The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Q will be a welcome sight to slumping Cavs
Team faces two more games on miserable road trip
The Cavaliers, like a group of young boys sent to summer camp for the first time in their lives, are homesick.
Unfortunately, a letter or a phone call appealing to mom or dad to come to the rescue for a ride back to Quicken Loans Arena in the family van would be a waste of time.
The Cavs still must play in Toronto on Jan. 11 and in Indiana on Jan. 12 before the most brutal part of their 2017-18 schedule concludes. By then, they will have played 10 of 12 games on the road.
Six of their last seven road games have ended in defeat. The forecast for Jan. 11 isn’t pleasant because the Raptors are 14-1 at the Air Canada Centre.
The longer the road trip drones on, the more lopsided the losses. The only team they beat during the seven-game stretch was the pathetic Orlando Magic (12-28, 14th place in the 15-team East) and they had to win
a 131-127 shootout to do that.
Defense usually is the first thing to suffer when the Cavaliers hit one of these rough patches. The skid began on Dec. 19 with a 119-116 loss in Milwaukee. They have held only one opponent under 100 points since then and lost that game, 99-92, to the Warriors in Oakland.
The Cavaliers have played without energy and focus, which is why defense is suffering. They trailed by as many as 41 on Jan. 8 in Minnesota before losing, 127-99.
“Tonight, I don’t know what tonight was,” Cavs center Kevin Love told reporters after the game. “It was just ugly. It’s easy to say it’s just one of those nights, but in a lot of cases, there’s a lot of things that we can do better.”
At least Love, and presumably his teammates, have the right attitude: Don’t panic, but don’t just assume everything will work out just because they are the Cavaliers and they’ve appeared in three straight NBA Finals.
The Cavaliers, 26-14, rarely practice for two reasons: They are the oldest team in the league and are often playing every other night, as all teams do since the league revised the schedules so teams wouldn’t be forced to play three games in four nights or four games in five nights.
Coach Tyronn Lue has concluded LeBron James,
33, and the rest of the veterans are better served recuperating between games rather than practicing. Even with that, James recently said players are in the Cavs’ practice facility on off days working on their own to improve. But team defense would understandably suffer when Lue isn’t running an organized practice.
The game with the Raptors will mark the halfway point of the season for the Cavaliers. Toronto, in second place behind the Celtics in the NBA East, is three games ahead of Cleveland. It is a good time for Lue to take stock of his team, but he won’t have much time to do it because his team is in Indianapolis 23 hours later and then hosts Golden State on Jan. 15 after getting the weekend off.
The Cavaliers are 15-4 at The Q. They have won 13 straight in front of the home crowd. The cozy confines of Quicken Loans Arena will look better than ever when the Trip of Misery finally ends.
Schudel can be reached at jschudel@news-herald. com; @jsproinsider on Twitter.