Sluggish offensive night leads to another Cavs loss against 76ers; three takeaways

1. Poor shooting

For whatever reason, the new-look Cavs just can’t seem to get it together at home on the offensive end.

Coming into Thursday’s game, the Sixers were ranked fourth in defensive rating in the league and second in opponent field goal percentage, and the Cavs felt every bit of that. They shot just 36-of-87 from the field (41.4 percent) and 9-of-32 from beyond the 3-point arc (28.1 percent).

After the game, head coach Tyronn Lue said he thinks players are in their own heads too much on the offensive end.

“I think offensively, we’re just playing in thought too much, and it’s not fair to those guys that – maybe we should slow down, I think,” he said. “Offensively, adding, I think, it’s too much for the guys right now, just trying to think and play just is too hard.

“I think you go back to our Boston and OKC game, they didn’t know any plays, they played better. Just playing free without being in thought. It’s a fine balance, because you’ve got to get better, get ready for the playoffs, but I think right now just it just ain’t fair. They’re not playing with speed, they’re not playing with pace, they’re in thought too much. That makes it tough on the new guys to kind of play.”

Lue says he didn’t see the play that got Clarkson ejected; says on offense the Cavs are playing too much in thought pic.twitter.com/DHJw7BfxP6

— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) March 2, 2018

From there however, it’s a fine line between simplifying the offense and guarding against predictability that started to plague the team last week.

“We’ve got to figure it out,” Lue said. “I’m not quite sure, but we’ve got to continue to keep working through it. We’ve got to keep adding, but adding slowly, but make sure those guys are comfortable where they can just play free, not thinking about what spot they’re in, where they’re going and what they’re supposed to be doing. We’ll get better at that.”​

Ty on getting the guys out of “playing in thought” while guarding against predictability. pic.twitter.com/oKbUVpH2kH

— Ashley Bastock (@AshleyBastock42) March 2, 2018

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