The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Love: Young Cavs were on right track before shutdown
The Cavaliers in the 2019-20 NBA season were like a motorist driving through miles and miles of orange barrels, and then, just as the construction is ending, suddenly a sign “freeway ends in 100 feet” sign appears on the side of the road.
Seventeen games remained on the Cavaliers’ schedule when Commissioner Adam Silver abruptly suspended the NBA season March 12 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The season will resume July 30 at the Walt Disney Resort in Orlando, Fla., for 22 teams, but the Cavaliers won’t be one of them because at 19-46 they have the worst record in the Eastern Conference.
Cavaliers veteran Kevin Love, one of the team leaders, on June 12 talked about what comes next for the Cavaliers during a wide-ranging Zoom conference.
The Cavaliers were 5-6 in the 11 games coached by J.B. Bickerstaff after going 10-35 in their previous 45 games under John Beilein. Love said the 5-6 stretch should have been even better.
“I can remember, when we played Chicago twice, we had an opportunity to win those games,” Love said.
“That was our Achilles heel the whole year. That kind of shows when your team is young, you have to figure out how to win and close out games.
“Just trusting one another and finding that that joy, playing together and messing with lineups, too (was part of the success under Bickerstaff). Our big lineup was great to play with. It was Dre (Andre Drummond) and Larry Nance and myself, too, and Tristan (Thompson). Those big lineups really were helping our guards and allowing our guards to get into the paint and play freely. I always talk about chasing the game and getting better, which is just so much fun.”
The NBA on June 12 announced it is still formulating plans for the eight teams not involved in the Orlando tournament so they will not have to go nine months without playing competitive basketball.
Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Golden State, Minnesota, the Knicks and Charlotte are the other teams left out in the cold. The NBA said all eight teams can keep their facilities open for voluntary workouts, but that presents a problem because players from foreign countries usually spend summer in their homeland. Cavs forward Cedi Osman, for example, returns to Turkey in the offseason. He would have been there by mid-April had COVID-19 not played havoc with the season.
Love wants to do more than play Around-The-World or Horse at the Cavs’ facility in Independence. He wants some kind of summer competition for the eight teams not in Orlando as long as everyone can be kept safe from COVID-19.
“I think with our team, we have to find a way to stay tight, stay together, have that summer or fall get together with potentially the other seven teams, and just find ways to better ourselves individually as well,” Love said. “That’s the only way, especially during this time, that we’re going to be able to get better.
“I think, watching basketball, especially good basketball, which I think the playoffs will be, is a way to kind of look and feel and see where you can get better. So I’m hoping guys will really have no excuse now to not sit there and watch playoff basketball, because there’s just nothing like getting a taste of that. So hopefully that’ll motivate us, and then as a collective, us to get better and want that.”
The Cavaliers went to the NBA Finals in 2018, but that ended their four-year run of dueling the Warriors for the NBA title. The Cavs missed the playoffs the last two years.