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After Game 3 of the NBA Finals, which saw the Cleveland Cavaliers take a 2-1 series lead over a 67-win Golden State Warriors team, you may have asked yourself some variant of this question: do the Cavaliers really need Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love? Might the Cavs even be better without these players?
As a fan of how both Irving and Love played on the Cavaliers this year, I’m almost glad that the team has started losing, for the simple reason that it might render these questions absurd.
Even when the Cavs were up 2-1, I refused to believe that they would have been better off without one, let alone both, of these players on the court. Yes, Irving’s absence allowed Matthew Dellavedova his 15 minutes of fame pestering Stephen Curry and making bizarrely clutch plays. Yes, Love’s absence allowed Tristan Thompson to play starter’s minutes, and attack the offensive glass with insane productivity.
But the Cavs’ offense has been a mess, and once the Warriors inevitably figured out how to beat their pesky new defense, things went south. They didn’t have another gear to reach on offense.
Dellavedova is what we thought he was: something of a one-trick pony on offense that shoots threes and throws lob passes That’s about it; ask him to make another play and it’s anybody’s guess what happens.
Thompson and Timofey Mozgov, effective though they have been in the playoffs, have not shown the ability to create offense for themselves consistently in the post. Mozgov had a particularly rough Game 5, at one point falling to the ground for a turnover off a post-up that the Cavs needed from him to rest LeBron James early in the game.
J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert have also shown their limitations as creators of offense. Smith, to be fair, has done a bit of that–especially in Game 5–but he’s given much of it back with bonehead plays. Shumpert, on the other hand, has looked very tentative with the ball in his hands.
These players would all be put back to optimal use with Love and/or Irving healthy. But alas, they aren’t healthy, and there’s no sense dwelling on hypotheticals (although for the record, I do think Cleveland wins these Finals with either Love or Irving playing. With both of them healthy, they win decisively).
I’ll close with this statistic: LeBron has now played 728 minutes (regular season and playoffs) without Love or Irving on the floor with him. In those minutes, he’s attempted 40 shots per 100 possessions; the all-time high in this stat over a full season is Kobe Bryant, who attempted just 35 shots per 100 possessions in 2005/06.
LeBron and the Cavs need Irving and Love. Expect them to play a huge role in getting this team back to the Finals next year.
Casey Sherman is the Toronto Raptors Beat Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @shermham
