Cleveland Cavaliers: Eastern Conference Finals Preview

Style of Play

AM:

Atlanta’s play is all about the team. As much as some in Cleveland may argue otherwise, they are the exact opposite of Cleveland’s superstar driven style.

In this series Atlanta will be looking to get back to what they do best. Expect to see a lot of pick and roll involving Al Horford, a constant flurry of ball and body movement to create open shots on the perimeter, and penetration to the rim for inside scores or kick outs whenever the opportunity presents itself.

A feature of the Hawks’ play that hasn’t been discussed much over the past couple of weeks is how they’ve locked down and smothered defensively. Atlanta has a lot of length and versatility, so they’ll be unafraid of switching on that end of the floor.

They cover well, and are incredibly intelligent defenders, so I’d expect the Cavaliers to go through occasional spells of struggling to score throughout the series.

JH:

The Cavs are still a take-their-time sort of team. For flashes, they can pick up the pace and run, but that’s usually off of a rebound. James and Kyrie are still two of the most terrifying attackers in the open floor, and when they get enough space they can put up points swiftly.

But most often Cleveland is going to get into a half-court set of some kind. Usually it involves LeBron handling the ball and either going into some form of isolation or pick and roll action. Both of those are effective because, well, because it’s LeBron.

Yet even when the Cavs miss it’s not that big a deal because guys like Thompson and Mozgov are there to rebound shots. Then they either get a put-back or an opportunity to score from the outside that gets defenses scrambling.

You’ll see a lot of Carroll on LeBron in this series, and the hope for the Hawks is that Carroll can be their version of Jimmy Butler. He’s a very good defender who’s mobile, and like Butler can handle the scoring load. He’s leading the Hawks in postseason points with an average of 17.1.

The only problem with that?

LeBron got the best of Butler, who is essentially Carroll 2.0, by taking him down into the post and shoving him headfirst into the torture chamber. He could easily do the same with Carroll, and if things get rough this series or he just wants to set the tone, expect to see LeBron go to that immediately.

Iso and rebounding versus passing and cutting. Let’s do this.

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