Cavs have the offense. Now they want the defense back

CLEVELAND — The Cavaliers know they can score. They’d rather not have to win that way every night.

After finishing last season 15th in defensive rating, they’ve made getting back among the NBA’s best defensive teams a priority throughout camp.

“We definitely want to get back to being a top-five defense,” Sam Merrill said. “It had been that way, and then last year that wasn’t the case. That’s been most of our discussion throughout this camp.”

The Cavs built much of their rise around defense after Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen arrived. At their best, those two give Cleveland as much protection around the basket as almost any frontcourt in basketball.

But there’s more to defense than protecting the rim. For starters, defense doesn’t end when the other team puts up a shot. You have to get the rebound.

That became a problem for the Cavs last season, particularly when it came to keeping opponents off the offensive glass. And it showed up again Thursday in the preseason opener, when the Celtics grabbed 21 offensive rebounds in a 124-113 win at Rocket Arena.

Kenny Atkinson didn’t dance around it afterward. “Rebounding is a concern coming into the season,” he said. “We gotta be better.”

The same applies before the shot ever goes up.

“It’s understanding the strengths we have with Evan and J.A., but not putting too much on their plates,” Merrill said. “I think there were times last year where we put too much on their plates by getting beat off the dribble, getting into rotations and whatnot.”

In other words, Allen and Mobley can erase plenty of mistakes. The idea is to stop asking them to erase quite so many.

Atkinson has stressed that the answer isn’t simply finding one great perimeter stopper, either.

“You have to play team defense,” he said. “Getting everybody on the same page and then being able to be adaptable, pliable, flexible. The NBA is not one-on-one defense.”

Meanwhile, Donovan Mitchell isn’t interested in making grand declarations about any of it. “I don’t like saying much,” Mitchell said. “I want to go out there and just do it.”

He did offer a pretty good summary of where the Cavs are trying to go.

“We can score with the best,” Mitchell said. “But for us, not having that be our calling card.”

The scoring isn’t going anywhere. If the Cavs start finishing possessions with rebounds, keeping the ball in front of them and making life a little easier on Mobley and Allen, maybe that old calling card comes back.