The Cleveland Cavaliers flamed out spectacularly in the playoffs. The Indiana Pacers have since proven to be a very good basketball team, but the Cavs were supposed to be a great team based on their regular-season success. Now we’re left wondering how you turn a 64-win group into one that can win more than five games in the postseason.
It’s no secret that the core has overlapping skillsets — or at the very least — they share similar deficiencies. That’s what happens when you have a pair of undersized guards and traditional centers. Naturally, the weaker one in those pairings will come under fire. That’s ultimately going to be the case for this core after every season that doesn’t result in a championship.
At the moment, it seems that the Cavs are willing to listen to offers for both Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen, even though it doesn’t appear like they’re actively trying to move either.
Garland is better and younger than Allen. That makes him the one who naturally gets thrown into these hypothetical deals, but trading him for the sake of shaking things up has the potential of creating way more issues than it could possibly solve.
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Moving Garland for Jaden McDaniels or Jalen Suggs has been floated out by reputable writers. The amateur trade opinions are, unsurprisingly, worse.
A trade for McDaniels or Suggs sort of makes sense if you just take Cleveland’s exit at face value and ignore the context that led to it. They don’t make as much sense if you spend a few extra minutes considering what actually went wrong against Indiana.
The Pacers were the more physical team. But trying to distill the Cavs’ issues down to physicality is accurate and also somewhat misleading.
Indiana didn’t dominate the glass or the paint. The Cavs controlled both rather decisively.
Instead, the Pacers’ physicality showed through in how they were able to dictate terms. The game was played at their pace on offense, and they disrupted Cleveland’s attack by pressuring them in the backcourt and making their guards work for every foot. This, combined with how well they were able to avoid giving up mismatches through drop coverage, got the Cavaliers’ offense off schedule.
The off-ball movement stalled, the ball stuck in the guards’ hands, and the Cavs ended up looking like their 2023 selves that flamed out in the first round against the New York Knicks, and not the offense with the second-best regular-season offensive rating in NBA history.
You know what would’ve helped prevent Indiana from disrupting things like they did? A point guard who could dribble, set up an offense, and is one of the most efficient players at his position. The Cavs had that for three games against the Pacers. Unfortunately, Garland couldn’t move well laterally because of his sprained toe, so it didn’t do much good in the second round.
Garland’s size and strength provide inherent limitations. It’s why Koby Altman repeatedly brought up Garland needing to add strength in his end-of-season press conference. That can be true, while also acknowledging that things don’t fall apart like they do if he’s out there playing 100%.
Skill doesn’t make up for size, but it does in certain contexts. You can’t overly pressure someone as quick and shifty as Garland without paying for it. At the very least, you can’t do it with Donovan Mitchell as his backcourt mate and vice versa.
Adding a skilled, healthy ball handler would’ve counteracted Indiana’s pressure much more than adding a tougher guard. Does being physically stronger allow you to break a full-court press more easily? If it did, you wouldn’t see the smallest guy on the court routinely bringing the ball up.
The same is true for all the other areas the Cavs struggled with.
Having a premier ball handler who can beat one-on-one matchups would’ve helped create advantages much more than someone stronger, but less skilled.
Adding another shooter that can generate quality off-the-dribble looks at all three levels would’ve been more beneficial than swapping in someone better at the point of attack.
Bringing in one of the best and most willing passers in the league would’ve led to more ball movement than replacing him with someone who isn’t consistently guarded beyond the arc.
In short, the Cavs needed a healthy Garland way more than whatever McDaniels, Suggs, or anyone else in that archetype could’ve provided.
That doesn’t mean that trading Garland is out of the question. But giving away talent for less skilled pieces that theoretically fit cleaner isn’t the way to become a better playoff team. This is especially true in a league where ball handling is becoming increasingly more important, considering the three-point shot is a prerequisite to playing time and not an optional skill like it was a decade ago.
This isn’t a roster without flaws or overlapping skills among its four best players. However, the biggest mistake that Altman and company could make would be to go too far in the other direction, where they try to make everything make sense conceptually, but lose the top-end talent that made them an incredible regular-season team to begin with.
The Cavs don’t need to demolish their core, at least not their top trio. They more so need to clean things up in spots six through 10 in the rotation to have more varied attributes with their role players.
Garland isn’t the perfect player for this group. However, he has the skill — when healthy — to fill several of Cleveland’s playoff deficiencies while still possessing the top-end talent that has made him a multi-time All-Star.
Talent is still the most important commodity in the NBA. Sacrificing that to hypothetically — but not actually — solve the weaknesses the Pacers exposed would be a mistake. No team gets better by actively choosing to get significantly worse players.
Let’s all just step away from the trade machines until a real upgrade over Garland becomes a feasible solution.
