CLEVELAND, Ohio – Sometimes a loss is just a loss.
It’s an incredibly horrible act that does not dive deeper. It does not speak to a poorly composed list. It does not mean much in the big picture. This does not mean that the rebuilding does not work. Friday night’s 102-81 clash with the New York Knicks qualifies as one of the games.
Could not make shots from outside to change New York’s collapse strategy. Could not finish around the edge. Couldn’t help releasing the pressure from Collin Sexton, who was suffocated by the Knicks’ sixth-position defensive unit. Couldn’t do much of anything.
Cavs head coach JB Bickerstaff knows what it was. He admitted so much when asked if the loss could be seen as a step back on the progress meter.
“Not at all,” Bickerstaff said defiantly. “We will be better on Sunday. We need to work much better to give basketball to the open man. It’s a simple thing. It’s simple to customize. This is an easy thing for us to fix. ‘
It’s hard to blame Bickerstaff on that perspective. Here’s the hard truth: the Cavs are going to have these nights. Every team does it. They are just a little more susceptible given the place where they are as an organization. More to come, especially in February – a grueling month littered with landmines in their play-offs.
Despite constantly hovering around the .500 market for the first month, the Cavs are nowhere near a final product. This is only year 3 of the rebuilding to LeBron James. They are a developing team that was not at full strength, lost the next most games due to injury, had one of the toughest schedules in the league and is still learning how to win while trying to build a culture build.
Either way, the Cavs – now 9-10 on the season – have so far exceeded. They have been ahead of their past two seasons.
In 2018-’19, it took 44 matches to achieve the nine winning mark. Last season it only got into game no. 30 happens. They scored that number in Wednesday’s win over the Detroit Pistons. It was their 18th game.
A few poor performances from time to time, including Friday night, do not change anything. The losses, if used properly, provide a useful roadmap where improvements are needed.
‘Patience. I think that is the most important thing, “said Bickerstaff. “People are short-sighted when they think about building a team. A team is not something that happens overnight. Just because you throw a bunch of duds in a locker room does not make them a team. We are still working to become that, to have that coherence, to have that trust, to have the understanding of each other in certain situations. It comes through experience. We must therefore have these experiences to get where we want to go. This can be frustrating for all of us right now. ”
Kevin Love is still missing. He could have been the pressure failure at the attack – an additional three-point threat because Nance did not have his usual touch while trying to play through a painful sprained wrist. The Cavs have yet to have a true rugby point all year, being forced to thwart Darius Garland and Sexton throughout the game, while Matthew Dellavedova is indefinitely with concussion. Injuries forced Bickerstaff to fluctuate lineup and rotations. At this point, he probably does not even know what his best group for five men is. He has not yet found sets when tension hits and the offense breaks down. It takes time.
“We definitely find ourselves,” Garland admitted. “But we’re becoming a very good team. We just have to lock in on both sides and play with each other. This is the only way we are going to win matches if all five on the floor are just playing with each other. ”
Sometimes the Cavs abandon that team ball philosophy. It happened against physical, defensive teams. Mostly quality opponents. And yes, New York tel.
At this point – and it’s still early – the Knicks exceeded everyone’s expectations, currently living in the Eastern Conference playoff mix, with a better overall record than Orlando, Miami, hit by COVID and away from home has been moved. Toronto. It’s not like Friday’s blowout loss to boring Washington.
First-year head coach Tom Thibodeau lets his team play a hard-nosed, troublesome style on the defensive side. It stifles even the most capable offenses of the league. The Cavs, um, are not. Not yet anyway.
“Not to beat a dead horse, but we believe we have good attacking players,” Bickerstaff said recently. “A lot of them were just out. If people want to look at the numbers and not pay attention to it, I think we are misrepresented in it. ”
In two games this season, the Knicks have plagued Cleveland’s weakness. Others have too. In eight of the ten losses, the Cavs could not crack the 100-point mark. Hard to win like that. These defeats came again against teams with a combined record of 84-61. The worst team the Cavs have beaten this season: Orlando with eight wins. Two times.
Isn’t that expected of a frontier playoff team that has won 19 games this past season and doesn’t have the high-level talent to overcome identity lapses and gaps in the game?
The Cavs are not at Boston’s level. They are not there with the Bucks, Lakers, Jazz or Pacers – other teams that Cleveland has lost by this season. New York is clearly a tough game.
The consecutive Nets wins were impressive, but hardly an indication of anything. Although the Nets claim the title for reputation, they certainly did not play at that level. The Cavs caught them at an amazing time, with a clear lack of chemistry and an unfortunate defense without any appearance of a domestic presence.
If a loss can be dismissed as a bad night, profits can be circumstances, or not?
Just outside the quarterfinals of this shortened 72-game season, the Cavs are in a good spot. This will require them to remember it while still addressing their correctable errors.
“In Brooklyn, we were kicked out of the arena. But we were never too down. We were never too high, not even on our win. We are never too low, not even on our losses, ”says Jarrett Allen, who is through this stage of a rebuild. ‘One of our main focuses, and we had great vets there to help us through, and we still have great vets to help us on the Cavs right now, just to keep us straight, keep us going with our heads and on. to keep playing game. ”
If things have gone badly this season, it usually starts offensively, with the Cavs finishing 29th. They panic. They lose focus. Doubt creeps in. The ball holds.
“Actually, it’s just a boomerang effect,” Garland said. ‘When one person goes one-on-one, other people just start following and trying to get theirs. But it was not much this year. I do not even want to talk about the one-on-one part, because we are actually becoming a very good team. And we start playing with each other more often. And tonight was just not one of those nights. ”
“Just trust the offense, move the ball and play according to your strengths,” Sexton said. “Keep getting better at it and that’s all we can ask for.”
Friday night shows the growing pains of a young, still-building team. Nothing more. Nothing less. It’s part of the process. There are no shortcuts. Another teaching moment.
“We need to take our bumps and bruises and keep moving in the right direction,” Sexton said. ‘Must continue to trust each other. At the end of the day, the only thing we can control is that we go out there and play hard. We can not control that we make shots, nor can we control what the referees do. What we can control is how hard we play, and we want to be the toughest team on the track, when we face off against whom and when.
“We gained confidence. If no one else is going to trust you, you need to be confident. Be confident that we are doing well, regardless of the situation. Suffering is going to hit, but that’s how we bounce back. ”
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