CLEVELAND — Twenty games into an NBA season is typically the first moment teams begin to assess who they really are. It’s essentially one-quarter of the season, which is enough of a sample size to draw pretty substantial conclusions about where teams have been and where they’re headed.
As the Cavs close in on the 20-game mark this week, the numbers behind their 17-1 start are astounding. I dug through all of the data and metrics the last few days to pull out some of my favorites.
All statistics and league rankings are before Monday’s games …
1. Georges Niang is 20th in the league in plus-minus at plus-103. Not bad for a reserve averaging 20 minutes a night, right? But that’s not the nutty part.
He’s seventh on the Cavs. Seventh! The Cavs have seven of the league’s top 20 players in plus-minus. For comparison, Boston has three in the top 20. Oklahoma City has two.
|
Rank
|
Player
|
Plus-minus
|
|
3
|
Evan Mobley
|
168
|
|
7
|
Caris LeVert
|
149
|
|
9
|
Darius Garland
|
131
|
|
10
|
Donovan Mitchell
|
122
|
|
15
|
Ty Jerome
|
113
|
|
16
|
Jarrett Allen
|
108
|
|
20
|
Georges Niang
|
103
|
2. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Cavs lead the league in point differential by a healthy margin. Cleveland has outscored its opponents this year by 223 points, already surpassing last season’s total of 198.
They were at 441 two years ago, which is in the neighborhood of the 492 differential the year they won the championship. At this rate, the Cavs will blow through those markers well before the All-Star break.
The Cavs’ best point differential in team history is 732, not surprisingly from the season they won a franchise-record 66 games. Their point differential through 18 games that season: 222. Just one point off their current pace.
Based on the numbers, the franchise wins record is going to be within reach. More on that later.
3. When Donovan Mitchell was on the court last year, the Cavs outscored teams by 5.9 points. When he was off the floor, Cavs opponents outscored them by 1.5 points. No surprise there. Teams often dip when the best player is resting. In the Cavs’ case, it was a 7.4-point swing last year.
This year, the Cavs are outscoring teams by 7.2 points with Mitchell on the floor — and 5.6 points when he’s not.
So the Cavs are outscoring opponents this year without Mitchell at nearly the same clip as they were last year with him.
What a BLOCK by Caris LeVert 🖐️ pic.twitter.com/emkFwf3SKU
— NBA TV (@NBATV) November 10, 2024
4. Without getting too far into the weeds with the on-court/off-court metrics, it’s worth noting one other item: The Cavs have a positive number with every player off the floor, meaning they aren’t getting outscored by teams just because one player is resting. That shouldn’t be surprising given all of the other data and it further emphasizes how much of a team effort this season has been.
The interesting nugget, at least to me: The Cavs are at their “worst” when Evan Mobley is off the floor. They’re “only” outscoring teams by 3.1 points when Mobley sits, which is the lowest figure for a player on the team. For those of us who felt the Cavs couldn’t become legitimate championship contenders until Mobley emerged as the team’s best player, please stand by.
5. This one defies logic and it doesn’t feel sustainable. But again, this is the part of the season where we start drawing conclusions about what’s real and what’s not.
One of the best defensive lineups the Cavs have used this season is Mitchell, Caris LeVert, Sam Merrill, Niang and Mobley.
Make it make sense.
Mobley is the only above-average defender in the group, yet across 74 possessions together, that lineup has a defensive rating of 89.3. The 74 possessions, for the record, are the third-most on the team, according to Cleaning The Glass. This is a lineup that gets heavy usage and they’ve oddly been terrific together on the defensive end.
The offensive rating for this group is over 120 and the net rating is a whopping 30.9. It’s been a great lineup for Kenny Atkinson. But it’s the defensive numbers that are most surprising.
EV4 ➡️ Sammy. @evanmobley & @smerrill05 | #LetEmKnow pic.twitter.com/Cd3Yo9boEN
— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) November 25, 2024
6. Ty Jerome is on the type of heater he never even experienced in college. Jerome has scored 55 points in his last two games and has four 20-point games in November. He never did that in three years at Virginia.
Atkinson has remarked multiple times this year about Jerome’s shot making and what a pleasant surprise it has been. He has made 11 3s in the Cavs’ last two games. Never did that in college, either. He could be an early candidate for Sixth Man of the Year, but he might have to fight his own teammate for it.
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7. For as big of a revelation as Jerome has been, LeVert might be even bigger. He has historically been one of the league’s most inefficient players, which has made his start to the season all the more stunning.
LeVert is averaging 134.2 points per 100 shot attempts, far and away the best mark of his career and ranking in the 90th percentile across the league, according to Cleaning the Glass. He’s one spot ahead of three-time Most Valuable Player Nikola Jokic on the points per 100 shot attempts chart.
LeVert was in the 21st percentile last year in efficiency and hasn’t ranked above 38th since his second year in the league — under Atkinson in Brooklyn.
Atkinson said a few games ago he always thought LeVert could be more efficient when they were together with the Nets and he was disappointed the coaching staff couldn’t get it out of him. They are now.
8. I saved maybe my favorite for last.
Given all of the Cavs’ efficiency numbers to this point, Cleaning the Glass projects them to win 67.4 games this year. That, of course, would be a franchise record.
But Cleaning the Glass also projected them for 14.8 wins to this point based on how they’ve played so far, so the Cavs are already a couple of wins ahead of pace. That could mean a bit of regression in the wins column — or it could mean flirting with 70 victories in April.
How accurate are the projections? Here is the Cavs’ win total for the past three years as predicted by Cleaning the Glass based on their efficiency numbers. Actual win total in parentheses:
2023-24: 47 (48)
2022-23: 55 (51)
2021-22: 45.8 (44)
The Cavs and Oklahoma City Thunder have matching 67.4 win projections for this season. I wonder how the ratings-obsessed league office will feel about parity when, within the next few years, it gets a Cleveland-OKC NBA Finals matchup.
(Photo of Caris LeVert and Dean Wade: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
