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There were holes in the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ 97-89 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday that were masked by J.R. Smith’s historic performance. Going 8-for-12 from behind the arc, Smith scored the most threes for both himself or any Cavalier during a playoff game. The bulk of his points came in the middle quarters when Cleveland ballooned its lead to 18 points.
Nonetheless, the victory was tenuous, as one Atlanta-based reporter pointed out. Asking head coach David Blatt if the win would’ve been possible without Smith, Blatt responded:
“If you meant by the question that perhaps we’re not going to be able to win unless J.R. Smith makes eight threes then I would beg to differ because we have enough other weapons on our team and we play good basketball in many other facets of the game. Tonight was a game that J.R. stepped up in a big way and obviously he had a big part in that victory, but it’s still a team victory.”
Barely.
DeMarre Carroll’s unfortunate exit for what was later diagnosed as a sprained knee came at the four-minute mark in the fourth quarter. This should have more than solidified Cleveland’s victory. Instead, with Kent Bazemore substituting for Carroll, Atlanta went on a 13-5 tear that brought the game to within four points with less than a minute to go.
What happened?
Atlanta has been deemed by just about everyone with a keyboard as the San Antonio Spurs of the East. Their head coach, Mike Budenholzer, spent 19 years as an assistant coach to living legend Gregg Popovich. Certainly some of the tenets that have made San Antonio great in years past are evidenced in Atlanta’s eastern dominance this season. The most prominent is probably the NBA’s current catchphrase of passing up good shots for great, which is just another way of saying balanced scoring from multiple passes with little isolation play.
It’s this type of basketball that doomed Cleveland at the beginning of March in a 106-97 loss that wasn’t even that close. Atlanta moved through Cleveland’s defense with surgical precision, frustrating a team that won six of eight after the All Star break and 20 of 24 since the middle of January when they made crucial trades for Timofey Mozgov, Iman Shumpert and of course Smith.
This was a team that was finally settling into itself after a rocky 19-20 start. Cleveland had lost its previous two games against Atlanta and was eager to prove that this new roster was better than anyone else in the East. Unfortunately, Atlanta’s balanced scoring from multiple passes with little isolation play proved to be too much.
The same thing nearly happened again on Tuesday when all of Smith’s hard work was erased in a matter of eight fourth-quarter minutes. Cleveland went scoreless for six of those minutes. In that span, Matthew Dellavedova, Shumpert and Smith each shot and missed once. Meanwhile, LeBron missed five times.
We’ve seen this before. We’ve even seen it very recently in Game 6 of the second round when James went 7-of-23. At some point, it’s as if he stops trusting anyone else and decides to do everything himself. Sometimes this works out. In November, sensing a loss to Boston, James took over, scoring 41 points en route to a 122-121 victory. It also worked out in Game 6 when Dellavedova had his own historic game. But what if Smith’s game last night hadn’t been historic?
Speaking about Smith’s performance, Shumpert said, “It’s always somebody. Seems like every game, somebody’s always stepping up. That’s what this team’s built on, hanging our hat on the defensive end, and offensively, we’ll figure it out.”
That’s exactly what a team can’t be built on. It’s why the Mike Brown-era Cavaliers never won a title and only made it to the finals once. The defense was stellar, but the offense revolved around whatever James did or didn’t want to do that night. As great as he is, he’s still human. This year more than any other has shown us that.
Probably in large part because of James, Blatt’s early attempts at implementing a Princeton-style offense were abandoned. It’s too late to inject anything new into their X’s and O’s, but Cleveland has got to be more disciplined if it has a prayer of taking down a Budenholzer-led team. It’s a catchphrase and it’s cliche at this point, but passing up good shots for great ones will win them games.
