The Cavs abandoned their offensive identity in the playoffs

Cavs lost track of what got them there.

The Cleveland Cavaliers had a historically dominant offense in the regular season. They led the league in effective field goal percentage and boasted the second-highest offensive rating ever.

All of that meant nothing as they finished the second round shooting below 30% from deep in an embarrassing five-game departure. Everyone is now trying to unpack how this high-powered offense was so lifeless against the Indiana Pacers.

Did Cleveland’s offensive system fail them? Or did the Cavaliers perhaps abandon the principles that got them there? Both are worth examining.

What happened to the ball movement?

The Cavaliers’ strength during the regular season was their offense. They were surgical with their approach, moving the ball with a purpose and hitting their opponent so quickly that the defense struggled to keep up.

Cleveland didn’t pass the ball as often as other teams (third-fewest passes per game), but they did share the ball and get into their offense quickly. The Cavs were sixth in secondary (hockey) assists in the regular season as they often ran multiple actions within any given offensive possession. This was a product of pushing the pace (10th fastest in the league) and having two dynamic guards who could run the show.

For reference, a successful Cavs possession looked something like this: Early attack, multiple guys touch the ball, and it results in an open look (that goes in).

As you might have guessed, the Cavs didn’t look like this very often in Round Two against Indiana.

Indiana passed the ball 239 more times than Cleveland in the final two games of the series. Over 71% of the Cavs’ field goals in Game 5 were unassisted. That’s miles above their regular season average of 36% unassisted field goals — and ranks as the second-highest unassisted percentage in a playoff game of the last 8 seasons.

So did the Cavs just decide to stop passing the ball? That’s possible. But there are more interesting contributing factors to discuss.

How to rush an elite offense

We’ve established that the Cavs’ offense wasn’t running as smoothly as before. Now let’s talk about what the Pacers did to ensure this would happen.

Indiana’s defense wasn’t a powerhouse in the regular season. They ranked 13th according to Cleaning the Glass, making them a respectable yet beatable defense. Something this rating couldn’t account for, however, was their ability to pressure the ball in a playoff setting.

The Pacers’ full-court press was a nightmare. Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith can’t anchor an elite defense on their own — but they can wreak havoc in the backcourt. Their speed and physicality made it so that Cleveland had to fight to get the ball up the floor on every possession.

Why is this important? Check the clock on some of these Cavalier possessions. By the time they break the press and get into their first offense set, they’ve already burned half the shot clock.

Not only were the Cavs exhausted by the time they crossed half court, but now they had less time to make something happen. The offense dissolved into one-pass possessions or pull-up jumpers out of necessity. This isn’t a lack of effort. It’s exhaustion leading to bad decisions.

It’s a credit to Indiana for executing their game plan to perfection. If you want to force a team into playing rushed offense — then you have to slow them down in the backcourt first.

The Pacers threw a wrench into Cleveland’s game plan. And it only got worse as the series went on. The Cavs had no answers.

No one stepped up

Watching these games, you may have asked yourself why Sam Merrill, Isaac Okoro and Max Strus were effectively playing point guard for long stretches. Well, that’s because Darius Garland was either on the sideline or limping up the court. And if you start placing more weight on Donovan Mitchell’s shoulders, he might collapse.

Cavs aren’t at their best when Mitchell has to do it all. Two previous years of playoff failures were enough to know that. But the Cavs found themselves with relatively no choice once Garland suffered a toe injury and the rest of the supporting cast went cold.

I can’t blame Mitchell for taking it upon himself to score in bunches — and he nearly pulled it off in Game 2 with an incredible 48 points — but it’s still not ideal for Mitchell to be shouldering this much of the load.

Mitchell has the fourth-highest career usage rate in NBA Playoff history at 34.5%. In the second round versus Indiana, Mitchell was posting a usage rate of 38.1%. That’s just not sustainable.

The Pacers understood this. And they showed no mercy. Indiana hounded Mitchell up the floor and made it so the Cavs couldn’t afford to waste Mitchell as a press-breaker. This left Cleveland with no alternative. The clock became their enemy for the first time all season — and the results speak for themselves.

A healthy Garland changes things. A better version of Ty Jerome or an outlier shooting performance from anyone on the bench would have been a miracle. Instead, the Cavs’ depth that was so crucial all season was nowhere to be found. No one stepped up.

It’s fair to say that at least some of Cleveland’s poor shooting in this series was due to bad luck. But the decrease in efficiency was too steep to ignore. Their lack of ball movement was damning. This wasn’t how the Cavs played when they won 64 games in the regular season. Abandoning the process that got them here was the most disappointing fact of it all.