Orlando Magic head coach Jahmal Mosley made it clear what his team needed before Game 1.
“Three-point shooting and rebounding,” Mosley said, “I think those are the two key areas.”
Mosley’s evaluation couldn’t have been more accurate through four games. The Cleveland Cavaliers grabbed 25 offensive rebounds leading to 12 second-chance points per game in their two wins. In the two losses, Cleveland combined for just seven offensive boards and 6.5 second-chance points per game.
Orlando’s desire to stop the three-point shot led to many of these offensive rebounds.
“A lot of times we’re switching so much,” Franz Wagner said after Allen’s nine-offensive rebounds in Game 2. “Smaller guys are defending Jarrett Allen under the basket.”
Seven of Allen and Evan Mobley’s 16 offensive rebounds in the first two games were a byproduct of mismatches. The others came from the defense overhelping or beating their counterpart for the ball.
Switching on the perimeter is how you stop teams with off-ball movement shooters from getting loose. Their strategy seems like a byproduct of getting torched by Sam Merrill in the regular season, but that isn’t how the Cavs’ offense operates when they’re near full strength.
Cleveland’s three-point attempts are derived from forcing rotations due to rim pressure. Once they get you in help, their guards are able to kick it out to the perimeter and generate shots from there. This also creates perimeter separation for Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell to take pull-up threes.
The Magic were in rotation the first two games of the series, but it was more to do with their switching. The Cavs punished mismatches leading to clean three-point looks that they weren’t able to consistently knock down.
Switching less and putting Jalen Suggs on Donovan Mitchell in Games 3 and 4 resulted in the Magic defense not rotating nearly as much. The Cavs weren’t able to get anything going with Mitchell more neutralized and no off-ball movement to off-set it.
The best looks they got in Game 4 were from due to defenders not being able to stay connected through on-ball screens which isn’t the best way to increase outside looks. It’s also why Georges Niang and Max Strus only combined for four attempts on Saturday.
The Cavs averaged 34.5 outside attempts in the first two games and just 25.5 in Orlando. Even more than that, not getting the defense to rotate makes it difficult to get offensive rebounds like they did in the beginning of the series.
The Cavaliers were 9th in offensive-rebounding percentage and 3rd in three-point attempts during their 23-5 run from mid-December to the All-Star break. Even though the outside looks weren’t falling in the first two games, the process that led to them being able to get those shots was the byproduct of a functioning offense that was causing the defense to rotate. That went away when the series shifted to central Florida.
Whether the Cavs can get either of those things back will likely decide the series. The simple solution is for Mitchell and Garland to consistently win their matchups for a full game, which isn’t something either of them has proven they can do, would help generate offensive rebounds and outside looks. Giving rotation minutes to Merrill, the only player with defense-breaking off-ball shooting gravity, would also help.
Mosley was correct on what his team needed to do to win this series. His problem was how he went about doing it. Now it’s up to J.B. Bickerstaff to counter.