Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff. ESPN Cleveland/Rob Lorenzo
Game Night Observations: Missing shots, too much traveling, and a test ahead
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and TheLandOnDemand.comLast week when the Cavaliers lost to the Toronto Raptors, it was because the team did a good job of generating the looks they wanted to get offensively but missed open looks from all over the floor.
Sunday night’s 92-81 loss to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden can be looked at in a similar light. Last Monday against Toronto, the Cavaliers shot 37.8% from the floor and 18.4% from beyond the 3-point arc. On Sunday night in The Big Apple, the Cavs turned in shooting percentages of 34.9% from the floor and 22.9% from deep. It’s tough to win games in the NBA shooting like that.
Donovan Mitchell – in his homecoming game – was the leading scorer for the Cavs with 23 points, but needed 22 shots to get there. He was 2-of-11 from beyond the arc. Darius Garland scored 17 points on 19 shots and Evan Mobley finished with 11 points on nine attempts from the floor. When that trio attempts 50 shots and only scores 51 points, the Cavaliers aren’t going to win games all that often.
The good news from this game for the Cavaliers is that they continued to play well defensively. They entered the night with the league’s best defensive rating, and will see it improve after holding the Knicks to just 92 points. In the loss, the Cavs posted a defensive rating of 90. Chances are, if they put forth that type of performance defensively, they’re not going to lose games. Sunday in New York was just an outlier.
Take a trip
Whoever decided that referees should start calling more traveling violations was way off base. Sunday’s game against the Knicks featured a combined 13 traveling violations between the two teams.
Yes, traveling has been rampant in the NBA for a long time. Every game could be officiated the way that Sunday in New York was.
It’s a bad idea to do so. This isn’t to say the Cavaliers – or Knicks, for that matter – played poorly due to the frequent whistles for the violation. And it’s not to say that the calls favored one side of the other.
It is to say that it’s very difficult for either team to find a rhythm when this type of thing is constantly causing stoppages in the game, especially when it’s for a violation that isn’t giving either side a robust advantage. The game being officiated like this has made it a less watchable product.
Sure, there are always going to be people that complain about the NBA, with the common thought that traveling is never called. That’s not going to change.
Let those people complain, because hearing a whistle for a minor violation like this just makes the game worse.
Up next
The next game for the Cavaliers comes at home on Tuesday night against LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers. This will be the second and final matchup of the season against Los Angeles, and although it’s been exactly one month since these two teams faced off out west, the Lakers are drastically different than they were back in early November.
Los Angeles started the season off losing 10 of its first 12 games, but since has won eight of the last 10. They’ve found success thanks to the re-emergence of big man Anthony Davis. On Sunday night, the Lakers beat the Washington Wizards behind a 55-point, 17-rebound effort by Davis. If the Cavs don’t have Jarrett Allen in the lineup on Tuesday – Allen has missed the last five games with a back injury – things could be even more difficult for the Cavs trying to slow Davis down.
Quick hits- The Cavs announced earlier in the day on Sunday that swingman Dean Wade would miss the next three-to-four weeks with an AC joint sprain in his left shoulder. Wade left the game against the Orlando Magic with the injury at halftime and did not return. Bickerstaff told reporters that night that Wade had been dealing with the injury for some time prior to re-aggravating it.
- The loss drops the Cavs to 15-9 on the season. They remain in third place in the Eastern Conference with a 1.5-game lead on the Atlanta Hawks at the time of this publishing. The Cavs are now four games behind the first-place Boston Celtics and two games back of the Milwaukee Bucks for second place.
- Just prior to tipoff on Sunday, Mitchell embraced a fan courtside at Madison Square Garden. However, it wasn't just any other fan. It was current New York Mets and former Cleveland Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor. Mitchell is notably a fan of the Mets, the franchise his father worked while he was growing up. Additionally, he's a fan of baseball as a whole and attended a couple of Cleveland Guardians playoff games earlier this fall.
