As a result of Wednesday night’s 98-95 victory, the Cleveland Cavaliers find themselves up three games to two in their first-round playoff series against the Indiana Pacers. And while there have been several notable storylines in this series, there is one that is flying under the radar, as they say.
Following Wednesday night’s game, Cavs head coach Tyronn Lue and three-time champion LeBron James gave credit to J.R. Smith for his defense on Pacers guard Victor Oladipo in this series.
“Swish,” as Smith is more commonly known, went scoreless in Game 4 (0-for-8 shooting from the field and 0-for-6 from beyond the arc). However, he did manage to grab two steals, and his pressure on Oladipo continues to give the Pacers problems.
“Second half I thought defensively JR was good,” coach Lue told Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com. “He was a little mad at himself in the first half because he missed some open shots. But if he is playing defense like he did on Victor — what’d he finish with? — 2-of-15, 12 points then we’ll take that. We relied on our defense tonight and did a good job.”
To be fair, Oladipo went off in Game 1 of this series, scoring a playoff career-high 32 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field. Since then, however, Smith and the Cavs have clamped down on the defensive end of the floor. According to Vardon, Oladipo is averaging 15.6 points on 12-of-50 from the field and 5-of-23 from 3-point range in the last three games, two of which were Cleveland wins.
“JR was fantastic,” James told Cleveland.com during his post-game interview. “Just trying to make Oladipo feel him out on the floor. Make it tough on him. I mean, Oladipo is an All-Star for a reason and he puts so much pressure on your defense. So for JR to take the challenge, we just try to be his eyes and ears behind him. Because when you’re playing on the ball, sometimes you don’t know what’s going on behind you — a lot of times you don’t know what’s going on behind you. And that sort of communication has to be at an all-time high. And we just try to make it where like we say, we can be his rearview.
“But he’s been great the last … he’s been great in the series, period, defensively,” James continued. “And I told him after the game, ‘Listen, every shot that you took tonight, I felt like they were going in.’ He had some really, really good looks but he never let that get to interfere with the defensive side and he was great.”
Though he struggled to find his shooting stroke in Wednesday’s game, Smith’s defensive intensity helped change Cleveland’s third-quarter narrative.
“Just tried to be more physical, stay on his body more, as much as possible,” Smith said. “Whenever he’s not in the scoring area, just trying to deny him the ball and make it tough.”
Game 6 is set to tip inside Bankers Life Fieldhouse at 8:00 p.m. EST on Friday night with ESPN, FOX Sports Ohio and FOX Sports Indiana having live broadcast coverage. Let’s see if the Cavs can keep their momentum rolling.