. They were usually vague and fairly obvious. “If you cheat on someone, you probably didn’t really love him or her as much as you thought you did.” That’s a pretty good approximation of one of his quotes.

I wanted to give my own today.

Remember, it’s not the end of the world if Cleveland loses the Finals. It will be the end of the world if we forget who we watched all of the post season with. I still remember listening to Joe Tait call games during the 2007 Finals, while I sat on a friend’s second story porch on Tate Avenue. And, I still remember the night LeBron scored the final 25 points against Detroit in a Game 5 to give the Cavs a 3-2 series lead. I was sitting on the floor with two other kids watching a 13 inch tv screaming louder each time he scored in an even more impossible way. I’ll be back in Cleveland with those same two kids watching games this year. It’d be nice if Cleveland won, but either way I’ll remember who I was sitting with during this post season.