The Cavaliers — after wilting in five games in a best-of-seven playoff series with the Knicks a year ago — might as well have had the scarlet letter “S” branded on their foreheads.
S for “Soft.”
The Cavaliers are determined to change that label in the playoffs this year. They finished fourth in the Eastern Conference to earn home-court advantage in the first round. Their best-of-seven series with the Orlando Magic begins at 1 p.m. April 20 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“We have to go in with the mentality that we have to throw the first punch,” center Jarrett Allen said. “That’s been the message all across the board, all across the locker room — to come in with a lot of energy and a lot of effort from the second it all happens.”
Being labeled soft is about the worst insult a pro athlete can get. And the Cavs have had to deal with questions about it for 12 months, almost non-stop.
Coach J.B. Bickerstaff bristled at that criticism midway through the 2023-24 regular season, as though he took it personally.
“We take what people say with a grain of salt,” he said. “We had the second-best defensive rating in the playoffs. You can’t do that and be soft. We don’t listen to outside noise.”
Allen, who was the main target of the criticism because of the way Knicks center Mitchell Robinson dominated him when Robinson fought for offensive rebounds, is as mellow off the court as anyone could be.
But Allen had a different take than his coach as late as last month when asked about the Cavaliers toughness after they beat the Timberwolves, 114-113, in overtime at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. The Wolves were in a battle with the Denver Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder for first place in the NBA West at the time, just as they were on the final day of the regular season. The Cavs, meanwhile, lost to the Hawks in Atlanta, 112-101, two nights earlier. They would go on to lose six of eight after beating the T-Wolves.
“Reputations are usually earned,” Allen said after outrebounding Wolves center Rudy Gobert, 18-17 and limiting Gobert to four offensive rebounds. “But reputations can be changed.”
The Cavaliers and Magic split the four games they played in the regular season. This is the Magic’s first trip to the playoffs since 2019-20 when they were eliminated by Milwaukee, four games to one. That puts them in a similar situation to the one the Cavs were in last season as a playoff team for the first time since they were in the NBA Finals in 2017-18.
Now the Cavs have experience on their side. Getting in the first punch, as Allen put it so eloquently, would maybe tilt the advantage in the Cavs favor and change that reputation.
“It’s a whole new year,” said Evan Mobley, who also was criticized for being pushed around by the Knicks. “Last year’s not even a thing. We just have to go out there and win now.”
Now that the regular season is behind him, Bickerstaff is admitting the Cavs went into the offseason last year knowing they had to get tougher.
The Cavs acquired Max Strus in a trade with the Miami Heat and they signed Georges Niang over the summer. They signed Tristan Thompson just before training camp began. They signed Marcus Morris to a 10-day contract in mid-March and then signed him for the rest of the season on March 29.
Niang played all 82 regular season games. He came off the bench in 72 of them. Thompson, who was suspended 25 games for using performance enhancing drugs, played in 49 games with no starts. Morris played in 12 games with no starts.
Strus has played in 70 games and started them all. He has been all-business since Day One. Niang was signed because of his ability to hit 3s, but he does not back down when bodies start smacking into each other. Neither do Thompson or Morris.
“When you bring in Max and Georges and Marcus and Tristan — we kind of make this joke about it all the time,” Bickerstaff said before the game with the Hornets April 14. “It’s like when you go to the park with your big brother, you’re always much more confident. You talk a little more smack because you know your big brother is there to protect you. That’s kind of the feel that those guys provide to our guys to give them that little boost of confidence.”
The Cavaliers clinched a top-four seed, and therefore home-court advantage, when they beat the Indiana Pacers, 129-120, on April 12. That game could have been a preview of a first-round series had the last day of the season unfolded differently.
The Cavs led the Pacers by 14 points in the second quarter, but with 51 seconds left the lead was down to 120-118. The Cavs took charge and outscored the Pacers 9-2 the rest of the way. The game with the Pacers was physical. Officials swallowed their whistles on plays that might have been called fouls earlier in the season.
“The game against Indiana was a great sign for our guys,” Bickerstaff said. “The way they competed, the way they attacked and were aggressive from the beginning of the game, to me showed a huge sign of growth and an understanding of how you need to compete in the moments when the games matter most, because that was a game we needed to win.”
The playoffs are likely to be even more physical. That is why Bickerstaff is so happy to have veteran enforcers on his side.
Being mentally tough is something else the Cavaliers believe has improved this season. They won three fewer games this season despite the addition of Strus and the others, but they had to deal with more injuries this year. Donovan Mitchell played 68 games last season. He played in 55 this year. Evan Mobley missed only three games in 2022-23. He missed 33 this season. It was the same story for Darius Garland — 69 games a year ago and 57 this year.
Adversity through injuries forced the 2023-24 Cavs to get tough. Now, with the exception of Dean Wade, who is battling a knee injury, and Kevin Porter Jr., who is out with a sprained ankle, the Cavs are healthy for what they hope is a long playoff run.
“Toughness is measured in your actions and not your words, and it’s not measured in what other people’s perceptions of you are,” Bickerstaff said. “Toughness is a frame of mind. The NBA season is extremely difficult. How you handle the ups and downs, and how you carry your emotions — if you stay above that and show up every single night, that is the mental toughness piece we talk about.
“Then there’s the actual acts of toughness — the 50-50 things and doing all the dirty work other people don’t want to do. You can’t be a good defensive team in this league and not be tough.”
In Bickerstaff’s own words, toughness is measured in actions and not words. The opportunity for the Cavs to erase that figurative scarlet “S” on their foreheads is about to begin.
