The James Harden Era with the Cleveland Cavaliers has gotten off to a great start. They’ve won all three of their games, and the chemistry between the backcourt duo of Harden and Donovan Mitchell has been impressive.
Lineups with both Harden and Mitchell have outscored opponents by 11 points per 100 possessions (93rd percentile) with a 128.8 offensive rating (99th percentile). It’s only a small sample size of 54 minutes and two of those games were against the lowly Sacramento Kings and Washington Wizards, but there’s a lot there to be excited about.
According to Mitchell, there’s room for their chemistry to grow.
“We haven’t even gotten to playing our two-man game together,” Mitchell said after practice on Wednesday. “It’s been James and J.A. (Jarrett Allen) with me in space. James and Sam with me spaced, or vice versa. Me handling it with James spaced.”
The Cavs haven’t done anything overly complex with the backcourt duo yet, but just playing in space is extremely helpful for players as skilled as Harden and Mitchell.
Not all floor spacers are created equally. There are guys that you don’t want to leave, and then there are guys that cause defenses to overreact when they are left alone in space. Harden and Mitchell are the latter. These three plays are good examples of that.
In the first play, Harden causes his defender to closeout so hard after he received a kick-out from Mitchell, it led to a wide-open three from Sam Merrill. It’s great offense anytime you can create a catch-and-shoot three from someone who is knocking them down at a 48.5% clip.
Here’s the inverse. Harden drives, Jamal Murray collapses to cut off the pass to Mitchell, which leaves a stand-still three for Jaylon Tyson who’s connecting on 47.2% of his spot-up triples. If you look at the bottom of the screen, you can even see Mitchell celebrating the make before Tyson even goes up with the shot.
Lastly, we have Mitchell getting an easy assist to Jarrett Allen in the clutch because the defense is so worried about keeping Nikola Jokic out of the action.
Even though it sounds simple, the Cavs have done a great job of using that space to their advantage. If the duo never advanced beyond doing just this, it would be an incredible pairing.
Being completely on the same page has allowed the duo to take advantage of these situations. That’s what head coach Kenny Atkinson wants to see more of.
“I just want their communication to continue to flourish,” Atkinson said. “Donovan knows this team intimately, like really the ins and outs. I was talking to Donovan today about the two bigs. You know, you got to help James a little on what that looks like, where you can find Evan [Mobley] in the best places. So I just want their communication to continue to flourish.”
The Cavs have found some creative ways to work player movement around Harden — that especially showed through with Merrill against Washington. We’ll see if some of those same principles can be applied to Mitchell or Harden working off the ball.
The duo has gotten off to a great start. So far, there has been a clear hierarchy and division of roles that have made things work well when both are on the floor. If that keeps going, the floor for this duo will be considerably high.
“The biggest thing now is we found something that works,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to stick with that, build off it, and then kind of tap into it with these 20-some odd games we have left.”