The Cleveland Cavaliers picked up a much-needed win on Monday. The offense was clicking in a way that we’ve rarely seen this season, resulting in a 139-132 victory over the Charlotte Hornets.
For one night, everything seemed alright with the Cavs.
“There were no boos in the crowd tonight, so that was really good,” Darius Garland joked postgame. “And a lot more cheers. So we’re trying to get back to Cavaliers’ basketball.”
The offense gave the fans plenty to cheer about. The Cavs went 24-44 (54.5%) from
outside the arc. It was the team’s most made threes and their highest three-point percentage for a single game this season.
The Cavaliers’ offense was artificially boosted by a hot-shooting night. They aren’t going to connect on over 50% of their outside attempts often. But they were also creating good looks by making the extra pass. Thirty-five of the team’s 48 field-goal makes were assisted. This includes 20 of their 24 three-point makes.
The Cavs did an excellent job of getting inside the paint and then kicking out for open outside attempts. They weren’t static, pull-up threes, or even shots from just moving the ball from side to side. The offense was getting downhill, and everything flowed from there.
The process was exactly what you’d want it to be on that end of the court.
On the other end of the spectrum, the defense remains incredibly frustrating to watch. The Cavs are seemingly always in rotation, chasing the ball. And more often than not, the ball finds the open man before the defense can recover.
These aren’t the traits of a respectable defense.
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There’s more than a few factors that contribute to this. The point-of-attack resistance remains poor. They don’t have many plus defenders on the perimeter, or at the very least, they don’t have anyone who you can put on a team’s best scorer and expect them to make life difficult for them. This causes the defense to help, get in rotation, and there’s only so much you can do once you’re behind the play.
On top of that, the Cavs are insistent on trying to play this fast, trapping defense that forces turnovers. And to their credit, they’ve done that this season as they came into this game sixth in defensive turnover percentage. But like the emphasis on offensive rebounding, the effort they put into forcing turnovers may not actually be worth it.
There’s no one stat to show exactly that the team is trapping too much and giving up open shots because of it. But opponents came into Monday’s game shooting 37.2% from three against them, which is the sixth-highest mark in the league. On top of that, they’re giving up their highest percentage of shots at the rim since 2020-21. Both point to a team that isn’t consistently in its proper spots on the floor.
While this is an offense-led group, the defense needs to be considerably better than it’s been lately if they want to get back into contention.
“It’s not great,” head coach Kenny Atkinson said about the defense. “We got to get better defensively. It’s funny, the first 19 games, I think we were fifth in the league [defensively], and we’ve just had this dip defensively.”
Rebounding also remains a problem. The Hornets grabbed 46% of their missed shots (98th percentile). This led to a 20-7 second-chance points advantage for Charlotte.
“We’re not a good rebounding team,” Atkinson said. “That’s the last phase of defense. We got to get better.”
The Cavs did a much better job of getting back in transition against Charlotte, but were beaten consistently on the glass and off-the-dribble on the perimeter.
There are simply too many holes in the defense right now. Whenever one is plugged, two more seem to pop up.
De’Andre Hunter finally broke out of his slump. He scored 27 points on 9-13 shooting. A decent amount of those baskets came after getting elbowed in the face.
This was a game he needed badly. Hunter came into this game averaging 12.1 points on 38.9% shooting from the floor and 28.9% shooting from three. This cold streak resulted in Hunter recently being moved back to the bench.
It’s a decision Hunter says he agrees with.
“Just going off the results,” Hunter said. “It wasn’t looking too great. … The numbers said it wasn’t working great. So [we’ll] just try to look for a different outcome.”
Garland looked like his All-Star self for the second straight game. He backed up his encouraging performance against the Chicago Bulls by pouring in 27 points and 10 assists against Charlotte. He was able to once again create separation off the dribble — which is something he struggled to do when he first came back from injury.
The concern is whether or not Garland’s toe can hold up throughout a full season. He seemed to get banged up again down the stretch of Monday’s game, but confirmed afterward that he was okay after being asked about it repeatedly.
Garland is the key to the Cavs’ offense working. As talented as Donovan Mitchell is, Garland is the one who organizes the attack by getting the bigs involved and controlling the tempo. The ball has more life when he’s playing like this.
The Cavs will go as far as their offense takes them. And their offense is only elite when their quarterback is in there playing near the level Garland has recently.
Mitchell benefits greatly from playing with this version of Garland.
Last season showed that their games complement each other quite well offensively. Mitchell needs someone who can set up an offense, while Garland is helped by having another guard there to carry some of the scoring burden.
That was on display Tuesday when both were able to do what they do best.
“I try to create as much advantages as I can for him just to get rolling, get some open ones,” Garland said about Mitchell. “He’s always gonna have the best defender on him. So, anything to get him open just for a split second, because he can do whatever with the ball. That’s all of our jobs. So, I’m trying to make his life a lot easier so he don’t have to keep running around with some of the best defenders in the world.”
Mitchell scored 30 points on 10-18 shooting on a night Atkinson said he “wasn’t as sharp” as normal. That speaks to the incredible standard that Mitchell has set this season.
This was a much-needed win for the Cavs. They demonstrated that they still can be the offensive juggernaut they were last regular season. At the same time, this is what a good team is supposed to do against the 24th-ranked defense.
While this was an encouraging offensive performance, this win on its own doesn’t mean much if they can’t find a way to build on it.
“We didn’t crack any code,” Mitchell said. “This isn’t a victory lap because we won tonight. We did it once, now ultimately, we got to do it on a consistent basis.”
