Cleveland Cavaliers/Indiana Pacers Playoff Preview
16 Wins A Ring Writers offer 3 different perspectives on each first round series
The Numbers:
Regular season: Cavaliers won 3–1
Cavaliers 110.3 PPG for (4th in NBA)/107.2 PPG allowed (20th in NBA)
Pacers 105.1 PPG for (15th in NBA)/105.3 PPG allowed (14th in NBA)
Cavaliers record vs Eastern Conference playoff teams: 15–12
Pacers record vs Eastern Conference playoff teams: 8–17
Cavaliers Preview by Ben Belden
Cavaliers’ Series X Factor:
JR Smith is the Cavaliers’ X Factor for this series. For some reason, Smith seems to be a large part of the heart and soul of this team. Often times Smith’s shot selection is so absurd that when the shots are falling, everyone gets excited.
In all seriousness, Smith has proven to be a spark for the Cavaliers as recently as last playoffs. In Game 7, when the Cavaliers emerged from the halftime locker room down 7 points, it was Smith who sparked the Cavs with back-to-back threes in the third quarter.
In addition, Smith will be counted on defensively. The Pacers will lean heavily on Paul George, Jeff Teague, Monta Ellis, and CJ Miles in this series. If Smith and the Cavaliers can hold them in check, they will be in a good position.
Cavaliers’ Series MVP:
LeBron James will be the series MVP. Especially on the defensive end, James has coasted through the regular season and he knows it. James may not draw the assignment of guarding Paul George early in most games, but if the game gets close at the end, James will undoubtedly rise to the challenge.
We know what James does for the Cavaliers offensively, but his defense has been lackluster both in an individual sense and as part of the team. When the Cavs are at their best defensively, James is not only locking down his man, but rotating, altering shots, grabbing rebounds, and starting the fast break.
Cleveland Cavaliers key advantage has over Indiana Pacers:
Talent. Simply put, the Cavaliers have 3 of the best 4 players in this series. In a playoff series, one team tries to take away what the other team does best. The advantage is that Cleveland’s Plan B and Plan C is just better than those of the Pacers. Though the Cavaliers have not shown a ton of depth as of late, they simply have more tools in the toolbox that have been honed and sharpened for the playoffs.
Cleveland Cavaliers key disadvantage has over Indiana Pacers:
Cleveland has a lot to lose and entered the playoffs reeling, to put it mildly. As the defending NBA Champs, the Cavaliers should win this series. Therefore, expect Paul George and company to play with a chip on their shoulder throughout the series.
The Cavaliers were able to beat the Pacers 135–130 in their last matchup of the regular season. Despite the loss, the Pacers are undoubtedly confident with their ability to keep up with the Cavaliers.
Cavaliers looks to up defensive effort in postseason:
The Cavaliers need to rotate on defense. There have been only a few games where it is safe to say that the Cavaliers gave proper effort on defense. In those games, the Cavaliers were not exactly dominant defensively, but they were certainly good enough.
The Cavaliers likely have some tricks up their sleeves defensively when it comes to the playoffs (in fact, they have more than implied that they do), so it will be interesting to see how the Cavaliers rise to the challenge the Pacers will present.
Series Prediction: Cavs over Pacers in 6 games.
The Cavs are the better team, but the Pacers will put together a couple great efforts and steal a game or two from the Cavs.
Pacers Preview by Cam Stewart
Pacers’ Series X Factor: Myles Turner
Turner has been wildly inconsistent since March 1st, scoring less than 10 points in 11 of the Pacers last 22 games. With a banged up Al Jefferson, Kevin Seraphin, and Lavoy Allen behind him, the Pacers will rely heavily on Turner’s rim protection against the Cavaliers, who generate much of their offense via drives by LeBron James or Kyrie Irving. The Pacers will need Turner to be an effective last line of defense in order to have a chance at a competitive series.
Turner will be tasked with stopping those drives and just as importantly, keeping Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love off the boards. The Cavaliers can dominate games with their rebounding, especially with second-chance points. Turner’s struggled with rebounding in his young career. The Pacers were out rebounded by 10 in their April 2nd double-overtime thriller, with Turner grabbing only three rebounds in 47 minutes of action.
For the Pacers to have a chance, they need Turner to look like a current All-Star, not just a potential future one.
Pacers’ Series MVP:
Let’s not overthink this, the answer is Paul George.
George has put the Pacers on his back down the stretch, averaging 28.8 points and 7.6 rebounds on 51.4 percent shooting since March 5th. George made his name by giving LeBron James about as much trouble as you can give James in the Pacers rivalry with the James-led Miami Heat.
In their meeting on April 2nd, George went off for 43 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists, but still ended up with a loss. The Pacers will need performances like that, where he is definitively the second-best player on the court (behind James) for the Pacers to steal a few games from the defending champs. George is their best offensive player and defensive player, and they’ll need all that he has on both ends to make this interesting.
The Pacers will need contributions all-around to make the Cavaliers sweat in this series, but if George has an off night, the help of others will likely heed no positive results in the win column.
Indiana Pacers key advantage has over Cleveland Cavaliers:
On paper, the Pacers are woefully out manned but they have two things going for them: momentum and pressure.
The Pacers ended the season on a five-game win streak and were 5–1 in games where Lance Stephenson played. The Stephenson signing seems to have invigorated the locker room. The post-Stephenson signing Pacers are high-fiving, talking constantly on defense, rushing to help fallen players over, they’re celebrating good plays together.
After seeming like a broken team for much of the season, the Pacers are gelling at the right time.
The Cavaliers ended their season with four straight losses, including one against the Hawks in which they blew a 26-point lead. Moreover the Cavaliers had a losing record after the All-Star break, going 12–15 in that stretch.
The Pacers also face no real pressure due to the expectation that this is a quick series. The Cavs are expected to flip the playoff switch, activate Zero Dark Thirty, and send the Pacers fishing, which they likely will do. But the recent drama and questions about the Cavs’ defense that have been taken lightly by most (including myself) could be brought to light if the Pacers can ride the regular season momentum and steal one of the first two games in Cleveland.
Indiana Pacers key disadvantage has over Cleveland Cavaliers:
The biggest obstacle the Pacers will have is just the issue of sheer talent, which can be explained in two basic statements.
1. The Cavaliers have LeBron James and the Indiana Pacers do not.
2. If you were to draft players off of these teams for a series, the Cavaliers would almost definitely have four of the first five picks.
In regards to strengths and weaknesses beyond that, the Cavaliers are one of the deadliest three-point shooting teams in the league. Cleveland is second in the league in three pointers attempted per game and also second in three-point efficiency. They take a lot of three’s (33.9 per game) and they make a lot of them (13). Moreover, the Cavs are a nightmare to defend due to the impossibility of defending James’ drives without sending help and being lit up by their cavalcade of knockdown shooters.
The Pacers ranked 13th in three-point percentage allowed, not a bad mark. But they’ve been exposed in their four matchups with the Cavs this season. In those games, the Cavs shot went 63–148 (42.6 percent) on three-pointers. Take away their first meeting, when James sat, and that mark goes up to 44 percent on three-pointers.
“Live by the three, die by the three” is an old adage that you’ll probably hear during the playoffs about the Cavaliers, Warriors, or Rockets. The saying isn’t incorrect, but it’s a lot easier to stay alive by the three when the formula is James or Kyrie Irving attacking defenses and hitting snipers like Kyle Korver, Kevin Love, Channing Frye, or J.R. Smith for open catch-and-shoot looks.
Pacers should shorten the rotation and trim the fat:
Around this time a year ago, Frank Vogel was the head coach of the Indiana Pacers and pushed the favored Toronto Raptors to the brink. Vogel made the fatal mistake of trusting in his bench. Considering it was comprised of guys like Ty Lawson, Rodney Stuckey, and Lavoy Allen who were playing real minutes for the Pacers that was their undoing. Lawson was atrocious (a -18 in only 7:29 in Game 5, played 6:50 in Game 3 in which the Pacers didn’t score a point while he was on the floor).
On a related note, Vogel was let go after the season.
Lawson is also gone, but the lesson must be learned. For the Pacers to have a chance, the weak links in the rotation must be removed from the rotation or given fewer minutes. The Pacers have a very good lineup of Jeff Teague, C.J. Miles, George, Thaddeus Young, and Myles Turner. All five are threats from deep without sacrificing size. That lineup outscored opponents 113.9 to 106.2 per 100 possessions, per NBAWowy.com.
It’s commonplace for teams to shorten their rotations in the playoffs. The difference between 32 minutes of Paul George vs. 40 minutes of Paul George could decide whether a game is a win or a loss. The Pacers’ pursuit of a playoff spot over the final month of the season gave Indiana head coach Nate McMillan a chance to shorten the rotation a bit. But, they must shorten it even more to stand a chance against the Cavs.
Series Prediction: Cavs over Pacers in 5 games
The Cavaliers are just too good, LeBron James is still the best player on the planet, and the defending champs should roll to the second round with ease.
The Pacers can win a game straight up on the right night when George has it going and the supporting cast comes through. The Pacers could snare a second game if the Cavaliers are still on regular season cruise control mode or are slow to flip the switch.
Independent Preview by Matt Way
Series X Factors:
For Cleveland, the X Factor is Kevin Love. By now it’s no secret the Cavaliers’ defense has been poor over the second half of the season. A big part of that is Love’s absence. The Cavaliers’ defense is at its best when Love is on the floor. Cleveland posted a 106.0 defensive rating with Love in the game, the best of any player with 1000 or more minutes.
Though not super athletic, Love is a good team defender and his rebounding is really valuable to Cleveland, who was well below-average in terms of defensive rebounding this season.
For Indiana, the X Factor is Paul George. The Pacers just don’t have the talent to match up with Cleveland, but George is the one Pacer who has the potential to take over a game or two. He’ll need to do that against Cleveland if Indiana has any chance to upset the Cavaliers.
George is the one player on the Indiana roster who can really make poor defenses pay in multiple ways. Cleveland should turn up the defensive intensity come playoff time, so George must have a strong shooting performance in round one to keep the Pacers in games.
Series MVP:
LeBron James will be the MVP of this series. He’s been the best player in nearly every series he’s played in for the last ten years and there’s no reason to expect that will change against the Pacers.
James has recovered from last year’s three point shooting struggles, and he produced the third most-efficient season of his career as a result. He’s showing little sign of slowing down, so there’s no reason to believe that he is not still the best player in the world. Come playoff time, that matters more than ever.
James will need to show a bit more effort in the playoffs defensively, but that has been the case for the last five or so years. In the playoffs, he is quicker to get into passing lanes and more cognizant of his role as a rim protector in help defense. If that trend continues against the Pacers, Cleveland should have no problem putting Indiana away quickly. And James will again be the MVP of the series.
Key Factor in series:
The key factor to the series is whether the Cavaliers’ defensive struggles are for real, or are a bit of an aberration. Cleveland’s defense doesn’t have to be great to win the series, but it will need to be much better if they want to win the series quickly and rest.
The Pacers’ offense is decidedly average, in terms of overall efficiency and in pretty much every significant factor.
The Cavaliers’ defense isn’t great at defending the three point line, but the Pacers are even worse at punishing poor perimeter defenses. Indiana was just 27th in the league in three point attempts this season, and they don’t have enough threats to really create significant problems for Cleveland’s defense.
If Indiana is going to have a chance in this series, they will need to be more willing shooters from the perimeter. Taking a lot of three pointers is a good way to increase variance, and that’s exactly what Indiana needs to do as a significant underdog. More importantly, Indiana will need to knock down their shots. A hot shooting team can pull off even the most unlikeliest of upsets, and that’s exactly the uphill battle the Pacers face.
Series Prediction: Cleveland over Indiana in 4 games
The Cavaliers’ defense is undoubtedly vulnerable, but the Pacers don’t have the type of offense that is likely to exploit it. The Pacers ranked 15th this season in offensive efficiency, and they don’t do any one thing especially great offensively. The team with the best player usually wins in the playoffs and the Cavaliers still have the best player in the world. They also have, at worst, three of the four best players in the series.
Expect Cleveland to come out motivated. Their defense has been much maligned (deservedly so) late in the season, and there’s a lot of people banking on them turning things up come playoff time. The sooner they silence the whispers, the better off they will be. A motivated LeBron James is still a scary thing, and that alone will win the series for Cleveland. The Pacers could take a game if the Cavaliers come out flat, but this has all the makings of a sweep.
