Cleveland Cavaliers, head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, JB Bickerstaff, Collin Sexton and Jarrett Allen – the trio of team representatives who spoke after Sunday’s 117-101 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder – were all asked the same urgent question.
How do you fix it?
Allen leaned back, crossed his arms and began to think. At one point he wanted to deviate from the usual diplomatic response. Say maybe something contentious. But he caught himself. This was not the time. He did not want to be the one. No reason to sour the best individual night of his brilliant career, with 26 points on 11-to-11 shooting, with an excellent headline.
“We have to … I do not know how to say this,” Allen replied. “We can not think that … I do not want to say the wrong thing …”
Then Allen talked about fighting, dealing with adversity in the game and playing with more energy – the same rhetoric that Sexton and Bickerstaff used during their Zoom sessions.
Perhaps the bigger point of this is: there is no one way out of this. There may not even be enough answer. No one moves that makes a significant difference.
The Cavs are currently broken. Their faith seems shaken.
“I think we look too little at ourselves,” Allen said. ‘Things like this happen. Teams lose streaks. I lost streaks – eight in a row – and then we came back and won eight in a row. Easy to look inside and be like, ‘Man, can we really do that?’ But this is the NBA. We’re all here for a reason, we all know how to play basketball, we all know how to play defense, the basics and if we get back to it, we can come back. ”
They have lost ten consecutive games and 14 of the last 16. Their four highest paid players – Andre Drummond, Kevin Love, Larry Nance Jr. and Taurean Prince – was currently sidelined due to injury or, in the case of Drummond, until he traded. The one-time rebuilt centerpiece – Kevin Porter Jr. – illuminate it in the G League Bubble. There is still no viable rugby point guard on the roster. Darius Garland and Sexton are wiped out on the defensive side without the protection of Drummond and Nance together or Allen and Nance – the ‘trees in Sexland’ to which Nance referred earlier this season. The ‘most lucrative game’ before the All-Star break was snatched away after a funny, promising six minutes. Their starting lineup consists of four guys aged 22 or younger.
“No one is coming to save us. Nobody comes to save us, “said Bickerstaff. “The rest of the league does not care about our series. They see us as an opportunity to get right. And we need to find that grain and that fixation where we draw the line in the sand and not just hold the line, but move forward and cross the line. This is the only way to get out of here. ”
Many of Cleveland’s recent problems can be easily explained. I mean, who did not see coming this month?
But Sunday night was not the time for that. This loss did not agree too much. At least it should not have been. It was Oklahoma City. You know, the franchise that made several moves last season to pick future first-round picks is in the early stages of a rebuild, has one of the league’s youngest rosters, plays for lotto table tennis balls and has six of them lost seven.
“You can win any game, but if you look, I think they are 14th in the Western Conference and they are in a similar position as we are in,” Allen said. “We are rebuilding. It’s like looking in the mirror, on the other side of the coast. These are games you want to make out, you want to fight and you want to win and play your hardest and best against the teams. We’re currently on a losing streak of ten games and it’s one of those nights you look through and say, ‘Yeah, I can protect this guy. We can beat this team. We can break this line. ‘”
Not quite. Although Sexton was somehow pleased with the performance in the offense, the Cavs barely cracked the 100-point mark while shooting 22.9% from the three-point distance. Not only are they not shooting enough tries, but there are also not many honorable shooters. The four players off the bench – Dylan Windler, Damyean Dotson, JaVale McGee and Lamar Stevens – combined for nine points in 46 minutes on 3-of-13 shooting.
Bickerstaff protected the terrible reserve quartet after the loss, saying the production was linked to his decision to play the beginners for so many minutes.
On the other hand, Cleveland’s dirty, grim defensive identity seems like a distant memory.
The Cavs went from first to 24th place in less than two months. The way they played on Sunday, with 117 points – somehow the least they allowed during this loss – at 54.4% off the field and 46.4% from outside the arc until the second worst offense of the league, they are on their way to 30th place for the third consecutive season. And this after we have invested numerous resources in the hope of patching it up.
“It comes down to one-on-one defense,” Bickerstaff said. ‘It was the issue where they could just set us up, play in space and then chase us in one-on-one situations. We just need to be better there. We need to watch better, we need to hold on, be more physical. We need to be better there. ”
Sexton agreed.
“I do not know where it is going,” he said. “But there is no reason for that. We have to play like we’re in the park. And when I say I mean on defense, you have to tackle the one-on-one challenge and make sure your man does not score. And if your husband keeps going, you need to do something to stop it. At the end of the day, no one comes to help you, no one comes to turn off, you just have to tackle the one-on-one challenge as you play the park and stop allowing your husband to paint and kick. If you’re doing your job and just locking up your husband and taking on the challenge, we do not have to be in a hurry. ‘
There is a reality of who the Cavs are and where they are in this rebuild. There is a reason why they were chosen by most predictors to lose the second most matches. Their stack of injuries shows up against play-off teams, which are not equipped to handle it like others, which do not offer them adequate options.
But not being able to compete against the Thunder, a similar organization? Do they become contemptuous in their own home? There is no justification for that. Not short-handed. Not youth. Not the process. Nothing. A competitive loss against a comparable team should not be too much.
‘We’re all frustrated by losing. These guys do not get to this level if they are not competitive. How we handle it is the question, “said Bickerstaff. ‘We have to deal with it as a group. We can not just vent our frustration individually and try to win the matches ourselves.
“I do not want to sell our guys on a lawsuit. We know where we need to continue to improve. We know we will take the lumps. But as a group, we want to be the same every night. So there are no excuses. The process can sometimes be used as a salvation, and I do not want our guys to think with the mentality. ‘
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