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DENVER – The Cleveland Cavaliers had a host of built-in excuses.
Larry Nance Jr., the unannounced handyman critical to the team’s early season success, was at home devouring McDonald’s chicken nuggets with a plaster cast around his surgically repaired left hand. That absence, a second game in a row, led coach JB Bickerstaff to use his odd pair of Jarrett Allen and Andre Drummond despite not having had any practice time to work on that massive adjustment.
The Cavs were also playing the next NBA bully on their relentless February schedule – Denver competing for the championship, which was angered by a three-game losing streak. Kevin Love is not yet ready to play, he is only able to practice on the pitch before the game and watch helplessly from the bench. Darius Garland landed two early fouls, quickly throwing spins out of control.
None of these are enough this time. No sugar coating this embarrassment.
“There is no excuse for the way we played tonight,” Bickerstaff said after the asymmetric 133-95 loss. “I can’t sit here and find the reasons why we did what we did tonight.”
Or, more appropriate, what they does not have do. Fight. Defend. Show your heart. Take care of the basketball. Take pictures. Perform a minimum of organized and respectable offense.
“Basketball aside, you don’t let people treat you that way,” Bickerstaff said. “It’s the most disappointing thing for me. At some point there is a line in the sand that you have to draw and then you have to defend it. There must be a sense of pride. The Nuggets are a very good team. I didn’t short-circuit them. But they went out on a mission and they accomplished their mission tonight.
According to Bickerstaff, it was to embarrass the shaken Cavaliers. From the start, making nine consecutive shots and scoring 25 points before their first failure, until the end, when rookie RJ Hampton – a talented youngster the Cavs worked on before the draft – did a float to push the ‘advance to 40 with approximately 13 seconds remaining. Because why not? Not like the Cavs are going to do anything.
In between were posters filled with taunts, 3-point posturing, slick passes, and bench dance parties. The Nuggets had a blast. All this at Cleveland’s expense.
The Reality: Denver is out of the Cleveland League. No one needed Wednesday to see this. A team has been picked to go to the playoffs, possibly doing a deep run in the rugged Western Conference. The other had one of the lowest projected win totals in the league. But that’s also not a sufficient explanation for Wednesday. Not after arguably the most disappointing performance of the season, one that has become too common lately.
“I can live with mistakes and missed shots. But I can’t live with a lack of fighting that we’ve been playing with tonight, ”Bickerstaff said.
Ahead of the season, Bickerstaff spoke about some must-haves for the Cavs. What they had to do every night to overcome a lack of talent. They have built their basic principles around being the most selfless, physical and competitive team. Bickerstaff demanded they play harder than the opponent, becoming the pesky team the teams didn’t want to see. Suddenly that identity starts to fade, as do their playoff hopes. Wednesday was their eighth loss by at least 20 points, three off last season’s total.
The Nuggets were tougher and more physical. They were more locked up. No longer tied together. Denver hit the 30-point mark in all four quarters, shooting 60 percent from the field and 44.4 percent from 3 points. The Nuggets distributed 31 assists and committed just 10 turnovers. They scored 100 points in three quarters and played with the Cavs all night.
“We can never allow this again,” said Isaac Okoro. “I had the feeling that since the jump, we weren’t playing with energy. We were not playing with competitiveness. We have entered the dull game. We were going through motions. I mean, we have to hit them in the mouth first before they hit us in the mouth. We just released the game with no energy.
How is it possible? These are the Cavs. Who they’re supposed to be anyway.
“It’s really frustrating because we know what we’re capable of and we know what level we have to play at, what we can play at. Every game is just looking for that level, but we can’t find it, ”Allen said. “Get to the point where we have to look inside ourselves to see what we need to improve.
“It has nothing to do with a team mentality. It has nothing to do with going back and forth with each other. We are all locked up and ready to play for each other. Just for some reason when we get on the pitch it’s like a lot of things that we have practiced we forget and have mental lapses. We start to look at ourselves and we just need to be able to play basketball as a team.
Allen admitted to being disorganized in violation. He thinks this is partly due to the evolution of the range. Allen and Drummond together have only been used briefly this season. Garland and Collin Sexton have to adjust to this setup, which no longer has the spacing that Nance, Love, Taurean Prince or Cedi Osman can provide to the 4. Okoro is still trying to figure out where he needs to be and where his shots will be. coming from this new look. Bickerstaff needs to be faster when it comes to tweaks and rotations in the game when the original shot is disrupted. Playing two crosses needs to be reconsidered.
“I hate to say this over and over again, but it’s going to take time,” Allen said. “I really believe that the coaches have the best interests in every game. They come up with the best game plan so that we can win. I think as far as the players are concerned, we need to be able to lock in more, know our covers and keep playing for each other. We just have to play our game. Whatever the score, we know what makes us a good team, we know what got us here. I am frustrated with the way we go about it.
After Wednesday’s nightmare, no one was able to pass the mirror test. Not Bickerstaff, whose vanilla offensive program couldn’t create quality looks, stifled by Denver’s crowd-the-ballhandler approach. Not Sexton, who couldn’t even get net shots, leading to one of his worst games as a pro. Not Drummond, which was an essential no-show. Not even Allen, who had a quality statistical night but minimal impact.
Losses happen. Eruptions too. Wednesday was more than that. It wasn’t just about being outclassed against a better opponent – although that was certainly part of it. It was a complete failure to live up to the standard we are trying to set, a standard that will eventually help them out of the rubble of this reconstruction.
The loss rightfully led to heart-to-heart conversations in the locker room. This led to some soul-searching from a team who quickly went from early surprise to a flawed suitor trying to find each other. It should serve as a wake-up call.
“We want to look beyond the game and say, ‘It’s disappointing. This is not how we play. This is not the way we do things. This is not how this organization was built, ”Allen said. “We know we have to do better in the future.”
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