How inefficient hero-ball is helping the Cavs hang with the Warriors
High-usage, isolation basketball is usually where efficiency goes to die.
But desperate times call for equally desperate measures - necessary evils, if you will. And with LeBron James leading an undermanned collection of limited talent into battle against the top-seeded Golden State Warriors, the already iso-heavy Cleveland Cavaliers have taken things up a notch.
You'd think opting for hero-ball against an all-time Warriors team that's dominated both ends of the court would be a recipe for disaster, particularly with James shooting so poorly. Yet the Cavs secured an improbable split at Oracle Arena to open the NBA Finals.
So how did this overmatched team - playing an outdated brand of basketball - come within an Iman Shumpert prayer of heading back to The Q with a 2-0 series lead?
Believe it or not, that inefficient hero-ball and its subsequent side effects are a big part of the answer.
Outside of having the best player on the planet, the Irving-less, Love-less Cavs are at a significant talent disadvantage, and the worst thing an underdog team can do is play at a fast pace.
A faster pace means more possessions, and more possessions mean more opportunities for the vastly superior team to assert their superiority. Simply put, talent usually wins out over a larger sample size, so the best thing Cleveland can do is limit the amount of possessions on a game-to-game basis.
By running their offense through predictable James isolations that burn clock, the Cavs are greatly slowing the pace.
| 2015 Finals | % of FGA after 6+ seconds of touch time | % of FGA after 7+ dribbles | % of FGA using 20+ seconds of shot clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cavaliers | 33.2 | 24.5 | 17.4 |
| Warriors | 11.7 | 8.8 | 4.7 |
In addition, while LeBron's efficiency has suffered as a result of his unprecedented usage, he's managed to take exceptional care of the ball, turning it over on only 6.4 percent of his possessions. That's helped the Cavs further slow the Warriors and limit Golden State's potent fast break attack.
| Warriors Pace | PPG off Turnovers | Fast Break PPG | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular Season | 100.7 | 19.7 | 20.9 |
| Rounds 1-3 | 96.63 | 16.1 | 21.6 |
| Finals | 93.65 | 9.5 | 15.5 |
When you consider that James has been on the court for 96 of 106 minutes thus far, that he's accounted for more than 88 percent of Cleveland's offense, and that he's grabbed more than 24 percent of available defensive rebounds when he's in the game, it's easy to see how he's been able to completely dictate the pace to his team's advantage.
The Cavs' defense has been a revelation in itself, shutting down the Warriors in ways no team has been able to this season, and like any matchup, both teams have needed a break or two along the way - a missed Marreese Speights dunk here, a bevy of wide open Stephen Curry bricks there.
But as crazy as it sounds, don't discount how a slow, predictable, largely inefficient offensive game plan has factored into LeBron and the Cavs finding a way to stay in this series.