The defense rests in Cleveland

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It’s hard to know if imperfections matter when a team is 10-0 in the postseason, perhaps bored knowing it can flip into another gear should any opponent decide to pose a challenge.

They matter now. The indestructible Cleveland Cavaliers are reeling, and the issues that bubbled below the surface all along — masked by historic shooting against punchless opposing offenses — have burst into the light: Cleveland’s defense hasn’t been good enough four games into an Eastern Conference finals tied at two games apiece, especially when point guard Kyrie Irving and big man Kevin Love are involved. The Toronto Raptors punched back from a 2-0 deficit with their most joyful and unburdened ball of these sloggy playoffs, and the Cavaliers couldn’t locate their magical switch; it’s possible Raptors coach Dwane Casey or Drake, the team’s global ambassador, ran out onto the court and stole it.

The Cavs have now allowed 105.7 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs, a mark that would have ranked 22nd in the regular season, and a disturbing drop-off from their season-long performance.

Boil down their struggles into one clip, and it would look something like this:

The Raptors have ruthlessly hammered that Irving/Love wall into rubble. Point guard Kyle Lowry has destroyed Irving, especially in Game 4 on Monday, either losing Irving behind screens or juking him out of the play by faking toward a pick — and then bolting the other direction. Those same fakes bait Love into lunging the wrong way and defending air.

This kind of stuff has been happening all playoffs, and Tristan Thompson, on the back line, is not quite fearsome enough at the basket to correct everyone’s mistakes:

Things get worse when Patrick Patterson replaces Luis Scola for Toronto; Patterson is a more dangerous 3-point shooter, and as ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy pointed out on the broadcast, he’s a Spurs-level expert at flipping the direction of his pick at the last second. Watch him sprint up from Lowry’s right, as if he’s going to clear a path that way for his All-Star point guard, only to pivot to the other side — and completely flummox both Cavs guard Iman Shumpert and Thompson:

Patterson is like a phantom. The Cavs don’t know where he’s coming from — or what he’ll do next — and he has them paralyzed with confusion. Another little thing on that play: Matthew Dellavedova and Richard Jefferson’s coverage on Lowry at the rim, leaving both Terrence Ross and James Johnson wide open. That’s not ideal; Lowry has a choice between a good shooter and a bad one. The Cavs needed one of those guys to hang back closer to Ross so that Lowry had only the least appetizing choice.

Such mistakes have dotted Cleveland’s entire playoff run. It’s a sin of commission and good intentions: The Cavs are trying hard, but effort without precision can lead to the same bad results as laziness.

Everyone on the court for Cleveland is working hard on this Ross 3-pointer from Game 1: LeBron James covering for Irving’s bad defense with an impromptu switch, Love pitching in around the basket and everyone else scrambling to track three shooters — Johnson, Ross, and DeMar DeRozan — off the ball. Two of those guys are non-threats from deep. The Cavs leave the other one open.

Effort, without precision. You need both to win a ring.

But Irving and Love have been the central players in Cleveland’s worst breakdowns. Opponents in the playoffs have scored 1.09 points per chance when they involve those two as the primary pick-and-roll defenders in a play that leads directly to a shot attempt, drawn foul or turnover, per SportVU data provided to ESPN.com. That would have ranked last by a mile among 119 two-man combos that defended at least 250 pick-and-rolls in the regular season, per that SportVU data set.

Zoom out to include any trip that features a pick-and-roll targeting Irving and Love at any time, and the number gets worse: a hideous 1.207 points allowed per possession, stingier than only one of those 119 duos — the Jrue Holiday/Ryan Anderson pairing in New Orleans.

Opponents know this stuff. They are putting Irving and Love into twice as many pick-and-rolls each game as they averaged in the regular-season, a massive jump out of proportion to the slight uptick in minutes the two are playing together. These are the sort of numbers that had members of the Golden State Warriors’ coaching staff quietly fretting when both Love and Irving missed last year’s NBA Finals, forcing the Cavs to play superior defenders in their place.

Love started this series well, hanging in as the Raptors dragged him through two or three pick-and-rolls on every possession. But he is starting to wilt. DeRozan has even targeted him. DeRozan knows the Cavs are going to duck under picks against him, daring him to launch from 20 feet, but he’s not settling. He calls for an immediate re-screen, and any defender will tell you it’s hard to go back and forth under multiple picks without eventually breaking apart.

That second screen often forces Love to switch onto DeRozan, and DeRozan just rams the ball down Love’s throat for layups — especially when Love experiences a blip of confusion that leaves him a hair behind and on the wrong foot:

The Cavs are still huge favorites to win this series, but they won’t beat the Warriors or Oklahoma City Thunder in the Finals with this kind of defense. Golden State has generally torn apart Love — to the point you almost feel bad for him. Irving played the game of his life on defense in Game 1 of last year’s series before getting hurt, but his performance so far in these playoffs doesn’t suggest he will duplicate that for a full series.

And if they face the Thunder, who defends Oklahoma City point guard …

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