Basketball, She Wrote
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The Definitive Pacers vs. Cavs Preview
🕑 Added 2025-05-03 12:04:07 +0000 UTCMy work at Basketball, She Wrote is typically paywalled. This video podcast with Samson Folk and Evin Gualberto, going deep on the nitty gritty of Pacers-Cavs, is available as a free trial for everyone. If you're new here and want to support independent writing about actual basketball, please consider subscribing and/or sharing it around. Alright, onto the spoken and written words about the Pacers.
By: Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper
To forecast the future, we're often told to look to the past. Well, that’s difficult to do in this series, when Tyrese Haliburton missed more than half of the games that mattered in January against a Cavaliers team that had yet to trade for De’Andre Hunter and was still integrating Max Strus into the lineup with Dean Wade starting in his place. And, oh by the way, Cleveland’s sixth man, Ty Jerome, didn’t play in those games, and Indiana’s sixth-ish man, Bennedict Mathurin, was still playing with the first five in the absence of Aaron Nesmith.
Still, although we must prognosticate from our current vantage point in the present, there is still some concrete evidence as far as concepts that can perhaps provide a roadmap of what to watch for in the series.
With Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland both capable of transforming into geysers with the ball in their hands, Cleveland leads the league in effective-field goal percentage on pull-up attempts, while also ranking second in overall three-point percentage and fourth in three-point attempt rate. As such, the push-and-pull to create/shrink space at the nail projects to be a key battleground in this series. Indiana is going to pull in extra help to prevent Cleveland's talented backcourt from popping off or attacking downhill. To counter, the Cavs often respond by stressing the help, cutting from the corner to the dunker spot to empty that entire side of the floor for the player at the wing to drift into.
With those cutting principles as a core feature of Cleveland's offense, the Pacers are going to have to find a way to contain the most efficient scoring team out of ball-screens in the NBA, while also going up against the No. 2 defense in terms of opponent field-goal percentage at the rim. Oh, and just as a reminder: Cleveland also played the most possessions of zone in a game against the Pacers this season (37), allowing just 0.865 points per possession in the back-end of the two-game mini-series in January, with Pascal Siakam going 1-of-5 from the field in the second half. For a team that put the clamps on the Cavs in the first of those two match-ups by dialing up the pressure (holding Cleveland to just 0.813 points per possession with at least two back-court defenders present), avoiding those types of snags at the other end of floor will be critical to also avoiding a potential double whammy.
For all of this and other questions, such as who will be guarding Tyrese Haliburton for the Cavs now that Max Strus has returned to the starting lineup, along with other match-up related inquiries, Samson Folk is here along with my friend, Evin Gualberto, who in addition to having more than 100,000 subscribers at his hyper-specific and incisive YouTube channel, coaches at one of the most prestigious high school basketball programs in the country while also working as a contributing writer for Cleveland dot com. Also, fun fact: Evin and Samson used to co-host a podcast together called Bouncing Around, of which I was once a guest.
Alright, now that everyone knows everyone, here are the relevant timestamps:
0:00 - Introductions
3:14 - Who is guarding Tyrese Haliburton for the Cavs?
8:12 - Will Andrew Nembhard be primarily assigned to Mitchell or Garland?
10:11 - The war between Indiana's heavy nail presence and Cleveland's corner-to-dunker cuts and what that means for defending the three-point line
19:24 - Toying with deep drop coverage + forcing Evan Mobley to force the Pacers to guard him as a possible solve
22:25 - Cleveland limiting Pascal Siakam and baiting open twos with zone defense
32:51 - Should the Pacers return the favor and zone the Cavs?
41:13 - Samson claims he doesn't listen to basketball podcasts (even though Caitlin has proof that he does)
42:27 - Pascal Siakam returning to his more natural role on defense as a roamer
49:19 - The potential need for Ben Sheppard at the point of attack in this series
54:46 - Samson promises to go just mustache, in honor of Sheppard, if the Pacers win this series
55:36 - Inverted horns as a means to displace the bigs for the Cavs
57:37 - Cleveland's willingness to switch with Mobley and Allen and the possibility of cross-matching Hunter onto Haliburton
1:02:16 - Targeting Jerome rather than Merrill
1:08:20 - Caitlin as Ravenclaw? Samson as Hufflepuff?
1:10:27 - Caitlin's galaxy-brained idea about jump-balls and tip-shots
1:12:56 - The origin story of how Samson, Evin, and Caitlin first met
1:19:50 - Evin gives Caitlin tips for her impression of Samson as a podcaster
1:20:53 - Thank you and goodbye -- if you made it this long
Comments
Kyle Taylor
I liked the 'war at the nail' discussion a lot. As good as Cleveland shot pull-ups in the first round, like all teams, they were meaningfully better in catch-and-shoot situations for the whole season and best in the league when left wide open for three -- and top 10 in generating those kinds of looks. I'm much more scared of Cleveland putting Indy in rotation perpetually with the heavy nail presence vs. Garland/Mitchell pull-ups, and, like you, more scared of the pull-ups vs. their bigs self-creating. For the season, basically every c&s three for Cleveland was a slightly higher % look than a Garland pull-up 3 and significantly better than a Mitchell pull-up 3 (he's at 36% over his last three seasons, inc. playoffs). I'd personally lean towards some slightly more conservative schemes OR ones like the Memphis clip you showed, where at least the rotation out to the shooter is more straightforward. I am opposed to just hoping Cleveland shoots way under their expected FG%, as happened earlier this year; those clips from the Cavs games look unsustainable in a best of 7 series. Cleveland wants to put you in rotation, they're great at generating quality shots out of that, and on top if it, you tire yourself out more vs. other coverages. I'm into the galaxy brain idea of playing more zone against them! Try it! That kind of experimentation is what I think early games in a series should be for, esp. when you're an underdog. Sorry for rambling - your analysis always gets me thinking! Cheers, and very much looking forward to however many more of these we get.
PaversPaveToThePave
I don’t know if you want to inflates Samson ego in anyway. However you should let him know that a user on the Pacers Discord channel uses the handle “Samson Folk Stan.”
