{"id":46088,"date":"2017-01-31T00:08:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T05:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/?p=46088"},"modified":"2017-01-31T12:37:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T17:37:17","slug":"recap-mavericks-104-cavs-97-or-feelings-of-anxiety-are-bigger-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/?p=46088","title":{"rendered":"Recap: Mavericks 104, Cavs 97 (Or, Feelings of anxiety are bigger in Texas)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"CHVRCHES, It&#039;s Not Right But It&#039;s Okay (Whitney Houston cover)\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b1FpTcId3YU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Overview:\u00a0<\/em>The Cavs turned in a lackluster performance on the road against the Dallas Mavericks, falling behind by double-digits late in the fourth quarter before emptying their bench and ultimately losing 104-97. Harrison Barnes led all scorers with 24 points, and LeBron James led the Cavaliers with 23 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Breakdown:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oof. One of those games where you kept waiting for the Cavs to snap out of it, then realized that it wasn&#8217;t going to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Love being less than 100%, or out of the lineup completely like he was tonight, has probably been the biggest factor over this tough stretch. The Cavs do so much through him offensively,\u00a0whether he&#8217;s spreading the floor, at the elbows, getting a cheap one down low, or dumping in the occasional jump hook, and he&#8217;s just as important on the boards and defensively. Without him, the team becomes less than the sum of its parts, and the parts themselves weren&#8217;t even particularly impressive tonight.<\/p>\n<p>On that note, we pretty much got the evil versions of LeBron and Kyrie tonight, despite the former ending up with a respectable game on the stat sheet.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, LeBron needs a rest. It won&#8217;t come on Wednesday, because that&#8217;s a national TV game, and the Cavs should probably get out of this slide before they think about resting, but he still needs a rest. LeBron was able to get to the rim in transition and in the half-court and find some easy baskets, but he was 1-9 from outside the paint, gave it up 5 times, and wasn&#8217;t in the flow of the offense at all in the second half. In the third quarter, his gameplan was to bring the ball up the court and fire up a long jumper, and in the fourth quarter, his plan switched to &#8220;throw the ball as hard as you can at a three-point shooter without driving first.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On defense, the less said the better. He jumped the passing lanes twice, but he was completely somnambulant on his rotations, allowing for easy three-pointers and cuts to the basket while he stood in no-mans land. Long story short, these are games LeBron has historically been able to take over, and he didn&#8217;t come close to doing so tonight. It might be time to officially say that LeBron has won his last regular season MVP, which is a bummer for me because &#8220;Will LeBron win the regular season MVP?&#8221; is my favorite way to stay engaged during the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>Kyrie didn&#8217;t fare any better, going 7-21 from the field, forcing jumpers and drives, and ending up with 5 assists against 6 turnovers. He got outplayed by Yogi Ferrell, which is not a thing that should happen. There were at least two occasions where Kyrie got into the paint and LeBron made a hard cut to get himself wide-open for a dunk, but Kyrie didn&#8217;t see him and forced up a bad shot instead, which are the plays that make you crazy from Kyrie.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, there&#8217;s not much more to the story than that. The Cavs offense devolved into Kyrie and LeBron vs. The World, and both of them played horribly. That&#8217;s a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n<p>On the other end of the ball, the Mavericks didn&#8217;t do much, but it was enough to beat what the Cavs were throwing at them. Harrison Barnes, whom you may remember averaging 9 points on 35% shooting against the Cavs in the Finals, scored 24 points on 9-16 shooting, with most of his baskets coming on smooth midrange jumpers. Wes Matthews took advantage of LeBron&#8217;s horrible defense to toss in 21 of his own, Seth Curry somehow added 16 despite not shooting well from the outside, and Yogi Ferrell, currently on a 10-day contract, tore up the Cavs from everywhere on the floor, presumably in an effort to troll the hell out of David Griffin.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Griffin, he&#8217;s apparently trying to move Jordan McCrae in a deal for a backup point guard, which may explain why Agent Orange was back in the rotation tonight over DeAndre Liggins and Kay Felder, ending the game with 11 points on 5-9 shooting in 30 minutes of floor time. Not much to report &#8212; he made some tough jumpers, didn&#8217;t really drive or pass the ball, and his defense was bad. Pretty much the same McCrae we&#8217;ve seen all year, with the exception of the made jumpers.<\/p>\n<p>Korver apparently took my pre-game advice about hunting for his shot too much to the extreme. He didn&#8217;t have any plays called for him, and finished the game with 2 field goal attempts in 26 minutes, one of which was a made 3. He also does not look great defensively.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s all I really have to say, because I&#8217;m ready to move on from this game. Richard Jefferson looks great, Shump&#8217;s wide-open looks went away, Tristan Thompson had 0 shots and was a -22 in 26 minutes, and seriously where did Yogi Ferrell come from he got cut by the freaking Nets earlier this year and came into the game shooting 36%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overview:\u00a0The Cavs turned in a lackluster performance on the road against the Dallas Mavericks, falling behind by double-digits late in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[408,13],"tags":[932,640,933],"coauthors":[807],"class_list":["post-46088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-recaps","tag-losses","tag-recaps","tag-sadness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46088"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46093,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46088\/revisions\/46093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46088"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cavstheblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=46088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}