The Cleveland Cavaliers have a myriad of problems at 13-9 at the beginning of December, but aside from being short-handed and questions of mental makeup, there's an elephant in the room that demands more urgency. The Cavs have not been fast enough, nor have they had the requisite endurance throughout their games.
“The game is changing, and we have to adapt to it,” Cleveland newcomer Thomas Bryant said after Wednesday's disappointing loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. “Just have to be better for a full 48-minute game out there.”
“He's right, it's a different pace,” Cavs All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell responded. “This isn't last year. It's different. We were good last year, we were solid. Now, what are we going to be this year with the way the game's changed, with the way teams are coming after us, with the way coverages are different, pace is different? It's a year-by-year league, and that's what I mean when I say this isn't last year. We have to be able to adapt and be physically ready as well as mentally.”
Multiple statistics support the eye test, mirroring the points made by Bryant and Mitchell. Here are the Cavs' averages in speed and distance, per NBA.com:
- Offense: 4.85 miles per hour with 8.9 miles covered per game
- Defense: 4.11 miles per hour with 8.3 miles covered per game
Cleveland's speed offensively ranks sixth in the NBA, while its distance ranks 24th. Looking at the defensive side of the ball, the Cavs are in the bottom-10 in terms of speed, yet fourth in ground covered. Shouldn't those correlate with each other more?
“I think what happens, it's like, we're missing shots, and it's affecting our defense,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said Wednesday. “It's like, ‘Man, am I going to make that sprint back? We just missed three 3s in a row. Are we going to still have that [hustle]?' And I thought we lost that in the first half, where I think we missed four threes in a row. We've got to be better and more resilient when we're not making shots.”
Succinctly put: the wine and gold are rushing ill-advised shots, then not getting back in time to stop damage from being done. And while a lack of effort may be the culprit here and there, this is more about one end affecting the other on a larger scale than even that. The Cavs rank second with 14.2 pull-up three-point attempts on a ghastly 32.7% clip and place in the bottom five in drives (42.7).
According to Cleaning the Glass, Cleveland is the third-worst team in the league in opponent free-throw rate (24.7 made per 100 possessions). Its foes are also averaging 16.3 points in fastbreak situations, which is the eighth-highest in the NBA. Atkinson has noted that it's a concern.
“I think we all know — we've talked about it a lot — how the league's playing,” Atkinson said in his pregame press conference vs. the Boston Celtics. “The Atlantas, the Torontos, Chicagos, it's a high-paced league, and part of stopping that is getting back on defense. So we had multiple clips of [the Hawks] just getting out, sprinting down the court; that bothers you as a coach.
“There's a focus to it, and then, it's kind of the repeated efforts. They were doing it after makes and misses. So that was disappointing, because when we got 'em into half court, we did a pretty good job defensively. We've gotta improve because I don't think it's slowing down in this league. It's not going back the other way. We're not going to see teams all of a sudden start [scaling back]. They're going to look at the Cavs and say, ‘We can run on these guys.' So we've got to do better.”
Atkinson acknowledged some of the long-rebound, open-floor opportunities that the opposition has had so far, but it goes beyond that.
“We call it a spill transition,” Atkinson said. “We have a guy go in, he lays it up, he's out of the play. Now, they've got a five-on-four right away, and can you get back to neutral? You have to get back to five-on-five in the NBA. If a team has a five-on-four or four-on-three advantage, you're in trouble. So we've got to get it back to where we get it to a five-on-five game, and when our defense is really good.”
Evan Mobley believes the Cavs can do a better job of controlling their energy constantly and not putting themselves at a disadvantage.
“Just having the right energy coming into each game, and if things aren't going our way, keeping that energy high and playing together,” Mobley said Wednesday. “I feel like defensively, as well, we can do a little bit better slowing teams down, and sometimes we'll score a lot, and the other team will score a lot as well. We've really gotta get some stops and not wait until the third or fourth to get those stops.”
While Cleveland has had a demanding schedule and repeatedly faced squads with a higher tempo, it will have to remedy this issue before it snowballs.
“The game is played faster,” Bryant added. “There's a lot of things that might've went their way before and are not going our way right now. We just have to adjust and keep following our path throughout it all. It's not going to be perfect for us in any way, shape, or form.
“Know we have a target on our back from what these guys did last year, and what they're trying to improve this year, so we know that going in with any team that we might face. We just have to build that consistency day in and day out, and know that it's not going to be easy for us.”
