In pre-practice meeting, Cavaliers hope to ease early growing pains

INDEPENDENCE, OHIO– The Cavaliers have had a less than ideal start to the 2017-18 season.

After winning their first two games against tough opponents in the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks, the 3-4 Cavs dropped four out of their next five contests, including the last three straight. Over the last couple of weeks, frustrations have seemingly boiled to the surface, especially concerning the pace with which the team is playing.

The team is undoubtedly hoping that the pre-practice talk they conducted on Tuesday will remedy some of their early problems.

For head coach Tyronn Lue, the talk allowed the team another opportunity to reset their focus when it comes to their level of conditioning. He also stressed that top to bottom, (and yes, that includes LeBron James) that the team will need to get in better shape. And as Kevin Love pointed out, it isn’t that guys are taking possessions off so to speak, but there still needs to be a conscious effort on everyone’s part to play each possession at 100 percent.

“Focused more on getting in better shape, I see after today’s practice, and watching us today, damn,” he said. “It’s a big difference. When I’m screaming play with pace, and move the ball, move bodies, we got to get in better shape to do that.”

Lue says there was a team meeting before practice today; he won’t go into much detail, but said at least part of it was about getting into better shape. pic.twitter.com/puQArFYc34

— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) October 31, 2017

Along with getting in shape, however, there is also an element of lack of attention to detail on the defensive end.

“As far as getting back, getting centered,” Lue said. “When a shot goes up two guys gotta get back. The problem is we’re not getting out of the corners. Shot’s going up, guys are standing in the corners, we’re not getting back. And teams miss or make they’re pushing the ball against us, trying to get back, trying to create confusion, create mismatches.”

He did also mention that he talked with Jae Crowder and Derrick Rose about being more aggressive on offense, and not feeling the need to defer to James or Love. He also discussed the need for the team to get back on defense in transition and contest every shot.

Other than that, Lue wouldn’t disclose much else about what was said, saying he would leave that to the players.

“It’s early in the season, it wasn’t like one of those meetings where it was so over the top so to speak,” Love said following practice. “It was just figuring out what we needed to do. We watched certain segments on film of the game, broke down film a little bit differently, came out here and got some good work in.”

The Cavs were blown out by New Orleans on Saturday, 123-101. They followed that up with a 114-95 loss to the New York Knicks the following night. They are currently ranked 16th in the league as far as pace, and are giving up the most three-pointers in the league at 13.7 per game. Their defensive rating is 109.8, putting them at 27th place.

“I didn’t expect it to be like this right now, especially after our first two games of holding opponents to under 100 points and playing good defensively,” Lue said. “And then I think, offensively, we’re not playing as well as we should and as we can, so when you’re missing shots, you got to get back in transition every single time. You’re not making shots, that puts pressure on your transition defense. We got to do a better job offensively as well.”

Lue says offensively the Cavs “aren’t playing as good as we should” pic.twitter.com/1lOGb0Q4BR

— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) October 31, 2017

While they may not have expected this start, however, perhaps today’s meeting will mark the first step in the right direction.

“Time will tell how it’s going to play out but we have a lot of really good positive energy from today,” Love said. “We had a great practice.”