Ben

Quick Notes on Washington Wizards-Cleveland Cavaliers, where No. 1 overall pick AJ Dybantsa debuted and the Cavaliers came back to win by 10 in the second half. -This was AJ Dybantsa's opener, so let's talk about it. Thought he played incredibly well for a rookie in his opening game despite a rough fourth quarter. He stayed within himself and took advantage of opportunities that came his way. He had 19 points to lead the team, shot 8/12 from the field, and just picked his spots well. They ran the first action for him, which was a sweet little ghost screen from Trae to create momentary confusion for the Cavs, Dybantsa gets downhill and gets fouled. Then they ran that same action like four plays later, Cavs guarded it well but he just blew by Harden and hit a nice cross-corner kickout to Sarr for 3. His best play of the game came at 8:10 left in the first, where Trae got doubled out of a corner DHO, threw a pass out high to AJ, where Dybantsa pumped, drove with two dribbles, pump faked again for a fly by then hit a nice step-through floater. He also had a couple of nice pull-up midrange jumpers, including a sweet pump fake to send Proctor flying in recovery past the elbow so that he could bury a shot in the fourth. It got a little bit messier in the 4th and it felt like he started to try to press just a bit after being so in-control for the entire game, but in all, this was about as strong an offensive opener as the Wizards could have hoped for and that's before getting to the defense. He was awesome on Harden and really made him work all night. Dybantsa's screen navigation remains a serious work in progress, but his effort in recovery to use his length to get back into the play and in front of his man was outstanding all night. I wouldn't say he had any disruptive plays and posted zero stocks, but he worked so hard in recovery that I was impressed with his game. -Unsurprisingly given that the Wizards had 69 points in the first half, I absolutely loved their offensive execution. I thought their intentionality in the first half was amazing with Trae Young in ball-screens. The Cavs were largely in drop coverage, and the Wizards constantly kept Mitchell's or Meleek Thomas's man in the weak-side corner to make it harder to tag. It gave Trae so much space to operate. It got to the point where at 10:45 in the second quarter, Mitchell was so worried about being in position for the tag that he completely forgot about Couliably in the corner and Trae threw a pinpoint lob to him for a baseline cut slam. They would also have moments where they'd time a corner lift to the wing with the player on that side, making it immensely difficult to tag the roller. The architecture of the offense was great and they crushed the Cavs from the inside out. -I have no idea where that architecture went in the second half. I want to give the Cavs a lot of credit here, becuase they did a fantastic job mixing and matching coverages to make life harder for the Wizards ball-screen attack. They straight switched at times, gave late peel switches at times, and blitzed actions pretty regularly, especially empty-side stuff. The Cavs forced two really critical turnovers by blitzing Trae at the end of the third quarter to get stops, one of which resulted in Tyson sealing Trae in transition for an easy bucket. Again, the Cavs did a great job on defense in the second half, and deserve a ton of credit. But I felt like the just decided to go away from ball-screen actions too easily in favor of post-ups and pindown curls for other players. -In the other two Wizards games that I've broken down this year, I've noted this same thing so I'll say it again because it played a big role tonight: the team's win total is going to be reliant on Trae finding answers again as a scorer given how much he handles the ball. I love the way he's running the show offensively and getting guys in position to score — it's incredibly valuable for their young guys to get these reps — but he's now at 10 for 37 from 3 this season and at 33 percent over his last 750 attempts. The 2-point percentage has been better this year than it was tonight, and he's getting to the line. But the Wizards have played two good defenses now in Cleveland and Toronto, and he's shooting 3 for 10 from inside the arc in those games. -Monster Bilal Coulibaly game for Washington as he exited the starting lineup for Dybantsa. He earned all 27 of his minutes, had 17 points on 8-for-9 from the field, and was awesome on defense against Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell only had 19 and some of the shots were truly just absurd ones. His play near the end of the first half where he deflected a short roll pass with perfect timing, grabbed the ball and went and dunked for a pick-six was one of the plays of the game for me. In total, I think 12 of his points came out on the break and he did a great job of leaking out, particularly on one play where he just snuck behind Watson for a slam around the nine-minute mark of the second quarter. Great game from him, and they'll need him with Champagnie out. -The Cavs played a terrific second half. All of the mixing and matching on defense clearly through off Washington and resulted in them scoring 42 points in the second half, including only 35 in the last 22 minutes of the game. Mobley was great flying around in help and they did a really nice job of loading up and helping off of non-shooters like Coulibaly, Sarr and Davis. Sarr and Davis both made a couple of 3s in the game, but they missed some big ones that were quite open in the second half because the Cavs were trying to avoid allowing paint touches. Basically, they worked to force Washington away from what it wanted to do, then forced the guys to take the shots they wanted. That's about 75 percent of defense, if not more. It was a great example of why you don't have to rack of steals and blocks to play strong defense. -Evan Mobley obviously played a role in that defensively helping all over the place and using angles well. Allen did, too. But Mobley was also critical in the ball-screen coverage adjustments due to his ability to switch and stick with his man. He also buried five 3s and grabbed 12 rebounds. Between Allen, Watson and Mobley, the Cavs dominated the offensive glass 15 to 5 and won second-chance points 19-8. That's literally your ballgame right there. Allen and Mobley just completely controlled that battle on the glass. -Really important Peyton Watson game, I thought. He was terrible in the first quarter but came alive in the second where he drilled three midrange jumpers, hit a corner 3, then also had an awesome baseline cut where he ended up finishing his own miss. They don't win this game without him. Now, I will note that I think his off-ball defense has been prett messy so far as he seems to be involved in some switch communication errors and also just fell asleep on that one Coulibaly dunk referenced above. But that hopefully will come around with more experience with this team. -Finally, I do just want to call out that Meleek Thomas' game was really useful. He had the 10 points with a few transition buckets, a nice layup in the dunker spot, and a sweet floater off of a ball-screen. Those bench points are just so valuable for this Cleveland group. He has a ways to go on defense still, as he's still adjusting to some of the switch calls versus when to stay at home, and the Wizards did a nice job locking him in as the low man defensively a couple of times and he couldn't really do anything to stop lobs (a great example of that was at the 10-minute mark of the second quarter against an Ayton lob). But this was a positive game, in my opinion. He's always been very confident and extremely skilled, but he's definitely ahead of schedule right now for Cleveland. I wouldn't have guessed after how bad he was with his decision-making and defense at Arkansas that he would have been ready to go this early on. But he's capable.