Recap: Suns 119, Cavs 113 (or, Flaring Out + LT)

Arriving in Phoenix for the first of five road games stretching into the imposing heights of the Western Conference, the Cleveland Cavaliers must feel a very long way from the hype they were enjoying just a few weeks ago. On this evening, they would put up an indifferent and curious loss in a winnable game against Phoenix, a performance in keeping with their generally poor performance this year against teams from the West. Thus far this season, the Cavs have racked up a 2-6 record vs. the opposing conference, with an average point differential just shy of 15 in the losses.

For their part, the Phoenix Suns were on the second night of a back to back, having won a 100-91 the previous night vs. Celtics, and were resting Chris Paul in their matchup with Cleveland. Although the Suns are sporting a a 13-9 record, have an interesting General Manager in James Jones, and still in the long afterglow of an exciting performance from the margins of the germ-free Orlando bubble experience, they still haven’t been to playoffs since Channing Frye was a younger man and LeBron James was winning second MVP award (i.e. 2009-10). And talk about a feel-out game: the two teams hadn’t played since April 2019.

Larry Nance was having surgery on one of his hands in Cleveland, where he was holding down the fort. Also injured but closer to return, Kevin Love has left Larry’s preferred eateries of Coventry behind and gone on the road trip with the team. So the Cavs slid Jarrett Allen over to the four, where he started alongside Andre Drummond, and the young core trio of Okoro, Sexton and Garland.

The Cleveland Tank Commanders https://t.co/RjHNn6g4vw

— Cavs:TheBlog (@CavsTheTweets) February 9, 2021

The condensed version of this game is that the Cavs drew even in the big men category, JaVale McGee got tossed in the fourth, Okoro and Prince gave boy-genius Devin Booker enough problems to keep Cleveland in it, Garland was a sparkplug and Sexton did Sexton things. But poor free throw shooting, insufficient rhythm for role players, and problems execution down the stretch all combined to doom the Cavs in the end. This was a winnable game that got away from Cleveland.

In this game, it was Okoro who had the biggest job to do on Booker. To call this a tough defensive assignment is like observing that whale hunting in the 19^th century was both physically strenuous and ethically unencumbered. Booker was as limber and unconscious as ever in this match, surfacing regularly to rack up 17 points in the first period alone even as Okoro crowded him essentially from the midcourt logo.

"I had to go at him a little bit."

Devin Booker on #Cavs rookie Isaac Okoro after scoring 36 with 17 coming in the first quarter of #Suns 119-113 win Monday night over Cleveland. pic.twitter.com/6yWzNUCwg5

— Duane Rankin (@DuaneRankin) February 9, 2021

Okoro did get into some quick foul trouble trying to fight around screens, but he had help from Taurean Prince, who logged a highly effective 25 minutes for the Cavs in this match. Both Prince and Okoro made life difficult for the Suns’ number 1, which one can only assume is an increment Devin Booker wears out of distain because he only scores in bunches, or because he truly believes that subconsciously, it makes Association referees more likely to grant him foul calls on made shots.

If the Cavs have a player who is pure subconscious, a mercurial man built like a mountain of shifting sand (like his game, all the metaphors are jumbled up and batted around), it is Andre Drummond. Forget the size of this man’s contract – the emotions he must elicit in fans of the Cavs must be as titanic. Drummond played an important role in both making this an exciting game and also hoisting another digit onto the L column for the Cavaliers.

First Quarter

Drummond managed to corral the Cavs first rebound of the game, which he negotiated with Jarred Allen. Pleased, he rewarded himself by walking the ball up himself and backing in for the basket. If it worked against the Spurs early in his Cavs tenure, then why not now? None of his teammates got a touch. Perhaps in the absence of actual offensive sets this is the best Cleveland fans can expect?

The initial Cavs defensive approach was to treat Okoro like a kind of free radical who was to tail Booker, with two bigs at the free throw circle and two guards on the wings guarding the corners, or, in the case of Sexton, allowing the occasional backdoor cut.

Booker has an uncanny ability to shoot off the glass at odd angles, and he quickly jumbled the Cavs and caromed one in to start his scoring. Okoro, not content to be only a defensive specialist, came back and hit a smooth catch-and-shoot 3. Of course Okoro needed help with Booker from the bigs and he didn’t always get it.

About 4 minutes into the quarter, Okoro, mindful of denying the threeball, lost Booker on a fake as the Suns guard moved without the ball and then scored. On the next possession, Drummond junked up the Phoenix game with his active hands and a tip out of bounds. It didn’t matter because Booker ultimately got free on the perimeter again with off-ball movement, shaking the twitchy duo of Okoro and Sexton. Drummond didn’t bother running out to contest, meaning that Okoro ran back to contest the three by running three times farther and going around Drummond from under the basket.

Some chemistry is developing — Garland and Allen combined for an alley oop, Okoro ran the floor and Sexton threaded the needle on the break for a nice 2. It was the stuff that visions and videos celebrating Cleveland’s bright future are made of.

But because we live in a world of eternal recurrence, Drummond again decided to take the ball up himself. Sexton wasn’t happy with this and wanted the ball back at the point of the inbound and indicated as much, but Drummond ignored him all the way up the floor. Okoro got the ball and did the adult thing by promptly giving it back to Sexton, resetting the possession. This kind of sequence would not be remarkable except for the fact that it is becoming a pattern between Sexton and Drummond.  A few minutes later Sexton yelled at Drummond for allowing an open three — which is fine, but after the Suns’ make, Drummond ignored Sexton again and inbounded to Garland. When he got the ball back in the half court, Drummond decided to sabotage the possession, slowed everything down, did not distribute, ran into a triple team, and got blocked, which led to a Phoenix fast break and uncontested dunk.

JB called a timeout, but probably not to yell at Andre. After all the Cavs as a whole were lethargic on the offensive end, so there was plenty to discuss. At one point when the Cavs finally did run some kind of action, they were labored, getting into it with 13 seconds left on the shot clock. It might be charitable to call it “an action” — essentially it defaults to Sexton dribbling into three Suns in the paint and leaping out for a fadeaway that he happened to make. Halfway through the quarter, the Cavs had something like three assists on 9 baskets and not a single possession with more than one pass. On one particularly ugly possession, Drummond dominated the ball, finally getting it to Allen at a bad angle, who got got stuffed by Frank Kaminsky (when this man has a big game you know it’s bad news) under the rim. Unsurprisingly, Allen wasn’t really in a rhythm alongside Drummond.

After the timeout, the Cavs were down 17-20, but JB left Drummond and Allen still in together, along with Taurean Prince and then Cedi. Clearly the directive was to get Cedi a shot and get the ball moving – with the exception of Sexton, who was oblivious to the fact that Cedi was wide open and asking for the ball in the corner. Instead he bulled into traffic, then threw an wild wraparound pass (could he not get some pointers on how LeBron does this?) which moved Cedi out of position by about 8 feet. Cedi’s next shot was even worse set up, with Drummond fumbling the ball upwards in the paint; it was a bail-out attempt. So Cedi’s numbers in this game were not good (0-4 from the field) but half of that is reflective of the inadequacies of his teammates. If perhaps not to the degree it might be with Delly, with Cedi’s arrival on the floor eight minutes into the game, the Cavs finally had something resembling ball movement.

Cedi was also fighting against the elemental force of Javon Carter, a West Virginia grad who got a 3 year deal thanks to bubble play. Carter is a very springy sixth man, and, like Cedi, he was hot off the bench and eager to make his imprint on the game. Cedi finally got an open corner three after another semi-chaotic possession with a lot of Drummond dribbling under the hoop, but he missed it.

Drummond finally came out with 2:40 left in the quarter, inaugurating a frontcourt unit with, JaVale, Cedi, and Prince, with Damyen Dotson and Darius Garland at the guard positions. This unit undertook a rapid series of three point line contests which was nothing short of frenetic– Booker managed to drain one with a second on the shot clock, since he was born unconscious, but for whatever reason (JB’s huddle clout? Drummond being out? a desire to win an actual game?) the cloud of lethargy seemed to lift. Then Cavs then started setting walls of screens so Prince could get an open shot.

As the quarter was drawing to a close, JaVale hit a buttery open three, making him 5/14 for the season from distance. But the Suns thereafter went on a very quick and devastating 8-0 run which included Booker flailing for a 4 point play on a questionable foul call on Prince. JaVale and Dotson lost focus and messed up a very basic and uncontested inbounds play, opening a small rift at the end of the quarter.

Quarter 2:

Dylan Windler looked really good in this quarter. He set an active tone on defense, shot the ball freely, and scrambled for loose balls. After missing his first two attempts, Windler confidently hit a step back right over Frank Kaminsky. He then snaked in for an awesome weakside cleanup jam.

Wait for it…@Dylan_Windler23 | #BeTheFight pic.twitter.com/dXEEgd7GWf

— Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) February 9, 2021

Windler, however, is not a floor general and without a true point guard or a more organized player like Cedi in the game, the match at this stage felt a bit like a pick-up game. Fortunately Taurean Prince seems to excel and take initiative when things are formless, and he emerged with a nifty Giannis-esque long Eurostep, and a swished 3.

Garland and the starting line up came back in, settling things down. The Suns big men started making their presence felt. Kaminsky was feeling good, hitting a 3 on the other end, and Suns center Deandre Ayton got a bucket and harassed Drummond into another miss. (Although he looks quite old, Ayton was the Suns’ number one pick in the 2018 draft and was a tough matchup in this game.) Allen never seemed to find the flow in this game, and apart from a couple of big dunks didn’t impact the game as he might have. Drummond clanked some free throws and in this stretch the Cavs were losing the big men matchups. Cameron Johnson, a 6-8 small forward from University of North Carolina who has been in the league for precisely a year (shooting a very strong .390 from three), also gave Phoenix some good minutes.

Suns vs Cavs.

Andre Drummond is tied as the league's leader in offensive rebounds right now, but Ayton grabbed 3 more offensive boards than he did on Monday.

Here's one. DA's board created the opportunity, but fantastic motion & ball movement taking advantage of the defense. pic.twitter.com/SWntWvuz3t

— Suns Video Breakdown (@SunsVideo) February 11, 2021

Frustration with JB’s out of timeout plays is a theme in recent CtB comment boards, but Phoenix was hardly superior in this area. If Monte Williams had any hair to pull out, it would have been gone after a time out which was immediately negated by a Suns foul. Sexton twisted the knife with two successive straightaway 3s.

A crazy sequence followed where both sides traded dunks thunderously. Garland served up an alley oop to Drummond; they have a good sense of one another. Sexton finally tried the novel idea of passing the ball around the perimeter; a great possession ensued which ended in a smooth Prince glide to the rim. The Cavs were also getting to the line, where they shot poorly, but at least had some energy with Prince serving as a sparkplug. The second quarter ended at 61-64, Phoenix.

3^rd quarter

The third quarter things started getting chippy. Darius Garland is not normally associated with that adjective, but he had a very solid defensive stretch in this quarter, working against Booker as the larger guard tried to post him up.

Kaminsky was the center of a number of tussles and physicality in this game. Jarrett Allen absolutely doormatted Kaminsky, who, out of frustration, body checked Sexton, tried to draw a charge on Drummond, and left the floor feeling frustrated. There’s a reason he got into it with McGee later and this stretch of the game is why.

Accordingly, the whistles started to pick up, and Booker was getting very animated with officials while carrying 3 fouls around. With 7:21 left in 3rd,  it was 69-72, Phoenix.

Okoro and Garland both pulled the trigger on long threes which missed —  but you like to see the confidence, shooting it from four feet outside of the arc, in the flow of the game. Working defensively, Okoro lured Booker into his 4^th  foul on the perimeter with about 5 and a half minutes to go in the quarter.

With Booker off the floor, the Cavs needed make up some points or get a cushion of a lead. But JB’s answer seemed to revert to the default – feed it to Drummond inside and have him lose the ball. Somehow in spite of the deficiencies, and maybe also because Chris Paul was in plainclothes, the Cavs were winning at the end of the quarter, though, 91-89.

4th Quarter

The Cavs came out with Dotson, Cedi, Windler, McGee and Prince to start the frame. The first few minutes of the fourth were really about JaVale McGee, who stifled a Phoenix shot via pure length then kicked off the Cavs’ scoring with a magnificent dunk on a feed from Cedi. After a couple of minutes of sloppy and entangled basketball and the Cavs leading 95-92, Kaminsky and JaVale got entangled and received double technicals. The proximate cause of this was three possessions in a row where the two were scrapping, but in reality Kaminsky was in a tough guy frame of mind following on from his having felt abused in the second quarter. For reasons that will probably never be clear (it wasn’t addressed in the postgame pressers, and the Cavs broadcast media were dependent on the footage and did not see what happened) JaVale got a second tech and was tossed. JB didn’t seem too exercised, but Phoenix tied the game with free throws. The McGee ejection was not in itself a turning point, although it was the only aspect of the game to end up on the ESPN.com video roll for the evening, giving viewers at least a reminder that Frank Kaminsky was no longer on the Kings or on a list of players available after waivers.

Cavs JaVale McGee ejected after altercation w/Suns Frank Kaminsky. #WeAreTheValley @azcentral pic.twitter.com/m7XmgdQKRd

— Michael Chow (@photochowder) February 9, 2021

Ben Werth has described Dotson’s on-court instincts and movements as being associated with street ball, but he also has a conversational aspect to his game. He seems to have a good link with JB, with whom he conferred and quickly engineered an and-one. Windler was also getting some crunch time minutes, blocking Booker, not without help from Taurean Prince who also denied the corona supernova on two successive possessions. With a contribution of a big bucket by Dotson, the Cavs were up 100-95 with 4 minutes gone in the quarter.

Unfortunately too many empty possessions followed. Two were squandered by Windler, who travelled and got the ball stolen on a fast break. Sexton drove the basket and leaped in the air, finding an open Andre Drummond looking befuddled at the three point line. (In which version of the Routledge Handbook of Crucial Possessions does the sentence “When in doubt, put Andre Drummond behind the corner three-point-line and give him a chance to launch” appear? Very curious.) But maybe Andre should have let if fly, since Garland then clanked a long 3 pointer. In a crucial last-minute possession, Sexton hooked his defender and didn’t let go, turning a possible go-ahead 3 point play into a foul against the Cavs. Drummond stayed in the game for the final minutes and bungled the ball out of bounds on the final legitimate Cavs offensive possession, and the Cavs lost, 119-113. Although the final margin of defeat was 6, for the last couple of minutes this was a one-possession ballgame and a close and winnable game.

This loss was not great news — the Cavs were looking to establish a tone for the road trip and get back into the win column. There was at least one positive development from Phoenix, call it a beacon of hope shining through the various dumpster fires…

Game No. 25!!! The Suns court is AWESOME. And, yes, that’s #Cavs Kevin Love going through a pregame workout here in Phoenix. 🏀 pic.twitter.com/L0Hqvq0XzW

— Chris Fedor (@ChrisFedor) February 9, 2021