LeBron And The Cavs Could Reach New Heights If Kyrie Irving Becomes A True Passing Threat

In just their first month as teammates in 2014, Cavaliers superstars LeBron James and Kyrie Irving had already come to an impasse. After a 19-point loss to the Blazers, LeBron and Kyrie had a “healthy” exchange of words that left the point guard miffed enough to skip his media appointment for the night. The discussion was reportedly about Kyrie dominating the ball, and he responded the next night by scoring 34 points and dishing out zero assists, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished by a point guard in a dozen years.

That display earned Irving another talk with James. According to Kyrie, LeBron warned “you can never have another game with no assists.” He apparently listened, until the playoffs anyway. Irving managed another zero assist game against the Bulls, a game most remembered for Derrick Rose’s miraculous buzzer beater, but also noteworthy for this postgame question to LeBron.

Frustration about Kyrie’s assist-adverse style of play lingered into last season as well, but a championship was the perfect remedy for that malady and all was well in Cleveland. Funny what a well-timed dagger in Game 7 to help the Warriors blow a 3-1 lead will do.

This season, Kyrie and the Cavs have gradually begun the ground work towards setting Kyrie up as a true distributor in their high powered offense. The former All Star game MVP has apparently been busy in the film room to improve this part of his game, detailing his studying to ESPN, and how the work lead to this monstrous dunk against the Warriors on Christmas day.

It was a nice play, one which could have been a contested but makable layup for Kyrie, but ended up in LeBron’s hands. Still, that’s a pass he’s made before in pressure situations, with spectacular results as well.

But Kyrie’s role is gradually changing, and his passing and assists numbers reveal the work the team is doing to not only increase Kyrie’s workload as a passer, but decrease LeBron’s. Simply put, Kyrie is passing more. In 13 November games he had 613 total passes, and in 13 December games that jumped up to 745. That led to an increase from 60 assists in November (4.6 per game) to 101 in December (7.8 per game). Even Kyrie’s hockey assists improved from month to month from 13 to 25.

Kyrie’s new role as a distributor allows LeBron to now be a roller in the screen and roll game, a rarity as he’s only been the roll man on 12 possessions in 27 games this season according to NBA.com. Just because these possessions have been scarce thus far does not mean they can’t or won’t be effective. In fact they may become the most unguardable set in the Cavaliers repertoire if they decide to implement this into their offense permanently.

As the small-ball 4 pick and roll has become a predominant set in the modern NBA, much of a team’s ability to succeed in that configuration depends on that rolling forward’s ability to catch a pass on the roll, stop, pivot and make a pass to an open shooter on the weakside as defenses scramble. This is how the Steph Curry-Draymond Green pick-and-roll became so unguardable. The ability to make that pass is what made Mason Plumlee one of the Blazers most valuable assets last spring when they upset the Clippers in the playoffs. No big man in the NBA is better suited to make this specific pass than LeBron James, and now with Kyrie initiating the offense, he will have endless opportunities to do so.

Take the play below. Love doesn’t make the wide open 3, but it’s a perfect illustration of that action and LeBron’s ability to find that pass even under duress and while Love is actually behind his back. As a bonus, James gets the offensive rebound and makes another quick pass leading to a DeAndre Liggins three-pointer, which went in.

And here’s another variation of the same pass, off of a Kyrie drive.

Those shots will be there as long as LeBron rolls to the rim off Kyrie, and defenses will be left to choose the lesser of two evils: either Love gets that open three pointer, which he hits at a 41 percent clip — a mark better than Kevin Durant — or LeBron gets a head of steam running to the rim with an unclogged lane.

LeBron’s ability to be a passer to open shooters as the roller on a pick and roll play is uncanny, and his new place in the offense will also open up opportunities like this:

The development also benefits LeBron the scorer as well, more specifically LeBron the shooter as he’s tossing threes in at 38.4 percent, his best mark since 2012-13 when he shot a career high 40.6 percent. That season his three-point mark was a result of selective shooting and increased efficiency, but this season LeBron is shooting five three-pointers a game, the second highest mark of his career. In fact, 27 percent of LeBron’s field-goal attempts this season have come from beyond the arc, a number that would be the highest split of his career. James is shooting the three more frequently than ever, and he’s gradually getting better as the season goes on.

LeBron is getting those threes by doing the same thing just about everybody else does in Cleveland’s offense: standing still. The Cavs are third in the league in catch-and-shoot threes per game with nearly 24 a game, and they hit them at 41.6 percent, second in the NBA only to the Spurs. (And the Cavs have seven more attempts per game than San Antonio).

Adding LeBron as a catch and shoot, three-point stud — he’s making his catch and shoot threes at 49.1 percent, a number higher than Klay Thompson (40.9%) and just below Steph Curry (49.4%) — doesn’t seem fair with everything else he can already do. He’s already made 26 this year, and while that doesn’t sound a lot, he made just 36 in each of his last two seasons.

That’s allowing the Cavs to run sets like this, designed to get LeBron an open three off a Tristan Thompson screen, and they’re cashing in as LeBron made 50 percent of his threes from Irving passes in December, up from 38.5 percent in November.

And thanks to Kyrie’s development as a passer and LeBron’s development as a shooter, the Cavs are ending up with shots like this off Kyrie pick and roll drives, passes LeBron usually makes, not receives, and shots Kyrie usually takes, not creates.

Kyrie has also found new ways to work his pick and roll actions with Love. Though he actually passed to Love 20 fewer times in December, they were better passes resulting in eight more assists. In a game earlier in the month against the Heat, Irving used a Kevin Love screen to snake his way into one of his patented pull-up jumpers, a shot he has had plenty of success with in the past, including the Finals.

Then, a few weeks later instead of settling for that inefficient shot he holds the ball a few beats more, forcing the defense to make a decision and giving Love the extra time he needs to settle into space for a wide open three.

And two possessions later he does it again, and Love drains another wide open three pointer.

Later, he uses the reluctance those passes put into the defense to open up space for a three pointer, this time with Channing Frye — an even better shooter than Love and another beneficiary of Kyrie’s increased passing — and drains the shot.

A few possessions later he uses Frye again, this time for a switch before he puts on a dazzling display of the #KyrieIrvingChallenge in a real game.

And Kyrie is also capable of making a variation of the same pass LeBron, Draymond, Mason Plumlee, and others make as the roll man off of screen actions.

It’s not simply Kyrie’s ability to make passes that is opening up his game, it’s his willingness to make those passes. Now, Tyronn Lue and the Cavs feel comfortable using Kyrie in new places in the offense, including this spot as the hub — usually reserved for LeBron — of the infamous horns set that brutalized the Raptors in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals.

Compare LeBron against the Raptors:

To Kyrie against the Warriors on Christmas:

That was one of just two assists from the elbow for Kyrie this season, both in December, nearly matching the five total he had last year and seven the season before. It’s a new wrinkle the Cavs are toying with, and with the threat of LeBron hitting threes, opening up that back cut could be a death knell for opposing defenses.

The Cavaliers are making adjustments to their offense and championship level team in-season, not only to gear up for their run this season, but to prepare for the future when LeBron’s athleticism erodes and his workload simply has to be lightened. A more willing and capable passer in Kyrie – and shooter in LeBron – could make that transition seamless.

Love and Irving are signed through summer of 2020, and James will seemingly be a Cavalier until he decides to retire, so the Cavs are locked in for the long haul with their core. With Lue at the helm and each player willing to sacrifice and curtail their games to one another, they have the ability to gel together for another three years. The fit may prolong the aging process for LeBron.

When he finally starts to decline (and even James can’t beat aging forever), that fit between the three Cavs stars can also ease him into his late career destiny as a super-Boris Diaw type do-everything player that could continue to steam powering the Cavaliers engine for years to come. It all starts with the continued evolution of Uncle Drew.