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Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and thelandondemand.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @RealDCunningham.
The Cleveland Cavaliers lost to the New York Knicks 130-116 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse on Friday night.
Friday night was a number of things for the Cavs. It was most importantly a lesson for the team and certainly a missed opportunity.
A win for the Cavaliers would have sewn up home court advantage for the team in the first round of the playoffs, where they will likely face these same New York Knicks. New York’s Jalen Brunson had other ideas, ruining Cleveland’s night with a career-high 48 points and nine assists.
The Cavs seldom had answers for Brunson defensively. Even at the times when it seemed they may, Brunson simply found a way to send a high arcing midrange jumper through the rim. His play almost single handedly ruined the chance for the Cavs to win.
This doesn’t mean the Cavaliers won’t still have home court advantage against the Knicks in the first round. They’re still the overwhelming favorites to finish with the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. Between now and the end of the season, the Cavs need a combination of wins and Knicks’ losses that equals two. The Cavs play Indiana, Orlando twice, and Charlotte to close out the season. Finding two wins in that stretch shouldn’t be an overwhelming challenge for this Cavs team.
If it is, there are bigger problems than what happened on Friday night.
As it has been throughout much of the season, the result on Friday night isn’t going to be the biggest story, but as the season comes to a close, how this team responds to a disappointing loss will certainly be one of the most important things of the season, if not the most important.
The lesson
After the loss, a common theme from head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and All-Star guards Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland was that this game serves as a lesson for the team moving forward. It’s a lesson that they cannot afford to play with less intensity than their opponent.
The Cavs came out on fire offensively on Friday night. They scored 47 points in the first quarter and Mitchell had 23 of those points. Typically, that would mean the Cavs hold a double-digit lead and have plenty to feel good about.
The Knicks scored 42 points of their own in that first quarter, representing one of the worst defensive quarters of the season for the Cavs. The great defense that has been a staple of this team was nonexistent for much of the night on Friday.
“I just think overall and tip your hat to them, they played in an intensity and with an effort level that we didn't match. It's that simple. Defensively, we're way better than that. We understand the things that we have to do defensively in order to be successful. And we did not do those things enough tonight,” Bickerstaff said after the loss. “No way you score 47 points in a quarter, and don't have a larger lead. That's just not a commitment to the defensive end of the floor.”
If and when these two teams matchup in the playoffs two weeks from now, that type of thing simply cannot happen. There are going to be mistakes made by both teams, just as there are in every NBA game. What there cannot be is a lack of intensity or commitment to the defensive end the way there was on Friday. That would lead to a quick exit for the Cavs in the postseason.
“I think it's more upsetting because we didn't finish. We didn't execute well defensively. We're better than that,” Mitchell said after his 42-point performance in the loss. “I think it's even more important because they're the team we're probably going to see. Obviously, we're missing people. They're missing people, but still the same competition, competitiveness. And they played well. They did a lot of things well. They played together in different ways, and we'll be better.”
What the Cavs cannot do is allow this to linger after Friday. Games like this happen, and it is disappointing that it happened in the spot it did, but there’s still business to take care of and the Cavs do control their own destiny as far as finishing with home court advantage goes.
The win by the Knicks on Friday does give them the tiebreaker should the two teams finish with the same record at the season’s conclusion. The Cavs currently have 48 wins and the Knicks can max out at 49 wins.
“It hurts, it sucks, but like I said, we control our own destiny at this point. If we let this affect us for the last [four], we're going to be in bad shape. You know what I mean? So understanding that this is a loss, this isn't the playoffs, this isn't like 0-1, we didn't lose home court,” Mitchell said. “We'll revisit this when the time ends, but right now we can't sit here and let this hang over our head.”
Missing Isaac Okoro
Neither the Cavs or the Knicks were at full strength on Friday night. The Knicks were without All-Star forward Julius Randle, who sprained his ankle earlier this week and will miss the remainder of the regular season. The Cavs didn’t have All-Star center Jarrett Allen or starting small forward Isaac Okoro.
Each of those players certainly have varying levels of importance, but it’s difficult to think Okoro wasn’t the one missed the most on Friday night. In the three previous matchups this season against the Knicks, Okoro spent a significant amount of time defending Brunson. In those first three games, Brunson averaged 17.7 points and five assists per game on 41.7 percent shooting and 30 percent from 3-point range. Okoro has been a big reason for that and his absence was noticeable on Friday night.
In his place, the Cavs opted for more size defensively against Brunson. Forward Lamar Stevens spent early portions of the game defending Brunson, as did the 6-foot-9 Dean Wade. It’s a much different strategy than what Okoro would provide defensively.
“Trying to put more size on him. Obviously, you miss Isaac on the floor,” Bickerstaff said. “You miss Jarrett on the floor defensively, but trying to create and put as much size on him as you can. Those guys have proven capable of defending, but we tried it all.”
Maybe Okoro wouldn’t have made a difference and Brunson just had it going at a level that couldn’t have been stopped. That’s entirely possible. But there’s no questioning that when these two teams square up in the first round of the playoffs, the way Brunson is defended by the Cavs will be much different than it was on Friday.