Cavs-Thunder, the rematch – Examining Cleveland’s case for 70+ wins
On Jan. 8, with the clock ticking below 30 seconds and one of the NBA’s top defenders standing across from him, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Darius Garland had a chance to call game in the biggest matchup of the regular season.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Cason Wallace held firm as Garland dribbled just inside the 3-point arc before pulling back briefly to cross the ball over to the left side of his body. He accelerated directly past Wallace into the paint and zipped between Isaiah Hartenstein and Jalen Williams, both of whom were a step late in providing meaningful resistance at the rim.
Garland laid the ball in to push the Cavs ahead by seven points and force an OKC timeout. But between the home crowd’s euphoric reaction and Garland’s teammates taking turns giving him celebratory chest bumps, the reality was clear: The Cavs had all but sealed a win in the massive showdown between the league’s top two teams.
“We don’t win this game last year,” Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell said afterward, in a statement that rang true in multiple ways.
Garland, who leads the NBA in clutch field goal percentage by a whopping eight percentage points (65.5) after ranking 104th out 107 qualified players (28.9) in the category last season, likely wouldn’t have delivered.
Notching a big-time victory over an elite club like the Thunder probably doesn’t happen, either, as the Cavs were just 3-6 against teams that finished with at least 55 wins last season, including an 0-2 mark against OKC. (The Cavs and Thunder, who boast the league’s best records, square off in a rematch Thursday night.)
That was last season. These Cavs have a 34-5 record — their 33-4 start was not only the best in franchise history, but also better than any 37-game stretch of LeBron James’ Cleveland career — and the attention of the league at the midway point of 2024-25.
More importantly, the Cavaliers are showing what a healthy core of young stars — mixed with a new coach’s subtle yet impactful style changes — can deliver: a juggernaut on both sides of the court with a shot at joining a group of historic teams and winning an NBA title.
But this didn’t happen overnight. Here’s how Cleveland became a team on pace for 70-plus wins, their chances of getting there and why the league probably should have seen it coming.
The Cavs’ best players are finally on the court together
Over a year ago, the Cavaliers were disjointed. Broken, even.
It was Dec. 14, 2023, in Boston, and Garland was driving toward the basket against Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis when he collided with the big man’s hip before immediately falling to the court and grabbing the right side of his face. He would writhe in pain during a timeout before heading to the locker room and eventually returning to play the fourth quarter.
But Garland’s postgame meal revealed the depth of the problem: The floor general couldn’t muster enough force to bite down on his pizza slice. A day later, a doctor told him that was because Garland fractured his jaw. Not only did he need to have the jaw wired shut, but he also was forced to consume a liquid diet — blended chicken alfredo, spicy rigatoni and mac and cheese, among others — through a straw for a month and a half, a span in which he lost 12 pounds.
Garland wasn’t alone in missing time. Evan Mobley was out, too, rehabbing from a knee scope, leaving the Cavs to rely on Mitchell and forward Jarrett Allen. So even when they managed to win at a high clip in their absence, it was with a short-handed, makeshift offense that then-coach JB Bickerstaff said was designed to lean more into analytics with less talent on the floor.
The Cavs’ four best players played in just 28 games together last season. When Garland did play, he didn’t feel like himself and finished with career-worst numbers due to the weight loss and inability to work out. And while Cleveland won its first-round playoff series against the Orlando Magic in seven games, the Cavs never looked like a threat to the eventual champion Celtics in the East semifinals, as Mitchell and Allen both missed time during the series with injuries.
Fast-forward to now and the outlook is so much brighter, perhaps even historically so.
Garland, who has spoken of having joy again after a largely lost 2023-24 campaign, is having a career season. The core four has been healthy, already having logged more games together (34 games) than it did all of last season. And between considerable continuity and a handful of key tweaks on either side of the ball under new coach Kenny Atkinson, the Cavs are suddenly looking the part of a favorite — if not the favorite — to win an NBA championship.
And while Cleveland is taking the league by storm this season, the signs were there all along that a title contender was lurking on Lake Erie.
Cleveland’s optimal offense was always elite — it just needed a nudge
To glance at the list of offensive categories Cleveland leads the league in is akin to reading a novel. It would almost make more sense to have it split into chapters. The Cavs own the most efficient offense — with the best 2-point percentage, 3-point percentage and true shooting percentage — and have the league’s best assist-to-turnover ratio.
They’ve knocked down the most corner 3s — long considered a sign of offensive effectiveness because of the movement and spacing needed to generate them. No team has shot better (60% from the field) or scored more on a per-chance basis (an eye-popping 154 points per 100 possessions) in decisive, end-of-game scenarios than the Cavaliers.
And perhaps most noteworthy: Cleveland scores more than any team whenever it runs in transition, something that Atkinson saw right away needed improvement during offseason workouts.
“We’d have three guys — Donovan, Darius and sometimes Caris [LeVert] — in the backcourt waiting to bring the ball up after a rebound,” Atkinson told ESPN. “It’s not some earth-shattering thing; we mostly just wanted guys to run without the ball. We call it selfless running. A lot of it was being comfortable with Evan rebounding and pushing so we can get quicker, easier looks on offense.”
The added freedom is part of the reason the Cavs, who ranked 24th in pace last season, boast the sixth-fastest offense.
Perhaps we should have expected this level of dominance from Cleveland before now. The club’s core had shown an incredible amount of potential off the bat … back in 2022.
That year, in Mitchell’s first season with the Cavs and Mobley’s rookie campaign, Cleveland managed to outscore opponents by 5.6 points per 100 possessions, the second-highest rate in the league. The defense was dominant, limiting opponents to an NBA-best 109.9 points per 100 plays, but the offense was also incredibly solid and tied for seventh in efficiency. Generally speaking, teams that have gone on to win NBA championships tend to rank in, or just outside, the top 10 on both sides of the ball. (Of the past 20 teams to win it all, 18 fit that designation.)
So for the Cavs’ core to illustrate that kind of synergy in its first year — especially on defense with two smaller guards in Garland and Mitchell — was eye-opening. All the club needed, beyond staying healthy, was a way to further unlock the offense.
“Our defensive side of the ball was already good,” Garland said earlier this season. “Getting more offense in our repertoire [was] a must.”
Enter Atkinson, hired in June after a three-season stint as the Golden State Warriors top assistant. The 57-year-old, who won praise for his player-development chops as the Brooklyn Nets coach from 2016 to 2020, estimated that 70% of his interview for the Cavs gig centered on the question of how he planned to use Mobley.
The answer has been clear: Mobley has served as a pick-and-roll ball handler 145 times this season, more than double the 58 tries he had last season. The looks have been more efficient, too, generating 110 points per 100 plays, a five-point increase since 2023-24.
The easier looks have simplified things for each of Cleveland’s stars. Allen had an outstanding 25-point, 11-rebound, 6-assist effort in last week’s win over the Thunder. Mobley is thriving in all aspects, driving more than he ever has while hitting 3s at a career-best 42% clip. Garland’s never been this efficient — not even throughout his All-Star season in 2022 — and is generating more points per play as pick-and-roll ball handler than any other NBA player.
And while Mitchell’s scoring, rebounding and assists are down, it comes with an obvious reason — and a need. After missing the end of the last postseason due to injury, Mitchell, 28, is playing the fewest minutes of his career thanks to the Cavs’ blowout victories, something that could help keep him fresh come June.
Cleveland’s best path to 70 wins? Playing like it’s already the postseason
Earlier this week, the Indiana Pacers snapped Cleveland’s 12-game win streak, crystallizing one of the concerns league observers have about the Cavs: How will Atkinson’s dominant, up-tempo offense hold up when things tighten considerably in a playoff setting?
The Pacers, who were enjoying a five-game win streak of their own, knocked Cleveland off its square Sunday by applying full-court pressure in the second half, swarming Garland, Mitchell and even backup wing Max Strus as they brought up the ball. The effort generated three Pacers’ backcourt steals in the third quarter, and Indiana — despite playing without All-Star guard Tyrese Haliburton in the second half — embarked on a 32-7 run fueled by Cavs’ miscues.
The loss stung — “I wouldn’t say we were shook, but our eyes were wide open, certainly,” Atkinson said — enough to where the club challenged itself to view the Tuesday rematch with the Pacers as if it was Game 2 of a playoff series, with Indiana up 1-0. On cue, the Cavs bounced back, flustering Pascal Siakam and the Pacers with a second-half zone defense.
Privately, members of the Cavs will tell you the 70-win mark doesn’t mean much. (ESPN Analytics gives them an 8% probability of getting there and joining the 2016 Warriors and 1996 Chicago Bulls.) Working against Cleveland’s chances is one of the league’s 10 toughest remaining schedules and a 6.5-game cushion atop the East that should remove any urgency to keep the No. 1 seed down the stretch.
And it’s totally fair to wonder how Cleveland will perform in the playoffs, given the slower tempo. Transition chances, where the Cavs have thrived, will be fewer. Still, Cleveland appears to have enough balance to hold its own.
Mobley handling the ball more now can only help in higher pressure playoff moments that figure to come. The team is an NBA-best 14-2 in clutch scenarios — when the score is within five points in the last five minutes — where games slow to a crawl and teams entrust possessions to their best offensive players.
The Cavs have shot the ball historically well — shooting 3.2 percentage points above expectation from 3-point range, Cleveland ranks as the second-best shooting club from distance in the league’s decade-old tracking era — and those looks haven’t been limited merely to catch-and-shoot opportunities. In fact, the team ranks as the NBA’s most accurate at catch-and-shoot 3’s and the best at off-the-dribble ones, a lethal combination that shows the Cavs are plenty comfortable creating for themselves.
It’s also worth noting how and where Atkinson has changed the club defensively and the ways that could change its playoff outlook. Cleveland has switched more than 38% of opponents’ on-ball screens, the highest rate in the NBA and more than double the team’s 18% mark a season ago.
“The team’s [defensive] base system is amazing, and I give [Bickerstaff] huge credit, because it’s so smart and good. We still use it most of the time, but you have to be able to switch in the playoffs,” Atkinson said.
“I used to say, ‘Do what you do, and do it well.’ But in my experience working with Steve [Kerr] and Mike [Brown], I learned that you have to try certain things during the regular season to give yourself a decent amount of experience with it for the playoffs.”
With Allen switching twice as much as he did a season ago and Mobley switching nearly three times as frequently, the two big men are put in spots where they are forced to guard one-on-one more often. The Cavaliers have defended more isolations per game (22.1) than any team. It’s an outcome they have grown comfortable with — particularly when wings settle for long jumpers or seek to get to the basket — as Cleveland ranks in the league’s top five in rim protection.
Only time will tell whether the Cavs are fully ready to play deep into June. But the added versatility and optionality they’ve shown on both ends under Atkinson gives the group its best chance yet to prove it’s more than a regular-season juggernaut.
Source: espn.com