PORTLAND, ORE.: Eighteen thoughts for 18 minutes from James Jones in a humiliating 105-76 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday…
1. There are tough nights and bad losses and then there are nights like this. This wasn’t just a bad night. This felt worse than a bad night. This is the kind of loss that makes a franchise go back and re-evaluate what happened that led to this point, because no team with the league’s highest payroll and championship aspirations should ever lose by 29 to a sub-.500 team that had lost five straight and 8 of 10.
2. “Throw it in the trash,” LeBron James said, but only if it was that simple. The Cavs could fill a dumpster with everything they did wrong tonight. They didn’t make shots, which happens sometimes, but they didn’t move the ball and they didn’t get good looks. They got beat on backdoor cuts defensively, they got beat in pick and rolls and they got beat because they didn’t get back in transition. Meyers Leonard beat Kevin Love down the floor for an easy basket in the third quarter when Love was standing at the 3-point line and Leonard was under the basket. That’s not to pick on Love, because he certainly wasn’t alone, but it’s an example of how little effort players exerted.
3. Allen Crabbe, who was on the Cavs for about five minutes on draft night in 2013, scored a career-high 26 points. That’s bad enough, but Crabbe exceeded his season scoring average (10.2) in the first quarter, outscored the Cavs by himself in the first quarter (13-12) and surpassed his previous career high (19) by halftime.
4. This was the second of a back-to-back and the third in four nights, but that’s not an excuse this time. The afternoon start against the Warriors meant the Cavs were at their Portland hotel by 9 p.m. Friday, highly unusual in standard back to backs.
5. David Blatt insisted before the game there wouldn’t be a hangover from the Warriors game, but changed his mind afterwards.
6. “I’m sure that had something to do with it,” he said before also mentioning the travel and the back-to-back before stopping himself. “You’re asking me a legitimate question and I’m trying to give you a legitimate answer but that sounds like an excuse. There’s no excuse that I can give you that is reasonable. We got kicked in the keister. That’s it.”
7. Players and Blatt have warned for some time that just because guys are healthy now doesn’t mean all of their problems are solved. Indeed, it seems as if more problems have been created. I’ve written for weeks one of the problems of a fully healthy roster could be an inability to settle on a rotation. That seems to be happening.
8. To be clear, an inconsistent rotation isn’t the reason the Cavs were blown out of Moda Center, but James mentioned it for the second time in as many games, which is worth noting.
9. “For the first eight weeks we had built chemistry, we knew who was playing, we knew who wasn’t playing. We had rotations, Coach had rotations down, so we got to get back to that,” James said. “We have no rhythm. We have some guys who don’t know if they’re going to play, or if they are going to play and it’s hurting our rhythm a little bit.”
10. Kyrie Irving sitting out so soon after returning doesn’t help the uncertainty of the rotation, but that’s a product of Irving not playing in back to backs right now. It will likely happen again Tuesday because Irving is expected to sit at Denver on the second night of another back to back.
11. The Cavs have strung together three consecutive lousy games offensively. There is no flow to what they’re doing. Blatt thought they had a lot of good looks against the Warriors and just missed them. He wasn’t as pleased with the shot selection against the Blazers.
12. “We didn’t take particularly good shots in the first half. We took a lot of hurried shots,” Blatt said. “We got behind fast and we tried to make it all up at one time and that forced us to play out of any kind of rhythm. We really didn’t do anything right in the first half. Nothing.”
13. The first half was all that mattered. They trailed 63-34 at the break and never really made a game of it. They trailed 34-12 after the first quarter, simultaneously setting a season low for points in a quarter while matching a season high for points allowed in a quarter to an opponent. Never a good combination.
14. The Cavs are shooting 35 percent in their last three games and 25 percent on 3-pointers. Shooting funks hit every team. James always calls this a make or miss league, and right now the Cavs are missing them. The lack of defensive effort and defensive awareness was more troubling, particularly since it followed such a strong defensive performance against the Warriors.
15. “We played a really tough game (Saturday). Exerted a lot of energy,” James said. “A lot of our big guys played a lot of minutes, but you try not to use that as an excuse. That Portland team beat us pretty good. Give them respect for that. We can’t let this one linger. We still got two more games on this road trip and we have to get better.”
16. Irving will be back on the floor when the Cavs play the Suns on Monday, but he hasn’t been himself since returning. Irving is shooting 29 percent and 22 percent on 3-pointers.
17. On a lighter note, remember this gem? James said he never even saw the woman and didn't know about this until after the game. He was instead looking at the Warriors bench because an assistant coach was calling out a play to Leandro Barbosa. “I was trying to steal the sign,” he said. It still made for the greatest vine. Ever.
18. Blatt tried to put lipstick on this pig of a night. "In the grand scheme of things it was a bad night. But you got to learn from it and you got to move on. There’s no other way. You know, we’re not a bad team all of a sudden. We’ve done some things so far this year. This was a bad night. Plain and simple. What that means is what we’re going to do with it the next day and the next day. That’s the important thing." Cavs and Suns on Monday. Talk to you then from Talking Stick Resort Arena.