Recaps: Cavs beat Wiz, Pummeled by Heat (Make or Miss)

It was a long weekend in the Smith household as my 4th grader finished her season with three games in two days before losing in the semifinals on Sunday afternoon. Layered between that action, the Cavs won an exciting contest in Washington Friday, before getting blitzed by the Heat and South Beach in Miami.

Despite a Cavs victory Friday and the fact that The Heat cruised to victory after an 82-52 first half in Miami, these two games had a lot more in common than you might think. Cleveland won Friday because Washington missed a lot of triples. You can say it was Cleveland’s D, but it was more likely that Miami just had a lot better shooters than Washington, and were more willing to make the extra pass to an open shooter than Washington was. An ice cold Bradley Beal led Washington in bricks, launching 1-10 from downtown while the Wizards as a whole went 9-37. Meanwhile, Cleveland canned a very respectable 11-27 from deep led by a 3-5 Cedi Osman and a 2-4 Darius Garland. Garland had a particularly nice game scoring on Friday with 15/2/4 and a game high +17 while only committing two turnovers.

Cleveland had balanced scoring Friday with seven guys in double figures led by Sexton with 25 (on 17 shots). Tristan Thompson carried Cleveland on his back in the fourth, altering everything around the rim and playing the whole fourth quarter while putting up a 9/11/4 line. TT, Nance, and Sexton anchored a lineup that was +11 in the final frame. While the defense around the basket was good, it was mainly a matter of Beal forcing and Ish Smith missing while Davis Bertans went 0-3: Cleveland got kind of lucky. They also overcame Andre Drummond thinking that he’s much better than he actually is with 12/12/2 line, but a disastrous seven turnovers, a part of the Cavs’ 21.

Drummond plays way too undisciplined and carries himself like a player who thinks he’s really skilled (he is) but doesn’t always play hard. After sitting the entire fourth against Washington, Dre’ was an abject disaster, Saturday: 6/6/1 and -25 with four turnovers in 25 minutes. Worse, the Cavs tried to pair him with Tristan Thompson for stretches.

Andre Drummond & Tristan Thompson played 11 minutes together vs. the HEAT.

Net rating: -95.7

HEAT shot 15-of-20, 8-of-13 from 3, outscored Cavs 45-23.#HEATTwitter

— Simon Smith (@SimonSperling) February 24, 2020

Why, God, why? It wasn’t the offensive disaster you’d think it would be. No, it was the Cavs’ complete and total inability to rotate out to shooters, and the Cavs’ general laziness. Miami patiently executed, swung the ball, and made the shots the Wizards missed. TT was gassed from the previous night and his South Beach exploits while Drummond was just mostly garbage. He does a lot of dumb things like trying to bring the ball up after a rebound instead of getting it to a guard and running the floor. He also has stretches where he wants to guard the rim, and much longer stretches where he just doesn’t give a flip.

To be fair, the Cavs as a whole give up on defending layup attempts more than any team I’ve ever seen. There was one half of good defense played in the last two games, and for a lot of the second half of the Wiz contest, the Cavs were just lucky. Kevin Love was especially atrocious in his defensive crap-giving and positioning Friday, so much so that he earned a “rest” game Saturday. Also abysmal? Kevin Porter Junior who got kicked out of Friday’s contest for mouthing off (twice) to the ref and then pitched an 0-5 delight in Miami. He is gambling way too much on defense and not being disciplined on offense. A huge part of the Cavs’ problem might be that they don’t realize how crappy they are.

https://twitter.com/2forme2foryou/status/1231750846515335169

While Andre Drummond is a turnover machine, the other big disaster Saturday was the perimeter passing and ball handling which produced a stupifying 24 giveaways and led to many runouts like these by Derrick Jones Jr.

Against the Wizards you can get away with that many turnovers. Against a Miami team that turns live ball turnovers into dunks and threes, you can’t. Miami shot 57% from the field and was 19-40 from three with seven guys in double figures. Cleveland was a not awful 13-36. But the turnovers and shooting? Six more made threes by the Heat: the difference in the ballgame.

Delly and Ante did put up a +11 in an entire fourth quarter of garbage time, but by that point the Heat fans were just running plays to get Udonis Haslem a bucket. At least Ante is Healthy and at least Dante Exum is playing well (24 points in two games).

It’s probably best to celebrate JB Bickerstaff’s first win and chalk the Saturday debacle up to the back-to-back and South Beach, but I’m more than a little worried about Drummond being consistently terrible and Kevin Love looking softer than fro-yo. Maybe Kev is pissed about the rumors that the Cavs could’ve let Kev go to Portland for Bazemore and Whiteside. If the Cavs could’ve sent Kev somewhere he’d be happy and got off the remaining $90 million of his contract without sending out assets to get someone to take him, and they didn’t? That’s probably something they’ll come to regret.

Well, they get their chance for revenge against the Heat tonight. We’ll see if they show up. Go, uh, Cavs.