AC Blog: Turning the Tide in Indy
Mr. Cavalier Breaks Down Sunday's Pivotal Game 4 in Indiana
by Austin Carr (@MrCavalier34)
4/22/18 | Cavs.com
What’s happening, Cavalier fans. It’s AC – checking in before Game 4 in Indy.
The Cavaliers need to get this one tonight. If we do, we get homecourt advantage back and we’re back in business.
If George Hill is unable to go tonight, I’m good with Jose starting. I see us functioning better, because we need assists from more people than LeBron right now.
Right now, we just need a little more from some of our younger, more inexperienced role players. They’re finding out about Playoff basketball right now, and they’re experiencing some growing pains.
Again, the Playoffs are a different animal than the regular season. It's a different focus, a different preparation. And you have to learn it and go through it to understand it. It's just different -- a different feeling, a different pressure. The media scrutinizes you more.
So now, what you CAN'T do is let that bother your next performance if you've have a bad performance. And that's what a lot of them are going through now is understanding that it's a different animal that you're dealing with now.
Now they've had a little taste of it and they understand what's going on. And it's coming down to where they can make those adjustments and understand what it's all about. But you have to have better preparation -- understand your opponent to a tee. You've got to know what he had for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Playoffs. It's nothing like the regular season.
But it’s not just the younger guys that are struggling. I’d like to see Kyle Korver get going tonight. He’s had a rough series finding his shot so far and I think a big part of it is that there's no flow to the offense. Shooters depend on flow, so you can anticipate where and when the ball is coming. Our offense doesn't have a good flow and that's what's hurting us right now.
"We need to come out aggressive and stay in that mode for all 48 minutes."
Mr. Cavalier, Austin Carr
But I think having Jose in the offense will changes things a little bit, because it seems like all season, having him in that lineup distributes the ball to people better – because now you'll have him and JR in the backcourt and LeBron at the 3, at his natural position, instead of having to play point guard.
Defensively, we’ve been very good so far.
Our individual defense has been good and help defense has been good. In terms of guarding Oladipo, they haven't let him turn the corner as much and they've attacked him further out. So that makes him give the ball up and he's not a guy that plays off the ball well.
So what we have to do now is, guys like Bogdanovic, we got to make sure those guys don't get too many good looks. We've got to stay close to them. In other words, you can't randomly switch a lot on this team; you've got to stay with shooters.
The Pacers make for a tough matchup for Cleveland. This was almost the worst matchup for us anywhere in the East – and we are actually having our Third Round in the First Round.
There hasn’t been a good flow to our offense, but you've got to give their defense some credit. At the same time, we were not executing our plays like we did during the regular season.
As far as Sunday night’s huge Game 4, I think it comes down to how resilient we can be.
They're going to be jacked up because they know they can put us in a hole with a win. We have to be mentally strong enough, which we haven't been all year. But tonight's going to be a mental test because you're going to have to overcome a lot of different things.
There's going to be a lot of swings and if we happen to be fortunate enough to get up by double digits we cannot give it up this time. We need to come out aggressive and stay in that mode for all 48 minutes.
If we do that, we’ll come out of tonight’s game tied at 2-2, heading to Cleveland to put the series back in our favor.