As we are all forced to watch the Lakers win the NBA Championship tonight while listening to Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson deify Kobe Bryant, who won this championship because he grew so much as a player and leader and “wanted it so bad”…or maybe it was just that the Grizzlies gave away Pau Gasol and the Magic did the same with Trevor Ariza, I don’t know, much of the Cavs talk today has focused on the possible trade for Shaquille O’Neal (a trade that Brian Windhorst puts at less than 50% odds). I was emailing with a couple of friends earlier discussing the addition of Shaq, and we started talking about how far away this Cavs team is away from winning a championship. This is an excellent thing to debate.
First, the facts. The Cavs won 66 games in the regular season. They had the highest point differential in the league at +8.92, a full 1.27 points better than the second rated team, the Lakers (point differential is a key statistic in that it measures offensive and defensive efficiency; in short, the difference between how many points you score per possession and how many you give up). They were also 3-6 against the Lakers, Celtics, and Magic, going 0-6 on the road. Ultimately, the Cavs lost in the Conference Finals 2-4 against an Orlando team that lost to the Lakers in the NBA Finals 1-4.
The tendency is to look at the Cavs-Magic series as the real indicator of the team’s level of performance, i.e. place six games in a row against a single team in front of 82 games against 29 other teams as the lead piece of research when determing what pieces to add or subtract to the roster.
On some level, this makes sense - one could assume the Cavs will have to beat Orlando next year in order to make it to the Finals, and therefore, the team must be geared towards playing and defeating the Magic. Further, the popular thought is that the Cavs lost to Orlando because of match-up problems, namely the inability to guard Da-wight one-on-one in the post and the lack of a perimeter player with the length to effectively contest the shots of 6’10” Hedo Turkoglu and 6’10” Rashard Lewis.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that over the course of the series the Magic were only +15 against the Cavs, including the deciding Game 6, a 13 point victory for the Magic. That means the first 5 games were determined by a total of 2 points, including a pair of 1 point games and one 2 point victory. Inarguably then, 3 of the 6 games were decided by one made basket. This shouldn’t be forgotten, as in close games, the impact of chance is magnified (see Delonte hitting a loose ball out of bounds that Bron might have been able to get to after a missed Pietrus 3, followed by a Lewis made 3 off the out of bounds play in Game 4). In other words, if one ball bounces differently, one shot rattles in or out, and any one of those three games could have ended with the other team winning. The Magic won 2 of the 3 games in question. The Cavs easily could have won all 3..or lost all 3…but the margin for the team to achieve victory was miniscule enough that it could be attributable to chance.
As for the above-referenced perceived match-up problems, comparing the Magic’s regular season numbers (45.7% FG + 38.1% 3PT) vs. their EC Finals numbers (48.2%FG + 40.8% 3PT) you could make a solid argument that the Cavs didn’t defend them well. Of course, you could also argue that the Magic simply got hot - they shot far worse during the Lakers series - and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Having said that, there is at least one statistic from the Magic that’s unattributable to anything the Cavs did - Da-wight Howard’s free throw percentage. Da-wight was 47-67 from the free throw line during the series for 70.1% up from 59.4% during the regular season. Another way to say it is that Da-wight made about 7 more free throws than we could have expected him to make during the series, points which very well could’ve determined the winner given the small margin of victory in so many games.
Obviously, we could go down the line and talk about how poorly Mo Williams shot for the series, how great LeBron shot, Pietrus’s surprising performance, etc. etc. The Cavs had match-up advantages at the 1 and 2 that didn’t pan out over the 6 games as the season-long sampling suggested they would have. Part of this could have something to do with switching the match-ups, so Delonte was on Hedo and LeBron was on Courtney Lee - whether that came as LeBron’s decision or Coldstone’s (our nickname for Mike Brown due to his affinity for Coldstone Creamery) we’ll never know…but I can bet that if LeBron had told Coach he wanted to check Hedo he would’ve been checking Hedo. Had Bron done that one of the Cavs’ three perceived match-up problems would have been gone.
What I’m arguing, essentially, is that while there are a ton of variables, the overall point remains the same - the series was very, very close.
It would seem then to be an overreaction to jump up and down and say that the Cavs need a complete overhaul in order to win a NBA Championship, particularly since both Gortat and Hedo will likely be gone from Orlando next year, and we’ll have to see whether or not Jameer Nelson’s production this year - when he wasn’t injured - was an aberration/career year or a new found level of achievement that he’ll meet consistently from now on. Yes, regular season losses to Orlando and Boston, on the road, and L.A., at home and on the road, should be factored in as well - but precisely how, well, that’s another story, as it’s difficult to pull 6 games out of 82 - some of which were marred by injuries - and determine their importance. There’s that number again…6 games.
As bad as the loss to the Magic in the EC Finals may have felt for Cavs fans, it’s important to remember that the team was a handful of makes and Orlando misses away from the NBA Finals - and if either, or both, of those things had happened instead of writing this post, I’m writing about a Cavs championship, a Game 7 on Tuesday, or what the Cavs need in order to beat the Lakers next year. Right now all these things are hypotheticals and, coming on the heels of 66 wins and the best point differential in the game, logic suggests the Cavs are not that far away at all….
*M*
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