Who is that team breaking up the Hawks right before our eyes?
A year ago, an outfit wearing the same color scheme swept the Hawks out of the Eastern Conference finals. Now, it is poised to do the same Sunday, in Game 4 of the conference semis, only in a completely different, thoroughly modern, almost Western Conference kind of way.
It was enough a season ago for Cleveland to bludgeon the Hawks with the undeniable greatness of LeBron James. Now it is winning bigger and winning far more artfully while leading the Hawks in seminars on their own specialties — ball movement, floor spacing, creating the open shot.
“It’s amazing to think about just how they’re built and how they’re playing this year,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said Saturday.
“Just so much shooting and so much offensive firepower. Last year you almost felt like it was a blood bath. … Now all of a sudden you have a lot of shooting and the court is spread, Kyrie (Irving) is playing at a very high level. It’s significantly different last year versus this year.”
It has been the Hawks’ misfortune to catch Cleveland at a time when the Cavs are really getting it. All the parts are there now for them — guard Irving and forward Kevin Love were in various states of disrepair in last year’s conference final — and they are functioning as efficient gear works rather than independent contractors.
Which team is still undefeated in the postseason? Not record-setting Golden State. It’s 7-0 Cleveland.
Which team has averaged the most made 3-point shots in the playoffs — nearly 17, far more than second-best (11). Not the Warriors, famed for their distance shooting, with or without Steph Curry. That would be the Cavs.
Golden State still owns the postseason lead in the one category that reflects intelligent ball movement, assists per game (27). But right there are the Cavs, in second at 24.
Some could say that in this series, even more than the first-round sweep of Detroit, Cleveland is out-Warrior-ing the Warriors. It is making a Golden State-ment, some might add.
The Hawks meanwhile are just trying to find some shelter from the rain — Cleveland dropped a record 25 made 3s on them in Game 2 and added 21 more in Friday’s Game 3.
“I can’t recall a team ever shooting like this for three games,” Budenholzer said. Against the Hawks, Cleveland has made 53 percent of its considerable 3-point attempts, while shooting 10 percentage points less overall.
James may say, as he did Saturday, “We’re don’t want to shy away from the fact that we can make 3s, but we definitely don’t want to be labeled a jump-shooting team.” But why fight that tag, it seems to quite a successful one these days?
Every coach wants his players to share the ball and play nicely with one another. Tyronn Lue — a one-time undersized guard whose meandering seven-city tour of the NBA had its longest tenure in Atlanta — is the coach currently doing that for Cleveland.
He moved into the head coach’s seat in January when David Blatt, despite taking the Cavs to the Finals last year and positioning them again atop the East, was deemed insufficient.
Only 39, Lue looks older now that he has left the jangling dreadlocks on the barber’s floor and sports flecks of silver in what’s left. “I dyed mine gray. It’s my Barack Obama look,” he has joked.
And, despite the lack of head coaching experience, he seemingly has commanded the Cavs admirably. They mostly have skipped to the Lue on his cue.
That has meant responding to his calm nature: “He keeps us even-keeled,” James said. “When we come to the bench, no matter if we’re up, we’re down, he just tells us to stay in the moment.”
That has meant making him look very smart, as every button he has pushed in the postseason has resulted in a reward. Like Friday, when responding to the Hawks’ intense pressure on Irving, Lue for the first time paired Channing Frye with Love on the floor in an attempt to exploit the resulting openings on the perimeter. Frye answered with a game-high 27 points.
Most important, that has meant forging a workable bond with his team’s high-profile and sometimes willful stars (James above all, of course). Every time Cleveland swings the ball side to side, inside and out, and gets another wide-open look; every time James goes rhapsodic about the pop and energy of the perfect pass (which is often), it is clear that Lue has done his job.
Speaking of James and Irving, Lue said, “I have two of the best one-on-one players in the world, and they have bought in.”
At this stage, nobody is performing offensive microsurgery any better than Cleveland, not even those specialists in the other conference, Golden State and San Antonio.
James put it succinctly after Friday’s 121-108 victory over the Hawks. “We’re a team that’s destined for greatness, and I really believe that. We’ve got a mission,” he said.
And woe be to those standing in the way of a team that has re-fashioned itself, if not its goals.
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