The Cleveland Cavaliers avoided a tragic upset by defeating the Orlando Magic in the first round of the playoffs in a full seven games. They won their first series without LeBron James since 1993, and they needed the largest Game 7 comeback win in NBA history to do it. It’s an ecstatic night for the city of Cleveland, but they’ll need to reset rather quickly with their series against the Boston Celtics coming in hot. The Cavs did enough to win their series, if only just, but they’ll need to learn a lot from their battle against the Magic.
Mitchell Needs to Stay Inside
Donovan Mitchell was unstoppable in games 6 and 7 in a very specific way. Despite the Magic having an excellent defense with guys like Jalen Suggs on the perimeter and Jonathan Isaac roaming the paint, Mitchell was near flawless going inside. His ability to penetrate and finish at the rim was mesmerizing. Less so was his jump shot. He’s been pretty bad at anything outside of the paint. While he’s shooting an insane 60% inside 14 feet, 15, and out, he’s at 28%. That’s an extreme tale of two players. The off-balance fade-away middys he’s taking can keep the defense honest, but sticking to his strength right now will go a long way.
Mitchell led from the front, scoring 89 combined points in Games 6 and 7, second only to Allen Iverson in NBA history. His energy kept the Cavs afloat, and he kept everyone’s heads up when things could have really gone awry. There’s no telling what Mitchell intends to do, but acting like he has a foot out the door is a mistake. The guy that played today is leaving it all out on the floor.
Mobley Needs to Step Up on the Offense
With Jarrett Allen out for now, the Cavs need Mobley to start helping out on offense. His defense has been excellent. By advanced numbers, Jonathan Isaac is arguably the best defender in the league. He couldn’t touch Mobley in terms of impact on the defensive end. While Mitchell and even Caris LeVert were cutting through the Magic often, Mobley locked up his side. He himself had more blocks than most teams in the first round. That being said, the offense was nearly unacceptable. He’s rushing a lot of plays as if he is desperate to get rid of the ball ASAP. That’s causing missed bunnies and silly turnovers. If Allen isn’t going to provide scoring help inside, Mobley needs to be something on offense.
It’s a similar story for Darius Garland. He’s been up and down all season, and that has extended to the playoffs. This Game 7 was shaping up to be a disaster class, but he managed to pull out of the spiral by the end and helped close out the Magic. Mitchell needs his running mate if they want to have a chance against the Boston Celtics.
Strus Needs to Shoot
That sentiment goes for all of the non-Mitchell Cavs. They were a top-ten three-point shooting team in the regular season, and a big part of their success was tied to that improvement. That fell apart in the first-round series. It’s understandable to get gun-shy when the Cavs were shooting as bad as they were, but it was getting dangerously bad. The Cavs averaged 36.8 threes taken in the regular season, good for eighth in the league. In the playoffs, that dropped all the way to 29.8 per game. That would rank dead last in the regular season, and in the playoffs, it was the bottom three.
Max Strus hit some critical threes in Game 7, finally. The Cavs need more of that. He’s a good shooter that needs to be taking at least six per game, preferably more, but he was much closer to five this series. Garland and Okoro were also well below their normal pace, and you could see all three guys passing up shots.
To their credit, Sam Merrill and Georges Niang tried to shoot their shots in their heavily limited minutes. Unfortunately, Niang was ungodly inaccurate all series. Merrill made a massive impact in Game 7 and needs to keep it up against the Celtics. The Celtics can bomb it with the best of them, and all of these Cavs who shot fairly well in the regular season NEED to step up their three-ball to have any chance of keeping up. They showed they can do it in the regular season, and a repeat performance of round 1 will not fly.
Patrick Yen is a contributor on Back Sports Page. He has written for NBC, SB Nation and a few more websites in his four-year sports journalism career. He has been the Back Sports Page beat writer for the Philadelphia 76ers and now the Cleveland Cavaliers. Patrick, a graduate from the Ohio State University, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but moved to Columbus, Ohio early in his life and has lived there ever since. You can find more of Patrick on Twitter @pyen117.
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