Recap: Denver 120, Cleveland 103 (or, a Fraudulent Environment)

From the tip of last night’s game, Denver’s offense was a Youngbull seeking missile. As a result of seeking him out and destroying him on every single possession, the Nuggets’ hit their first 11 shots to go up 26-14. Sexton in that stint? 1-3, two turnovers, and a foul before checking out at 7:03. Will Barton finally clanked a floater at the 5:20 mark. The Cavs, sans Youngbull, actually held the Denver bench squad to just seven the rest of the the quarter. Sexton checked back in at 3:17 and ran over Facundo Campazzo for a charge, his third turnover, and his second personal foul a half minute later. After a good defensive stretch, Denver hit a couple around a Dotson pull-up, and the Nuggets ended the first frame up a merciful 33-23. Anyone promoting Collin Sexton stock right now is engaging in fraud.

If you’d just looked at a raw box score, you’d say Sexton was ok this game: 23 points on 17 shots; four assists; 3-7 from deep. But Sexton was horrendous at making winning basketball plays in this game. He was a team low -22 with five turnovers, and I’m not exaggerating when I say Denver was clowning him constantly. They built their entire offensive attack arou d how abysmal he is at defense, and spent a lot of time going after a beaten down Isaac Okoro too. The scheme that Cleveland started with was a joke: six-one Sexton matched up on the six-ten Michael Porter Junior who was drafted six spots after Collin in the 2018 draft. The nine inches Sexton gave up were impossible to overcome as Sexton attempted to steal the first pass and failed, leading to an easy Porter dunk. When they weren’t throwing it over the top to Porter, he was destroying everyone they put on on him in the post, which was usually and hiliariously the Lilipution Sexland, but for the first 11 possessions everywhere Collin Sexton went, the Nuggets punished him.

Sexton failed to grab a single rebound this game and when he wasn’t being asked to guard an impossible matchup in MPJ, Collin was on Jamal Murray, who put up a 50/6/2 line on just 25 flame-emanating-from-his-fingers shots. The rest of the Cavs weren’t great in this one but it was a spectacular show of empty stats by Sexton in this one. Despite going 3-7, he turned down multiple open jump shots that were semi-contested in what looked an awful lot to me like an attempt to protect his field goal and three point percentage, and then the most galling play came at the end of the first quarter when Campazzo threw the ball away, and the Cavs had an unlikely but realistic attempt at a shot with 1.9 seconds from about 50 feet away, and Sexton dribbled the ball out to protect his field goal percentage instead of a shot or a pass to score some bonus points.

What we have here is a player working for a rookie contract extension in the offseason, not playing to win basketball games. Sure, Sexton did the dopey thing where he balls up his fists and guards at the midcourt line against Murray a couple times this game, but it’s all bravado and bullheadedness, and not intelligent defense or winning basketball. Sexton and Co. throughout the game failed to apply any physicality when dealing with Denver’s offense, and Sexton reverted to one-on-many trips multiple times this game, flexing his baffling lack of vision. The dude was exhausting.

The rest of the Cavs were fine, I guess. Isaac Okoro’s jumper looked a lot better: 3-6 from deep and 5-10 from the field, but he was terrified of attacking the basket. When he beat the first wave of defenders he overpassed multiple times instead of trying to finish, and as a result, finished with five turnovers. Defensively, he had few answers, and Denver went after him often. Ice looked undersized versus MPJ, and got routinely picked on by Denver defensively. Like all the Cavs, he was a lot better when he wasn’t sharing the floor with Sexton.

Okoro was a part of the Cavs’ best stretch: when they ran their offense and defense through Jarrett Allen in a phenomenal nine minutes of the third quarter that saw them cut a 21 point Denver Lead to nine. During that run, the Cavs worked the ball into Allen in the post or on the roll, and then it found shooters which got Sexland into the scoring flow. Then Allen scored on three straight possessions before a Dotson runner cut it to nine with 3:14 left, eliciting a rage timeout from Mike Malone. Dotson was defending like a maniac in this stretch, as were Osman and Allen, who was just fantastic all night.

Allen played Jokic about as well as you can play him this game: making him work for tough one-on-one plays and limiting him to 16 and 5-8 from the floor with three turnovers. But the Cavs’ schemes, off ball defense, and over-helping were at the mercy of the best passing big man since Arvydas, and when the Cavs’ stupidly doubled, or anyone got caught on a pick or a mismatch, the Joker found them. Only in that stretch of the third when the rest of the Cavs’ stopped over-helping communicated off ball, and played with some physicality did Cleveland have a chance at stopping the Nuggets.

Offensively, Allen was sublime this game: 8-9 from the field to finish with 20/10/4 with a block and a steal and just one turnover in 33 minutes. He also had a ridiculous dunk in that stretch you can watch on the highlight reel. You think you’d let a guy balling like that touch the ball every other possession in the half court, but Denver packed their defense around him, and Cleveland often failed to find him.

Sadly, all good things must end, and after Malone’s timeout in the late third, Javale McGee replaced Allen and Denver stopped messing around. The collapse started when Javale tried to do way too much, and Darius Garland passed up an open three to set a bad drive with no floor balance balance drive that led to a Jamal Murray transition triple after which Austin Carr opined “Man, they hunt for that three point line.” (Just by the eye test, the Cavs are the worst three point transition team in the association). Next play, freed by a mid-court back screen, Murray walked into a three the after a McGee on three hook shot and Denver blitzed through a 10-4 run to close the third up 95-80.

In the fourth quarter, Jamal Murray turned into basketball genie, rattling off 13 points in the first five minutes of the third before anyone else from Denver even scored: dribbling into 30-footers, hitting impossible floaters, and wearing Isaac Okoro like a cape on a post-up turnaround. Cleveland did nothing to try to disrupt him. The dude ate a 50-burger with no free throws! The Cavs’ lack of physicality with him was comical, and he was laughing and joking when he got hot while Collin Sexton was doing things like missing free throws and getting his shot blocked. After a series of heat checks, a Jarrett Allen dunk had the Cavs with a remote chance – down 14 with 4:38 to go. Then Murray drove for a layup, JB called timeout, and Garland turned it over out of yet another ill conceived OOB play.

Up 17 with three minutes to play, Murray was all smiles as he was hunting for 50. The Cavs have zero mean in them. If I were on that floor, there’s no way he’d have gotten halfway to hundred with a smile on his face. I’d be intentionally fouling every other player on the floor and running Jamal off elbow screens on offense to get him off the floor. It’s frankly disrespectful to be running it up and acting like a chucklehead when you’re up by 17 with less than three minutes left. Prideless, the Cavs let him get to to the midcentury mark on a dunk and then happily exit the floor on a “get the scrubs in” timeout. A garbage time 50 is bull****. As folks noted on Twitter and the LT, we all miss Kendrick Perkins in times like these. It took me an hour and a half to go to sleep after this game, I was so livid.

I had myself talked down this morning, but writing that up got me in a lather. I have to focus on the positive, or at least the not-awful. The Cavs scored on a baseline OOB play this game! They actually ran off-ball screens to free up shooters! The Cavs are letting Cedi do more with the ball. He posted an 11/6/7 line and was running sets with Garland and Sexton surprisingly off-ball. With only one turnover, you could call it successful. Darius Garland had an ok night, and was at least aggressively looking to shoot the three ball, even if he was just 2-7 as he finished with 14/1/5. He had a lot of nice setups for Allen, and the offense always looks better when he or Cedi are controlling it as opposed to Sexton. Cleveland finished with 30 assists. The rock moved. The 18 turnovers were hard to overcome.

The Cavs lack of rebounding has a lot to do with their tiny backcourt and Denver’s size, but Isaac Okoro remains a bad rebounder with bad hands when it comes to tracking down the ball. I’ve seen a lot go through his mitts. Dylan Windler looked like an NBA player and is probably the best solution for the Cavs at the four when it comes to rebounding, but he is still struggling to put the ball in the basket: 1-7 with a 4/4/2 line in 26 minutes. I have to remind myself this is his 16th game. He’ll be fine. Still, the Cavs finished tied in the rebounding department at 45. That’s deceivingly competent when you let the other team shoot 58 percent, though.

At the very least Damyean Dotson and Javale McGee provided some bench hustle on D, even if McGee looked positively Drummondian on offense with multiple miss possessions and was a bench low -12. Lamar Stevens drifted a lot on D, exhibiting a lack of engagement that I would also exhibit if I were forced to share the floor with Collin Sexton. Lamar can’t shoot, but the Cavs have gotten more mileage out of his two-way deal than they have rights to. When the trade stuff gets sorted out, I expect them to cut Wade before his contract is guaranteed and convert Stevens’ deal into a standard contract.

Look. Denver is a better team than the Cavs and all we’re really asking is the Cavs to be more competitive and play with some pride. $86 million dollars worth of salary are sitting on the bench right now, so many a reasonable person could excuse them for being terrible. But the Cavs are operating in a fraudulent environment this season, and their biggest problem is Collin Sexton. I like the kid, but his “All-Star” media blitz a few weeks ago when the team was hovering around .500 shows you what he’s about right now: securing the bag. He’s playing for all star games, exposure, and a contract, not to actually win games. Much of his play around that is antithetical to sacrificing your game to help your team win. I don’t even really blame him.

These kids have one chance to get a big deal after their rookie season, and Sexton’s trying to get his. It doesn’t make him a bad person, but it does make him bad at winning NBA basketball games, and maybe that’s what is most infuriating about this Cavs team and the NBA in general. The league is designed to encourage this kind of fraudulence: when you field a team that talks about building a culture and making the playoffs, yet you don’t sign one of multiple replacement level power forwards off the free agent list when your top two are out; when you centerpiece a tiny back court for two straight years while convincing your fanbase you’re trying to win; when you trade for a former all-star center and then alienate him by trading for another center and then attempt to flip his contract; and when you throw your fifth pick “to the Wolves” by playing against the NBA’s best night in and night out. The NBA rewards teams for incompetence by letting the worst teams have the best odds at getting new, elite talent. We should have been very skeptical at the beginning of the year when the Cavs told us they were trying to win. What they’re doing isn’t sustainably successful in the NBA. They’re selling a product to convince us it is, but we don’t have to buy it.

And that kind of fraud does Collin Sexton and Cavs fans the biggest disservice of all. The Cavs have presented the case that he’s a good basketball player when he’s not: by nominating him weekly for player of the week, by giving him all the minutes in the world – despite horrible defense and selfish production, by playing him with another short point guard whose offensive game may complement Sexton’s but whose defensive game completely doesn’t, and by offering him the inevitable big contract extension this offseason, the Cavs have elevated a kid who’s a decent scorer but hasn’t shown any propensity to be good at winning basketball games. They’ve given him no incentive to get good at winning, either. I guess if it gets people to watch the games, that’s all that matters, but eventually, the Cavs are going to run out of their fans’ good will.

I’m avoiding the temptation to see the Cavs as emblematic of the fraud we all ignore as a matter of our daily business as Americans on the whole right now. I realize that everything looks and smells worse after a loss. Ben Werth summarized the state of the Cavs on the comment board this week.

There have been a lot of factors that have combined to put the Cavs in garbage mode, but the primary reason is the loss of Larry Nance Jr.

All the defensive pressure and versatility on that side of the ball was sapped when Andre’s spirit left post trade and Larry went out.

Collin had about two weeks of professional level basketball IQ before reverting to his maddening play.

An engaged Andre, a healthy Larry, and a deferential Collin made a decent squad. Each one of those things has gone up in smoke.

On the bright side, the FO seems to understand the importance of not dampening Andre’s counting numbers, both for him and to maintain trade value.

Jarrett is clearly a building piece and needs to play center where his lack of elite lateral quickness isn’t such a liability.

Darius is about a two clicks away now from being a truly devastating offensive player.

Everyone on the squad needs to stop playing like it is 1982 with “catch, triple-threat, survey”. If you are open behind the arc, shoot the stupid ball.

The Cavs at least appear to be working on that last point, but I’m very worried about their future, and I say this as a guy who knows that it is very difficult to project player development and what the NBA future looks like. But Isaac Okoro looks like he could just not be a good offensive basketball player. Collin Sexton seems antithetical to winning. I’ve actually come around on Garland and think he’ll be all right. The Cavs and Koby keep alienating people, as Jason Lloyd recently posted. Even the way they treat media is fraudulent: giving access to guys like Fedor who toe the company line and keeping folks who’ve been critical of the org like Lloyd at arm’s length. There’s a lot of BS around the way the team operates, and frankly it gets exhausting to wade through it all. In a way, all this losing is good. The Cavs are the worst team in the association right now, and no amount of fraud can cover that up. Everyone knows this team stinks. They’re designed to. Knowing that doesn’t make it any less hard to watch, even though I will.