Danny Cunningham covers the Cleveland Cavaliers for 850 ESPN Cleveland and thelandondemand.comPHOENIX – Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has taken an interest in seeing how his team responds to various things throughout the season. Sometimes he’s curious about their response to success, sometimes it’s their response to failure. Sunday night’s 112-98 win in Phoenix qualifies as a good response to a disappointing effort the last time they took the floor.
On Friday night after losing to the Denver Nuggets, Bickerstaff mentioned after the game he was disappointed that the Cavaliers didn’t put forth their best effort against one of the NBA’s better teams. He said that they weren’t locked in enough.
Sunday night in Phoenix, it wasn’t a perfect effort, but it was a much better performance, especially to close out the game. After the Suns took a brief lead near the end of the third quarter, the Cavaliers turned up their effort level to close out the game, starting the fourth quarter on a 27-6 run to take a 107-85 lead.
“It was just time to get going,” Bickerstaff said about the Suns taking a lead late in the third quarter. “We were, again it was, in my opinion, too much of this with our focus. And that's how you get bit in the butt, so we just needed to lock in. And I think we did that.”
That fourth quarter for the Cavs shows them what they can be when the focus and intensity is there, even if it isn’t something that’s present for 48 minutes on most nights. There were times when the Cavs allowed the Suns to be too comfortable, but there were also times when Phoenix couldn’t withstand the Cavs on both ends of the floor. For a team that hasn’t been fully healthy all season and is still growing together as a unit, the Cavs have become pretty good at flipping a switch and turning up the pressure when they need to.
“Yeah, you know, at one point they only had six points. We went on that run and in fact, I said it to the guys, that's what we want to be,” Donovan Mitchell said. “That's who we're trying to be on a consistent basis, that level of effort, attention to detail, all four quarters.”
When the Cavaliers start to put together full games of the focus and intensity that Bickerstaff wants to see from them, they’ll become much more dangerous than they have been. That statement sounds silly, considering they’re on pace for 52 wins at the halfway point of the season and have won an NBA-best 17 points by 10 points or more.
Sunday featured a glimpse into who they can be, albeit against a shorthanded Phoenix team, even if they’re not quite there yet.
Neto timeWhen the Cavaliers needed a spark on Sunday night, they once again turned to reserve point guard Raul Neto. There are nights when Neto doesn’t see the floor, nights when he may play five minutes, and even nights like Sunday when he didn’t play in the first half before playing 11 minutes in the third and fourth quarters to help lift the Cavs in the intensity department.
“I think the guys that were on the floor, guys who hadn't played, Raul, Lamar, came in and gave us a big spark,” Bickerstaff said. “[Suns guard] Duane Washington was cooking. We needed somebody who could kind of slow him down. So, the staff suggested we put in Raul and he was ready to go.”
Like he has been in the past few games, Neto stepped up in the areas the Cavs needed him to.
“He's always ready,” Mitchell said of Neto. “Continuously finding ways just to, whether it's on offense, the past two games it's been on defense, he's been a spark for us.”
The only number in the box score that justifies the impact Neto had on the Cavs on Sunday was his plus/minus. It’s a number that certainly at times doesn’t tell the whole story, but the Cavs outscoring the Suns by nine points with him on the floor in the second half feels about right.
He only scored three points while recording two assists and one rebound, but his impact was something easily seen while watching the game. The pesky defense he played on Washington can best be seen by Washington going 1-of-4 from the floor in the fourth quarter.
There are going to be plenty of nights where Neto doesn’t see the floor for the Cavs, especially with the return of Ricky Rubio on the horizon. Even with that being the case, there should be very little reason to worry about Neto being ready when his name is called.
Injury updateGarland scored a team-high 22 points on Sunday night and played with a wrap on his thumb again. He was listed as questionable due to the thumb injury that kept him out of three games last week and played through the pain.
“It was swollen this morning and still swollen today,” Garland said. “Just tried to come out and compete with my guys.”
An exclusive clubWhen Mitchell scored 71 points last week against Chicago he joined a very exclusive club of NBA players in a historical sense. Only seven players have ever reached 70 or more points in an NBA game in the league’s history. Of those seven, only two of them are active with Phoenix’s Devin Booker 70-point game in 2017 against the Celtics placing him in that club.
On Sunday night, despite Booker missing the game with a groin injury, he and Mitchell were in the same building and able to commemorate their inclusion in the elite club. After the game, Mitchell and Booker exchanged jerseys with messages written on them relating to the 70-point club.
Up nextThe Cavaliers continue their five-game Western Conference road trip with a stop in Salt Lake City against the Utah Jazz. It will be Mitchell’s first game back in the arena he used to call home. We’ll have more on that story later. Talk to you from Salt Lake.
