CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cavs may be stacking victories, but they’re doing so while dragging around a flaw that keeps making games far harder than they need to be.
On the latest episode of the Wine and Gold Talk podcast, cleveland.com beat reporter Chris Fedor and host Ethan Sands laid out why Cleveland’s persistent free throw struggles are becoming a glaring problem for a team with postseason expectations.
The issue resurfaced in the Cavs’ 108-100 win over the Memphis Grizzlies, where yet again Cleveland left a pile of points at the stripe.
“This Cavs team has consistently got to the free throw line. They’re 10th in the NBA in free throw attempts per game, but they’re 24th in free throw percentage,” Sands said. “Tonight, they were 19 of 29, 65.5%. One, it’s unacceptable. Two, if they make free throws, some of these games are a lot easier to manage than they make them.”
Those numbers encapsulate a frustrating contradiction.
The Cavaliers are improving on their early season struggles to get to the rim, forcing teams into the bonus early, putting opposing bigs in foul trouble and opening the floor for shooters. But the payoff vanishes when they fail to convert the very shots their style is designed to generate.
Against Memphis, ten missed free throws kept a winnable game unnecessarily tight.
But the problem may run even deeper than missed points — one that hints at a psychological ripple effect influencing the Cavaliers’ decision-making.
“But could that also be because they know if they drive, they’re not necessarily going to knock down the free throws?” Sands asked.
If players begin hesitating to attack the basket because they’ve lost confidence at the line, the impact on the offense could be significant.
“Last year Donovan Mitchell was irritated with himself after missing one free throw. That’s been a common denominator for everybody. Like Evan Mobley tonight. It felt like when he went to the line, you knew he was going to split,” Sands added.
Fedor, however, pushed back on the idea that the Cavaliers can afford to let their free throw inconsistency reshape how they play. He argued that altering their mindset would do far more damage than the misses themselves.
“They still have to drive the ball, they still have to get contact, they have to try and find a way to finish through contact,” Fedor said. “They’ve got to put pressure on the defense over and over and over again.”
As Fedor explained, stepping away from that identity would result in an offense that is easier to guard, more reliant on jump shooting and far less capable of dictating tempo.
“That’s just who they’ve been in the past, and that’s a big part of what opens things up for them offensively,” he said.
The free throw conversation ultimately reflects a broader theme that continues to define the Cavaliers’ season: a team winning games but still searching for its anchor.
The Cavs have enough talent and discipline to grind out victories, but too often the margins feel tighter than they should. Free throws — expected, routine, fundamental — have become one of the clearest markers of that inconsistency.
For a franchise aiming to ascend from contender to legitimate title threat, solving this issue isn’t simply about padding final scores.
It’s about confidence. It’s about execution. It’s about developing the reliability needed when the stakes tighten in April and May, when every possession and every point becomes magnified.
Right now, the Cavaliers are winning in spite of their free throw shooting. The challenge ahead is to ensure they’re not undone by it when the games matter most.
Here’s the podcast for this week:
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