The potential pitfalls for the Cleveland Cavaliers were evident the moment they made their blockbuster offseason move to bring in Donovan Mitchell. A roster built around two small guards in Mitchell and Darius Garland and two non-spacing bigs in Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, with no two-way wings to bridge backcourt and frontcourt, would likely encounter complications at some point in spite of the obvious talent of the players in question.

But it was still a bit jarring to see how swiftly and brutally that roster flaw was exposed once the playoffs began, especially on the heels of such an encouraging regular season.

The Cavs won 51 games and produced the league's top-ranked defense, seventh-ranked offense, and second-best net rating. Mitchell took his pull-up shooting and driving to another level, authoring a surefire All-NBA campaign in his first year in Cleveland. Mobley started to build out his offensive skill set and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting in his second season in the league. Garland continued to grow into one of the league's best playmakers, and he arguably performed even better than he did as a first-time All-Star last year. Allen remained a rim-running, rim-protecting menace with slowly evolving playmaking chops.

That all amounted to bupkis in a first-round series against a smart, tough, extremely well-prepared New York Knicks team that leveraged its physicality and pressed on Cleveland's weak spots with relentless cruelty. The Cavs were flicked away in five games and finished the series with a 101.9 offensive rating. For context: The league-worst Hornets finished the regular season at 108.4. Cleveland's stout defense mostly held up, save for the fact that New York manhandled the Cavs on the glass. Led by Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle, Josh Hart, and Isaiah Hartenstein, the Knicks rebounded an astonishing 39.4% of their own misses and grabbed 54.9% of all available boards. Robinson hauled in 11 offensive rebounds in New York's series-clinching Game 5 win.

Despite starting two 7-footers, Cleveland was a poor defensive-rebounding team all season. That's partly because when it comes to controlling the glass, heft can be as important as height, and Allen and especially Mobley are both slight of build. It's also because a tall frontcourt's impact can be undercut by poor rebounding wings and guards, which is exactly what the Cavs have. In any case, it's tough to start two traditional bigs without reaping one of the major theoretical benefits of doing so.

Cleveland's lack of good options on the wing, a major point of concern coming into the playoffs, was laid painfully bare. Isaac Okoro was the only Cavalier who could really trouble Jalen Brunson, but when he played, that typically meant having three non-shooters on the court at once. The Cavs' offense was crippled by the Knicks' ability to neglect defending him, helping way off of him even from the strong side and daring his teammates to pass him the ball in the corner. When they did, he shot 31% on a diet of wide-open threes. Often, Okoro's teammates chose not to and simply drove into traffic instead.

The Cavs surrendered a microscopic 91.3 points per 100 possessions with Okoro on the floor in the series, 20.1 fewer than with him on the bench. But they also scored just 95.2, which is why they bumped him from the starting lineup after Game 2. Other options like Caris LeVert and Cedi Osman allowed their offense to breathe better, but they still didn't bring enough at that end to offset how badly they compromised the defense. That single issue – the inability to find a fifth guy who didn't take something off the table – bled into everything the Cavs did.