Cavaliers get 13th straight win with clutch performances for James, Korver; three takeaways

3. Sloppy start

But how did the team get themselves into this position? On Wednesday the Cavs had one of the sloppiest starts in recent memory, bringing back those not-so-fond memories of October.

In the first quarter, The Cavs quickly went down 10-6. While they clawed their way back, they still lost the quarter 22-19 and shot just .381 from the field with five turnovers. It didn’t help that James ended the frame with zero points and three turnovers.

In the second quarter, the Cavs allowed the Kings to shoot .667 from the field and weren’t playing hard or efficient one-on-one defense. They had just two steals, and were allowing Sacramento to dominate them on fast breaks and in the paint.

Basically, the Cavs’ lack of energy was evident from the opening tip. But where they have made strides since the beginning of the year is being able to close out an ugly game like this down the stretch.

“It was a tough game, you have some of these all year through a long year and we just had to grind it out,” Lue said. “We couldn’t handle the ball early– a lot of turnovers, missed layups, missed shots, and in the first half I just thought we were slow defensively. We just didn’t have a lot of pop, a lot of energy. But in that second half, I thought we really did a better job of locking into what we wanted to do.”

Lue says that the Cavs did a good job of executing down the stretch in 4Q pic.twitter.com/tSRN97gvho

— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) December 7, 2017

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