Depth Charge

Today we take a look at how New York's depth has been the key to the series. Plus, NBA history last night in Miami.

Good morning! Is it Wednesday yet?

News & Notes

🏀 If the Knicks can finish off their first round series against Cleveland, they may have a familiar foe waiting for them in the next round.

Behind one of the greatest individual performances in postseason history, the Miami Heat overcame a 12-point deficit with under six minutes to go to take a 3-1 series lead over the Milwaukee Bucks. Jimmy Butler finished with 56 points, tied for the fourth most ever in a playoff game. He kept the Heat in it early with 22 in the first and then took them home late with 21 in the fourth, including 12 in the final two minutes.

Game 5 will start right after the fifth game of Knicks vs Cavs on Wednesday night.

🏀 Jalen Brunson finished 3rd in the Most Improved Player voting, behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the winner, Lauri Markkanen.

This is the second time in three seasons Brunson has finished in the top four for a major award, as he finished fourth in 6th Man of the Year voting in 2021.

Meanwhile, according to Marc Stein, Brunson “has very much played his way into national-team consideration with USA Basketball.” Quite a rise for a guy the Dallas Mavericks didn’t see fit to lock up long term.

Depth Charge

One of the reasons I want to hold off on any celebrations until the deed is done is because it’s not like there’s nothing the Cavs can’t get anything right in this series.

Far from it, in fact.

Looking at Cleveland’s most used lineups through the first four games, we see that when their core four plays with either their offense-first option (Caris LeVert) or defense-first option (Isaac Okoro) at small forward, the Cavs have been pretty darn good. It’s the rest of the time that they’ve struggled:

The LeVert and Okoro lineups are certainly succeeding in different ways, as the on/off numbers show, but they are succeeding. Similarly, in the 104 minutes that the Cavs’ starting backcourt has shared the court with Evan Mobley, they’ve outscored the Knicks by 17 points.

That also means that in the 88 minutes when even one of those players has been on the bench, Cleveland has been outscored by a whopping 33 points. One one hand, this data makes you understand why J.B. Bickerstaff continue to roll out lineups with two or even three lesser rotation pieces, as doing so buys him more time that he can keep the core group together. On the other hand, some of these groupings are getting absolutely pulverized. The trio of LeVert, Osman and Allen, for instance, has been outscored by 29 points in just 20 minutes. Going further down the rotation, Danny Green, Ricky Rubio and Dean Wade have played 63 total minutes and have a combined individual plus/minus of negative 28 in that time.

For as much as it’s easy to criticize the Cavs for their lack of depth, credit to the Knicks for being able to take full advantage any time Cleveland can’t have their ideal compliment of players on the court. It also speaks to just how big of an advantage New York’s depth has been.

Consider that two of the Knicks’ four highest usage players, Julius Randle and Immanuel Quickley, are a combined 29-for-88 in this series, and that New York’s best deep threat, Quentin Grimes, has one more made 3-point field goal than you or me. Meanwhile, no playoff team has made fewer threes per game or shot it from deep at a lower clip. New York’s 47.8 effective field goal percentage is 16th out of 16 teams.

And despite all of that, the Knicks are a win away from the second round. How have they done it? As Tom Thibodeau likes to say, you don’t have to shoot well to play well, and New York’s ability to stack the floor with legitimate NBA rotation players is part of the reason that Cleveland never had a run in Game 4 that exceeded four straight points. There is perhaps no better example of this than Immanuel Quickley, who can’t buy a bucket but still makes winning play after winning play. With the exception of one possibly injured star forward, everyone has been contributing in myriad ways whenever they’ve played.

Heck, even Randle made arguably the biggest defensive play of the game in the midst of an otherwise forgettable third quarter:

So given all of the above, is this series over? I can’t say that, not after re-watching the beginning of the third quarter and wondering whether (and for how many games) Bickerstaff will go for broke and keep his top four on the court together for something crazy like 32 minutes a game for however long the series goes.

Why would he do that? Because that third quarter started out with the Cavs scoring on 11 of their first 13 offensive possessions. 10 of those were in the half-court, and of those 10, six featured Cleveland bringing one of their bigs up to screen for Garland and then Garland either scoring himself or dumping it off to the dunker’s spot. A few more saw Garland eschew the screen altogether and simply cook Brunson one-on-one in a way where New York either wasn’t in position to help off of LeVert or didn’t have time to.

Brunson was obviously a big part of the issue, and his defensive struggles have been well-documented, but the Knicks have been able to mitigate that damage through the collective abilities and energy of the other four guys. In the third quarter though, Randle was perhaps an even weaker link than Brunson.

Cleveland went at Randle in two ways.

There were plays like this, where the Cavs trusted Julius couldn’t deter Garland on the switch, nor would he rotate over to whomever Mitch was leaving open to clean up the mess. There were also plays like what happened immediately after this bucket, when Cleveland brought Mitch into the action, and instead of Randle rotating over to the rolling big, he stayed planted and watched Allen dunk unencumbered.

When the Cavs finally made a sub and brought Okoro into the game, Thibs slotted Randle on him, hoping that matchup would provide safe quarters. Not so. On their first possession with Okoro, they swung it to him in the corner and he took Julius off the dribble along the baseline with ease. Thankfully, Isaiah Hartenstein had other ideas at the rim, and his block lead to an RJ fast break, but on the very next Cavs possession, Okoro again took Randle off the dribble and this time was able to covert.

The third quarter ended soon thereafter, and with it, so did Randle’s day. His performance and possible lingering ankle issue begs the question as to whether the Cavs will be able to take great advantage of New York’s defense when both Randle and Brunson are in the game that this series might not be over just yet.

Of course, Thibs already showed his hand in that he’s not afraid to go with a different option. That could be Josh Hart or RJ Barrett at the four even though we haven’t seen it in this series, especially when one of Cleveland’s bigs is out of the game.

Or, more likely, with the next round very much in sight, he could turn to the other power forward on the roster, just like he did with the game on the line on Sunday.

Speaking of which…