Cavs big man Jarrett Allen via Cavs.com
Game Night Observations: Worst quarter of the season, Allen's hip, and a rest advantage
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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and TheLandOnDemand.com
The Cleveland Cavaliers picked quite a time for their worst quarter of the season. They took an 11-point lead into the locker room on Friday night at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. That 11-point lead turned into a 117-102 blowout loss against the Bucks thanks to an abysmal third quarter for the Cavaliers.
For 12 straight minutes in the third quarter on Friday, the Milwaukee Bucks bullied the Cavaliers, outscoring them 35-10 in the period. The uninspired effort from the Cavs featured bad defense, allowing the Bucks to make 14 of their 24 shot attempts, including five of the six taken from 3-point range.
Offensively, things were even worse. Scoring 10 points in a quarter seems nearly impossible in today’s NBA. In fact, it tied the lowest scoring quarter by any team this season in the NBA. For a team that attempts to always feature one of Darius Garland or Donovan Mitchell on the floor, scoring only 10 points in a period is sort of unfathomable.
In that quarter the Cavs shot a paltry 3-of-18 from the floor. Four of the team’s 10 points came from the free throw line. Very few of the looks the Cavs got would be considered good ones. The Bucks deserve credit for the defense they played, but the Cavs didn’t exactly put forth anything resembling good offense.
It was, simply put, a quarter to forget for the Cavs. In the same token, it’s a quarter that should be learned from, too. Cavs head coach told media in Milwaukee after the game that there was a valuable lesson to be taken away from this loss against one of the NBA’s best teams.
At the end of the day, the second half was bad basketball all around, but in a league like the NBA, the performance Friday night doesn’t mean as much as the way the Cavs respond from it will. After losing five straight games, the last of which came in Milwaukee nine days prior to this loss, the Cavs rattled off four straight wins.
How the team reacts to a loss in this fashion will be something to watch over the next couple of days.
Allen’s injury
The thing that may be more important than seeing how the team reacts to this loss is the status of All-Star big man Jarrett Allen moving forward. Allen injured his hip in the first quarter while committing a foul on Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo. The hard fall helped to limit Allen to just 12 minutes on the night, including just four in the second half.
Allen may mean more to what the Cavaliers do – especially defensively – than anyone else. He’s the player that most helps to form the defensive identity.
Things simply aren’t the same for the Cavs when Allen isn’t on the floor, as evidenced by the two games he missed during the five-game losing streak.
If Allen does have to miss time, it could spell bad news for the Cavs. It changes the way the team has to defend when it matters most and makes things more difficult for fellow big man Evan Mobley.
A schedule break on Sunday
The good news for the Cavs is that they’ll have a bit of a rest advantage on Sunday as they look to bounce back. The team takes on the Pistons in Detroit as they return from a six-game road trip out west that started back on November 17.
The Pistons will likely be flying back to Detroit from Phoenix on Saturday, be forced to deal with the jumping forward two time zones, and playing a game on Sunday with a start time that’s an hour sooner than a usual night game. Those things all combine to give the Cavs a bit of a rest advantage.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s similar to what the Cavaliers faced two weeks ago when they lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves on the team’s first game back from a five-game road trip that finished in California. In the loss to the Wolves, the Cavs practically slept walked through the first three quarters before frantically rallying late to make it a close loss.
Obviously, that doesn’t guarantee a win for the Cavs, even against one of the NBA’s worst teams. But it something that swings in Cleveland’s favor on Sunday.
