[Observation] Tigers start and end! The Cavaliers are a pseudo-strong team and send Garland away in the offseason?

Sports Weekly All-Media Reporter Li Hui

Not many people could have thought that the Cleveland Cavaliers ended the 2024-2025 season in this way. Especially when they have a 64-18 regular season record, people are expecting that they will win another championship after the LeBron James era. The season ended with the Tiger Head and Head is confirmed to be a powerful team. The Cavaliers have always been creating surprises this season. Before the start of the season, not many people expected what kind of storms this team with little change in lineup could cause. But after completing the change of coaches in the offseason, the new coach Atkinson injected new changes into the team. He activated Mobley, who had previously seemed a little stagnant. He created a substitute group led by "civilians" such as Jerome. With the stable performance of Mitchell and Garland, the Cavaliers started with a record of 15 wins and 0 losses. From beginning to end, they were in the leading position in the Eastern Conference and eventually won the Eastern Conference regular season championship.

In this process, the Cavaliers team gained a lot: Atkinson won the Best Coach, which was his greatest achievement since his coaching career; Mitchell had a good chance of being selected for the Best Team for the first time in his career; Garland was selected as an All-Star again, breaking the doubt that he and Mitchell could not coexist to a certain extent; Mobley was elected the Best Defensive Player and successfully won a big contract for himself.

However, in the playoffs, the strength of this Cavaliers team, which was defeated in the regular season, has dropped sharply. In the first round, facing the Heat, who entered the playoffs as the 10th in the Eastern Conference, the Cavaliers easily swept, but considering the opponent's experience throughout the season and physical fitness at the end of the season, this is not too convincing. In the second round, facing the Pacers who won 14 games less than him in the regular season, the Cavaliers completely revealed their true colors. It is true that the injuries of core players such as Mitchell, Garland, and Mobley have affected the trend of this series to a considerable extent, but when they are relatively healthy or all players play, the Cavaliers do not show the dominance of the regular season. In this round of series between

and Pacers, the Cavaliers exposed many of the characteristics of "pseudo-strong teams". First of all, their lineup is not reasonable. The backcourt duo are both strong offense and weak defense, while the inside are both weak defense and strong offense. They are unable to play multiple positions on the court, resulting in the team lacking workarounds when encountering difficulties. If the regular season competition is the lower limit, then the playoff competition is naturally the upper limit. The regular season opponents lack targeting. The Cavaliers can focus on me and keep winning games with a healthy lineup. However, in the playoffs, the opponents will carefully deploy and look for your shortcomings in every game. At this time, the Cavaliers expose their own problems.

Secondly, Atkinson, as the best coach of the season, also exposed his shortcomings in this round of the series. Compared with the experienced champion coach Carlisle, Atkinson seems too immature. He has very few flexibility throughout the series, especially after winning the third game of the series, the Cavaliers had the opportunity to take advantage of the victory, but Carlisle made perfect adjustments in G4, and Atkinson seemed to be inadequate. In the end, the Pacers won 20 points at home, which determined the final trend of the series.

It can be said that this Cavaliers team is a bit similar to the Hawks in the 2014-2015 season. The Hawks also won 60+ wins in the regular season, but they played stumblingly in the playoffs and were eventually swept 4-0 by the Cavaliers led by James in the Eastern Conference Finals. Like that Hawks, this Cavaliers have many All-Star players, but they don’t have a truly outstanding superstar. Although Mitchell’s performance is excellent, as a defender known for his scoring and a short ball holder, Mitchell’s influence in the playoffs is ultimately limited. Of course, in this round of the series, Mitchell has performed quite well when both himself and his teammates are injured, and you can't blame him too much.

Change is imminent. Garland solves the problem?

After eliminating the playoffs last season, many voices from the outside world believed that the Cavaliers needed to make changes, and in the end they just changed their coaches and played a 64-win season. Now, when the Cavaliers are eliminated again, Mitchell is the first to speak, "You must deny us again, but we will make a comeback."

However, is such a Cavalier with flaws really going to make a comeback? The answer obviously tends to be "no".

Trading Garland may be the best way to solve the current Cavaliers' dilemma. Although Garland performed very well in the regular season this season, in the playoffs, Garland once again exposed his shortcomings. Not only did he miss 4 games due to injury, but in the 5 games he played, Garland averaged only 18 points and 5.2 assists per game, with a shooting percentage of 42.2%, and a three-point shooting percentage of only 28.6%. In addition, Garland made 3 turnovers in each game. Some people may say that Garland suffered an injury and fought against the Pacers with injuries. However, so far in his career, Garland has never performed well in the playoffs. Last season, he averaged only 15.7 points per game in 12 games and shot only 42.7%.

From the perspective of technical style, the combination of Garland and Mitchell is destined to fail to succeed in the playoffs. They are both defenders whose offense is far greater than defense, and they both need the ball to make themselves in the best state. Compared with Mitchell, Garland's offensive explosive power is obviously insufficient, and he is more restricted by physical conditions. It can even be said that Garland's injury is not bad luck in the absolute sense, but his own chance of injury in the playoffs will be greater, because in the playoff level confrontation, the thin Garland is difficult to continue to output.

Therefore, even though Mitchell and Garland always believe that they can succeed, even if the two always encourage each other, from a competitive perspective, Mitchell and Garland are at best replicas of the Trail Blazers' double guns that year. In fact, from the actual performance, they are not as good as the Trail Blazers' double guns, and the Trail Blazers are also a team that has stable performance in the regular season but has not achieved much in the playoffs. The Cavaliers are undoubtedly following such an old path..

But if the Cavaliers choose to trade Garland, they are expected to usher in another village. What this Cavaliers lack is a forward player who can hold the ball and provide stable outside defense, that is, their size needs to be further increased. After getting Hunter in the middle of the season, the Cavaliers' third position strength has indeed increased, but Hunter still cannot completely solve the problems faced by this Cavaliers. The fundamental reason is that the upper limit of the backcourt combination of Garland and Mitchell is too low in the playoff environment.

In 2022, Garland and the Cavaliers reached a five-year, $193 million contract renewal. In the next three seasons, his total salary will exceed $120 million. This is a big burden for the team. We have every reason to believe that Garland can still achieve outstanding results in the regular season when staying in the team, but in the playoffs, the old-fashioned issues will also appear again.

After two consecutive seasons of the semi-finals and three consecutive years of bleak playoffs, the Cavaliers ushered in the best period to break up Mitchell and Garland.