CLEVELAND– As the losses pile up, the frustrations continue to build.
The Cavaliers dropped their fourth straight game on Wednesday night, with a 124-107 loss to the Indiana Pacers.
“A lot of teams are playing well right now, we’re not,” LeBron James said. “That’s just a simple fact.”
After the Cavaliers held a lengthy pre-practice team meeting on Tuesday, it seemed as if the team was in good spirits. After the actual practice itself, Kevin Love said he felt like they had a great practice as a result. Head coach Tyronn Lue also said that he noticed “a big difference” with the team’s effort.
And while there were some good moments in the game against Indiana (only being down two points at the end of the first quarter, and one at the half), the Cavs still very clearly aren’t near where they need to be. They allowed the Pacers’ starting five to all score in double-digits, and especially struggled with guards Victor Oladipo (23 points, seven assists) and Darren Collison (25 points, eight assists).
To make matters worse, Tristan Thompson went down at the end of the first half with a strained calf. Not much else is known about his status, as he will be reevaluated tomorrow, but all signs point to another shakeup in the starting line-up for Friday night’s showdown against Washington.
“We did a lot of good things out there tonight, but we gotta play better basketball,” Love said. “We felt like a lot the night we did some good things, we did some not so good things. But overall we were better, but it wasn’t enough. We need to be better.”
Frustrations are boiling over to a point where they haven’t yet. James was visibly more so agitated after this loss, (which drops their record to 3-5) and even confirmed so verbally. For the first handful of questions asked postgame, James gave short answers.
He was especially irked by the team’s inability to sustain effort for a full 48 minutes. When asked what the team could do to solve some of these problems, James said that there’s a lot of things they could be doing, including getting in better shape and just being more mindful.
“We have an opportunity to be very good, but then you see some of the lulls that we have, and it’s just very difficult on our team right now,” James said. “We’re just trying to figure it out on the fly and unfortunately we don’t have time to practice a lot and do those things. And now Tristan went down again, and we don’t know how long he’s going to be out. Our team is kind of depleted as well, both on and off the court.”
Tonight was also a night that should have been a memorable one for James, as he became just the sixth player to score 30-plus points in 400 or more games, joining Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. While he did finish with 33 points and 11 assists, he also ended with eight of the team’s 16 turnovers, another source of his frustration.
“I have the ball in my hands a lot so I have to be very careful with my decision-making,” he said. “I take full responsibility for our turnovers tonight because it starts with me.”
LeBron: “I take full responsibility for all our turnovers today because it starts with me” pic.twitter.com/nSSHa3gbLa
— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) November 2, 2017
Those issues on offense no doubt fueled some of the defensive issues. As Lue pointed out, the Cavs struggle to get back and get set after coughing the ball over. Lue has expressed frustration so far this season with the team’s attention to detail on the defensive end, as well as the pace with which they play in transition.
“It’s frustrating because you work on it every day, just like you do your offense,” Lue said. “After coming out the first three games and holding teams under 100 points, we thought we were getting off to a good start. And then lately, we just haven’t been really good defensively. A lot of it starts with a one-on-one challenge, a lot of it just starts with the foundation of our defense.”
The Cavs gave up 16 threes, allowing Indiana to make 61.5 percent of their shots from deep. They also gave up 16 fast break points, and nine in the first quarter alone.
While everyone acknowledged that the Cavs did some good things tonight, playing defense for a full 48 minutes still hasn’t been accomplished.
And for now, regardless of talk and meetings, there remain no concrete solutions to their struggles.
“For us, we’re lucky that this is happening now, and not in April and not the last game of 82,” Jeff Green said. “We’ll fix it. It’s going to take some time but we’ll fix it, I know that for a fact.”
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