At Madison Square Garden on Thursday, on two digital billboards on the side of the building, there was a Nike ad featuring New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson and the phrase “TOO MUCH TO PROCESS.” The image, which first appeared on social media at the conclusion of the Knicks’ four-game sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers, was conceived as a bit of light trolling of the Sixers and Joel “The Process” Embiid. Now that New York has a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals, though, it functions just as well as a taunt toward the Cleveland Cavaliers.
After the Cavaliers blew a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter of the series opener, forward Dean Wade said, “I think our process was right tonight.” The next day, coach Kenny Atkinson said the same thing, adding that, according to the team’s internal data, the Knicks “were in the first percentile of shot quality.” And after Game 2, in which Cleveland shot 9 for 35 from 3-point range — including 2 for 12 on shots classified as “open” (i.e. closest defender 4–6 feet away) and 6 for 19 on shots classified as “wide open” (i.e. closest defender 6-plus feet away) — in a 109-93 loss, everyone was on message:
- Atkinson: “I thought our process was right. Took care of the ball, offensive rebounded. I think it wasn’t a great shooting night. I think at the end of the day, you gotta put the ball in the hole. Tonight, we didn’t.”
- James Harden: “We just didn’t make shots. We had a lot of open shots. Makeable shots. Hit a couple those, it’s a different ball game. I think throughout the entire game, our process was right. I don’t know if it was tired legs, whatever the case may be, but we had a lot of really good looks.”
- Evan Mobley: “I think it was definitely the right process. There’s definitely a few possessions you want back and a few turnovers and stuff like that, but overall I felt like we played a pretty good game. We got open shots on a lot of the possessions, so that’s all you can ask for.”
- Donovan Mitchell: “Our process was right tonight. I’m not mad at what we did offensively.”
- Jarrett Allen: “We all said it in the locker room, you’re going to hear it over and over again: The process was right. We truly believe in that. Just couldn’t make shots.”
Process, process, process. The Cavaliers truly believe that haven’t played poorly in the conference finals; they’ve merely shot poorly, especially after the first three quarters of Game 1. To illustrate their point, here are 14 Cleveland misses from Game 2, minus the result:
From the Cavs’ perspective, they’re not in such a bad place. They lost the first two games of their second-round series against the Detroit Pistons, too, and they’ve shot 37.6% from behind the arc at home in the playoffs. Sam Merrill and Max Strus are elite shooters who aren’t likely to go a combined 1 for 11 from deep again on Saturday. Everybody in the league knows that 3s are inherently high-variance shots. Coaches preach that, if you trust the process, you will eventually be rewarded for it.
That’s part of the story, anyway. Even Atkinson, Mr. Process Over Results, acknowledges that there is a gray area here. Before Game 2, while discussing Cleveland’s defensive strategy against Brunson, Atkinson said, “This is a real dilemma in coaching, but I do think there’s a point where you’ve kind of got to say, ‘OK, the numbers don’t mean as much right now, we gotta do something different.'” That sentiment isn’t all that different than the one New York’s Josh Hart offered about analytics after the game: “At a certain point, they’re a lamppost to a drunk person: You can lean on ’em, but they won’t get you home. At a certain point, you gotta have a good feel for the game.”
Every game is a small sample in which high-variance shots vary highly. Acknowledging this, however, does not mean that all a team can do when its jump shots aren’t falling is shrug its collective shoulders. For years, Oklahoma City Thunder coach Mark Daigneault has stressed the importance of manufacturing offense by getting to the paint, getting to the foul line, forcing turnovers and crashing the offensive glass, as he doesn’t want them to “rely on jump shots” and be a “make-or-miss team.” Unlike Daigneault, Atkinson isn’t working with a hyper-athletic roster and All-Defense types at every position, but he understands that simply hoping more shots will fall isn’t a sufficient strategy.
“We knew coming into this series we have to make 3s,” Atkinson said. “That’s part of it. That being said, we do have to find a way to get our bigs at the rim more, get more free throws, probably attack downhill more in transition.”
If the Cavs are excellent in every other area, they could insulate themselves from a cold shooting night and win ugly in Game 3. The reality, though, is that everything will be a lot easier if they catch a rhythm. “It’s difficult when you’re not making shots, and it puts twice as much pressure on you defensively,” Harden said. Giving away Game 1 was devastating not because there’s an enormous talent gap between Cleveland and New York, but because the margins are razor-thin at this stage of the playoffs. The Cavs can be confident about how they’re playing despite the 2-0 deficit, but they know they don’t have much room for error. If they fall down 3-0, no one’s going to want to hear about shot quality.
