ORLANDO - Through a full week of the playoffs, there are only two teams with a defensive rating under 100. The Oklahoma City Thunder, who are up 3-0 on the New Orleans Pelicans, are one of them. The other are the Orlando Magic, who evened up their series with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday afternoon with a second straight resounding win at Kia Center.
The Cavs, through the first four games, are averaging just 91.3 points on 42.9 percent overall floor shooting and a playoff-low 26.7 percent 3-point shooting.
A big factor in Cleveland’s perimeter shooting struggles is Orlando’s combination of length and contesting frequency.
This stat tells a big piece of that story: Of the 120 3-pointers the Cavs have taken so far this series, 72 have been heavily contested, per Second Spectrum. That’s 60 percent of Cleveland’s 3-point attempts. The Cavs have only made 25 percent of them.
While four games are a relatively small sample size, those are unprecedented playoff numbers. Since this stat started getting tracked in 2014, never has a team in the playoffs heavily contested 60-plus percent of the opponents’ 3-point shots while also holding them to under 30 percent 3-point shooting.
The Cavs have been bothered by the Magic’s collective size.
While this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering Jonathan Isaac is arguably pound-for-pound the best defender in the league, the Cavs are 0-of-8 from 3-point range with the 6-foot-10, 230-pounder contesting. Meanwhile, they are 0-of-5 from beyond the arc with Wendell Carter Jr. contesting.
Others are causing havoc as well. The Cavs are 3-of-21 (14.3 percent) from downtown with Franz Wagner contesting. Of the 15 players who have contested at least 20 threes so far, that ranks No. 1. Paolo Banchero is also one of those 15 players, and Cleveland has made just five of its 20 3-pointers with the 2024 NBA All-Star contesting.
The job the Magic have done on Cleveland’s 3-point snipers has been extraordinary. Max Strus is 2-of-16 from 3-point land with a contest, while Georges Niang is 1-of-9.
Donovan Mitchell has also struggled. He’s 7-of-27.
As we saw in the third quarter of Saturday’s Game 4, in which the Magic held the Cavs to just 10 points that frame, there aren’t many ways to evade a locked-in Orlando defense.
“You give us a two-and-a-half, three-minute stretch where we can play the defense that we are known to play, we can (build) the lead on any game,” Isaac said. “That’s a part of what makes us dangerous, and we were able to showcase that tonight.”
In the regular season, the Cavs averaged 13.5 made threes per contest, seventh-most in the league. So far in these playoffs, they are averaging only eight makes from downtown.
Although it’s not abnormal for the home team to win the first four games of a playoff series, the sheer gap in how both Orlando and Cleveland have played on their home floors is significant. Each game has been decided by at least 10 points and the average margin of victory in this series is 21.2.
Obviously, the Cavs can win this series without winning a game in Orlando. The Magic – whether it’s in Game 5 or, if necessary, Game 7 – will have to find a way to come up big on the road.
“We’re not satisfied at all,” Franz said. “We just got two wins. We need two more against them, so we’ve got to stay locked in and you know, hopefully get the next game in Cleveland.”