The Nadir

2014: The Weirdest (and not in a good way) Regular Season in Cavalier History

A mistake we often make as sports fans (well, really, just as humans in general) is failing to place the present in the proper historical context.  This can happen in either direction.  We overlook brilliance because it’s too new and we’re not comfortable acknowledging it.  And we despair, disregarding a history of dramatic cycles of success and failure.  Of good and of evil.  I recommend War History as the antidote for all the gnashing of teeth over America’s supposed decline and breakdown of political civility.  Become overwhelmed with the realities of World War II and the extent of today’s violence almost morphs into a cause for thanksgiving.  The reality is there has never been a safer time to be alive on this beautiful breathing rock.  Think Republicans and Democrats are crossing lines with their outrageous (verbal) attacks?  Get acquainted (or re-acquainted) with Sherman’s March to the Sea.  I’m not trying to tell everyone to get a grip…on second thought…I am: Get a grip, everyone.  But the purpose of this prologue, now “long in the tooth” as it were, is to call to mind the lowest of low points in the what had to be the one of the most disappointing seasons in Cavalier Franchise history.

Ben Cox of WFNY trademarked the #SeasonofHuh to describe the downright ridiculousness of the 2013-2014 season.  A season filled with the high expectations of making the playoffs degenerated into some kind of cartoonish driver’s ed video where every sub-optimal decision (and sometimes even the seemingly good decisions!) results in a 15-car pileup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI2rFZOBSUw#t=5m30s

To commemorate the #SeasonofHuh, many Cavs bloggers came together to write a retrospective.  Read the last half of this post for details on what was supposed to happen.  Robert and I wrote chapters.  To be honest I’m not sure why this hasn’t been published yet.  It will be a shame if it never gets published because it’s highly entertaining. (And took a lot of effort from a lot of people)  When we were planning the book I told the other guys that I wanted to stake claim over Chris Grant’s firing, and the games that led to that inevitable outcome.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but this chapter that I titled ‘The Nadir’ felt very natural to memorialize.

During this season of creeping anxiety, now may be a good time for us to get re-acquainted with just how much more dramatic and “there’s no way out of this”-seeming the #SeasonOfHuh actually was.  It’s akin to remembering a bad dream.  The Cavs, after being almost crushed beyond recognition under the weight of a sinister cosmic karma tax, unwrapped an envelope with a shiny golden ticket tucked inside.  So while we wring our hands over the inconsistencies and poor habits of a LeBron-Kyrie-KLove triumvirate, it’s worth remembering that time when the future was Jarrett Jack, Earl Clark, and the corpse of the corpse of Andrew Bynum flailing around Waiters’ Island, suffering from a rare form of inbounding PTSD.  But it was just a dream.

Chapter Title: The Nadir

By Tom Pestak (@tompestak, www.cavstheblog.com, www.gotbuckets.com)

Subtitle 1: The Harbinger

With a little over six and a half minutes remaining in the third quarter, John Wall caught a pass 70 feet from the basket. Of the thousands in attendance at the Q and watching (laboring, if we’re being truthful) at home, exactly none of them was surprised when John Wall dribbled past four Cavaliers and threw down an uncontested dunk with his off hand. Marcin Gortat had managed to screen Earl Clark at the foul line while Andrew Bynum stood frozen in time, his feet joining the likes of his perpetual scowl.

Predictably, Mike Brown called a rage timeout, as most NBA coaches would do after a speedy point guard with a broken jumper was permitted to dribble coast to coast completely untouched. But there was something deeper at work here than just a mental lapse, and Coach Brown emptied his bench in a blaze of glory. There’s a fine line between inspiring and punishing, but no matter his intentions, Brown had no choice but to the pull the chute on his starters – they’d quit long ago. He gave them five and a half minutes to see if his halftime speech had any effect. It didn’t, as an 18-point deficit ballooned to 27. “Lack of effort,” an oft-overused diagnosis in sports, was the only explanation for this sick team. The extenuating circumstances surrounding the beatdown made the general malaise even harder to comprehend: at home, four full days of rest, and facing the similarly-inexperienced Wizards (3-7 at this juncture), just days after besting those same Wizards in DC. It was November 20, 2013, and on this day, CavsNation learned that their team had some powerful demons lurking.

Coach Brown’s hockey substitution only further reinforced the lack of effort from the starters, as a feisty Matthew Dellavedova harassed Bradley Beal, unbothered to that point, and ignited an almost-epic comeback. Now, that this uncouth, unlikely, undrafted rookie with a chip on his shoulder stepped into the Rudy-practice-montage role isn’t the most uncommon script in sports. No, it’s part human nature for those that have “made it” (guaranteed contracts and such) to keep their hands from being soiled with grunt work. It’s up to the less talented, like Delly, to “battle in the trenches.” Of course the obvious fallacy here is that almost every member of this inexperienced Cavalier roster should have been playing with annoying, kid-brother aggression. They’d been caught in a vicious cycle of underachievement for some time, and the core, to a man, had either plateaued or regressed since entering the league. But to the trained and untrained eye, it appeared to be only the awkward Aussie that acted with a sense of urgency. Mike Brown, to his credit, abandoned the increasingly common part-coach, part-therapist lingo in his post-game interview: “We had one guy that competed the entire time he was on the floor. It’s Matthew Dellavedova.”

In some ways that third quarter white-flag (upside down flag?) timeout signaled the beginning of the end for Mike Brown and his college roommate, General Manager Chris Grant. The playoff expectations permeating the owner and the fanbase (however premature) meant complete and utter embarrassments like this game would no longer be written off as growing pains. Not after three years of painstaking asset hoarding while pleading with the season-ticket holders for patience. Not after swallowing all those bloated salaries to improve draft positions. Not after selecting all the tweeners rife with upside and questionable fit. Missed shots could be excused, blown rotations could be excused, failed execution could be excused. But on this November evening in front of a home crowd, the Cavs, the youngest team in the league, couldn’t even get their energy up. They just…quit. This game became the first harrowing reminder of what the Cavs were capable of: losing in humiliating fashion to terrible teams even as the circumstances were favorable. Brown’s marked preparation and commitment to defense, traits that should have lent themselves to scrappy defensive battles, were ineffective against the toxic malaise. Likewise, in an attempt to create a Frankenstein of upside, Chris Grant had breathed life into a Mr. Potato Head – none of the pieces complimenting the others, never becoming more than the sum of their parts.

Perhaps shocked by the total lack of effort through two and a half quarters, Dan Gilbert tried to leverage the late-game run into some inspiring parental advice.

This game is the one we should look back to as the game this team learned its biggest lesson&turned us in the right direction. It’s a choice

— Dan Gilbert (@cavsdan) November 21, 2013

Perhaps “a choice” for the players, but this shot across the bow read more like an ultimatum for the front office that Gilbert had entrusted so many hundreds of millions. If nothing else, the defiantly hopeful 140-character blast felt decidedly less patient than this one just 11 days earlier:

The season is 6/82 complete.If the season was a game there would be 8:30 left in the 1st quarter.Let's calm down,watch a bit more then judge

— Dan Gilbert (@cavsdan) November 9, 2013

However exasperated the coach, owner, and fanbase felt, they’d really seen nothin’ yet. The #seasonofhuh was barely underway. The loss to the Wizards dropped the Cavs to 4-8, and the uninspired play wasn’t just puzzling the faithful. The Cavs failed to cover the spread in 10 of their first 12 games. The joyous opening night victory seemed like an aberration, as the Cavs succumbed to a steady death spiral through the New Year. There weren’t enough tangible improvements to counterbalance the energy lapses, cries of locker room dysfunction, and blown inbounds plays. Three losses stood apart over the next month, as the Cavs continued to bore further and further below rock bottom.

Subtitle 2: “…they’re the freaking Kings!”

The Sacramento Kings most recently eclipsed 40 wins in 2006. Over the last four seasons the Cavs seemed to interact with them more in trade negotiations and at the draft lottery than on the court. The Kings emerged victorious in three of the five contests during the Cavs’ post-LeBron nightmare. On January 12, 2014, the two teams faced off in Sacramento, both riding promising win streaks. The Cavs had won two straight by double digits, eclipsing 110 points in both. They were undefeated in the Luol Deng-era. There was a palpable sense that the Cavs were finally, finally going to turn the corner. The sustained, start-to-finish effort of their two wins signified a breaking from the debilitating mental mistakes of the first two months. The Kings, similarly, were riding an impressive two-game win streak. They outlasted the Blazers (26-8 at that juncture), surviving a 46-point fourth quarter barrage with 43 points of their own. They followed that up by stomping the Magic by 20. So the 12 and 22 Kings hosted the 13 and 23 Cavs, in a matchup that had all the makings of a competitive game. Both teams had a day of rest, and the Cavs needed only travel from Salt Lake City, a relatively short flight. With Luol Deng, the “culture changer” in tow, it was time for the Cavs to prove they had outgrown their immature tendencies: playing down to their opponents, folding at the slightest sign of adversity, engaging in selfish basketball, etc.

On cue, Luol Deng drained his first two shots of the night. Both teams executed at a high level, with the Cavs spreading out the scoring among their frontcourt, and the Kings working through the overpowering DeMarcus Cousins and the electric Isaiah Thomas. The quarter ended with Tyler Zeller and Derrick Williams trading blows, scoring 13 consecutive points in just over a minute and a half, before C.J. Miles hit a 40-foot three at the buzzer.

During the end-of-quarter TV Timeout, Mike Brown almost certainly emphasized “getting stops” or some similar try-harder jargon to stave off any lurking energy letup. But Secretly, he must have thought what the rest of us were thinking: “The boys’re up two on the road and Kyrie and Dion are ‘oh-of-six’ from the floor. We’re in good shape.” C.J. Miles started off the second quarter with an and-1, pushing the Cavs’ lead to five. At this point the Cavs started getting sloppy, but their effort wasn’t (yet) in doubt. Their activity, completely erratic, led to some turnovers but also a slew of offensive rebounds. With a lid on their rim, as AC would say, they started bleeding points, as three straight triples gave the Kings a 10-point lead, their largest of the evening. The Cavs went into the half down nine, certainly in striking distance, especially considering how poorly Irving and Waiters had played, having as many combined points as missed free throws (3). To date, there is no recorded account of Mike Brown’s halftime speech. Maybe Richie Incognito wore a Mike Brown Mission Impossible 2 mask and gave the speech, leaving all the players in a stunned silence wondering when their mothers and sisters had even had the chance to meet Mike Brown, much less…

There’s really no explanation for the final 24 minutes of the game. The Cavs managed just three points in the final seven minutes of the 3^rd quarter. With a 12-minute garbage session to act as the great point differential equalizer, the Cavs got completely run out of the gym. With Cousins resting the entire period, the Kings caught NBA-Jam fire while the Cavs caught dumpster fire. Quincy Acy and Isaiah Thomas literally ran circles around the Cavaliers, and the Kings splashed four 3s and an old fashioned and-1 in less than two minutes. The Cavs raised the ultimate white flag, inserting Anthony Bennett. Despite an Inception-like 5^th level of garbage time, the Cavs still managed a four and a half minute scoring drought.

Cavs: The Blog contributor Patrick Redford summed up the quit:

“The Kings ranked 28th in the league in defensive rating before this game, but flummoxed Cleveland with their activity and work rate. Of course, the Cavs flummoxed themselves with an array of straight-faced contested jumpers and lazy passes. You could tell the team had visibly given up as Isaiah Thomas drove into the lane and finished over three half-jumping Cavs defenders to dot a 14-0 burst.”

Akron Beacon Journal Beat Writer Jason Lloyd was uncharacteristically animated in his post-game round up:

“The Cavaliers will never truly be a good team until they get mentally tougher. That point has been lingering over this team much of the season and was driven home Sunday night. They’re just too soft. Under no circumstance should the Kings beat any team in the NBA by 44 points. They’re the freaking Kings!”

Indeed. It was the King’s largest margin of victory since 2006 and their 3^rd largest in franchise history. A franchise that is 67 years old, no less.

In less than 21 minutes of game time, the Cavs were outscored by 39 points. They lost by 44 points, their 6^th largest loss in franchise history….to the freaking Kings! Particularly disheartening was how ineffective Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters were. It wasn’t just the missed shots and missed free throws – it was the olé defense on Isaiah Thomas, the inability to run the offense, and their surly on-court demeanor. The Sacramento broadcast team made ever more brazen remarks comparing the relative value of Irving and Thomas, and yet digesting this game in isolation would make their commentary seem too kind to Kyrie.

https://twitter.com/Satchman23/status/422516736135798785?lang=en

Subtitle 3: Massacre at Madison Square

During his post-game interview with Jason Lloyd, shortly after the 44-point thrashing at the hands of the “freaking Kings”, Mike Brown responded to a question about the Cavs burying their effort-demons with…well, a vote of no confidence: “…knowing my team, it could happen again to us,” Brown said. “You hope it doesn’t. You hope tonight is a lesson learned. … Hopefully it doesn’t happen again, but I don’t know. I’m not sure with this team yet.” Once bitten, twice shy, Brown must have been unnerved showcasing his squad before a national audience on January 30 at Madison Square Garden. The Cavs limped into New York after an extremely disappointing home stand where they lost four of five games, their lone win against the hapless Bucks. Following their double-digit loss to the sub-.500 Pelicans, both Brown and Chris Grant called out the team for its lack of effort. Said Grant: “The lack of effort is just not acceptable. It’s not who we are and who we want to be. It’s got to be addressed head on.” Brown lamented his team’s competitive spirit being “non-existent”.

Cavs will be w/o: effort, shame, soul. RT @Ryan_Mourton Knicks tonight will be without: Bargnani, Martin, Stoudemire, Udrih, and Shumpert.

— Ben Cox (@CoxSportsOhio) January 30, 2014

To call the 2013-2014 Knicks streaky is an understatement. They’d lose five straight and just when they appeared to be the laughing stock of the NBA, they’d reel off five wins in a row. They were riding a four-game win streak when the Cavs came to town, including victories against the Bobcats and the Celtics where they outscored their victims by 29 and 26 points, respectively. Streaky as they were, their body of work was poor. The Cavs entered their lone nationally-televised matchup with a chance to gain a full game on the Knicks, whom they trailed by just two games for the 8^th playoff spot. If ever there was a time for the young Cavaliers team to assert its future, it was at this juncture, against the Knicks, on national television.

Right from the tip the Cavs had no answers at either end. The Knicks had just recently become enamored with extended small-ball. They started Carmelo Anthony at power forward and J.R. Smith at small forward with two point guards, Pablo Prigioni and Raymond Felton, in the backcourt. The Cavs were missing Anderson Varejao on this night, leaving them with Tyler Zeller to start at center. Not only was Zeller overmatched by the much stronger Tyson Chandler, but the Cavs decided to have Luol Deng guard Melo, which made more sense than Tristan Thompson, but forced Thompson to cover J.R. Smith, which was a patently absurd idea. The Cavs had the personnel to match the Knicks lineup, but they chose to start Thompson and Zeller rather than slide C.J. Miles into the small forward spot to chase around J.R. Smith and have Waiters or Dellavedova covering the other point guard alongside Kyrie Irivng. The Knicks jumped out to a 17-7 lead after just a few minutes and Coach Brown realized things would get ugly if he left Zeller on Tyson Chandler. Zeller checked out and Thompson took over the center duties. Dion Waiters checked in, giving the Cavs two guards to match the Knicks, but instead of now sliding C.J. Miles to his usual position, small forward, he substituted Anthony Bennett for Miles.

To say the Knicks “went right at” Bennett doesn’t do justice to the violence the Cavs incurred. On the first possession, Melo drove at Bennett and drew two free throws. On the next, J.R. Smith splashed a three in his eye. Mere seconds later, Smith found himself isolated on the left baseline against Bennett. It’s hard to say if Smith decided to drive baseline because he noticed Kyrie Irving was the only body nearby to protect the paint, or if he decided to because he had Anthony Bennett guarding him. Or maybe he realized both conditions were in his favor. With a simple right to left crossover, Smith blew by Bennett, rose up, and threw down a positively spiteful windmill dunk. Irving got out of the way as soon as he saw Smith rise up, sheepishly patting his hair as he turned up court. After a block on Luol Deng by Tyson Chandler, the race was on the other way and Melo finished with a transition layup. Mike Brown called timeout, his team down 17 points after just six minutes. A familiar lifelessness had overcome his team, a maddening cycle of stagnant offense feeding into frightened and disorganized defense. And with a “non-existent competitive spirit”, short spells of this laziness were dooming the Cavaliers time and again.

The Knicks continued to pile on, exploiting Bennett and Thompson at will. Tristan finished -29 for the game in just 22 minutes. He made just one of five from the floor, picked up five fouls, and wound up on the wrong end (his rear end actually) of a J.R. Smith crossover jumper. Typing “JR Smith b” into YouTube quickly autocompletes to “breaks Tristan Thompson’s ankles”. Luol Deng could neither slow Melo nor get into a rhythm on offense. Curiously, Mike Brown hardly played C.J. Miles at all, despite being the appropriately sized player to match up with a small-ball lineup, and despite C.J. draining three out of four 3-pointers in his very limited burn. It was an awful showing for the wine and gold. Down 60-36 at halftime, the Cavs momentarily flashed a pulse, cutting the lead to 14 in the early moments of the 4^th quarter. And then, none other than rookie Tim Hardaway Jr. had decided he’d seen enough, putting on an offensive clinic the rest of the way. With 18 points in the 4^th, he almost outscored the Cavs by himself. The Cavs fell by 39 points to a bad team that they had no reason to overlook.

For many outside observers with a limited sense of the day-to-day drama surrounding the Cavs, this game revealed to them the severity of the Cavaliers’ dysfunction. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst was in attendance and often reflected on this game when lamenting the wasted opportunities of this talented roster. In a podcast with RealCavsFan’s Carter Rodriguez, he questioned the Cavalier’s maturity and mental toughness.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been more disappointed in a performance in the NBA than I was at that effort the Cavs put forth at the Garden a couple weeks ago.”

Later in the season, looking back on this game, Windy quipped:

“The Knicks were horrible at the time. The effort level that the Cavs put forth in that game was as bad as any I’ve seen in my 12 years covering the NBA. To play like that when you’re on national television – even if you hate your teammates, even it you hate your coach – have some pride not to get ripped by Charles Barkly. Have some pride. The effort they put forth in that game was an absolute abomination. I was in the locker room after the game in disgust. I ended up ripping Kyrie that night because I’m like, “Who are you? Are you a superstar? Start acting like it.””

Barkley seemed more disappointed and bored than insulted in his post-game commentary. Said Barkley:

“The Cavaliers, man, they have to play better. That was ridiculous tonight. Thirty-eight points in the first quarter? You’re better than that, Kyrie.”

The emotions for Cavs fans had begun a transition from frustration to despair. It was hard to see Thompson as anything other than a liability. It was hard to see Bennett as anything other than a bust. It was hard to see anyone filling the leadership vacuum on the court, and it started to seem like it was deeper than just coaching and inexperience and all the convenient excuses tossed around over the past few months. All the expectations placed on Kyrie Irving seemed premature, all his accolades trite (ESPN Rank #8). Many of the fans that had reluctantly endorsed trading Anderson Varejao now wondered just how much worse the Cavs would be in his absence. After losing to the Rockets and the Mavericks, the Cavs came home on February 5^th licking their wounds. They’d lost five straight and seven of eight. They’d lost to good teams and bad teams. They’d blown games in the waning seconds and been blown out of the gym in first quarters. They replaced Alonzo Gee and Earl Clark with Luol Deng and somehow got worse. The day after the massacre at Madison Square Garden, a report emerged in the New York Daily News that alleged, among other things, that Luol Deng was dismayed with the Cavs organization, in particular at the lack of accountability among the young players. If you were scoring at home, the Cavs traded away non-trivial assets to acquire Deng to immediately improve the defense and the culture. The defense went from bad to abominable shortly thereafter and instead of improving the culture from within, Deng washed his hands of it as early as possible. Did I mention there were ESPN reports of Kyrie Irving wanting out of Cleveland? What the Cavs really needed was a pick-me-up. There aren’t many gimmies in the NBA but the Cavs were getting theirs when they needed it the most. The comically bad Los Angeles Lakers were en route to C-Town, and it seemed the Cavs would finally get off the schnide.

Subtitle 4: The Robert Sacre bleus

Inclement weather delayed the Lakers’ bus ride from the airport to their downtown Cleveland hotel in the wee hours of February 5^th. They didn’t arrive until after 3am, and rest was something the Lakers desperately needed. They had just lost to the Timberwolves a few hours earlier, their seventh straight defeat. Their season had been spoiled early, with the departure of Dwight Howard, the nagging injuries to Steve Nash that continued unabated, and a season-ending knee injury to Kobe Bryant (though the Lakers hadn’t declared Bryant’s season finished until March). As the team trudged its way through the Cleveland snow, a perfect storm of injuries had severely depleted the already-skeletal roster over the past few days. Pau Gasol aggravated his groin just two games prior and was out for the foreseeable future. He didn’t travel with the team to Cleveland, but provided unintentionally hilarious salt-in-wound commentary for Cavs fans via twitter during the game. Jodie Meeks sprained his ankle the night before and was out. Jordan Hill suffered a neck strain and would not play against the Cavs. (Proclaimed as a “cervical strain” for the viewers at home, leading to a few hilarious comments on twitter about Hill injuring his “cervix”) Steve Nash had finally returned from a 3-month back-injury and logged 24 minutes against the Wolves, but would not play against the Cavs, as part of the Lakers ‘No back-to-backs’ policy for Nash.

When each eligible Laker, completely exhausted, finally turned out the light in his hotel room at some ungodly hour, he must have wondered how the heck he was going to get through a 48-minute game the next evening, which was approaching quickly. At tipoff, the Lakers were without Meeks, Gasol, Hill, Xavier Henry, and Shawnee Williams. Those players ranked 1^st, 2^nd, 5^th, 7^th, and 9^th, in minutes played for the 2013-2014 Lake Show.

https://twitter.com/CTowersCBS/status/431214508963790848?lang=en

Since this is the #seasonofhuh you know what happened next. In the opening seconds, Tristan Thompson went up for a thunderous 2-handed dunk. Robert Sacre met him at the apex and got Tristan’s weak stuff thoroughly out of there. Both members of the Lakers broadcast team exclaimed that “that was Sacre!” as though they’d never seen him play up to this point. At the other end, Sacre slipped a screen and received an entry pass under the hoop, cleared Luol Deng to the floor with a fierce shoulder, and flushed it home. A few possessions later, Thompson tried to bully his way across the paint into his pet righty hook. He was swatted from behind by Wesley Johnson who then finished the fast break with a soaring two-handed dunk. The Lakers made 14 of their first 16 shots, six of which were 3-pointers. Steve Blake and Jordan Farmer carved up the Cavaliers with surgical precision and found Wesley Johnson and Ryan Kelly spotted up all over the arc. The early Laker onslaught was incredible. At the nine-minute mark of the second quarter (just 15 minutes into the game) Chris Kaman was hacked on an up-an-under layup that he got to drop. He converted the 3-point play and the score read 50-21. Fifty! The Lakers finished the half with 70 points on 60/60/90 shooting. They drained 10 of 17 threes. Maybe the most ridiculous stat of the entire half was that the Cavs shot eighteen threes, making just one. Against a team with eight eligible players, whose big men were Chris Kaman, Robert Sacre, and Ryan Kelly, the Cavs elected to jack up 18 threes in one half. It was so bad it reached the inflection point where Cavs fans were actually enjoying the insanity of it all, like Truman Burbank screaming “Is that the best you can dooooo!?” after his sailboat is shredded and he’s nearly “taken out of this world” by Christof.

Then, things got weird. Nick Young emerged in street clothes, having injured his leg in the closing seconds of the half on a Tristan Thompson foul. The Cavs struggled to score at all out of the locker room. (To be a fly on the wall during that half-time speech…) At the seven and a half minute mark, Mike Brown benched all of his starters san Jarrett Jack. The Cavs trailed by 27 at this point and would trim the deficit to 18 by the end of the third quarter. Miraculously, yet unsurprisingly, the Cavs closed the gap to 10 points with almost 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. And instead of re-inserting Kyrie Irving for some “Mr. 4^th Quarter” action, he kept Uncle Drew glued to the end of the bench for the rest of the game. (He never re-inserted Deng either) Forced to play with five fouls for much of the half, Chris Kaman finally fouled out with eight and a half minutes remaining. With Young hurt and Kaman fouled out the Lakers were down to six players. With the scrappy Matthew Dellavedova leading the Cavs comeback, the Lakers lead hung by an 8-point thread. Jordan Farmar, having himself a fantastic game (21 points, 8 assists, and 2 steals), injured his leg and had to leave the game with five minutes to play. The Lakers had a completely depleted bench. All five available players were in the game and Robert Sacre had already committed four fouls. While the broadcast crews and twitterverse raced for an answer to the question “what if he fouls out?!”, Sacre wasted no time in making it a reality. On three consecutive plays he was involved in a collision. The first was ruled an offensive foul on Anthony Bennett, the next two were personal fouls on Sacre. (It’s almost like fate wanted the Cavs to lose a 4 on 5 game, just because.) As it turns out, the NBA has a completely unheard of rule in these situations that allowed Sacre to stay in the game, only any additional foul he incurred would result in a technical foul. After that, Steve Blake made two threes to put the Cavs to bed for the night. Blake, having just returned from injury the previous night, finished with a triple double. Steve Blake. No, yes, that Steve Blake! The final score was 119-108. The Lakers tied a franchise record for 3-pointers in a regulation game with 18. An 8-man roster of scrubs, losers of 19 of their previous 22 games, tied a franchise record against the Cavs…

This was, without a doubt, the lowest point of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ season. Losing at home, in that fashion, to the likes of Ryan Kelly and Robert Sacre was the nadir, perhaps of the entire rebuild. And the dam could hold no more. The next day, Chris Grant was fired. Dan Gilbert issued the following statement:

“This has been a very difficult period for the franchise. We have severely underperformed against expectations.”

That just five months later the Cavs would find themselves remarried to LeBron James and working on a superteam is truly a rags to Rich Paul story for the ages.