The Cleveland Cavaliers have been like a dam all season long with cracks starting to show, moments away from bursting. Sure, injuries Cleveland's players have dealt with have made it seem like the flood was about to break through. Despite this, the Cavs have done their damnedest all season long to hold things together with whatever they could muster. In a lopsided 121-84 road loss to the Miami Heat, though, the dam finally burst and, like any catastrophic type of structural failure, all it took was a little bit of pressure.
Players have been continually asked to step up in relief from their injured teammates, doing more and playing harder to string together wins and on-court consistency. Eventually, the bill came due, and no matter how long Cleveland tried to avoid it, it resulted in the lowest point of their season.
“We’ve asked these guys to do so much,” head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said following the loss. “We have asked them to carry the burden of everybody having to do more because of all the injuries and the things we are going through. I think it just showed tonight. It caught up with us. I think mentally and physically, we are worn. It’s on us all to figure it out. No excuses. It doesn’t get any easier. I think tonight was one of those nights where collectively it just set in on us. It was uncharacteristic of this group. I think we had one of those nights.”
Miami used their signature full-court pressure after makes before dropping into a 2-3 zone, and Cleveland wilted under the pressure like a team that had never seen it before. From the beginning, the Heat's pressure threw off the Cavs' entire offensive flow, turning over the ball on three of their first five possessions.
From there, it became a comedy of errors for Cleveland and Miami happily took advantage of it. Cleveland's performance against a no-nonsense opponent in Miami further crystalized the notion that the Heat outclasses the Cavs in every way.
Between the lackadaisical turnovers and the careless fouls, there was no effort on either end of the floor. Cleveland scored a season-low 84 points on 41.7% shooting and 31% from 3-point range. Only one starter, Evan Mobley, who returned from a multi-game absence, hit the double-digit scoring mark. He finished with a team-high 15 points on 4 of 6 shooting and 2 of 2 from beyond the arc in 21 minutes. The eighty-four points were their fewest since their December 21, 2022 loss to the New York Knicks.
Cavs' injuries can't be an excuse
Although Cleveland is missing Donovan Mitchell, their best player, lately, especially in games like this as Bickerstaff noted, there is no room for excuses for performances like these. Even if having Mitchell would've at least made the Cavs competitive, Cleveland has seemingly become more complacent on either end of the floor and looks lost with only eleven games left in the regular season.
There isn't much time left for the Cavs to figure things out and, if Cleveland faces the Heat in the first round of the playoffs, performances like these make the Cavs' chances seem shaky.
But now that Miami has opened Cleveland's proverbial floodgates, where do the Cavs go from here?
From Cleveland's perspective, Rome isn't yet burning with Moondog fiddling away. Instead, this loss to the Heat doesn't have the Cavs reeling, but it humbled them and gave them clarity. Cleveland has to let this roll off their back and move forward, no matter how embarrassing things got on the court for the Cavs. But, if they do run into Miami in the playoffs, perhaps Cleveland will use this bludgeoning as added motivation.
“Nobody is going to feel bad for us because everybody has had to go through the same thing this year,” said Georges Niang. “You just have to amnesia and flush this one. There is nothing that we can gain from this. Nobody likes getting beat like we just got beat. I think we will remember the feeling of what it felt like to get whooped and fight to never have that feeling again.”
The next chance to bounce back and correct the record comes at home against the Charlotte Hornets, the second game of a back-to-back.
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