The Cleveland Cavaliers lost on Saturday night. It was a 123-101 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on the road as DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis bludgeoned them, and it marked the fifth time in a row that the team has allowed at least 112 points in a game. Through six games, the Cavaliers boast the seventh-worst scoring defense in the NBA and the eighth-worst defensive efficiency in the league per John Hollinger’s defensive efficiency statistics.
Now, the Cavaliers’ roster isn’t exactly one that is brimming with outstanding defenders. LeBron James and Jae Crowder are both stout on-ball defenders, but beyond that, the team is relying on a handful of decent defenders and a bunch of guys who have never been known for their ability on that end of the floor.
Cleveland used this offseason to bring in veteran backcourt depth after trading Kyrie Irving, but Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, and Jose Calderon are all below average defenders. But even beyond that, Cleveland’s defending as a team has just looked awful. The team has been inconsistent on that end, to the point that James said this after the team’s loss to New Orleans.
“Defensively, we have spurts, and we know we can get to a point where we can sustain it a little bit longer than what we’ve done so far,” James said, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “So that’s a positive. On the negative side, we’ve had more lulls than we’ve had spurts, and teams — we always know every year — when we have lulls, teams make us pay. It doesn’t matter what they’re shooting, it doesn’t matter how they’re playing, teams are going to make us pay, and it happened again tonight.”
And the crazy part is this isn’t an issue that’s occurring this season — all of last year, the prevailing narrative about the Cavaliers was that their porous defense would be an issue once they made it into the postseason, especially in a potential Finals rematch with the Golden State Warriors.
Through six games, it looks like that narrative is going to be around during the 2017-18 season. This is the part where the usual disclaimer regarding the Cleveland Cavaliers pops up: All that matters is they get to the postseason, iron out whatever wrinkles they have, and rely on the fact that they have the best basketball player in the world in a sequence of best-of-seven series. And if the defense is still unable to figure it out? Whatever, they have LeBron and no one else does.
This should not take away from the fact that Cleveland’s defense is an issue, namely because going forward, it’s very likely that it will get worse. That is because the Cavaliers are going to fold two of the worst defenders in the league into their rotation at point guard: Derrick Rose and Isaiah Thomas. The former has never been known for his ability on the defensive end, while the latter’s physical limitations have made it so he has had a negative defensive box plus/minus every year of his career.
As for fixing these issues, getting to full strength and building chemistry on the defensive end so those lulls aren’t as prominent will certainly help, but as we saw last season, hoping the team can play through its issues and be fine once the postseason comes around might be a bit ambitious. It could try and trade for help — this is the portion of every Cavs column where we are legally required to mention the Brooklyn pick — but giving up a valuable trade piece for one player and hoping that one player will fix the entire defense is wishful thinking.
The answer might be as easy as “everyone buys in and focuses all of their energy on defense,” or it might be as simple as “just give the team time.” Everything ultimately comes down to whether it is wise for the Cavaliers to project the next 76 regular season games and the postseason, determine they can’t beat the Warriors or the Thunder (or even the Celtics) in a seven-game series, and blow it up. Whether that means by shaking up the roster, shaking up the coaching staff, or some combination of the two would be all up to the whims of Dan Gilbert and the team’s front office.
For now, though, while there is plenty of time to right the ship and fix things on that end of the floor, Cleveland’s defense is simply not good enough to consider them legitimate contenders.
