Recap: Cleveland 90, New York 87 (or “Is it the Shoes!?”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Yea0vVpmo

Tonight, every Cavalier not named Kyrie Irving played like garbage for three and a half quarters. LeBron James and the minimal effort supporting cast played like they knew they could beat the Knicks any time they wanted. The non-Irving Clevelanders waited till crunch time to bother to try.  Then, they put the pathetic Knicks out of their misery. If it weren’t for Kyrie’s new shoes and his unbelievable first half (23 points on like 10 shots), to keep the Cavs in it, Cleveland never would have had a chance to be the stoppable force that overcame the moveable object. Kyrie was transcendent tonight, scoring 37 with an unearthly 81% true shooting. He was the best player in the building.

First Half: It was clear from very early on that the front court was mailing this one in. LeBron and Love played with minimal effort defensively, and the Cavs couldn’t rebound a lick. Fortunately, the Knicks couldn’t shoot a lick either. On the very first Knicks possession, New York had five offensive rebounds and missed all six shots. The Cavs traded baskets with them through a ho-hum first quarter that saw the Cavs lazy defense give unbelievably easy buckets to the likes of Sam Dalembert and Quincy Acy.

In the second quarter, Tim Hardaway Jr. got a couple easy looks, then got red hot from three and scored 11 points in a 13-2 Knicks run. Surprisingly, Joe Harris and Dion Waiters hit consecutive pull-up twos (their first in weeks) to stop the bleeding. But the Knicks managed to stretch the league to 11 when Kevin Love and the rest of the Cavs interior efense (they don’t deserve the “d”) gave up a series wide open dunks, offensive rebounds, and putbacks to Quincy Acy and Dalembert, and the Cavs failed to rotate to open shooters. In truth, I blame Kevin Love, but Anderson Varejao, LeBron, and Tristan Thompson were equally as lazy and clueless on defense…

But the Irving show continued. Irving got to the line, and just started hitting everything. No one on the Knicks could stay in front of him. With his newly introduced shoes, K.I. put the whole arena in a blender with ridiculous spin moves, hesitation dribbles, finishes off the wrong foot and at impossible angles, a deadly pull-up jumper, and a dead-eye three point shot. He scored 13 points in the final five minutes to close the gap to 53-50.

Second Half: The third quarter was mainly Amare and Quincy Acy dominating the Cavs bigs who just rotated and rebounded awfully. Fortunately for Cleveland, Carmelo Anthony really struggled throughout the half and looked disinterested and disgusted with life. LeBron’s play was similarly inexplicable. On the second Cavs possession of the half he just decided he was going to throw two straight passes at Kevin Love’s feet for no apparent reason. On another play he screwed up a fast break opportunity by passing backward directly to Iman Shumpert.

As an aside, do the Cavs drill fast breaks? In the previous video, the Cavs screwed up a four on two break with horrific spacing, and because LeBron held the ball too long (it’s beginning to be a them with him). This team is too talented to screw up as many breaks as they do. (OK, it may be that LeBron didn’t want to pass to the open guy, “may miss” Shawn Marion).

Except for a Marion three (he was due), only ‘Bron and Kyrie scored in the third, but LeBron continued to struggle to find his shot, and the Cavs failed to even pass the ball to Kevin Love, like at all. The third ended in horrific fashion when LeBron bizarrely threw the ball to Waiters on the left wing with about 18 seconds remaining. (Maybe this was one of those “teaching moments”). Dion initiated a pick and roll with TT, tried to split the defense, and turned it over for a Tim Hardaway gimme. Then, Cleveland attempted to get the ball in to Kevin Love and he caught it in the key. He didn’t get the shot off in time, but as the quarter ended he got leveled by a nasty shove by Jason Smith. TT was standing behind the play, and I don’t know if he saw the leveling, but if he did, he should have been in Smitty’s grill. You can’t let your teammates get punked liked that, unless you’re on a team full of — I’m being polite here — weenies.

Trailing 73-68, Blatt tried to get some toughness going with Tristan and Andy at the bigs to start the third. It didn’t lead to much chemistry, but Blatt was desperately searching for someone besides Kyrie to play hard. After a poster dunk by Stoudemire, and another weakside layup, Cleveland trailed by seven with nine minutes left. James came back in, hit a J, Andy stripped Amare, Irving hit a layup, Love hit a Kevin McHale-esque scoop-layup thingy while falling out of bounds, and then Irving got Cleveland in the bonus with six minutes left. He used another nuts hesitation move where he was one-on-four and completely in control.

When Cleveland cut it to two with five left, I knew they would beat New York. Cleveland tightened up the D, and James took over: a side pick and roll pocket pass to Andy; a three; a steal and dunk off an Irving pass; and suddenly the Cavs were up 88-85. Amare made a nice spin move layup to cut it to one, and then Kevin Love got a real, honest-to-God block on ‘Melo. But Cleveland’s late game shot selection was baffling. Love, 26-footer; LeBron nine-foot fadeaway; LeBron 26-foot “LeBron special” heave; and a Kyrie 19-footer. Thank the stars Melo couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, and the rest of the Knicks went cold. When Kyrie extended the lead to three with the filthiest one-handed-offhand-layup I’ve ever seen with 10 seconds left (the link below is queued up to the layup highlight), this one was practically in the books. ‘Melo sealed the deal by bricking a three, and Cleveland notched a mail-in win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Yea0vVpmo

Kyrie Irving: There’s no way Cleveland wins without all 37 of his points. There wasn’t a lot fancy in the way he got it, at least in terms of sets. He just took guys one-on-one all night, with masterful dribble moves and finishing abilities. New York did a poor job of helping, and Irving took advantage. There was a national commentator who took exception with Kyrie’s lack of assists. Let’s just call that viewpoint ignorant. It’s becoming clear that LeBron is the point forward, and Kyrie is the shooting guard. Kyrie’s 37 points off of 81 TS% might be one of the best offensive displays I’ve seen in a regular season game. Watch the video. Your jaw will drop.

The New York Knicks are awful. It’s hard to overstate how poorly the Cavs played and won, and how New York gave away this game, but 21 turnovers and an inability to execute defensively certainly helped Cleveland’s cause.

Carmelo Anthony might have committed to a “sign-and-retire” contract for New York. He went 5-19 with 5 turnovers. He was chucking up mid-range giveup shots and had no confidence or desire throughout the game. Cavs dodged a bullet with the fact that he had an awful game.  The rest of the league dodged a bullet by not signing him.

LeBron James is so frustrating right now. Tom Pestak commented to me that Amare Stoudemire has more lift at this point. Tom’s right. I don’t know if it’s the weight loss, the busy summer, the back, something else, or if he’s just out of shape, but my guess is that LeBron lost too much muscle, got out of shape, and screwed up his body. I don’t know if he’ll be the same — and he’s still probably the best player in the league. But he’s so talented that he can coast and it’s maddening. It’s maddening when your team’s best player doesn’t play hard all the time. It’s maddening when he holds the ball forever instead of moving it because he’s not sure he’ll get it back. It’s maddening that the most efficient player in transition over the last eight years is blowing multiple layups at the rim, and looking at the refs for help when there is literally no one within three feet of him. LeBron notched 19 points, five boards, and 12 assists, but he also was 7-17 despite the star treatment from the refs, and was, like I said, maddening.

Kevin Love defends like a ninny most of the time. He had one foul in 39 minutes. That’s an unacceptable lack of aggressiveness by a big man. Lay some lumber on someone, Kve. Love’s another guy who appears to have lost too much weight. He just seems so small now. And he just gives up so often on defense. Also, he’s terrible at showing on the P/R. Here, he basically screens Kyrie to give up a layup at the end of the third. Still, he’ll get props for a meaningless double double stat (11 points and boards in 39 minutes), and he did have a couple clutch baskets in the post. They need to get him the ball there more often.

Anderson Varejao‘s chemistry and communication with KLove is terrible  right now. Neither know where they’re supposed to be on defense, and who they’re supposed to rotate to. Andy, screened his own man in a pick-and-roll, too. There is a chemistry problem with this team, and Andy seems to be suffering because of it it.

Dion Waiters had a nice first half, notching six points, and did nothing of note in the second aside from subbing in on defense at the end. He played his assignment and the Cavs won. It was nice to see Dion in a rhythm in the first, but he’s so far from being a good player right now that even a mediocre showing is cause for celebration.

Tristan Thompson was very ho-hum tonight and suffered from the same lack of energy and communication as everyone else. He finished with two points and only three rebounds in 25 minutes.

David Blatt can’t solve this team’s chemistry problems by himself. At some point the players have to “buy in.” It’s unfortunate that he has little leverage with Love who the Cavs clearly don’t want to piss off because he can walk next summer. Coach also has to figure out how to motivate LeBron, or get LeBron to motivate himself. One thing that would help is picking up a tech once in a while, especially when it comes to protecting his players from rough play. But when it comes to match-ups, he just has no options off the bench. The Cavs bench was outscored 40-8 tonight.

When Dion’s playing like junk and your alternatives are an ancient Mike Miller and Joe Harris, one can’t just conjure bench productivity. If TT and Waiters have bad games, the starters have to win it. One option might be to bring Andy off the bench, to try and get some energy going , and to run the offense through the high post… The Cavs are only seven — maybe six — deep right now. Amundson, Haywood, Kirk, and, James Jones don’t appear to be NBA quality players, there’s not much Blatt can do besides hope Delly gets healthy,  hope Delly has been working on his jumper, hope A.J. Price can steal some minutes, and keep LeBron supplied with Icy Hot patches for his back. I’m sure he was as irritated with how his team won this game as I was.

David Griffin has made some serious missteps with building this team’s bench. Miller and Jones were probably part of the price of getting LeBron but the Cavs are thin as paper right now. Kirk and Amundson aren’t helping, and Harris is barely helping. As Sean Tshikororo wrote at bballbreakdown.com, Griffin probably blundered when he moved Keith Bogans for a trade exception, too. Cavs need to make some changes to get LeBron some rest and fix some of the defensive problems (particularly at the rim). They also might have the worst bench wings in the NBA (not to mention the worst offensive two-guard). We’re going to have to sit through some more mail-it-in for three quarters games until the Cavs get some depth. Thank God for Kyrie, and let’s hope LeBron can keep turning it on at will.