Heading into the playoffs, the Cleveland Cavaliers had a defense problem.
The problem was that their defense wasn’t very good. They looked to address some of those issues in the season by adding Andrew Bogut to the team, but the Australian big man went down with an injury less than a minute into his Cavaliers tenure. Cleveland was left with just one viable rim protector on the roster – Tristan Thompson – and a whole lot of wings and guards, many of whom were aging and not quite as quick as they once were.
Even at the start of the playoffs, against a scrappy Pacers team, the Cavaliers struggled in the first two games on the defensive end, relying on amazing offense and general wizardry from LeBron James to see off their inferior opponents.
Then something changed. Over the first two games of their series against the Raptors, the Cavaliers have looked like a transformed team, executing as well as they have all season on the defensive end. And the spark came not from a new addition to the team, but from a familiar face, albeit one that was completely unexpected: J.R. Smith.
Over the first two games of this series, Cavaliers coach Ty Lue has challenged Smith to defend Raptors star guard DeMar DeRozan, and he has risen to the challenge. On Wednesday night DeRozan didn’t score a bucket in regulation until the fourth quarter, his one point in the first three quarters coming off a technical free throw. It was Smith, free-shooting, happy-go-lucky, defense-is-for-other-people Smith who did it. He finished with just 6 points on 2-of-4 shooting, and had perhaps played his best game in a Cavaliers uniform.
His teammates and coaches had noticed, too.
“J.R.’s been doing a tremendous job,” Iman Shumpert said of Smith’s defense. “His work’s cut out for him this series.”
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