Sixers and Cavaliers Will Play Two

By Sean Kennedy

This weekend, Philadelphia fans will be treated to the rare home-and-home series in the NBA, as the Sixers will host the Cavaliers Friday night before traveling to Cleveland to run things back on Saturday. Cleveland has started the season 2-3, winning two close contests at home, but losing all three of their games on the road.

Clearly, much of the talk in the Philadelphia media will be centered around the return of Andrew Bynum after the Sixers franchise shipped off a ton of players to acquire the mercurial big man, only to see him suit up for a total of zero minutes. Sadly, it appears the degenerative arthritis in his knees will never allow Bynum to regain the dominant form we saw in his Lakers days. This season, Bynum is averaging 12.8 minutes per game and not playing back-to-backs so he’ll only play in one of the two games this weekend; it’s still undecided which game that will be. He has come out and stated that he still feels ‘little, sharp pains’ in both knees and that he feels like a shell of himself. I’d wager (and have!) that the big man will not play in more than half the games this season.

Moving on to the Cleveland team that will actually be deciding the outcomes, the Cavaliers have played very well defensively, sporting the fifth-best defensive rating in the league. The returns of Anderson Varejao from injury and Mike Brown as head coach (who has always been known as a defensive-minded guy) certainly have a lot to do with that. However, they’ve had the second-worst offense in the league thus far, only ahead of the Jazz, who are the most succesful tankers in the league right now. Cleveland has been the fifth-worst shooting team in the league with an eFG% of 44.5%, as they’ve shot just 31.5% from three and struggled to get to the line. Given, the defense, or lack there of, fans have seen from the Sixers thus far, chances are this will be the weekend the Cavaliers snap out of that shooting funk.

Like much of the team, star point guard Kyrie Irving has struggled a bit with his shot in the early going, only shooting 40.0% from the field and 69.6% from the foul line. He’s still averaging 18.0 ppg through sheer volume so I’d look for him to really breakout this weekend as his efficiency numbers adjust to career levels. He’s also taking on more responsibilities in other areas of the game, averaging 5.4 boards and 7.0 assists. Scary news for the rest of the league as Irving continues to get more comfortable and take more control of the action on the court. It will be another day in the office for rookie Michael Carter-Williams as his string of matchups against top-flight point guards continues.

To complement Irving, the Cavaliers have had a bevy of high draft picks where they really seemed to have missed out on some opportunities. Tristan Thompon appears to be an aggressive offensive rebounder but is probably better suited to be an energy guy off the bench. Dion Waiters is just in his sophomore season but all signs point to him being just an inefficient gunner. Finally, the first overall pick Anthony Bennett became a national story for the wrong reason, missing his first fifteen field goals attempts before finally connecting last game. Obviously, that’s an incredibly small sample size but still not the start you’d like to see when drafting a guy first overall.

As far as the Sixers’ chances in these contests, I think it all boils down to whether Brett Brown wants to make a more concerted effort to clean up the three-point defense. There’s no dominant post presence in the regular rotation for the Cavaliers so I wouldn’t think the team should be overly concerned about defending the paint. Irving is an excellent three-point shooter, as are guys like Alonzo Gee and CJ Miles on the wings. If it’s basically a pre-game shootaround behind the arc for the Cavaliers, like it was for the Wizards, the Sixers won’t stand a chance. If they clean that up, Philadelphia can hang with these guys; Vegas agrees given that the Sixers are only 3.5-point underdogs for tonight’s game. The real treat to me will be watching Carter-Williams do battle with Irving and see how he defends the guy with arguable the sickest handle in the game. So keep an eye on that matchup and remember, when you’re tanking, any result is a win.