Cavaliers Film Room: Tristan Thompson’s Offense

In our last installment of Cavaliers Film Room, we took a look at how the Cavaliers defended Lakers center Dwight Howard. This week, we’ll dive into one of the season’s most strongly criticized facets: the offense of second-year power forward Tristan Thompson. While some point to lapses in Tristan’s defense 1 , it’s his offensive skills (or lack thereof) that are making him a less than ideal start at power forward. At this point in his career, Tristan is a solid contributor with his rebounding, but we’ll take a look at some of the reoccurring themes in Tristan’s struggles as well as a few recent bright spots. Let’s start in Milwaukee last Saturday and Tristan’s biggest issue on offense. In 27 games, Thompson has had 36 of his shots blocked, nearly all of them directly at the rim on dunk opportunities, good for nearly 18% of his total shots and sixth in the entire association among those with at least 10 games played. Here, we see Thompson catch the ball in the left short corner agai...