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The Cavs aren’t running from their playoff failure.
INDEPENDENCE — Koby Altman,
Cleveland Cavaliers President of Basketball Operations, met with the media for his customary end-of-season press conference late Monday morning.
Usually, Altman likes to give an overly positive spin on what went right that year. He wasn’t able to do that this time. His 64-win group was shown the door in the second round of the playoffs by an Indiana Pacers team that the Cavaliers were better than in almost every regular-season metric.
But playoff games aren’t played on spreadsheets. When the rubber hit the road, the Cavs weren’t ready. They folded when adversity hit and dropped winnable games, including a
Game 2 that will “haunt us forever,” in the words of Altman.
Right now, the Cavs are just a regular-season team. There’s no running from it or making excuses for why that isn’t the case. This will be the narrative on this team until they show otherwise.
“We’ve become very, very good at the regular season,” Altman said. “Eight-two games. We’ve been brilliant [in the last three years]. ... We need to figure out how to win at the highest level when everyone’s juices are up, when everyone’s competing at the highest level, it’s more physical.”
The Cavaliers have certainly perfected the regular-season formula. Their depth and overlapping skills have been an asset through the six-month slog. But that hasn’t translated to short series yet.
Injuries play a part in the playoff failure, but they don’t explain everything. Altman pointed out that none of the teams that made it to the conference finals had a regular rotation player missing. That’s important. But he also went out of his way to explicitly state that injuries were “not an excuse” for his team’s shortcomings.
The Cavs executed their plan to be ready for the playoffs, but there’s no way to truly prevent injuries. Both Altman and head coach Kenny Atkinson mentioned early in the season that one of their goals was to be healthy going into the playoffs. Part of that was by relying on their depth and keeping their best players’ minutes down. That plan worked until it didn’t.
“The hard part was the plan that we laid out over the course of the year was phenomenal from a performance standpoint,” Altman said. “The year before, we were limping into the playoffs. We didn’t want that. So minutes came down. Let’s elevate them at the end of the year, let’s have some ramp-up. ... Let’s be our best heading into the playoffs, and we were in the first round.”
There’s an inherent randomness and unpredictability with sports. That’s what makes it so fascinating to watch. That randomness shows through with injury luck as well.
It’s not exciting or reactionary to say that injuries greatly influenced the Cavs’ demise. It also isn’t right to say that the playoff failures were just because of injuries.
Altman was clear to point out what the real problem was.
“I think there was some misfortune that we had (with injuries), but we can’t point to that,” Altman said. “I think it’s the intangible toughness. When things get tight, how do you get that foul-line rebound? How do you get the ball in? That’s what I’m looking towards.”
Atkinson
pointed this out immediately after Game 5 and rightfully so. The Cavs didn’t respond well to the adversity that they faced. They didn’t continually respond to Indiana’s punches and fell because of it.
“There’s a mental toughness that we’re going to have to get to, that a lot of the Pacers had,” Altman said. “At the end of those games, taking out Game 4, I think that’s what we saw.
“They made those winning plays at the end. And as much as we won the possession battle, and dominated the possession battle throughout the playoffs, that one foul-line blockout at the end of Game 2, right? That’s a level of focus and winning that we have to get to, and it’s going to eat at us.”
Mental toughness is something Altman believes this group can acquire through losses like this.
“These are experiences that you can’t teach,” Altman said. “You have to go through them and that has to eat at you, but it has to fuel you.”
Whether or not this is something that can be built upon remains to be seen. Not every team bounces back resiliently from a loss. Not every team can learn and grow from disappointments like this.
The Cavs have improved from past playoff letdowns. They became a better rebounding and shooting team after their loss to the
New York Knicks in 2023. They became a deeper team after losing to the
Boston Celtics a year ago.
They’ve shown that they can fortify weaknesses. Whether or not this is an area they can incrementally improve in as well remains to be seen.
Only the Cavs can change the narrative that they’ve created after repeated poor playoff performances.
Donovan Mitchell said that they weren’t going to get respect even if they went 82-0 next season. That’s something that only they can change
“Externally, the narrative is going to be the narrative,” Altman said. “People are going to write what they’re going to write. We have to change that. That’s on us. That’s not on you guys (the media). I don’t need you to combat [that] and say, ‘Well, they were the second-best [all-time offensive rating]. Look at all the stuff they’ve done. Sixty-four wins.’ Like, we have to change that narrative, and the only way we do that is to win.
“If we won the Pacers series, there would be no questions about toughness and [being] a regular season team. We have to live in that space. We have to create our own narrative.”
As bad as things are, there’s a championship window still open. That makes what moves they do or don’t execute this summer so important.
“There’s going to be urgency,” Altman said about their championship aspirations. “We have patience because we keep knocking on that door. I want to be in that space where we’re the final eight teams. The final four teams, and if we don’t get it done, there’s a level of disappointment and frustration. And how do we come back and go after this thing again?”
Altman has previously talked about wanting to build a long runway. That is still true, but there is also a sense that next year could be this group’s best chance to advance through the conference based on how things currently look.
The Celtics don’t know what their future is going to look like after the Jayson Tatum injury and their second-apron restrictions. Giannis Antetokounmpo might not be with the
Milwaukee Bucks next year either.
How the Cavs go about improving or at least staying as competitive as they were this season remains to be seen.
It doesn’t seem like Altman is looking to get away from this core group.
“Last year, if we were going to be reactionary, then last year,” Altman said when asked about how difficult it is to stay the course again after their most recent disappointment.
“After everything that was written about that group and all the rumors and all that. And we stood pat and look what happened, right? I think the same thing now is you lean in even more to what we’re building, the culture that we have here, the internal growth, the youth, the sustainability of that.
“I think there’s a championship window that we have here that’s wide open, and that’s one that we’re going to try to pursue next year, and the year after, and the year after, and so forth.”
The Cavs will need to figure out how to navigate the second apron if they’re going to keep trying to be a championship-level team. They’re projected to be a second-apron team right now, but there’s moves that they could make to avoid that if they wanted to.
Altman wasn’t sure that going into the second apron now would be the best basketball decision for this team. There’s a cost-benefit analysis that needs to take place no matter what decision the Cavs go in.
By the sounds of things, chairman Dan Gilbert’s willingness to spend doesn’t seem like it’s going to be an issue.
Whether or not they’re able to keep Ty Jerome could come down to how willing the Cavs are to go into the second apron.
Alman mentioned that one of the benefits of the second apron is that it allows you to “retain your best talent.” That is true. The Cavs could offer Jerome over $14 million for next season, but that will make it tougher to get out of that tax group in the coming years.
“The league did that to us,” Altman said of the luxury tax. “It’s unfortunate, actually. I don’t know if it was intended for small markets, but it’s hitting the small markets worse than the teams that were so extraordinarily into the tax. ... We’ll figure it out.”
Altman mentioned that they want to keep Jerome, but it’s not as simple as writing a check.
Internal improvement is the simplest path forward with the luxury tax restrictions. The Cavs aren’t the young, upstart team they were a few years ago, but there’s still more that they can get out of this group.
“We like where we are from a roster standpoint,” Altman said. “We still feel like we have internal growth. ... If we are a second apron team, we still know we have internal growth to get better.”
Darius Garland is one of the players who needs to improve. It’s unfair to be too critical of Garland given the toe injury he was playing through, but it’s also worth pointing out that he’s struggled to carry his good regular-season play into the postseason for the third year in a row.
The Cavs can’t afford for that to continue if they want to get over this hurdle.
“He needs to get stronger so he can compete at the highest level,” Altman said of Garland. “It’s the same thing that [happened] with Stephen Curry. ... Now, Steph is all world, I’m not making that comparison, but Steph got so strong over his maturation of his years. He’s a different physical specimen than he was when he first started playing.
“It’s the same thing that has to happen with Darius. And so, that’s a durability question, but it’s more, how does he get physically stronger? How does he get mentally stronger? And he’s still 25, so he’s young, but there’s a level that he has to get to from a body standpoint.”
The same is true for Evan Mobley. He’s still the key to the Cavs' future.
Mobley needs to be more assertive.
He talked about improving there immediately after the season. Altman backed that up as well.
“We need more than 13 field-goal attempts a game,” Atkinson said of Mobley. “That’s new for Evan. So there’s another jump, and to that point, Kenny is going to be able to implement his off-season program, which we’re very excited about, and we’re going to see some internal growth there. And we think we have one of the best big men in the game in Evan Mobley.”
Competing for championships is the goal. This was the first year that being a title team was a realistic outcome. The team didn’t handle that well. They struggled with being the hunted, as seen in their March slump and embarrassing second-round showing.
We’ll see what moves the front office makes to try to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Even though they’re currently in the second apron, there’s still avenues to make a splashy trade if they wanted to.
But no matter what they do, this is a group that should be relevant again next year, even if they can’t repeat their 64-win regular season.
“We’re going to keep fighting for that championship,” Altman said. “This window is wide open.”
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