It might be crazy to think a team consisting of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love would have some major problems to begin the season. Defense was an issue coming in, and it has perhaps been worse than some may have expected. Before arguably their best game of the season — and clearly the best defensive performance — the Cleveland Cavaliers ranked towards the bottom of the league.
Now, they rank 17th in defensive efficiency, but there are still some problems to be fixed that effort — something that holds plenty of teams and players back on defense — can’t necessarily fix, starting with rim protection.
While Kevin Love and Anderson Varejao can be quite crafty down low on offense, they struggle on the other end. Love has been especially bad, only causing his opponents to shoot worse from 15 feet or further. Love is allowing his opponents to shoot 43.5 percent from deep, a 7.2 percent differential from what they are shooting vs. the rest of the league. From within six feet of the basket, Love’s opponents are shooting 66.7 percent compared to 59.6 percent against the rest of the league — a 7.1 percent difference.
Varejao has been much better than Love, but is still allowing opponents to shoot 60.6 percent within six feet of the rim. Even good rim protectors will allow opponents to shoot fairly well that close to the rim, as these are professional basketball players. The most inaccurate shooters will shoot well that close to the rim.
For what it’s worth, Roy Hibbert is only letting opponents shoot 45.3 percent that close to the basket — 13.5 percent less than their normal percentage from that distance. Marc Gasol, a former Defensive Player of the Year, allows opponents to shoot 51.5 percent from six feet out.
The likelihood of getting either of those two players this season is low, and that’s why Cleveland has been aggressively going after Denver Nuggets center Timofey Mozgov long before the season even began.
Ever since late August, the Cavs have been trying to lure the Nuggets into a deal to send Mozgov to Cleveland. No trade packages seem to interest Denver enough to ship Mozgov, however. Mozgov has only made the Cavs want him more thus far this season, allowing opponents to shoot 53.8 percent within six feet of the rim.
In all of his defense combined, opponents are shooting 47.8 percent against Mozgov. Seeing that his opponents are shooting about 66 percent of their shots within 10 feet of the rim, allowing them to make less than half of those attempts is very impressive.
While the two teams haven’t found any traction on a current deal, talk around the league suggests Denver could become a “seller” if they fall out of contention early on. Denver has been hot lately, winning five of their last six, but being in the West, they are still two and a half games out of the eighth seed. If that number continues to grow, the Nuggets might accept less for Mozgov.
Still, there is no guarantee Dion Waiters or Tristan Thompson don’t get involved. If either of these two were to be included in a deal, this would add more to Cleveland’s depth issue. While adding Mozgov would help add a legitimate backup center–whether that be him or Varejao–to the rotation, it would take away a great rebounder in Thompson, or an effective scorer in Waiters.
If the Cavs were able to get Mozgov in a deal including Joe Kelly and/or Will Cherry (two backup point guards currently filling Matthew Dellavedova‘s void as he recovers from an MCL sprain, who is set to return in the coming weeks), a draft pick(s), and perhaps some cash, that wouldn’t hurt Cleveland’s depth to the point where the deal wouldn’t make sense.
Sure, they would lose their depth at guard altogether, but assuming Dellavedova stays healthy the rest of the season, there would be no reason to worry. Denver accepting a deal of that sorts would show their true desperation, however.
Another thing to keep in mind is the possibility of signing Ray Allen, which would fill any sort of void Waiters would leave in a trade. If the Cavs lure in Allen, maybe that is enough to include Waiters — who has frustrated James early on — in a Mozgov deal, sending him to Denver.
A lot has to go right in order for the Cavaliers to fix both current issues right now in rim protection (or defense overall) and depth. With the team playing pretty well as of late, getting too aggressive on a deal right now might hurt the Cavs later on. If they are patient and work with what they have, good things may start to unfold as the season goes on.