During this five-game road trip, the Cleveland Cavaliers have been in disarray on the floor.
Between the balancing act of Donovan Mitchell's recovery from a bothersome knee injury and a lack of effort from key starters, the Cavs have struggled to find their center. Despite this, Cleveland can still roll things back and stick to the basics, playing a slower, more careful, style of basketball on the court. With the Los Angeles Lakers next on the schedule in this lengthy road trip, the Cavs could put the idea into execution.
Well, Cleveland could put up numbers against Los Angeles, but they weren't careful. In their 116-97 loss to the Lakers, the Cavs turned over the basketball 19 times, which is tied for the second most in a regular-season game this year. From those 19 turnovers, Los Angeles scored 26 points, picking apart a Cleveland team that was hoping to slow things down. It made the Cavs uneven on either end of the court, which was a simple recipe for failure when Cleveland was looking for consistency and success.
Cavs' carelessness burns them
It wasn't just that Cleveland was careless with the basketball that hurt them—they were also careless in their overall effort.
When the Lakers went on a forceful 15-2 run at the start of the second quarter, building a 16-point lead, the Cavs found a way to battle back. The back-and-forth continued until Cleveland took the lead for the first time since late in the first quarter, and the Cavs saw their lead go as high as four points midway into the third.
But Los Angeles, spearheaded by LeBron James, took things to another level after that and shifted into a gear that Cleveland hasn't hit in quite some time. The Lakers went on a 19-0 run to reclaim control and never relented. Over the final five minutes of the third quarter, Los Angeles outscored Cleveland 21-5, putting the Cavs away for good to help their chances in a tightly contested Eastern Conference.
“We did some really good things in spurts,” Cleveland head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said postgame. “We just couldn’t sustain it for long enough to come out with a win today. Thought guys competed and shared the ball. Shots didn’t go for us. The turnovers bit us in the butt. It’s about finding that level and continuing to sustain it. Didn’t do enough to get it done.”
The Cavs' general lack of urgency has continued for far too long and they're sliding down the Eastern Conference rankings. Cleveland entered the afternoon with a chance to pull closer to the Milwaukee Bucks for the Eastern Conference’s second seed while also creating some distance from other teams nipping at their heels. But the Cavs couldn’t do it and with four games left in the regular season, they could drop to fifth after wrapping up this Western Conference road trip.
“Hopefully we can figure it out and change it, so we are ready for the playoffs,” said Cleveland forward Max Strus. “But we all know there needs to be an adjustment made and we need to figure out a way to be better. Going to get together and stay in the saddle as a unit. We have enough in this locker room to be good enough. Everybody is on the same page. Everybody has the same goals. We have good guys in this locker room. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to do the right thing. Have to find a way to do it.”
Strus and everyone else on Cleveland's roster have had similar sentiments on what they need to do to get back on track. But, it starts and ends with consistency and after this frustrating loss to the Lakers, it's hard to feel high on the Cavs with the playoffs looming.
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