CLEVELAND: Thirty-five thoughts for 35 points from Steph Curry in a humiliating 132-98 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Monday…
1. It took three losses, including one that rivaled the worst home loss in franchise history, but LeBron James finally dropped the “1 of 82” shtick and conceded what we already knew.
Marla Ridenour: Cavaliers’ colossal flop against Warriors shows drastic changes might be needed
2. “Against the top teams you want to play well and we haven’t done that,” he said. “We’re 0-3 versus the top two teams in the West, we’re 0-1 against the Bulls so far. We’ve got to play better basketball.”
3. Maybe this is why James Monday morning thought my question about seeing this team in June was both "absurd" and "ridiculous." James isn't worried about June. He's concerned with the now, and rightfully so. As I wrote last week after the Spurs loss, there just aren’t many teams that make a fair comparison to the Cavs. No one in the East can rival their talent, but if James wants to cite the Bulls then it’s only fair to also include the Raptors, who have a slightly better record. The Cavs are now 1-5 against those four teams, but this loss very clearly is the worst of them all.
4. They trailed by 43, their largest deficit of the season. It’s also the largest in James’ 1,127 career games, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The 34-point loss narrowly missed the 39-point loss to the Bulls on Jan. 20, 2012, which still ranks as the worst home loss in franchise history. In truth, the Warriors could’ve set their own score tonight. That’s how much they dominated the Cavs in every facet.
5. Steph Curry scored 35 points. The Cavs’ entire Big Three combined for 27.
6. “They definitely played like the champions,” Kyrie Irving said. “They came in and just kicked our ass.”
7. With every loss to one of these Western Conference powers, the dismissive “it doesn’t matter” grows softer. Yes, it matters. The Cavs haven’t won anything yet, as James has reiterated on occasion this season. Does a 34-point loss in January mean they can’t beat the Warriors in June? Of course not, but it exposes that they aren’t prepared, motivated or both to play the league’s elite. If not now, then when?
8. The Warriors have heard for months they wouldn’t have won the championship if the Cavs were fully healthy. Then the excuse on Christmas was Irving just returned and wasn’t in shape yet. Well, now what? Now what’s the excuse?
9. First game back from a long West Coast trip? Sure, but the Cavs had two days off and this isn’t the Sixers we’re talking about. James said early in the season the Warriors are the defending champions and they’re more motivated to play this season than the Cavs. He was right then and, without having to say it again, it most certainly was true on this night. The Cavs weren’t ready to play.
10. David Blatt took responsibility for not having his team mentally prepared, but it’s more than that. The Cavs were helpless to stop the Spurs in the second half Thursday. It was vintage Spurs attacking the Cavs’ defensive weaknesses and smothering them offensively. The Cavs shot 42 percent in the second half, managed 45 points and looked powerless to do anything about it.
11. They played too much isolation against the Spurs and fell back into that against the Warriors. It’s on Blatt to call a play to get the ball moving, but will the players even listen? They scrapped his system early last season and have been running what they want ever since.
12. The Warriors packed the paint defensively, Irving said. The wings stayed with the shooters and Andrew Bogut still sagged back to contest paint shots. Everything was covered and the Cavs’ standard pick-and-roll game quickly wilted.
13. “Mentally, we’ve got to be sharp. We’ve got to be more sharp,” James said. He mentioned teams like the Bulls, Spurs and Warriors who have players that have won championships and who are “sharp mentally at all times.” He clearly isn’t putting the Cavs in that same category.
14. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “We’ve got some inexperienced guys that haven’t played enough meaningful basketball games where they can fall back on. When it gets a little tough sometimes, it’s not like they can kind of fall back on previous experiences to try and help them get through it. We’re going to have a lot of bumps, and that’s OK. We’ll learn from it and get better from it, but the best teacher in life is experience, and it’s good to go through it.”
15. It’s worth noting the top 12 players from this team all went to the Finals. The only one who didn’t really experience that was Kevin Love, who played one of his worst games of the season.
16. In two games against the Warriors this season, Love shot a combined 6-of-21, including 1-of-8 on 3-pointers. He totaled 13 points in two games, which isn’t even his scoring average for one game. He did grab 18 rebounds in the first game against the Warriors, but has struggled terribly in this series.
17. Love, of course, didn’t play in the Finals because of his shoulder injury. Two games is hardly a valid sample size, but he’s 0-for-2 in making an impact in this series. Factor in his numbers from last week’s Spurs game and he is 10-of-31 and has totaled 23 points in three games against the West’s elite.
18. Love is averaging 12.4 points and shooting 37 percent since Irving returned to the lineup. He was averaging 17.6 points and shooting 43 percent prior to Irving. Love, who clearly thought these questions vanished about the time he signed that contract extension, didn’t have much of an answer when asked how he felt about his diminishing role in this system.
19. “I don’t know how to answer that,” Love said. He didn’t offer up much else, either, other than he hasn’t lost confidence and he didn’t want to discuss the issues on offense. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.
20. Love did make one curious remark about guys looking in the mirror after a game like this and gestured in James’ direction while saying it. “We got beat up on our home floor. I think a lot of things went wrong, a lot of things we need to clean up in our preparation, but I think they’re the better team right now,” Love said. “We have a lot of things to get better at. That’s going to take a lot of guys looking themselves in the mirror and it all starts with our leader over there and dwindles on down.”
21. Take that as you will, but Love’s defensive problems are quickly getting everyone’s attention. Right around the time this went viral…
22. ... former NBA forward Al Harrington, who spent parts of three seasons with the Warriors and last played in the NBA two years ago, took a shot at Love’s defense on Twitter.
Does KLove even try on D?
— al harrington (@cheddahcheese7) January 19, 2016
23. Yet again when the frustrations were mounting, J.R. Smith reverted to J.R. tactics and shoulder tackled Harrison Barnes while running through a screen. I thought a flagrant-1 would suffice, but the officials ruled it a flagrant-2 and ejected him from the game.
24. Compounding matters was Smith’s late arrival. He was seen walking into the locker room in street clothes, presumably just arriving, about 45 minutes prior to tip-off. Blatt said he was unaware Smith arrived so late but conceded that if he did, that isn’t good. Nor was Blatt pleased with Smith blatantly running through Barnes.
25. “He got very frustrated tonight with what was happening,” Blatt said. “I really got to take a look at the play, but obviously the referees did and decided what they decided, and I’m sure they had merit for it or they wouldn’t have done that. That does concern me That’s not a situation that he can allow himself to get into, because he’s an important player for the team and what he does and what happens impacts the team.”
26. Smith’s history is well-documented and doesn’t need to be rehashed yet again. The important part to realize is he has shown a difficulty to contain his emotions in heated situations – such as the punch thrown at Jae Crowder last season in the playoffs.
27. “He wants to help this team, and at times his emotions get the better of him,” Blatt said. “That’s something that I’ve got to reconcile with him and together we’ve got to channel that in the right way, even in the tough times like tonight.”
28. James said after the Cavs were embarrassed at Portland to just throw it away and forget about it. I don’t think it’s quite that simple this time around.
29. The Spurs beat the Cavs last week with a textbook Spurs second half. They moved the ball, they defended, they went right at Irving and Love defensively in the fourth quarter. Blatt and the Cavs were powerless to stop it.
30. One veteran was talking before the game about developing a consistent style and sticking to it. The Cavs have a tendency to drift, to adopt a win-at-all-costs mentality. Sometimes their superior talent is enough to pull out victories against inferior teams. But the elite teams, the teams the Cavs compare themselves against, never waver from their system. The Spurs didn’t on Thursday. The Warriors didn’t Monday. They play the way they play, and while it might occasionally cost them a victory in the short term, they’re better off for it long term because of their identity.
31. “We have a long way to go, we know that,” Irving said after the game. “We still have a lot more games to play to find our continuity. We’ve been preaching that. Even in our wins, some of our wins have been really, really ugly as well, but we get by sometimes based on our talent. .. Tonight they took us out of a lot of our stuff. Isolation basketball wasn’t going to be the answer tonight.”
32. You want hope? Here’s hope: The New York Knicks smashed Michael Jordan and the defending champion Chicago Bulls by 37 points early in the 1992-93 season, handing Jordan the worst loss of his pro career. Six months later, the Bulls beat the Knicks in six games in the conference finals and eventually captured their third championship in as many seasons.
33. Of course, the Bulls were the defending champions and had already won two titles. The Cavs? The Cavs left Quicken Loans Arena still searching for answers.
34. “We’re not defeated, it’s not the worst thing,” Irving said. “Of course everyone else is going to make it seem like it’s the worst thing possible that we got beat on our home floor. But it’s something to learn from and go forward. We’ll be just fine.”
35. I’m not doing the Nets game on Wednesday. Marla Ridenour will be handling. You can read her Final Thoughts after the game just like always. I’ll be back Thursday for the Clippers. Talk to you then.