BOSTON _ Tuesday night wasn't the first time this season Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue questioned his team's toughness.
But the fact that Lue said much the same after a 32-point home loss to the Houston Rockets on Feb. 3 as he did after a 13-point setback to the Boston Celtics in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals may not bode well for the Cavs' postseason future.
Before or after the dramatic roster remake at the Feb. 8 trade deadline, the Cavs still lack the will to fight. And that is the mantra of the underdog Celtics, who lead 2-0 going into Saturday night's Game 3 at Quicken Loans Arena.
"We've got to be tougher," Lue said at TD Garden. "I think they're playing tougher than we are. They're being physical. They're gooning the game up and we've got to do the same thing. We've got to be tougher, mentally and physically."
That sounded like a replay of what Lue said more than three months ago after the Cavs were thumped by the Rockets.
"I didn't think we really knuckled down and joined the fight. What [are] we really playing for? Are we playing to win or are we playing to look good? We just have to be tougher mentally and physically," Lue said then.
"Gooning" may not have been the best choice of words when the player who best fit that description on Tuesday night was Cavs guard J.R. Smith, who shoved Celtics center Al Horford in the back while Horford was going up for a lob pass. After review, Smith received a flagrant 1 foul. On Wednesday, ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the NBA would not discipline Smith.
"It was a good call. I blatantly pushed him," Smith said. "It wasn't like I was trying to low bridge him or something to make sure he didn't get it. It was a good, hard foul. I can understand why they gave me a flagrant."
Marcus Smart got into it with Smith and both drew technical fouls. Smart harshly criticized Smith after the game.
"I just looked at it, Al is a defenseless person. He's in the air. He can't control how his body goes, and he's not even looking, and you go and take two hands to the back, that's a dirty shot," Smart said. "You just can't allow that to keep happening. That's not the first time J.R. has done some dirty stuff, especially playing against us. He's known for it, especially playing against us. We know that.
"It's like a bully _ you keep letting a bully keep picking on you, he's going to pick on you until you finally stand up, and that's what I tried to do. One of my guys was down, and I took offense to it."
Smith was suspended two games for an incident against the Celtics in the first round of the 2015 playoffs when he delivered a backhanded punch to Jae Crowder, who sprained his left ACL as he fell. Smith served the suspension in the semifinals against the Bulls. Smart was a Celtics rookie, the sixth overall pick in the 2014 draft, when that happened.
On Tuesday, Celtics fans responded to Smith's shot by chanting, "(Expletive) you, J.R.," which did not offend its target.
"I love it. I don't want the opposing fans to like me. That's not why I'm here," Smith said. "They can chant and scream all they want. It actually makes me feel better about myself. They know me."
The physicality was brutal from the start. LeBron James took an inadvertent shoulder to the jaw from rookie Jayson Tatum, dazing James and sending him to the locker room. Early in the second quarter, Larry Nance Jr. and Celtics backup center Aron Baynes rolled on the floor wrestling for a rebound for several seconds before the whistle blew. That was a rare instance in which the Cavs didn't surrender.
"We both wanted the ball pretty bad, so that's what you get when that happens," Nance said. "It was definitely a physical game, two physical guys going at it. We just need to bring more of that next game."
In the third quarter, Marcus Morris finished an and-one layup to tie it at 69 and screamed in the face of Cavs center Tristan Thompson.
Asked what happened, Thompson said, "Does it matter? I'm not a Chatty Patty, so you're going to have to ask him that."
Smith and James said they didn't think the Cavs lacked aggressiveness, but Thompson took the side of Nance and Lue.
"They're going to play physical. They got to. That gets them going, and they've got players that are gritty players that play hard," Thompson said. "That's their edge, that's what they bring to the table. Guys got to be ready for that. And if you're not ready, then you can't play."
The Celtics are 37-0 in best-of-seven series when they've taken a 2-0 lead, but this season they're 1-4 on the road in the playoffs. James is 2-4 in series when his team has been down 0-2, all with the Cavs. But according to ESPN Stats & Info, facing that deficit in the Eastern Conference playoffs, he's 6-0 in Games 3 and 4.
"We're going to see what we're made of on Saturday," James said.
Lue knows the approach the Cavs must take.
"We've got to come out swinging," Lue said. "We've got to be aggressive. We've got to be physical and we've got to have a physical mindset, that they're coming in, playing tough. They're aggressive, and we've got to match that."
