Smart basketball? Winning habits? What are the Cavs asking themselves?
It’s been a whirlwind season for LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, with fans enduring ups and downs like passengers on one of Cedar Point’s world-famous roller coasters. The Cavs have had their fair share of success this year as the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference, but one thing they have lacked to this point is consistency.
Consistency and winning go hand-in-hand when it comes to the game of basketball, which Spurs’ Gregg Popovich describes as “a pretty simple game,” with a winning formula that demands “consistency and competitiveness.” Now, the Cavs have won a lot of games this season, but in a year marred by controversy and contention, a lack of consistency has many fans worried. Worried about their team, and a city’s chance for a long awaited championship.
In fact, just about the only thing that’s been consistent for the Cavs is inconsistency. For every 23-point road victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder, there’s a 29-point blowout loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. For every win against a historically great squad like the San Antonio Spurs, there’s an equally bad loss against the lowly Brooklyn Nets. The Cavs just can’t seem to keep it together. Call it a dent in focus, a lack of composure or just regular season shenanigans; the playoffs give only so many chances.
April is the perfect embodiment of what LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers are going through this season. The Cavs blew a 19-point lead to fall to the middling Houston Rockets. They followed that up with a dominant 20-point win against the Nets on Wednesday, only lose another 20-point lead to the Atlanta Hawks Friday night, before coming back and winning in overtime. Just this past weekend, in a game that would clinch the No. 1 seed in the East and eliminate the Chicago Bulls from the playoffs, the Cavs fell behind 16-2 in the fourth quarter only to finish with another “too little, too late” rally.
As the NBA Playoffs draw ever closer, one question lingers over the heads of the Cleveland Cavaliers – do they have enough to win? At this point, fans are tired of asking if they will have enough to get it done in the playoffs.
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Many critics are quick to state the importance of a team’s ability to come together down the stretch. They must begin to hit a run of dominance in the latter half of the regular season in order to see that success translate in the postseason. With the Cavs seemingly lacking in that regard, does a lack of consistency spell doom for the city of Cleveland? Can a team win it all without consistent play down the stretch?
Looking back at past examples, this particular narrative has become a bit overblown. Of the past 10 NBA Champions, only six finished the regular season winning more than two-thirds of their final 15 games.
The 2006 Miami Heat went 7-8 down the stretch. Their 2012 South Beach counterparts went 9-6. The 2010 Los Angeles Lakers struggled as well, finishing the season with an 8-7 record. After all that, LeBron’s Heat and Kobe’s Lakers only needed five games to dispatch their Finals adversaries after a rocky end to the regular season. So much for consistency.
Moving on to other sports – hockey and baseball, specifically, for their similar utilization of a series style playoffs – we see many of the same trends. In the NHL, three of the past five Stanley Cup Champions have finished the season with a record of 8-5-2 or worse. As for Major League Baseball, each of the previous three World Series Champions went 9-6 or worse down the stretch. The key for them was consistent play in the playoffs, not the regular season. You can’t win a championship (or get in the playoffs) off a mediocre regular season, but any sports enthusiast can surmise the difference in intensity, pressure and stakes when you enter the playoffs.
Look no further than to the last time in 2012, when you’ll find LeBron James in the same situation in Miami. The Heat were well into their second season as a “Big Three,” coming off a Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks, and questions lingered as to whether LeBron & Co. had what it takes to get it done in the postseason. After a relatively solid start to the season, the Heat began to show serious signs of weakness after the All-Star Break, losing to lowly lottery teams like the Wizards, Jazz and Bucks. The media spread rumors of a lack of team cohesion, with players still failing to find their roles in a team full of superstars and their coach was on the hot seat. Sound familiar?
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Irrespective of a faltering regular season, James and the Heat turned it on in the playoffs and ultimately dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder in just five games to give LeBron his first ring. They effectively put the controversy and the questions behind them and came together as a unit to demolish all in their way. Why can’t the Cavs do the same?
For the Cavs, the keys to having a successful playoff run are not consistency, but efficiency. If they want to stand a chance against the behemoths in the West – San Antonio and Golden State – the need to ditch the incessant isolations, pass the ball and lock-in on defense. That involves Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving breaking out of their respective shooting slumps and playing close to their full potential.
With less than a week left in the regular season, now is the time to build on these winning habits and get into a groove. The win-loss record is unimportant at this point. What is important is that Irving, Love and Iman Shumpert start hitting their shots again. LeBron and Kyrie need to learn to not revert to constant isolation and a lack of off-ball movement when the going gets tough. They need to lock-in on defense and, most importantly, communicate.
Last year’s Cavaliers showed us they have a second gear when they took a healthy Golden State Warriors to six games without two former All-Stars in Love and Irving.
As history has shown us, crazier things have happened.
