Take a deep breath, people. Wednesday’s game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder has been the game of the year to this point. And if this is what June is like NBA The finals will look like we are in for a real treat.
The Thunder and Cavaliers went back and forth for 48 of the most intense minutes of regular season basketball you’ll ever see. Neither led by double digits at any point, and the Cavaliers didn’t finally pull away until they won a crucial challenge with 1:19 remaining to retain possession up by three. They finished it off from there, winning 129-122 and moving to an NBA-best 32-4 on the season while the Thunder, now 30-6, saw their 15-game winning streak snapped.
So how did they get there? How Cleveland scored 129 points on the best defense in NBA? How did the Thunder lose control of the game that they led for most of the first half?
Let’s dig into what we learned from him Clash of the Titans on Wednesday He came up with the three most important points from Cleveland’s win over Oklahoma City.
The Thunder lose for the same reason they lost in the playoffs
The Thunder may lose games, but they always do so on their own terms. Their basic approach to defense is to play as aggressively as humanly possible. They want to generate turnovers and use them to get out on the break. They want to take the ball out of the hands of opposing stars. The Thunder have the best defense in the NBA, but they are beatable if you are able to beat them with one hand tied behind your back.
Oklahoma City again dictated terms of participation on Wednesday. Donovan Mitchell spent the entire game in the Dorture Chamber, scoring just 11 points on 3-of-16 shooting. Cleveland turned the ball over 15 times, not a lot by Oklahoma City standards, but higher than their average of 13 turnovers per contest. The game was played pretty much the way the Thunder wanted it to be. The problem is that their style allows opponents a very specific, high-value shot: corner 3s. Specifically, corner 3s taken by opposing role players.
No team allows more corner three-point attempts per game than the Thunder at 11.3. Cleveland took 14 of them on Wednesday and made eight. This game swung, in large part, due to the fact that Max Strus, Dean Wade and Caris LeVert made their threes (10-for-15 combined) while Oklahoma City’s role players did not.
If this sounds familiar, it probably is. Remember Oklahoma City’s second-round loss to Dallas last season? The Thunder built their game plan around trapping Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, allowing the Mavericks to take 16.2 corner 3s per game. P.J. Washington and Derrick Jones Jr. hit them at rates they wouldn’t normally have, and the Thunder were knocked out in six games.
This is the primary danger in the way the Thunder play defense. If the opponent has enough ball handling and shooting, they can reduce turnovers and make up for the lost production from their stars. Mitchell was slowed down, but no one else was. Darius Garland (18 points, seven assists), Evan Mobley (21 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists) and Jarrett Allen (25 points, 11 rebounds, six assists) were outstanding, and when the Thunder defense ran into them, they knew they were… That corner 3 is available to them. The Cleveland players made them, and the rest is history.
Does this mean the Thunder need to change their style of defense in order to win the championship? Of course not. They are the No. 1 defense for a reason, and more often than not, opponents aren’t shooting 8-of-14 from anywhere except the paint. It just means they rely on shooting variation more than most defenses are comfortable with. Imagine you’re a blackjack player who always hits 20. You’ll win most hands, but there’s nothing you can do if the dealer rolls 21. That’s what happened against Dallas last spring. To some extent, that’s what happened against Cleveland tonight. But that wasn’t the only important factor in Cleveland’s favor.
Could Chet Holmgren have stopped the Cavaliers’ dominance in the paint?
The raw numbers don’t do Cleveland justice in the paint. The Cavaliers outscored the Thunder by six in that area and rebounded them by two. Not exactly dominance. But just look how the last few minutes went. All of Cleveland’s points in the final four minutes came either in the paint or at the foul line because of what happened down low. Cleveland made four crucial offensive rebounds in an 18-second period between the 1:37 and 1:19 marks. Across the entire game, Allen had nearly as many offensive rebounds himself (seven) as the Thunder did as a team (nine).
Give Mobley and Allen plenty of credit. The intensity that Mobley added last offseason has been on display all season, but his finish in this game, in which he shot 8-of-13 from the floor, was perhaps the best example of his growth we’ve seen yet. Two years ago, Isaiah Hartenstein was part of a Knicks front court that embarrassed Allen so badly in the playoffs that he would have done so. Tell me later That “the lights were brighter than expected.”
The lights certainly weren’t very bright on Wednesday. Allen edged out Hartenstein. He was probably the best player on the floor for Cleveland.
But in those crucial final minutes, it was clear that the Thunder were a big man short. They spammed the same play multiple times. Garland called on Hartenstein’s man to check him beyond the 3-point line. That forced Hartenstein to venture beyond the arc himself, where Garland could have walked on an open pull-3. Hartenstein turned to Garland from there, and Garland would pass the ball over him to whichever big man set the screen — Mobley or Allen. Both are such good passers that they can easily pass the ball to the other star big, who will have a chance to score with Oklahoma City’s only capable defender off the play. Mobley and Allen had 13 assists in this game, often passing to each other. Hartenstein was the only Thunder player capable of consistently bothering them.
Do you know who might have helped? Chet Holmgren, former Defensive Player of the Year His hip injury. If Holmgren had been on the floor, he could have been the low man on that high catch play and taking easy looks near the basket away from Cleveland’s big men. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Thunder would have won with Holmgren. A whole bunch of other things change if Oklahoma City has to change its rotation to accommodate him. But that means the easy things Cleveland experienced down the stretch weren’t available.
The Thunder and Cavaliers play again in a week. Holmgren won’t be ready to return by then, so we won’t see how he factors into this matchup in advance if this is indeed who we’re getting in the Finals. But his absence was noticed on Wednesday. Changes everything for the Thunder.
The Thunder should add a starter at the trade deadline
The Thunder’s offense is no different bad. It ranks eighth in the NBA. It’s not quite as versatile as Oklahoma City prefers. The basic premise, aside from turning all those turnovers into fast break points, is to use Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s rim gravity to suck defenses into the paint and then get the ball outside for wide-open threes. Only three teams take more wide-open 3-pointers per game than the Thunder, and Oklahoma City ranks ninth in total 3-point attempts.
The Cavaliers have shown some danger in this approach for the Thunder. Gilgeous-Alexander was outstanding, scoring 31 points on 13-of-27 shooting. Jalen Williams was similarly productive, adding 25 points of his own. But Mobley and Allen took the paint off the walls like they usually do, and Cleveland was determined to limit Oklahoma City’s 3-point range. The Thunder had just 31 seconds in this game, down from their season average of 38.6. With those high-value threes off the board, the Thunder relied heavily on Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams’ difficult and intermediate shooting. They did, hitting 10 of 14 mid-range shots and 12 of 21 on the float, but their overall shooting quality was nowhere near what Cleveland was getting on corner shots and at the basket.
This isn’t the first big game in which the Thunder have struggled to generate easier shots against elite opponents. Their last two NBA Cup games, against the Bucks and Rows, also come to mind. It’s a symptom of putting too much moral burden on players. Cleveland relies heavily on a trio of creators in Mitchell, Garland and Mobley, but almost everyone they use is able to find their own shots in at least some way. The Thunder have a lot of players who live off of what Gilgeous-Alexander and Williams can do for them.
This is a solvable problem, especially when Holmgren returns. But with the trade deadline about a month away, the Thunder should look to address him. They have all the draft capital and mid-range payroll they need to improve. Whether it’s taking a swing at another high-end shooter like Cam Johnson or perhaps another ball handler like Collin Sexton, the Thunder’s offense just needs one final jolt to keep up with its dominant defense.