CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – If the Cavaliers aren’t careful, their feel-good season could go up in flames in a hurry.
Whatever mojo they had seemed to have that vaulted them into the playoff picture has vanished as quicky as opponents are running out to 20-point leads on them.
Not even the return of All-Star Darius Garland was enough to prevent the Hornets from buzzing through town and leaving with a 119-98 win, the fifth loss in six games for the sinking Cavs, who fell behind by 22 points in the second half for the second consecutive game and trailed by 20 for the fourth time in their last nine.
“We know how good we can be,” center Jarrett Allen, who finished with 18 points and 11 rebounds, said. “We know we’re not the team that should be getting blown out like we are now – starting games out lackadaisical, giving up 38-point quarters. That’s just not who we are.”
Charlotte, who led by as many as 25, shot a blistering 50.6% and the Cavs were helpless to stop them.
They beat the Cavs on the perimeter hitting 17 of 38 from deep while the Cavs only hit 10 of 31 tries.
The Hornets beat Cleveland in the paint too, outrebounding them by 8, 45-37, and outscoring them inside 52-48.
Charlotte’s bench outscored Cleveland’s 54-22.
“It’s just effort at the end of the day,” Allen said. “It’s looking inside of who we are as a team, who we are as individuals and just playing harder.”
Garland agreed.
“It is effort,” Garland said. “We don’t have that mentality we did in the first half [of the season]. It’s tough to touch on right now but I’m pretty sure we’ll fix it soon.”
In all, just another ugly night.
Bickerstaff’s frustration with his team boiled over in the third quarter when he lost his cool and ran on the floor to protest Cedi Osman being called for a block. He was quickly T’d up twice by referee Natalie Sago and asked to leave the bench.
“That’s me losing my composure,” Bickerstaff said. “I apologized to the guys, I apologized to my staff, I apologized to my kids. Nobody should see that. That’s on me. That’s a combination of frustrations, obviously, but I need to stay in the fight, and so I need to be better.”
Bickerstaff’s Cavs, who have prided themselves on their scrappiness, hustle, defense, and opportunistic offense, found themselves wondering Wednesday night where that has suddenly disappeared to.
“No matter what offensively, we’re a defensive team,” Bickerstaff said. “And that’s where we have to hang our hat, and our defense turns into offense for us. What we have to get to is the trenches, and the scrap and that’s the way we’ll find it again.”
Garland was back on the floor and despite his sensational night, the offense looked like a mess at times. Players running into each other, too many one-and-done possessions – just four offensive rebounds on the night, and 14 turnovers cost them 25 points.
“We’re not playing the same way as we did in the first half of the season and we just have to get back to that,” Garland said.
“We’re playing soft. We gave up 38 points in a quarter, I think that happened twice this week. That’s unacceptable. Turnovers are killing us, transition points are killing us. We’re just not being ourselves right now. We’re not having fun with the game like we did in the first half, so we’ve got to change that for sure.”
Garland, who admitted after the game it took him a quarter to settle back in after missing the previous three games due to a bone bruise in his lower back, was sensational scoring 33 points while shooting 13-22, including 5-10 from 3 in the loss.
It’s become clear the Cavs problems go deeper than recent injuries to Garland, Rajon Rondo and Caris LeVert and the schedule doesn’t get any easier where they’ll play just five games against non-playoff or play-in tournament contenders the rest of the way.
The 76ers, currently third and resurgent following the James Harden-Ben Simmons trade, awaits Friday night in Philadelphia and No. 7 seeded Raptors come to town Sunday night followed by a trip to Indiana then top-seeded Miami next week..
“It is concerning,” Allen said. “If we’re not concerned, I don’t think that’s a good way to look at how we’re playing, but at the end of the day we know that’s not who we are. We know that’s not Cavs basketball.”
Bickerstaff was candid in his assessment of what has happened to his team.
“I think we got comfortable and that’s the way it appears to me as if we’re playing,” Bickerstaff said. “People start to write good things about you, and you start to read all those good things that people are saying about you and you start to believe it. Your mentality, which is human nature, flips from being the underdog to someone who you feel as if you’ve accomplished something. That’s part of young teams developing and getting better and becoming winners.”
One thing they aren’t doing is hitting the panic button – not yet at least.
Luckily for the Cavs, their recent slide has only cost them two spots in the standings – they’re down from third to fifth but are now clinging to that with Boston mere percentage points behind them.
Bickerstaff is preaching patience and views their most recent struggles as part of the process of learning how to become a good team in the NBA.
“We still believe in each other, and we believe we’re still a good basketball team,” Bickerstaff said. “The hardest thing to do in this league is to replicate and sustain success. And that’s where the good players, the good teams go from good to great. So if some of these losses bring us back to the mentality that we’ve had of the toughness, the physicality, the scrap, then it’s worth it in the end.”