With their 103-74 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers fell out of first place in the Eastern Conference. The 48-26 Boston Celtics now hold a half-game over them, with the end of the regular season now in hailing distance. Meanwhile, the Cavaliers have gone 7-10 since 25 February, and were so embarrassed by this most recent loss that it looked like they weren’t even trying.
How much will all this actually mean? The answer might end up being: not much. Should Cleveland enter the playoffs as the second or, horror of horrors, the third seed, they’ll still be heavily favored in every postseason series they play until the finals. With home court advantage, the Celtics or the Washington Wizards might be able to land a few more blows than they normally would, but it’s still difficult to imagine Cleveland losing a series against them, even playing at their current level – unless they suffer a serious injury loss, which briefly looked like it had happened on Monday when LeBron James exited the game with a back injury. (James, however, says he will be ready to play on Thursday).
Yes, the Cavaliers should breeze through the Eastern Conference playoffs, but their chances of repeating as NBA champions have never seen slimmer. If they play like they have during this second half, the Spurs or the Golden State Warriors would likely dismantle them in the finals, and should a blazing-hot James Harden or Russell Westbrook shock the world by emerging from the West, they won’t be afraid. Cleveland’s second half fall is concerning, and it’s worthwhile to pinpoint who, or what, is to blame.
1. LeBron James
OK. Let’s be clear about this: James is not part of the problem here as a player – and anyone who suggests he could be is just being willfully ignorant. (Or Skip Bayless, but I repeat myself.) As they have been for the entire history of the franchise, the Cavaliers are a much better team with James than without him. He’s playing at a MVP level and is again carrying the team. With him on the bench, Cleveland’s offensive efficiency drops 13.6 points per 100 possessions, and their defensive efficiency drops 2.7 points. He’s averaging 26.0 points, 8.8 assists and 8.4 rebounds per game. That’s seriously impressive.
When the Cavaliers struggle, however, the criticism will always start with James, whether deserved or not, simply because this is very much his team: he’s the on-court leader, a de facto coach, and is involved at some level with every major personnel decision. This team has looked unmotivated and sluggish lately, and some of that has to be on James. It’s probably why he called his team-mates “delicate” yesterday. The fact remains, though, that LeBron continues to be the biggest reason the Cavaliers have been as successful as they have been.
2. The defense
The other problem with the “hold James accountable” approach is that the Cavaliers might be plenty motivated but just not that good right now, particularly on the defensive end. Since the all-star break, the Cavaliers have posed a 113.2 defensive rating: only the tanking Los Angeles Lakers have been worse. They’re relying too much on Tristan Thompson and Iman Shumpert, who didn’t play on Monday, to hold down their defense.
Cleveland have not been blind to their defensive struggles and did attempt to improve by bringing in veteran Andrew Bogut, who has a game-changing impact on that side of the ball. Unfortunately for them, his Cavs career lasted less then a minute of game time. The team reacted to this setback by signing Larry Sanders, but because Sanders hasn’t played in the NBA for several seasons they can’t count on him becoming an instant difference-maker.
3. Tyronn Lue
If you’re in the “Cavaliers aren’t too concerned with winning games right now” camp, Cleveland head coach Tyronn Lue probably won’t change your mind. After losing to the Washington Wizards on Saturday, Lue oddly insisted: “We’ve got to hold back. We can’t show our hand early. We just have to play our normal defense until we get there and then we will see what happens.”
The premise behind this strategy is that the Cavaliers are saving their greatest effort, as well as their best plays, for their playoff run, not in itself a particularly ridiculous or even novel idea. We’ve seen NBA teams that look exhausted and out of options in the regular season flip the switch in the postseason. Heck, we’ve seen the Cavaliers themselves do it. The problem is: what if they reach the playoffs and Lue realizes that he has let this become their “normal defense?”
4. The Boston Celtics
Certainly, we also must give a smidgen of credit here to the Celtics for actually catching up with the Cavaliers. They’ve erased Cleveland’s 5½-game conference lead by going on a 25-11 run. A huge part of that has been courtesy of sole all-star Isaiah Thomas, who has been their best player by a ridiculous margin while logging franchise records in the process.
Still, that the story has been more about Cleveland’s fall than Boston’s rise. Thomas’s ability to manufacture fourth-quarter heroics is partially a product of their second-half difficulties in putting opponents away. The Celtics pulled into a tie with the Cavaliers by barely surviving a game against the Miami Heat after blowing a nine-point fourth quarter lead, and then jumped ahead of them by watching them implode during an off-day. It’s been an oddly passive rise to the top for the Celtics, who shouldn’t scare Cleveland, although that could change if Boston wins the two teams’ final meeting on 5 April.
5. Adam Silver
What if this is a secret protest? Let’s all embrace our inner Alex Jones and explore the possibility that the Spurs game was a false flag operation. With NBA commissioner Adam Silver threatening to fine teams for sitting star players during nationally televised games, maybe the Cavaliers’ no show was a message to the league. Yes the starters technically showed up to Monday’s game, but they didn’t really “show up” to Monday’s game. With Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and JR Smith all scoring in the single digits, it’s hard to say that them physically being there and not resting made much of a difference that night.
Are the Cavaliers protesting Adam Silver's "don't rest your stars before network games" by playing while mentally forfeiting?
— Hunter Felt (@HunterFelt) March 28, 2017
If you, like some Spurs fans, believe that there was something performative about James’s third quarter injury where he crumpled to the floor in pain after taking an elbow to the back, maybe there’s a reason. Could it have been a way to shock Silver into viscerally realizing the worst case scenario for playing stars too long? There was the league’s most important player, writhing in agony for an injury suffered after being left in a game that was already essentially decided.
Yes, it seems far-fetched but consider this: if the Cavaliers were attempting to deliberately play the ugliest basketball they could without blatantly throwing the game, how would it have looked any different than what we saw on Monday?
