NEW YORK — Either fix the problem, or find a workaround.
If you root for the Cleveland Cavaliers, or are just curious about what’s happened to the team that tore the Eastern Conference limb from limb last regular season, and watched the New York Knicks steal the Christmas game, you came to this space to read about, or possibly comment on, the rebounding.
The Cavs are not a “great” rebounding team, although the stats are a little better than you may realize. They tend to give up offensive rebounds at inopportune times, and that was certainly the case while blowing a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter en route to a 126-124 loss to the Knicks in Cleveland’s first Yuletide game since LeBron James’ last season here.
Cleveland allowed four offensive rebounds to reserve center Mitchell Robinson, who didn’t score a single point, and the Knicks seemed to convert all those second chances into crucial baskets. The Cavs should try to fix that, and we will discuss how shortly. But for the sake of this argument, they already know this is an Achilles’ heel. The workaround would be to play with more poise, then, when they have the ball.
With 1:45 left and Cleveland ahead by a point, Donovan Mitchell raced ahead of the pack and caught an outlet pass from Darius Garland on his way to what he was sure would be an uncontested dunk. So sure, Mitchell was, that he slowed to gather himself for the slam. Except Mitchell wasn’t alone. Knicks sensation Tyler Kolek caught Mitchell from behind and swiped at the ball, originally getting called for a foul that was overturned after a video review because he clearly hit the ball first.
“I didn’t see him,” Mitchell said. “I don’t slow up unless there is nobody around. … It’s a credit to him. Hell of a play. That’s winning basketball. … I knew it wasn’t a foul as soon as they called it.”
Mitchell also admitted he was holding his wrist on the ground immediately after the play in a bit of an act to curry favor with the officials (it worked, but obviously didn’t survive the coach’s challenge).
Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson was blunt about the play when asked about it, saying: “Lay it up, Don. Lay it in off one foot. He knows. … There were a couple frustrating plays like that.”
If Mitchell had gone hard at the rim, either for a layup or dunk off one foot, the Cavs would have led by three inside of two minutes. No guarantee they hold on, but they wound up with no points on the possession because Mitchell missed a 3 off the inbounds play. The Knicks retook the lead on the ensuing possession.
No one is going to blame this loss on Mitchell, or really anything that’s gone wrong for the Cavs during this frustrating first two months on him. He’s carrying this team, and his 34 points, seven rebounds, and six assists in 33 minutes were just the latest installment.
But if the Cavs are going to be weak on the glass, those are the plays they have to execute.
Jalen Brunson, Mitchell’s counterpart for New York, was awesome with 34 points, but he was 10-of-25 shooting. He was 8-of-10 from the foul line, in part because the Cavs fouled him three times on 3-point tries. Can’t happen if they’re trying to work around a fundamental flaw.
“Once, I can see, but three times?” Atkinson asked, rhetorically. “We know the game. We know what’s on the scouting report. Those are the mental things we gotta do better.”
It also doesn’t help when trying to ice away a 17-point lead (that’s how much they led by with 10:26 to go) when you go 2 of 9 on 3s and shoot 9 of 26 overall in the fourth quarter. Mitchell was 4 of 11 in the final frame, and Darius Garland, who otherwise enjoyed an encouraging game with 20 points, 10 assists, and good defense on Brunson, shot 1 of 5 down the stretch. There was a little less ball movement, and a few lower percentage shots in the fourth quarter than what the Cavs had done to build the big lead.
So you are aware, Cleveland was actually relatively upbeat after such an aesthetically brutal loss. Evan Mobley returned about two weeks early from a left calf strain and, in his first game coming off the bench in the NBA, contributed 14 points and nine rebounds in 25 minutes. Sam Merrill continued to impact the Cavs at both ends in a positive manner since his return from a badly sprained hand. With Garland moving better, and second-year forward Jaylon Tyson continuing to improve (16 points and six rebounds off the bench), Atkinson said he felt the team is “just starting to get (its) mojo back.
“I wish I could be up here and be like, ‘Yeah, we won this game,’” but you feel it as a coach,” Atkinson said. “I told the guys after (the game), like, I couldn’t be more encouraged. Disappointed in kind of how we lost, but like I keep telling you, buy the dip, I got a ton of confidence in this group.”
The loss snapped a modest two-game winning streak and knocked the Cavs back to 17-15. If the postseason started today, they would have to win a Play-In game to reach the playoffs.
Now, for one of their chief bugaboos — a primary culprit for the mediocre record through 32 games. Cleveland is vulnerable on the glass.
Statistically speaking, the Cavs could be worse. They’re 16th out of 30 teams in opponents’ offensive rebounds (11.6 per game) and are 14th in overall boards (in part because they actually get more offensive rebounds — about 1 per game — than they allow). But goodness, do they seem to give them up at the wrong times.
Perhaps the worst came with 27.3 seconds remaining and the Cavs down by 2. They got the initial stop, but Karl-Anthony Towns crashed toward the rim and finished off a putback for a 123-119 advantage.
Towns was Mobley’s man on the play, and Mobley admitted he lost track of the Knicks’ big man.
“I was about to get out (on the break),” Mobley said. “I thought it was going to be a miss, but then Towns crashed hard, out of nowhere, and I should have boxed him out, hit him hard.”
In the past, like, for instance, the playoff series with the Knicks in 2023 that led to the Cavs being called “soft” for at least one full season, Cleveland has been criticized for its overall lack of physicality — a cliche people typically use when trying to explain why teams struggle in the playoffs.
Jarrett Allen, who has had to deal with the label more than most on the team, seemed to have a tough time with Robinson in the fourth quarter. He’s averaging 7.5 rebounds per game — the second-lowest average of his career and lowest since his rookie year, but he’s also playing a couple of minutes less per game than he’s used to.
Allen and the Cavs are again flirting with that tag, although it has more to do with the constant injuries and how they affect the team in the playoffs. When it comes to the team’s rebounding woes, Atkinson said it’s “mental focus.”
“I think it starts with mentality,” Atkinson said. “I know everyone says physicality, physicality. I think it’s your mental focus. And there’s a difference. You got the scrum rebounds and you got the ones where guys came in from the corner, and I don’t know who missed that Towns one, but those are the ones, the mindless ones, it’s not physicality to me. It’s like, ‘Are you focused? Are you seeing your man? Are you going to crash? Are you gonna get a hit first?’ ”
Atkinson said the Cavs weren’t a great rebounding team during last year’s 64-win march through the regular season, but I looked it up and they were ranked sixth. More encouraging, though, and this was the point he made Thursday, was that Cleveland did commit to rebounding in the playoffs. They were the third-best team average-wise on the glass during the postseason, albeit a postseason that ended with the Cavs getting bounced in five games in the second round.
But, for silver lining’s sake, there seems to be one here. If this whole season is a “show me in the playoffs” season, well, this team has a history of improving on a perceived weakness on the glass when the games are worth the most.
To have a better chance of advancing through the playoffs, they need a higher seeding than the one they currently have. To get there, the Cavs would do well to work around their rebounding woes with smarter plays in other facets until they fix the big problem.