It seemed like they would never lose, but the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 16-game winning streak finally came to an end on Sunday afternoon when they dropped a 108-103 home decision to the Orlando Magic despite leading by as many as 13 points. The Cavaliers now need to win 14 of their final 15 games if they want to become the third team in NBA history to win 70 regular-season odds; they currently have +1200 odds on DraftKings Sportsbook to accomplish that feat.
If Cleveland doesn’t care to chase history, it’ll be cautious with power forward Evan Mobley, who missed the team’s defeat with a foot injury and is questionable for tonight’s contest against the LA Clippers at the brand-new Intuit Dome at 10:30 p.m. ET.
Meanwhile, LA is on a three-game winning streak of its own and is one game behind the sixth-seeded Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves in the quest to avoid the Play-In Tournament. The Clippers also recently welcomed their leading scorer, Norman Powell, back from a hamstring injury that has cost him all but one game since the All-Star break.
Even with Mobley questionable, the Cavaliers are three-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-142 on the Moneyline) and the point total is set to 233. Meanwhile, the Clippers are +120 on the Moneyline.
Norman Powell U16.5 Points (-110)
This isn’t a slight on Powell, whose knee and hamstring injuries robbed the league of a Most Improved Player race that was shaping up to be a tight one between him and the Detroit Pistons’ Cade Cunningham. But he returned too soon from his knee issue too quickly when he suited up against the Los Angeles Lakers on March 2, shooting one-for-five from the field and zero-for-three from downtown before leaving with the hamstring issue, and in his return Sunday night, he played just 22 minutes, finishing with seven points on three-for-13 shooting (one-for-four from downtown). The 31-year-old will take a little while to acclimate himself back to game speed and will likely be on a minutes restriction.
Powell will assuredly be back to his efficient scoring ways soon enough — LA fans hope he’ll be fully healthy and productive by the Play-In Tournament — but that doesn’t have to happen tonight against a team that has had the third-best defensive rating in the league since trading for former Atlanta Hawks forward De’Andre Hunter at the trade deadline. Cleveland has mostly won this season on the strength of its league-best offense, but in recent weeks, the Cavaliers have paired that with an elite defense. Sure, that defense is mostly anchored by the two bigs — Mobley and Jarrett Allen — but they’re pretty strong on the perimeter too, holding opponents to the sixth-lowest field goal percentage outside of 15 feet since adding Hunter.
Jarrett Allen U23.5 Points + Rebounds (-115)
Call it the effect of The Wall: in their 33 home games this season, the Clippers have allowed the fourth-worst opponent free throw percentage. Free throw percentage is heavily luck-based — the best and worst teams in that category are separated by just 7.5 percentage points — but this stat suggests that Steve Ballmer’s vision in recreating the boisterous atmosphere of a college student section at the professional level has borne fruit so far. Of all the players on Cleveland’s roster, Allen will be the most affected, given that he has the 11th-highest free throw attempt rate in the league, with 0.421 free throw attempts for every field goal attempt. Plus, LA center Ivica Zubac, who’d been one of the league’s most foul-prone players for most of his time in the league, is averaging just 3.2 fouls per 100 possessions, 1.7 fewer than his previous best mark.
Prior to his injury, Powell received most of the consideration for Most Improved Player and most of the credit for the Clippers’ position in the standings despite losing Paul George and being without Kawhi Leonard for the first two-plus months of the season. However, Zubac deserves to garner a few Most Improved Player votes as well, especially now that his teammate is no longer eligible. This season, the ninth-year Croatian big has been elite on the boards, ranking sixth in total rebounding percentage, and he’s also been a capable defensive anchor who will make it extremely tough for Allen to get anything going. Opponents are shooting 8.8 percentage points worse than usual within six feet when Zubac is the nearest defender, the ninth-best mark among 82 players who have guarded at least 250 close shots this season.
Kawhi Leonard 3+ Three-Pointers Made (+170)
Leonard still isn’t quite 100% recovered from his offseason knee surgery, and it shows in his shooting: his effective field goal percentage is the fourth-lowest mark of his career, and his two-point percentage is his second-lowest. In order to compensate, Leonard is attempting threes at the third-highest rate of his career, and even though he’s only hitting 37.0% of them, by far the worst efficiency of his stint in LA, that mark has steadily been climbing. Leonard averaged 1.5 made threes per game on 35.9% accuracy prior to the All-Star break, but since, he’s bumped that up to 2.4 makes on 38.1% shooting. He’s still less deadly than he was last season, but he has made three or more triples in two of his last three games.
The post-trade deadline Cavaliers don’t struggle at anything defensively, so for them, ranking sixth in opponent three-pointers made per game is a relative weakness. Since adding Hunter, Cleveland ranks just 12th in contested three-pointers per game, and since the trade, Donovan Mitchell has allowed opponents to shoot 8.9 percentage points better than usual from beyond the arc, a weakness that the Clippers might be able to exploit if they can manufacture switches to get Leonard onto the six-foot-three shooting guard. Tyronn Lue is arguably the league’s best coach at in-game adjustments, so he’ll relentlessly hunt Mitchell on defense if he struggles early on.
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