Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson has his work cut out for him.
With sky-high expectations, Atkinson has some low hanging fruits to improve the offense, but will that be enough in the modern NBA?
There is little doubt that the Cleveland Cavaliers were, and are, ready for a new voice. However, that isn’t to say a new coach can fix everything. It’s hard to pinpoint how much of the Cavaliers’ offensive limitations were due to coaching versus the talent they put on the floor.
Getting Darius Garland to play at his best in the postseason seems like something a coach can help with. There is definitely still room for improvement in finding the right bench combinations. Getting Garland, Donovan Mitchell, and the rest of the team running around and setting picks off ball instead of the ball-watching we often saw last year would also be a boon to the offensive efficiency.
The biggest challenge, however, is whether any coach can create a high-end, modern playoff offense when two of his best players, each deserving 30+ minutes, can’t stretch the floor. The Cavs now have goals that can only be achieved in multiple seven-game series, and that deserves the majority of the coaching staff’s attention.
Jarrett Allen doesn’t attempt to shoot from deep, and while Evan Mobley has made modest strides, smart playoff defenses still ignore him at the three-point line. He hasn’t punished them for it yet. It’s hard to believe that will change dramatically anytime soon. No coach can consistently fix a player’s shooting, and Mobley has yet to crack 33.3% on shots longer than 10 feet in a season, mixing and matching decent and terrible long twos and threes thus far in his career.
The bar for Atkinson is high. I’m optimistic that his better offensive acumen will pay dividends, particularly with off-ball movement for Garland and Mitchell. Still, I fear it might not be enough if the Cavs aim is to win a championship, or even dance until the final four.
Looking at the NBA champions of the last decade, or the last four squads of the last few years, it is difficult to see how Atkinson is going to score at a competitive rate. Every champion of the previous four years started four or more players that took at least 3.8 three-point attempts per game on at least 33.8% shooting in either the regular season or playoffs. For the six years prior to that, dating back to the infamous 2015 Golden State Warriors’ “Death Lineup”, it was at least 2.6 attempts on the same percentage. So for a decade, every single champ has started at least four players who demanded some respect beyond the line.
This arms race for spacing has only increased, as the Boston Celtics just won the first five-out championship, as heavy favorites, despite no player who finished in the top five of MVP voting. The spacing revolution is the primary reason why the average NBA offense today scores 115.3 points per 100 possessions, a number that until 8 years ago, had never averaged north of 108.3. A number that, 10 years ago, had been only achieved four times since at least 1980. Only the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers, the Seven-Seconds-or-Less Phoenix Suns, Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, and Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics achieved the feat before this decade… once each, with the highest at 115.6. All of these offensive juggernauts, at their very peaks, would be virtually average offenses in today’s NBA.
It is true that a decent portion of the offensive explosion is the threes themselves giving teams another efficient outlet for scoring, and not just the spacing it provides. Cleveland has capable volume three-point shooters to help, with Garland, Mitchell, Sam Merrill, and Max Strus all being very capable of letting it fly. But with the recent explosion of blue chip creators in the league and 60-point games, it seems a significant portion also has to do with open driving lanes and rim protectors being pulled away from the hoop. League-wide raw field-goal percentage climbed to a 25-year high in the last two years, despite more and more three-point attempts coming in at ~36.5%. This is a surefire sign that two-point shot attempts have improved along with the additional spacing.
This is the NBA that Atkinson must navigate. He’s seemed to understand the importance of spacing at his last few coaching spots with the Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers, and Brooklyn Nets. Those Nets teams also had Jarrett Allen, who only received 27 minutes per game despite not starting next to another player who took less than 4.9 three-point attempts per game. A similar strategy here, staggering him with Mobley more, could open up our offense, but at the expense of keeping our best players on the floor.
I hope Kenny has some magic up his sleeve, but if not, let’s remember not to put all of the blame on him. If he can get a team starting two non-spacers to score up there with the top third of modern NBA offenses (~118 points per 100 possessions these days), he’ll be among the first.
