CLEVELAND — If it weren’t for bad luck, Cleveland Cavaliers defensive stopper Dean Wade wouldn’t have any at all.
Which, after he stepped on a ball boy’s foot about 90 minutes before a game against the Miami Heat last month, spraining his right ankle again, he probably would have preferred.
Now, Wade wears matching black ankle braces on each foot, with both laces and an extra layer of Velcro for additional security. He calls them 60-year-old, church-league ankle braces, and he hates them, but if they keep him out of harm’s way, he’ll tie them extra tight and pull the Velcro until it can’t stretch anymore, to lock those ankles down.
He’s doing the same thing to Toronto’s Brandon Ingram in this series.
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Game 2 was a “superstar game” for the Cavs, coach Kenny Atkinson said, referring to their 115-105 win to take a 2-0 first-round lead behind a combined 83 points from Donovan Mitchell, James Harden and Evan Mobley.
While Cleveland’s stars were shining brightly, Wade threw a wool blanket over the Raptors’ Ingram, their leading scorer from the regular season and an All-Star who managed just seven points on 3-of-15 shooting. With Wade as the primary defender on Ingram, he was held scoreless in the first half and connected on a wide-open, nearly meaningless 3-pointer near the end of the game with the Cavs headed for a victory. Wade scored just three points, but scoring is not his role.
Shutting down Ingram is.
“For five or 10 minutes after the game, we’re sitting in here (the locker room), and you feel really good about it,” Wade said of his near shutout of Ingram. “But you just have to know that there are more games (left in the series), and he’s going to come out and be super aggressive.”
Wade, with a little help from teammates, nearly did throw a no-no at Ingram. Wade is unquestionably the primary defender on Ingram, but Jaylon Tyson and Keon Ellis took a few spins on him, and both Mobley and Jarrett Allen are Cleveland’s last, towering line of defense if any of the wing defenders funnel Ingram toward the rim.
After a scoreless first half, Ingram scored on consecutive possessions early in the third quarter, on 16- and 19-foot jumpers, and there was that corner 3 with 1:12 left to cut the Raptors’ deficit to nine. Onlookers could see Wade in the paint at the time Ingram shot the ball — a place Wade said he shouldn’t have been.
“I know shutting somebody out is probably not going to happen, especially with the caliber of player he is,” Wade said. “I did have a little lapse at the end where he made the 3, I shouldn’t have helped in (the paint), and I did. But, other than that, I think keeping him under his average … obviously, the main thing is winning.”
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Ingram has averaged 20 or more points for seven consecutive seasons, led the Raptors at 21.5 points per game this year and, through two games, can’t seem to get around Wade. He scored 17 points in Game 1 but took just nine shots, as Wade and a cabal of the Cavs’ other competent defenders are obviously daring someone else in a Toronto shirt to beat them. So far, no one has.
But Game 2 was a tighter affair; the Raptors cleaned up some of what they did wrong from Game 1, were better than Cleveland on the glass and in transition, and, to quote Atkinson, tried to wear down the Cavs. And while Mitchell, Harden and Mobley lived up to their pedigrees and closets full of accolades to lead Cleveland to another win, a lesser defensive performance from Wade may have made this a tied series with Game 3 in Toronto on Thursday.
“As much as y’all talk about us three, me, (Harden) and Evan, Dean Wade deserves a bunch of credit tonight,” said Mitchell, who led all scorers with another 30-point game. “On both ends of the floor. He’s rolling. He’s screening. He’s defending. He’s doing everything. I know he only had three points, but his impact is extremely high outside of just the scoring.”
What the Cavs are asking of Wade now has never been this specialized, this singular. And it suits him. Just stop the other team’s best player. Let your teammates worry about the offense.
Stopping Ingram the way Wade has done so far has nothing to do with luck. Being on the court at all, on the other hand, is part of Wade’s story.
He’s hurt, a lot — with at least five different stints on the injured list this season. Stepping on that ball boy’s foot, at the start of an early shooting workout, cost Wade seven games. This year and last, he appeared in 59 regular-season games; before that, it was 54, 44 and 51 over his previous three campaigns. He also has had a hard time in previous playoff runs.
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Wade barely played in the 2023 playoff series against the New York Knicks, in part because of a crisis of confidence that befell him after he was installed over Kevin Love in the Cavs’ rotation that season. The next year, he missed the entire first round against the Orlando Magic and then two of five games against Boston because of injury. He played in every game for the Cavs last postseason but didn’t have quite the impact against the Indiana Pacers’ super-charged offense.
“My game has evolved,” Wade said. “They rely on me more on defense and give me more responsibility. It’s almost like I have to put offense on secondary in my mind, because, on the defensive end, I cannot have any mistakes. That’s the only area where I can really have a super effect on the game.”
Wade is 6 feet 10, but he can move quickly enough laterally to guard much smaller players. Should the current path of this series continue, and the Cavs advance to the second round, if the opponent is Detroit, one can bet Wade will draw Cade Cunningham on defense. Cleveland thinks Wade’s presence, in addition to changes made at the trade deadline, gives its defense a much more physical presence and a heap of newfound versatility than it had in previous playoffs.
Cavs fans know Wade because he’s played his entire seven-year career in Cleveland, but in a starting lineup with household names Harden, Mitchell, Mobley and Allen, Wade thrives in relative anonymity. He took three shots and made one — a 3-pointer — in Game 2, and one wonders if the Raptors’ next adjustment in this series may be to double-team Harden or Mitchell and leave Wade so open that he’s forced to shoot?
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Cleveland may have too much offensive talent for that to work. Perhaps the Cavs could survive a bad shooting night from Wade, because he is a co-anchor of their defense, which is saying something given that Mobley is his teammate. Until Monday, when Victor Wembanyama was named Defensive Player of the Year, that title had belonged to Mobley for about 365 days or so, and Mobley will almost surely be on an All-Defensive team when those are announced.
Wade is never mentioned as a DPOY candidate, and he is not going to be on an All-Defensive team, in part because he isn’t eligible due to injury. He missed too many games, as is his custom.
“He’s up there,” Mobley said when asked how good Wade is compared to the league’s elite defenders. “He’s definitely underrated. It’s tough to score on Dean Wade.”
Just ask Ingram, who’s had the unfortunate luck of being guarded by a healthy, ankle-brace-wearing Dean Wade.