There is no question the Cleveland Cavaliers are going through a rough time. They just went on a five game west coast trip in which they didn’t win a game. And since they beat the star-studded Brooklyn Nets in consecutive games in late January, they’ve dropped 14 of their last 16 games.
They have said they will not play Andre Drummond for now, as they are trying to work out a trade for the big man, and they are also without one of their best defensive players and one of their best passers in Larry Nance Jr.
And, of course, they haven’t had Kevin Love for all but 1-1/2 games out of the 29 played thus far in the 2020-21 season. No matter what you think of Love, and no doubt he has been much maligned pretty much since the day he arrived in Cleveland, he’s a very good player, and he can provide what the biggest weakness the Cavs have on offense, the lack of three point shooting.
The Cavaliers have fallen to 14th place in the Eastern Conference, ahead of just the Detroit Pistons. It seems all of the defensive concepts coach J.B. Bickerstaff put in place prior to the season have gone out the window. Some of that could be because the availability of players changes on a nightly basis.
To play solid defense, you need to know where your teammates are, and just on this past trip, Bickerstaff used three different power forwards: Jarrett Allen, Taurean Prince, and Cedi Osman. That’s difficult in creating continuity.
The bad news from the trip was punctuated with a disagreement between Allen and Collin Sexton at halftime of the most recent defeat at Golden State.
To be fair, as the trip went on, we did see more of the Sexton they played in his first year and a half in the NBA, a lot of possessions for the wine and gold where one person and only one person touched the ball, and that guy was Sexton.
We have enough faith in Bickerstaff that he will address this with the third year pro, and hopefully, the player listens.
However, after taking a couple of days after the latest defeat, we took a deep breath and realized most of the losses in these last 16 games have come against some of the best teams in the NBA.
Really, the only bad losses in this stretch were road losses to Minnesota and New York. Otherwise, they lost to Boston, the Lakers, the Clippers twice, Milwaukee twice, this latest trip was composed entirely of pretty good teams. If the season ended today, each of the last five games were against playoff teams from the Western Conference (Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Clippers, and Golden State).
Now, the margin of defeat is concerning.
The Cavs play Denver again on Friday, but the next three games are at home against Oklahoma City (11-17), Atlanta (12-16), and Houston (11-17). If they play poorly and get blown out against that trio at home, then it would be time for concern.
Perhaps we all got overly excited by the wins over the Nets, and overestimated how good the wine and good were. Quite frankly, they ran into a bunch of games against teams better than them.
On the other hand, losing can cause bad habits. It’s up to Bickerstaff to get his squad focused on playing the right way going forward and converting that into some wins to reinforce good play.
Let’s see how the next couple of weeks play out before panicking.
Cleveland Sports Perspective 