Stonewall in Cleveland, In-Sync Nuggets, and the Bizarro Knicks
Game 1 Takeaways (Part One) for CLE-ORL, DEN-LAL, NYK-PHI
I wanted to write this more up-to-date, meaning delivering this on Sunday, but a busy weekend (as I have some great personal things going on in life in the next few weeks) got in the way of basketball and writing. I’ve caught some time to watch and write down some of my notes from the game into (I hope) thoughtful sentences that don’t rely on numbers and charts that much.
This is the process I’ve had on my other blog websites in the past years, come playoff time, I don’t try to force “analytics” if I can’t, or if there is no place for it. The most useful thing in my opinion is to make useful conclusions from the vast data coming from the regular season and try to tone down the overreactions coming from single-game outliers.
So with that in mind, let’s go ahead and start to write some words.
CLE-ORL - game 1
The Cavs are my favorite team, and I’ve been heavily following them throughout the season, so as many other teams, I’ve also been aware of their issues on the offensive side, especially when it comes to spacing. But the thing with the Cavs and their loss in the last game of the regular season is that Orlando Magic is probably the best matchup for them, and they’re the team where the Cavs’ starting lineup can shine the most.
Defensive stonewall
One of the reasons I was confident in the Cavs advancing to the 2nd round is the big man duo of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. They have caused so many issues in the flow of the Magic’s game. The young Orlando team is thriving in driving toward the rim, and they take most of their shots inside the restricted area, but the Cavs are among the top of the league in FG% allowed at the rim.
So throughout the game, Banchero and Wagner kept attacking Mobley, and they got stuck either in an iso game vs him, or Allen came by and helped out. Mobley stood his ground in isolations as well as help defense, and he was a constant pest on the defensive side of the ball.
Both of the Cavs’ big men have also shown off on the offensive side, as Mobley opened the game with 2 3-pointers, and plenty of self-created shots, while Allen was a constant roll threat through the game.
Poor Shooting
Both teams shot extremely poorly from the 3-point line. The Cavs finished at 26%, while the Magic shot a lowly 21%. The 5% difference stood by throughout the regular season so we didn’t have a huge swing - both teams were just poor at shooting.
The geometry on the court doesn’t differ that much between the two teams. The paint often gets crowded when the Magic has the ball, and the Cavs try to stretch the floor as much as they can by moving Mobley to the opposite side of the ball, but teams can still slack off of him. I already mentioned that they involved him more in his shot creation, which then kept the Magic on their toes.
Because of geometry, and the fact that the Magic simply have less talented shooters than the Cavs I believe that this trend of poor shooting might continue throughout the series.
Star Power
Donovan Mitchell is still the biggest star of this series, and he’s shown it in several mini-streaks in the 1st game. Some of those streaks happened when the stagger started for the Cavs (meaning that one of Mobley/Allen is on the bench - usually Allen plays with Mitchell). But at that point, Donovan was able to penetrate the lane more deeper than with both big men on the court, and when he’s able to reach the paint, he can score really efficiently.
Banchero still isn’t at this level, his decision-making is still off, and he isn’t a complete scorer on the offense, and that might be another reason why the Cavs are the favorites in this series.
DEN-LAL game 1
Boy oh boy, this was a great game. The Lakers played an amazing game. But the Nuggets were just better. I don’t like these cliche sayings, but the Lakers tried many things in this game to stop one of the best, if not the best, halfcourt offenses. On offense, they also tried to relieve LeBron of too much creation, but in the end, mostly offense by him and/or Davis turned out to be a good and solid offense.
Complete synchronization by Nuggets
As I said in the first couple of sentences, I have felt that the Lakers have played a really good game, their rotations have mostly been clean and on point, but then some details show up in the Nuggets game that is just mind-blowing how in sync they are.
In this action, everything is played well, but then in the end Reaves is hesitant in his final rotation and that leaves just enough space and time for Michael Porter Jr. to drain a 3-pointer.
Let’s look at a play where we can see a usual rotation performed by the Nuggets where a guard that tags the roller rotates to the ATB shooter, and the other guard rotates to the corner. Everything is done in sync, without hesitation, and crispy.
The same thing can be seen on the offensive side. Very often it seems like they’re telepathic.
This play ended up with only a foul on the Lakers but it shows a very good example of smart and intended movements. MPJ cuts to the center to take away weakside help, Murray dives to the corner to get open, and Gordon cuts towards the paint as well. The play ended up in a mismatch down low that could’ve ended up with and-1 for Gordon.
This is one of the “less sexy” examples, there are plenty of Nuggets movements that freeze defenses.
AD and LeBron can’t do it alone
If anyone talks anything negatively about either of these players, they clearly haven’t watched the game. They were carrying their teams in periods when both were on court or only one of them. Periods at the start of the 2nd and 4th periods were a time for Davis to feast. In 2nd he managed to dismantle DeAndre Jordan’s attempts to defend him, while in the 4th the Nuggets switched it up a bit, but Davis managed to play strong through it.
The rest of the team was very reserved in their attempts, or just missed shots. Reaves, Hachimura, and Prince combined for 20 shot attempts, the same amount as D’Angelo Russell, and the biggest issue here is Russell’s 1/9 from the 3-point line.
The weird and sad thing for the Lakers is that almost all of his shot attempts were good and practically open shots, but he just couldn’t knock them down. And Russell was generally good in the game, he kept attacking the paint, and managed to score inside of it, or on the mid-range, but was dead cold behind the arc. Had he shot 4/9 the game could have swung in a completely different direction.
Nuggets 2nd chance point comeback
The Nuggets had their own 3-point shooting crisis in the 1st half. That was one of the reasons they were behind in that half. But they scored 11 second-chance points in the 1st half, and 18 throughout the game. Late in the 2nd quarter, they even managed to score on putbacks 3 possessions in a row to nullify all the good things the Lakers were doing on the other side of the ball (and contesting the shots well).
This is something the Lakers have to keep in their mind and work on for game 2.
NYK-PHI game 1
A thrilling game that will definitely give us a thrilling 1st round.
Bizarro Knicks
The Knicks and Thibs are known for running their starters to the ground, they were also among the “worst” teams in bench points this season yet their best periods of the game came when Bojan Bogdanović, Miles McBride, and Mitchell Robinson, all bench players, were in the game. Bogdanović managed to give first aid to the Knicks at the start of 2nd quarter, and McBride took that impulse and converted it into a huge lead by the end of a half.
The two of them even managed to cement Donte DiVincenzo to the bench in the 4th quarter, who had an off night for the Knicks.
This 4th quarter 3-pointer was crucial in keeping the lead while Brunson was taking a breather. Such shots aren’t uncommon as McBride shined throughout the season, with many injuries that forced the Knicks into heavy changes in their starting lineup. He was also the reason why the Knicks went on and pulled the trigger on a trade for OG Anunoby (who also had a good game, on both sides of the ball).
This is only a sign that Thibs counts on everyone, and isn’t going to be stubborn and sit his shooters who are on a hot streak.
Offensive rebounding and Mitchell Robinson - a 16-game player
It seems like Mitchell Robinson does this every year during the playoffs. Do the dirty work, defend their best big men, crash the offensive glass, be a menace, and overall just make himself a nightmare for the opposing teams. Robinson was great at defending Embiid, managed to stay in front of him, and (most of the time) did not get run over when Joel was driving. Robinson ended the game with only 8 points, but massive 12 rebounds (7 offensive), 1 steal, and 4 blocks.
The rest of the team is also very good at crashing the boards, as the Knicks in total had 23 offensive rebounds, an overall bonkers number. Their tenacity led them to 26 second chance points which were a huge factor in this win.
Positive signals for the 76ers
Tyrese Maxey continued his breakout season into the playoffs. He performed some ridiculous maneuvers through the Knicks’ defense both with and without Embiid on the court.
This sort of play was a common occurrence throughout the game, and Maxey scored 5 buckets in the 3rd quarter when the 76ers came back from a large deficit. That alone was a good indicator that the 76ers have additional firepower along with Joel Embiid who seemed to be unscathed by the awkward landing in the 2nd quarter. Embiid missed some shots, but in my opinion, had a good game. His playmaking is becoming elite and generates some easy shots for teammates.
Weird 2-3 zone
This is still a part of the “positive signals” section, as Nick Nurse managed to throw off the Knicks a bit by playing a super “high” 2-3 zone with plenty of weak spots that the Knicks just couldn’t expose.
It was a zone where the 2 guards weren’t way above the 3-point line, and the 3 players stood at the level of the FT line. Weird setup of a 2-3 zone that often seemed to have wide-open players in the dunker spot, but maybe the passing angles just weren’t good enough for the Knicks’ guards who were at times closer to the center line than the 3-point line.
Looking forward to seeing more of these weird defensive setups.
I have to admit that this took more time than I thought so. I did some podcasts a couple of years ago, and I realized that you can say a LOT more things in one hour than you can write in 3 hours. Or maybe I just suck at writing. But it’s tough to combine the thoughts with videos and make it out so that everything makes sense. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed these game reviews, I tried to touch on all games that will be played today, on Monday.
I’ll try to write more of similar content throughout the playoffs, but maybe with more focus on only some series, I don’t really think we need to go in-depth about Boston-Miami, from everything I’ve seen for now.
Also, I apologize for not posting last week, I still felt a bit sick the past week so decided to take a week off. I had some thoughts about the play-in games, especially the 7-8 matchups but didn’t manage to write anything that made sense in the end as then I had the weekend already lined up for me.
Thanks for reading and have a nice, basketball-filled week!