Recap: Orlando 93, Cleveland 87 (or, A New Hope vs The Polar Bear Menace)

No need to mince words, for a long stretch now the Cavs have grown close to unbearable to watch most nights.  They weren’t just getting beaten or even blown out by great teams.  Instead during a relatively weaker stretch of the schedule and a long home stand they seemed to literally invite any team in the NBA to embarrass them at will.  It’s been bad.  No surprise that Nate and I were pretty much just commenting to each other on the Live Thread for most of last night’s game (though Simmo did make a welcome appearance later in the game!).  I don’t blame anyone, as I’ve missed commenting on recent games as well.

So the mood has grown somber surrounding this Cavs squad and things managed to turn even worse with the appearance of Shams Charania and Joe Vardon’s “everyone on the Cavs hates somebody” yearly article.  This leads to the inevitable speculation into who said what and who thinks what.  Unavoidable now, the rest of the year their will be a storyline about how Beilein doesn’t understand NBA basketball.  Shockingly similar to last years article on how Sexton doesn’t understand NBA basketball.

This leads us to last night, where despite an eventual loss, the Cavaliers seemed to deliver a Draymond Green-esque groin punch to the overall credibility of that article.  Cleveland came out playing like a team, especially on defense.  Guys were quicker on help defense and overall played like they believed in each other.  Sure Sexton and Garland still made missteps running the offense and the team was not without their defensive lapses, but the Cavaliers looked like a team again.

The first quarter was a little back and forth but the Cavs shot 58% from the field and came out with a 25-24 lead, only that close because of a five to zero free throw disparity in favor of the Magic.  Notably Cedi continued to handle the ball a bit more again, leading to a wide open Garland three pointer early.  Later in the quarter the second unit had some pretty ball movement with Kevin Porter Jr. and John Henson taking turns giving each other pretty assists right at the hoop.  All things considered, Cleveland came into this game looking like they were ready to prove they were a united team, even with Kevin Love out for the night.

The second quarter saw Orlando punch back to eventually outscore the Cavs 28-22 for the period.  This is also when some officiating complaints started to show a bit more and more.  While some of the officiating complaints throughout the game can be attributed to homer bias, the shooting foul call where Ross was fouled before clearly getting the ball and dribbling again before shooting was incredibly irritating.

From the second quarter on the Cavs shooting cooled off to 40% on 26 of 64 shooting.  They stayed in the game with a combination of hustle plays from Cedi, Nance, and Delly along with some good offensive flashes from Kevin Porter Jr.  Sexton led the team in scoring with 19 points with 50/33/100 shooting splits and varied wildly between boneheaded plays and speeding and hustling into hugely important plays.

The second half was a bit of a rough back and forth as the Cavs won the third quarter 23-16 only to lose with a17-25 score in the final frame in the favor of Orlando.  Much of the way it looked like Cleveland was going to be able to hang on to the lead until an all-too-familiar late game scoring drought led to the Magic overtaking the hustling Cavaliers.

This is the point where, as a Cavs fan, I start to get angry.  The refs blew (and refused to review as I thought they were supposed to in the last two minutes) a goal tending call with 54.4 seconds left that led to the Cavs fouling the Magic to stop the resulting fast break.  Orlando made both free throws, effectively creating a officiating mistake induced four point swing. Even before that, they also missed a Khem Birch shooting foul against Cedi Osman with 1:40.6 left in the game.  These two complaints are not my homer bias.  They were the only two mistakes listed in the NBA’s offical Last Two Minute Report.  Without even going into the multiple mistakes from earlier I am confident in saying that the refs stole this game from the Cavaliers.

Perhaps it is the best for the Cavs future that they got this loss for Round Two of the post-LeBron tankathon, but it is still frustrating to watch.  Especially in the wake of the Athletic drama-fest article it would have been really nice to see a win last night.  The game wasn’t pretty, the young Cavs made young mistakes, but they played hard and they looked like a team.

Looking towards the rest of the season and then the future there were definitely some standout performances worth a second mention.

The first mention should go to the recent tendency toward the Return of the Cedi as he has had the ball in his hands more often on offense and has been typically more successful than the young lottery guards have been at play making.  Combining this offensive versatility with the defensive steps forward Cedi has taken this year leads to a more optimistic outlook for his future than his early season 3 & D role had produced.  The First Cedi absolutely filled up the stat sheet with 14pts/5reb/4ast/4stl/1blk while also going 3/7 from deep (not to mention that late game foul, and others, that he got robbed on).  Besides doing a little bit of everything on the stat sheet last night, Cedi did a lot that didn’t show up.  Notably, Evan Fournier was a handful in the first three quarters with 16 points until Cedi was switched on to him in the fourth.  After the switch, Fournier had only one basket in the fourth quarter for just two points.  In short, if Cedi becomes a player that plays like he did last night on a regular basis, then his recent contract extension will become an absolute steal.  Oh yeah, and his shot clock buzzer beater alone is worth watching his highlight reel.

https://youtu.be/KlxUdIiqGjs

Larry Nance Jr. had a rough night offensively, but as Coach Beilein said, when LNJ struggles on offense he knows how to vent that frustration with his defensive play.  He racked up eleven boards, a deflection, contested and altered six shots, and had one monster block against Evan Fournier’s almost wide open attempt at a second basket in the fourth quarter.

As mentioned before, Collin Sexton led all scorers for Cleveland with 19 points, but this was far from an ideal game from the Young Bull.  Several of his baskets were from ill advised mid-range jumpers that happened to drop and his three point shooting (while not terrible at 1/3) continues to regress since last season.  He had a couple great hustle rebounds, one offensive and one defensive, but also was held to a single assist.  Sexton had some great baskets where he stepped on the gas to blow by all defenders, but he also had three turnovers to that single assist.  Essentially, Collin needs to take a long look at his trouble this year and hopefully start working towards another late season growth spurt in his game like he did last year.  Luckily he is still very young, has multiple skills, and a good (GREAT?) work ethic, so this is definitely something to hope for.

Tristan Thompson was a big boost for the first half of the game with ten points and five rebounds and though his scoring and rebounding cooled in the second half he was still able to tack on assists and some big defensive plays to end the game with a well rounded 10pts/7/reb/5ast/3stl/2blk game.

Kevin Porter Jr. was the other standout, especially early, ending up with a 12pt/4reb/1ast/1stl stat line while shooting 2/4 from deep.  He had some clunker moments including a travel that ended up causing a five point swing, but he continues to show more promise and NBA readiness than Garland.  At this point he seems to be the best passer under 21 years old on the team.  If KPJ can get his shot mechanics cleaned up and continue to learn the NBA game he will quickly live up to his Rookie Survey status as Steal of the 2019 Draft.

Besides that, no Cavalier had a particularly outstanding performance.  Henson is getting his legs under him but already shows his impact as a rim protector even with his simple presence near the paint.  His back and forth assist/score with Porter was also a good sign of how Henson can also fit in and help on offense.  Dellavedova managed to hit a three and a nail-biting shot clock buzzer beater along with some great hustle plays, though his offense has still been a drop off this year.  It would be nice if Delly was a bit more of a scoring threat, but he still put up four assists in just 14 minutes and 21 seconds and fills his role in short minutes off of the bench.

So all told the Cavs had some good moments and bad, successes and failures, but at least they played together and well enough that the officiating gripes actually mattered for more than how many points they were blown out by.  Ultimately if Cleveland can put together this type of game against their competition for the rest of the calendar year, then most of us will be somewhat satisfied and at least entertained to watch again.

This leads up back to that lonely Polar Bear.  According to the Athletic article, one of the Cavs anonymous complaints was about certain screens and actions being named after wild animals.  “Polar Bear” was the only example given as the name used for a curl.  I get it, that does sound a little more like something a school’s coach would do than a professional NBA coach, but REALLY?  That is really something to complain about to a reporter?

I have plenty of complaints about Beilein.  I think he should have followed through on his starting lineup changes already.  I think he has given too much leash to Garland and Sexton.  I even think with all of his reported focus on fundamental you’d think he run more drills to teach most of the team how to make a clean damn post entry pass.  But complaining about a silly “Polar Bear” name in a league made up of Grizzlies, Timberwolves, Wizards, Raptors, and whatever a Knickerbocker is seems pretty trivial.

Tristan Thompson was incredibly vocal in post game comments in his support for Coach Beilein and so it leads one to wonder who these “sources” are.  I’m hoping the Cavs can just play together like a team again so we can start trying to put the annoying specter of this article in the past as much as possible.  The whole “Sexton doesn’t know how to play” thing kept it’s legs all last season despite his massively improved play but we can only hope the entire team can help make Cavs games somehow against basketball again sooner than later.

Once again, I by no means think Coach Beilein is perfect.  I do think this is only 20 games into the season and the complaints are absurd.  Outside of that lonely polar bear, the other complaints about him seemed to revolve around his focus on fundamentals and lengthy film sessions covering mistakes.  Anyone who has been watching the Cavaliers this last couple of weeks knows they have had plenty of mistakes to watch on film and they’ve displayed all kinds of fundamental lapses.  If the Cavs were currently fighting for playoff position and going strong I could understand not having time for working on the basics and wanting to move on to bigger strategies.  That is not the case here.  This team is building from the ground up and they obviously need some more foundation.

Here’s hoping the whining and complaining was from the Cavaliers that won’t be here by season’s end and we can get back to working towards a brighter future sooner than later.

Until then, and as always:

Go Cavs!