Recap: Washington 91, Cleveland 78 (or Does Everyone on this team Hate Each Other?)

Well that game sucked. Cleveland passed poorly, shot poorly, defended poorly, rebounded poorly, were poorly coached, and generally played selfish basketball. I’m sure I left some things out that the Cavs did poorly that game, but it’s hard to list them all. The game was not nearly as close as the 13 point deficit might indicate, either. Cleveland had a 13-8 lead about halfway through the first quarter, after a sequence where LeBron scored off a Kyrie fast break assist, and then Irving stole the inbound, missed a three, and LeBron cleaned up the trash. That was as good as it got for the Cavs for the rest of the game. Cavs made two stupid turnovers and Bradley Beal stole the ball twice and fed John Wall for two straight far too easy baskets to tie it up at 13. Washington never looked back after the first quarter.

The Good:

There wasn’t much on the Cavs side that was good. Andy had his moments in the pick-and-roll, snaking his way to the basket off cuts on his way to 10 points, but he balanced that out with way too many jump shot bricks and wild post-ups that dropped his shooting percentage to 4-10. Kyrie Irving scored 22 on 16 shots and 8-10 from the free throw line, but (and there were a lot of “buts” about Kyrie’s – and every Cavaliers — game tonight) Irving had only two assists to three turnovers. And he simply would not pass the ball late in the game.

John Wall pretty much destroyed Cleveland tonight. He scored 28 and added seven dimes, six boards, and four steals in 37 minutes. His mid-range jumper was in full effect and it made him unguardable. Wall scored 17 in the third and broke the backs of Cleveland defenders who had no physicality and no answers for him in one-on-one defense. It didn’t help that the Cavs switching scheme consistently put inferior defenders on Wall like Tristan Thompson and Mike Miller. John took advantage of every opportunity.

We all thought that Marcin Gortat might be the recepient of the king’s bounty that goes with being an inside player facing the Cavs, but no. It was Kevin Seraphin who lit up the Cavs for 12 points in the second quarter, and then patrolled the paint in the fourth on defense. Kevin finished with 12 points, six boards, and three monster blocks in only 23 minutes.

The Bad:

Oy, where do I start. This one was painful to watch. Let’s start with coaching. Once again, the Cavs were horrific at closing out quarters. In the first quarter, the last two minutes saw an 9-0 domination by the Wizards. Mike “the game has passed him by” Miller, came in, rimmed out a wide open three, and Joe Harris played bullfighter defense on John Wall who canned a far-too-easy layup. And then it snowballed. The Cavs lack of a defensive stopper hurt them badly against Wall. The second quarter ended 6-4 in favor of the Wizards, and all three field goals were at the basket. The third quarter went 6-5 for the Wizards in the last two minutes, with John wall scoring four of them (at least that one was close to a draw). In case you can’t add, that’s 21-9 in the last two minutes of quarters one through three.

Those weren’t Blatt’s only sins. There were some truly bizarre lineups in this one. In the late first: Haywood, Thompson, LeBron, Miller, and Harris (or LeBron and four guys who can’t do anything without LeBron). But really, the offense… a Dios mio. The offense mainly consisted of fast breaks (that the Cavs kept screwing up), two man pick and rolls with three guys standing around, and left block isolations with four guys on the other side of the court. Those plays, predictably, had a low success rate and a low offensive rebound rate. The Cavs failed to get the ball to Kevin Love in effective spots, and Love only ended up with eight field goal attempts and four free throws.

Equally disconcerting was Blatt’s obliviousness after the game about how bad his defense was. Blatt noted (paraphrasing) that “any time you hold a team to 91 points, you have a chance to win.” But what he didn’t note was that the Cavs allowed Washington to shoot 49% with ten offensive rebounds. That’s never good.

But David Blatt can’t step on the floor to run fast breaks. The Cavs screwed up multiple (I’m looking at you, Dion Waiters). Whether it was failing to run lanes (or even run to the corner), bigs not getting the ball to a guard, or just being selfish and not swinging the ball, the Cavs came away from multiple transition opportunities with no points. And Blatt certainly isn’t the one telling Dion, Kyrie, and LeBron to step into long twos from the elbow with over 12 seconds left in the shot clock. Blatt isn’t telling Tristan to dribble drive from 20 feet. And Blatt isn’t telling Kyrie to dribble around for 20 seconds before throwing up a brick in the last five minutes of a game where the Cavs were trailing.

The offensive sets weren’t fantastic, but the ball never moved. LeBron and Kyrie seemed to want to make a home run pass instead of simply passing the ball to the next open player. No one, especially Kevin Love, was trusting that the ball would come back to them if they got open. Love is turning into the Vanilla Gum Drop Bear when it comes to quickly jacking up mid-rangers and threes. In a way, it’s hard to blame him. In true Gum Drop fashion, Love even had an offensive foul that everyone could see coming from 30 feet away.

The Ugly

The turnovers were incessant. In the first quarter, the Cavs had seven. Cleveland couldn’t execute a clean pass. Everything either went off someone’s knee caps or their fingers. When they weren’t bouncing the rock off people’s shins, the Cavs were throwing it out of bounds, or flubbing it just like end of the game, Wednesday. The starters had 15 turnovers and the team had 19 for the game, and they all hurt.

The bench discrepancy: 40 points for the Wiz to the Cavs 9. Of course, Brad Beal is really a starter. His 10 points, five boards, and five dimes, outpaced the Cavs entire bench in points and assists. But still, 9 points from the bench? Someone get Delly some deer antler spray for his knee.

Dion Waiters was 1-7 (click for video), and took some mind numbingly dumb shots (specifically clips two, five, and seven — where he ignores a wide open James under the basket). Dion, Joe Harris, and Kyrie combined to go 0-12 from three. Cavs apologists will tell you that if a couple of those had gone down, it would have been a completely different game. That may be true, but the Cavs shot 27 threes and only made six. This is just a thought, but they might have wanted to try to go inside some.

The officiating was FIBA bad. My favorite moment: with three minutes left: the refs blew two straight out of bounds calls. One resulted in a jump ball and another in a Wizards possession. It’s true that aggressive teams get the calls, but the Cavs got hammered multiple times, and couldn’t get a whistle. LeBron, specifically, should have had two fouls reviewed for flagrants. And, as well as Kevin Seraphin played, he got away with a lot. I counted at least three shooting fouls on him that weren’t called. But I can’t complain too much; Cleveland shot 27 free throws to the Wizards 10. To be frank, the Cavs should have fouled more. They needed to lay some lumber on some of the Mavs when they drove. I may have thrown something and yelled, “PUT HIM ON THE DECK!” during a John Wall drive, and I definitely said “Smack him on the nose on that next jumper, Joe Harris!”

Not since Andrea Bargnani have I ever seen an NBA big man that plays more like a weenie on defense than Kevin Love. The man simply refuses to challenge shots or get his hands up half the time. And he takes a charge with his hands across his chest like a girl. (Not to denigrate female basketball players. They do this cause they have boobs to protect– Kevin doesn’t anymore). Someone teach Mr. Love the rule of verticality and how to put his hands up. At the very least, put a hard foul on someone, Kev! You need more Diana Taurasi in you.

This… is just embarrassing.

Mike Miller’s defense… Everone matched up on Miller had the green light to take him one-on-one any time they wanted. Old man, Andre Miller took that green light to heart and went 3-3 against Mike. After the game they agreed to meet up some time for a meal of soft foods and conversation about The Great War and the marvel of the horseless carriage.

The attitudes in this game were bizarre. Whether it was David Blatt or whether it was the team breaking out of the designed offense, the ball stuck like glue. As Doug Collins and Jalen Rose noted on the ESPN halftime show, the offense was so bad (Cleveland shot 36% with 19 turnovers), that Washington didn’t have to break a sweat guarding the Cavs, and as such, had a lot more energy on offense. The body language, the pouting, the b**ching at the refs and not getting back on defense, the frustration: it was all palpable.

But what really irritated me was that no one got pissed at a Wizard. David Blatt didn’t want to protect his players with the refs and take a tech. No one wanted to challenge anyone who wasn’t on their team All the Cavs wanted to do was side-eye each other in annoyance. And after the game? Same old blah blah blah, “it’s a process,” “we’ll get better,” “tomorrow is another game.” No one was pissed. I would have been livid. There was absolutely no sense of urgency by anyone. LeBron noted “frustration” and seemed annoyed yet oblivious to the fact that he’s part of the problem… But in the age of ever-present media, one must always be composed, even when the situation calls for one to lose all composure. If this apathetic malaise carries over to Saturday night, Cleveland doesn’t have a chance against the best team in the East.