the Cavs advance this year as far as Evan Mobley takes them<\/a> because we know how far a Mitchell-led team can go. We have eight years of evidence that it\u2019s the second round.<\/p>\nThat was obviously before Harden\u2019s arrival. Mobley struggled in an expanded role early this season, and Harden is among the top 75 players of all time. He might be a bit older these days, but he immediately becomes the most talented partner Mitchell has ever played alongside. No disrespect to Rudy Gobert or Darius Garland or even Mobley, but Harden is in an elite class that the others simply haven\u2019t reached.<\/p>\n
Along with his scoring ability, he is excellent at dictating pace. The offense goes when he\u2019s ready and not a moment before. He can tilt defensive pressure as he sees fit and control the entire floor with a precision pick-and-roll game that ranks among the league\u2019s best.<\/p>\n
When he arrived, I wondered how he would fit alongside Mitchell, whose game is drastically different. The answers have been overwhelmingly positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gets us clicking,\u201d Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said of Harden. \u201cIt\u2019s like a quarterback that\u2019s super accurate. He\u2019s just kind of picking them apart with short passes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harden\u2019s excellence should continue to reveal itself over the course of these playoffs, as it did with Saturday\u2019s relatively easy 126-113 win over the Toronto Raptors in Game 1.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers will soon be tested, but I don\u2019t believe it will be in this round. This is a 4-5 matchup in name only. The Raptors don\u2019t have the perimeter shooting to match the Cavs\u2019 artillery.<\/p>\n
Toronto lives in the midrange. Brandon Ingram can get his shot off from anywhere and over anyone the Cavs put on him, but most of those shots come inside the 3-point line.<\/p>\n
Cleveland\u2019s shot chart from Game 1 was a master class in analytics: Everything \u2014 everything \u2014 was either in the paint or behind the line. It was four quarters of Harden\u2019s personal brush strokes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we got quality shots,\u201d Harden said. \u201cThat\u2019s going to be a huge, huge key for the series.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harden has played alongside some of the game\u2019s best. He had Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City and Chris Paul in Houston. Each of them will be Hall of Famers one day. He played briefly alongside Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, a pairing that Harden and Mitchell might best replicate. Mitchell is a ferocious scorer who is comfortable playing off the ball.<\/p>\n
Together, their ability to penetrate and attack defenses will stress any opponent the Cavs face between now and June. Mitchell made it a point to get to the rim late in the regular season in preparation for these playoffs. Attack, collapse the defense and kick to the shooters.<\/p>\n
Harden\u2019s presence will reduce the load he has to carry on offense. Mitchell has multiple playoff games the last two years with absurd usage rates in the 40s and 50s. In both seasons, the Cavs\u2019 offense was at times reduced to four players standing around waiting for him to bail them out. That should no longer be the case.<\/p>\n
While Mitchell rested in the third quarter of Game 1, Harden and Max Strus extended the lead. Harden\u2019s ability to find bigs on pick-and-rolls with precision passes will keep both Jarrett Allen and Mobley active in the offense.<\/p>\n
Toronto\u2019s flurry of midrange shots isn\u2019t likely to keep pace as this series progresses.<\/p>\n
After that?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say just how good this version of the Cavs can become. Harden, Mitchell, Allen and Mobley played just seven games and 92 minutes together during the regular season. Still, they outscored opponents by 52 points and registered a net rating of 26.7.<\/p>\n
The beauty of this four-pack is how the pieces fit in tandem. Allen is the ideal pairing for Harden, and Mobley improved greatly as a pick-and-roll partner alongside Harden as their time on the floor together expanded. Similarly, Mitchell can fit alongside either big. It\u2019s only one game, and a first-round series can be deceiving.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, it\u2019s a bit poetic that the star player with the reputation for postseason failures is now paired in perhaps the final act of his career with another star who has struggled to find success when it matters most.<\/p>\n
Maybe, just maybe, they\u2019re the perfect fit to fill the void in each other\u2019s careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 He arrived dressed in all white, a tuxedo top and shorts combination that only a professional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,305,193,3846,6,2294],"class_list":{"0":"post-713916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","12":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116431491369538155","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}