Cavs-Pacers Reaction: Donovan Mitchell is BALLING & is best player in series over Tyrese Haliburton

Cavs-Pacers Reaction: Donovan Mitchell is BALLING & is best player in series over Tyrese Haliburton

What’s up, guys? Thanks as always for supporting the show. It would mean a lot to me if you would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Also, make sure you follow us all over social media so you don’t miss any of our content or show announcements. Donovan Mitchell just logged backtoback 40point games in the playoffs for the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time since LeBron James did so in the 2016 NBA Finals. Finally got his three-point shot going a little bit. He was two for 18 in the first two games, but he got several clean catch and shoot looks that helped him build that rhythm. He got one on the left wing in transition, a couple ones on like other transition sequences. Just those easy catch and shoot threes are great ways to build rhythm as a three-point shooter. He actually hit five in this game and he was able to go to one of his patented stepbacks after the Pacers cut the lead down to 11 in the early fourth quarter. It was kind of like it felt like one of those Pacers runs was coming. He had a huge step back three that kind of styied them, brought it back to 14. and they never got that close again. That that that three-point shot is a big piece of it because especially when you’re in a high volume offensive role like he was before Garland got in the series and even now with Garland being in kind of a smaller role, he’s just leaned on for so much offensively and if you can step into threes and knock him down, it’s such a great way to provide scoring without having to like really exert yourself physically. But we got to emphasize the job he was doing athletically. Donovan’s moving probably like he’s always been an elite athlete, but it looks to me like he’s moving as well as ever. And he’s having these insane contact finishes in this series where he’s like, it’s almost like he gets that first angle and then he just pops off the ground and just improvises. Like he pops off the ground and then the ball just starts windmilling around at all these different angles and then he finds a finishing angle to get a shot off. Whether it’s like below the rim scoop or it’s he shoots like a really soft almost like floater layup that he’ll get a lot of really good rolls on right at the front of the rim. I just thought he was fantastic tonight as he goes for a second consecutive 40point game. Stress had his second consecutive 20point game. A little bit of everything. Open catch and shoot jump shots, contested catch-oot jump shots, cutting, driving, closeouts, running second side action, you know, big transition dunk there in the fourth quarter. Darius Garland came back and like he was a little rusty. Uh, but you can just tell how much it greases the wheels for the offense. They brings the ball up with pace, hits some sort of action early in the possession, and usually we’ll get the defense in rotation. And again, look beyond the box score. The Cavs logged a 135 offensive rating tonight when Darius Garland was on the floor. But what I want to zoom in on tonight is the defensive end for the Cavs because this is what I thought was the ultimate like kind of revealing thing that came out of this game. We knew that the Cavs could score in this matchup. Donovan’s been pretty comfortable all series. Obviously, even down bodies, they were in position to win game two. But one of the things we talked about after game two is like their defense got cut to pieces in game one. And yeah, they came out in the first quarter of game two and they held the Pacers down, but then for three straight quarters after that, they gave up at least 34 points. They hadn’t had any sort of sustained success defensively against Indiana. Tonight, they finally did. They held him to just 38 points total in the second and fourth quarters combined when they built the first big lead and when they put the game away. So, another way of looking at it is this was the first time the Cavs had some defensive success against the Pacers. So, let’s talk about how there’s three concepts that I want to get into. One, the denial of Tyresese Hallebertton. Two, the zone defense that worked tonight. And then three, the job that Evan Mobley and Jared Allen did on the back line tonight. So, the denial of Hallebertton. This has been the Cavs game plan the entire series. Started in game one with Sam Merrill. They just uh in the early part of that game didn’t take the ball out of the net enough times for them to be able to do it as effectively. But basically, what they’re doing is just trying to prevent Tyrese Hallebertton from ever having the basketball. So any made basket or defensive rebound, whoever is closest to Hallebertton will just run up and basically hug him, like position themselves directly between Hallebertton and the ball and just not let him go get it. Then on any ball screen action, they’re coming up super aggressive and high to get him to get rid of the ball if he ever does get the ball. So like Tyrese will just sometimes like just do a little shove off move. He’ll get the ball, they’ll run a ball screen, they’ll just immediately get the ball out of his hands. And it’s worked to varying degrees in this series. In game one, they tried Merrill on him and how he still got into a rhythm and he was still great. Game two, they switched Strus onto him and it worked much better. But then they lost control of Hallebertton late in the game. Uh you could tell the difference between Strus and Merryill. Strus when he’s kind of like bear hug denying Hallebertton. He’s just stronger. So when Hallebertton tries to shed him through that offball contact, he’s just having a harder time than he did on Sam Merrill. But it succeeded in a big way tonight in game three. and it succeeded in that it just killed his aggression. After taking 15 shots in game one, he’s taken just 19 shots total in the last two games. Took only eight shots tonight. Finished with just four points and five assists. Couple things, you can tell that even when he has the ball, he’s rushing. He’s missing reads that he doesn’t usually miss. And he’s not looking to be aggressive to score. So, the game plan is working. It’s psyching Hallebertton out. We’ll talk about Hallebertton and how he can adjust to that later, but that’s the first piece of how the Cavs are finally getting some defensive success against Indiana, denying Tyresese Hallebertton the basketball whenever they can. The second piece of it was a zone defense we saw tonight. In the second quarter, with about 11 minutes left, the game was tied at 34. The Cavs ran 15 possessions of a 3-2 zone. We’ll get into that concept here in a minute. The Pacers scored just seven points on those 15 possessions of zone. By the end of the of the second quarter, the Cavs were up by 21 points. So, from a tie game to a blowout in large part because the Pacers couldn’t score against the zone. Now, a 3-2 zone is very different from a two-3 zone. A two-3 zone is built around taking away the rim and usually if you move the ball well against it, you’ll get wide open catch and shoot threes. Essentially, you have the middleman whose responsibility it is to cover the basket and depending on the scheme up to the elbows. So, like anybody who catches in the middle, sometimes the middle guy will cover that. Sometimes different zones will use different guys to cover that when they want to keep someone at the basket. Like we saw Houston in games when they weren’t playing Steph Curry, they would have Stephen Adams just sit right underneath the basket in their zone. But a 3-2 zone is very different because in a two-3 zone, the other four guys are splitting the remainder of the three-point line, right? But in a 3-2 zone, both of the bottom guys, so again, there’s three guys up top, guy on the top, guy on the wings, two guys that are on the bottom. Both of those bottom guys are actually responsible for the corner. So as a result, all five players have responsibility at the three-point line. And with the way that the Cavs were doing it too, it it’s kind of similar to what Houston was doing in the sense that like as ball and player movement would occur, guys would be willing to change spots to make the whole thing function. But there are opportunities against a 3-2 zone in the interior that are not there against the outside and it just flumxed Indiana early in the game. They did do much better in the second half. They scored 11 points in just nine possessions against the 3-2. They did have some success there. The main thing they started doing is two things. One, high ball screens. They started just screening the top man and having that man roll into the middle of the floor. So, they were able to get some pocket passes into the middle of the floor. They also got like a deep seal for Thomas Bryant on a play where they had a shooter in one corner that occupied one of the low men and then they had Thomas Bryant just seal the other low man. So, it created a very big passing window. They were able to throw him the ball and he got a big dunk. So, they kind of figured it out in the second half. And I don’t think we’re going to see a ton of that zone moving forward. But I think we’ll see it a little bit here and there, but again, as I often talk about, the zone defenses are not meant to like permanently flumx NBA teams. If they do, you stick with it. And we’ll see that from time to time. Like you’ll see long stretches of it. Like you saw it a lot today. You’ll see it, you know, like in what was it game six against the uh the Warriors when the Rockets ran a bunch of their zone, but like it’s primarily its primary purpose is to just disrupt rhythm. Oh, you’re used to playing this way. Well, how about we just, you know, throw a giant wrench in things and make you play a very different style of basketball. And it worked for 15 possessions in the second quarter. It threw the Pacers out of whack. Yeah, they eventually figured it out, but it didn’t matter because they were already down 21 at that point. So, like just uh this is why like when I talk about with coaches mixing up coverages, like you can’t just run the same damn thing every time. You got to do something that just kind of disrupts the flow. It’s like you can’t just, you know, run high drop 10 possessions in a row, then low drop 10 possessions in a row in a in an adjustment. A lot of time, the best coaches will mix in various different coverages multiple times in the same quarter just to keep a an offensive player or an entire offense off balance. The third piece of it, Evan Moy and Jared Allen, multiple efforts at the rim defensively. Those two guys were pretty rough in game one and they’ve had their playoff moments where they haven’t been very good defensively over the years, but I thought they were amazing tonight. This Indiana Pacers team applies so much rim pressure with their speed and they’re just in a lot of positions in a lot of times they’re expected to be in multiple places at once, step up and contest a driver, then recover to someone at the basket. They forced a bunch of misses at the rim or near the rim for the Pacers tonight with their activity. All three of those guys just did a really or excuse me, all three of those factors I should say. Moian Allen on the backline, the zone defense, the denial of Hallebertton finally had some sustained success slowing down Indiana’s offense, which I thought was the main takeaway from tonight’s game. And then for the Pacers moving forward, Tyrus Haliburn’s got to find a way to get involved. The opportunities are still there. when he is aggressive to the ball, he can still get a catch. He can shed the deny. Then once they get up the floor, he’s rushing against the blitzes. He’s usually so comfortable. He’s like rushing that pass and not putting it in a place where they can quickly compromise the defense. He missed two floaters early in the game. One where he got blocked and one where he missed it long. And on both of them there were kickout reads, but he’s like rushed. You can tell like this is legitimately just kind of getting him out of sorts. And so some of this is like Hallebertton just needs to take a deep breath, understand the coverage and what it’s doing and find a way to be impactful anyway, meaning like overcome that circumstance. We talked about shedding the shedding the deny and still looking to be aggressive making the proper reads. There’s also when you’re being faceguarded, that guy is most likely not going to help as a sc on a screening action. I would like to see Carile really be aggressive with Hallebertton as a screener in game four to try to just generate some openings for him there. If he sets good screens, Strus will have no choice but to help. If Streus doesn’t help if he sets a good screen, then there’s an opportunity for someone to drive downhill. just I would just run a bunch of Seakkum Hallebertton inverted pick and roll and just try to get uh Seakkum going downhill or get Strus off of Hallebertton with a slower defender on Hallebertton so that he can get going with the with the dribble. But your offense is predicated on Tyrese and his advantage creation and right now he’s all out of whack and you got to find a way to get that right.

Jason reacts to the Cleveland Cavaliers getting a huge win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 behind a monster performance from Donovan Mitchell. He also discusses how Tyrese Haliburton needs to get more involved going forward.

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