A tactical preview of Nets vs. Cavaliers

The first game of the play-in tournament features the Nets and the Cavs. Let's take a look at the biggest things to watch.

The play-in tournament is here, and on Tuesday, we’ll start with the two 7 vs. 8 matchups. The winner gets the seventh-seed, while the loser must face the winner of their conference’s 9 vs. 10 game in order to secure a playoff spot.

With all due respect to the Timberwolves-Clippers game, I’m going to focus on the Nets-Cavaliers game, which is tonight on TNT. Here’s everything you need to know about that game, and what to watch for:

Is everyone healthy?

Let’s start with this: no. The Nets won’t have Ben Simmons, who is looking to hopefully return in round 1 if Brooklyn makes it. They will, however, have Goran Dragic and Seth Curry, who have missed games lately.

The Cavs are missing Jarrett Allen, their star center who has been out with a finger injury and hopes to return for a potential second play-in game. They also don’t have wing Dean Wade, who went down for the season in late March and would’ve been useful.

The Cavs’ defensive strategies

— Above all, Cleveland prides itself on defense, and that’s where this game will be won or lost. With Evan Mobley in the middle, they play a drop coverage scheme that can vary in aggressiveness, depending how effective the other team is at pull-up shooting.

Ideally, against a team like the Nets, they will meet the ball-handler at the point of attack and rotate from there. Mobley is great at this; he is long with good instincts, and can provide effective contests on pull-up jumpers from Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, without letting them blow by.

But when these two teams played a few days ago (convenient for scouting purposes!), the Nets directed their screens away from Mobley and toward weaker defenders. Watch Durant walk into a jumper against Kevin Love, who drops too deep:

Cleveland has Mobley standing in the paint. Love should step out to deter a jumper and trust his teammates to rotate if he gets beat.

Those rotations are easier said than done against a team like the Nets, which has a lot of shooting. You simply can’t leave guys like Curry, Patty Mills, Irving, Durant, and Dragic open. Cleveland, though, is built to wall off the paint and trust its perimeter defenders to make smart, on-time rotations to close out on shooters.

Watch Darius Garland (#10) in the gif above. His man is Curry in the corner, but he is ready to put a body on Andre Drummond in case Mobley has to deal with Durant.

In that game on April 8, which Brooklyn won, Cleveland left Kessler Edwards open a lot. Edwards might be the odd man out of the rotation with Dragic back. Only Bruce Brown and the centers, then, are non-shooters. If the Cavs lose, it’s going to be because they gave up looks on the perimeter.

— Cleveland has players who can challenge the stars. Isaac Okoro will start and guard Irving. Okoro is a dogged defender who can be trusted to fight over screens and make things as difficult as possible for Irving. Mobley will get some time on Durant. They might also try Lauri Markkanen or Cedi Osman. I bet they start with Markkanen on Durant to let Mobley protect the paint.

They also might throw Lamar Stevens out there as a reserve defender of the stars. Cleveland is light on depth; Stevens and Okoro are nonthreats offensively.

— How will Cleveland deal with different screening combinations? They generally don’t have much of an inclination to switch, but plays like this gave them problems:

A pick-and-roll involving any combination of Durant, Irving, and Curry is a five-alarm fire. There are shooting threats everywhere. Switching might risk giving Durant a target, but that is better than conceding a really good look to one of those guys.

Here’s a Durant-Irving pick and roll:

That’s a scary sight! Switching would provide more clarity, and less risk of the above happening. That’s a tough spot for Okoro.

Plus, the Cavs can double Durant. They did it a little bit in that first game. I bet they do it more on Tuesday, especially if Durant is cooking.

— We’ll get to Bruce Brown’s impact in a second, but I would recommend that the Cavs stick Osman on him. Osman is a versatile defender with size who can switch onto either Irving or Durant, and also provides a presence in the paint when Brown stands in the dunker spot:

Osman might prove important for the Cavs. He can hang on defense and shoot threes on offense, plus he has size that could provide value against the Nets’ small lineups.

— Keep an eye on any Cavs’ zone defense attempt. They like to stick Mobley at the top of a 3-2 zone occasionally, a rare sight in the NBA.

The Nets on offense

— The Nets run a lot of pick and roll. That forms the basis of their offense, apart from some pindowns and post-ups for Durant and isolations for the stars. Keep on eye on the centers, Drummond and Claxton: their ability to finish through contact and gather offensive rebounds is an X-factor for this offense.

Drummond gets a bucket here despite quality defense:

There’s not much else to be done here for the Cavs. Mobley contests the Curry three-point look, and Caris LeVert is in time for the rotation, forcing a contested shot. But Drummond is able to power it through.

— Bruce Brown unlocks the best version of this offense. He’s a non-shooter, but his offensive impact as a passer, screener, and finisher in the paint is crucial to keeping the ball moving, and capitalizing on defensive focus on the stars.

Brown will screen a lot for Durant and Irving, so much so that his defender has to be able to deal with those stars to some extent. Brown is an excellent passer, and he has a pretty effective floater in the lane, which compensates for his lack of size. When Cleveland doubles Durant, Brown is an important outlet:

Notice how Brown is already turning his head toward the corner when he receives the ball, knowing that Edwards will be open.

The strategy of doubling KD and trusting your rotations gets tougher when Brown is picking out passes like this.

Do the Cavs have enough on offense?

— This is a really tough matchup for the upstart Cavs, especially without Allen. You can’t really stop a team with Durant and Irving. Cleveland doesn’t have the sort of offense that can keep up unless the Nets are slumping.

The pressure is on Garland, their All-Star point guard. He’s an excellent passer with a good pull-up jumper and a crafty package of finishes at the rim. The Nets will switch everything on defense, putting the initiative on the Cavs’ bigger players to be aggressive. It’s hard for Garland to dictate in the pick and roll if the Nets just switch (he only had three assists in that recent matchup against the Nets).

Mobley, Love, Markkanen, and Osman have to be big parts of the offense. Mobley is still raw on that end. Love will run a lot of pick-and-pops, as well as the occasional post-up — something he did effectively against the Nets:

He seals Curry after screening for LeVert and gets the bucket.

Markkanen has a tendency to drift in and out of the Cavs’ offense, but he has to be a real presence given Cleveland’s limitations on that end. He had a nice 17 points against Brooklyn last week. Stuff like this is positive:

Cleveland has size. They have to get seals in the paint and run plays like this to take advantage of it. The Nets will play small at times, given how many guards they have. This is the Cavs’ advantage.

— I’ll be interested in how much coach JB Bickerstaff decides he can afford to play Okoro. Brooklyn won’t guard him on the perimeter, congesting the paint:

Okoro’s defense on Irving might also prove necessary. It’s a delicate balance. The same goes for Stevens off the bench.

— I haven’t mentioned LeVert yet. The Cavs brought him in at the trade deadline to get buckets, and he will be an important factor as Cleveland tries to keep up with Brooklyn’s fireworks. LeVert can be effective attacking smaller or weaker defenders:

He’s equally prone to out-of-flow pull-up jumpers. The Cavs will need a good LeVert game.

Prediction

Brooklyn’s going to take this one, I think. The Cavs don’t have the offense to keep up with KD and Kyrie. Durant is tough to pick against in a must-win game. Nets-Celtics it is in the first round!