It’s finally here, on Sunday our Cavaliers will continue their unfinished business and get their playoff quest underway. That quest begins against the young and exciting Detroit Pistons, a team that is definitely not the ideal first round matchup. But fear not Cavs Nation, Detroit already has some kinks in the armor that LeBron and company will be ready to target.
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We all know the Cavs aren’t exactly the deepest team in the league, but when you have three All-Stars in your starting five who needs a bench, right? Bench scoring was a weakness for the Cavs all season, as Cleveland finished the season 28th in the NBA for bench scoring per game with 28.1 points. But the team that finished dead last just happens to be those boys from the Motor City, finishing with 26.2 bench points a night.
The Pistons rely heavily on their starters, with their bench players playing a league lowest 15.5 minutes per night. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope plays 36.7 minutes a night, Marcus Morris plays 35.7, Tobias Harris plays 33.4, and Andre Drummond plays 32.9 per game, all more than Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love per night. Caldwell-Pope and Morris even play more minutes every night than the King himself, LeBron James. This simply means that Cleveland’s bench players will have to prepare themselves to matchup against Detroit’s starters.
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To be completely honest, Dellavedova and Mozgov are probably good enough to start for half of the league’s teams. For Cleveland to have those guys ready to check in from the bench is a really nice advantage right from the opening tip. Mozgov started more than half of Cleveland’s games this season, and Delly held the fort early on in the year while Kyrie Irving was on the recovery path from last season’s devastating knee injury. Add in the veteran knowledge of Richard Jefferson’s 795 career starts and Channing Frye’s 423 career starts and things just continue to sway in the favor of the Wine and Golders.
The five leading scorers for the Pistons are unsurprisingly their entire starting five. These guys play heavy minutes every single night, and will not only have to deal with Cleveland’s Eastern Conference best starting five, they’ll have to contend with our hungry-as-ever bench. Coach Lue’s bench might not be the deepest in the league but when used in the right rotations, guys like Frye, Shumpert and Delly can be really quite potent on the offensive end. Delly and Tristan Thompson rank amongst the league’s best when it comes to pick and roll efficiency, and watching Channing Frye as the trailing three point bomber with LeBron and Kyrie running a break is a thing of beauty.
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Bench productivity could very well be the difference in this entire series, and you can guarantee that both teams have done their homework on rotations and which ones to try and exploit.
