Recap: New York 95, Cleveland 90 (or “In Northeast Ohio, Nothing is Given. Everything is Earned.”)

The words from “The Letter” came back to haunt LeBron James and the Cavaliers in this game: a game that no one in Northeast Ohio thought the Cavs could lose. LeBron looked nervous. David Blatt looked overwhelmed. And the Cavs looked like they’d bought stock in the seriously ill-conceived “big three” narrative. Honestly, there could have been about a dozen more subtitles to this recap. Examples include: “Andrew Wiggins would have blocked that shot,” “LeBron has terrible games too,” “Defense matters,” “That crowd sucked,” “Go back to Hollywood, Biebs,” or “Oh that’s right, Carmelo Anthony’s pretty good.” Ultimately though, the Knicks just played with more energy, intelligence, and focus. The energy that had infused the entirety of the city of Cleveland throughout the day seemed to drain the Cavs instead of fuel them.

The Cavs led early, trailed late, and just seemed to wait a few minutes too many to “turn it on.” In a way, I’m glad the Cavs lost this game. Not because I root against them, but because the Cavs and we fans needed to learn a lesson: winning is not automatic. Winning is about effort, and the Cavs displayed a conspicuous lack of it. Also, as much as this game was about the renaissance of Cleveland, it was antithetical to the working-class ethos of Cleveland. This was one of the worst crowds I’ve ever seen at a Cavs game, and some of the worst defensive effort I’ve seen from a Cavs team in a big game since… last season. I got in an argument with Tom Pestak about this crowd. He disagreed, but when you watch every game in HD, you learn to recognize faces and people in the crowd. A lot of regulars sold their tickets to this one.

I saw some of the most bizarre basketball fans I’d seen in a while. Some of these people looked like they were dressed for the opera. Quite frankly, there were too many one-percenters there, and not nearly enough die-hard Cavs fans. We’re not Lakers fans. We are Cavs fans. A basketball game should be a basketball game, and not a place to see and be seen. In LeBron’s return, the fans should have been standing the entire game. Instead, after the first half of the first quarter, the crowd had their butts glued down. This might be the first Cavs game I can remember that I yelled at the crowd through my TV.  There was no point when the Cavs were lagging in which the crowd tried to get the team going. I didn’t hear one Cleveland kid trying to start a “Let’s go Cleve-land!” chant. The Cavs could have used it. Maybe the fans were exhausted too.

And this is not to say that the city of Cleveland didn’t represent itself very well. The vibe throughout the region has been one of constant positivity and joy throughout the week. It was evidenced in the pre-game concert outside the Q, and everyone on television said that they’d never seen a city this palpably excited for a sporting event. Way to go, North Coast. Let’s hope we can get it into the Q next game.

LeBron James had a really bad game. In 43 minutes, he went 5-15, 1-5 from three, had eight turnovers, and was a game low -13. He seemed very nervous and very out-of-sync with his teammates, and like his teammates, he displayed an unacceptable level of apathy on defense. I saw saw multiple occasions of LeBron failing to even try to close out on open shooters, and this apathy infected his teammates. Here’s a video of some lazy-a#% defense by James on a Larkin three.

But that’s not all from Shane Larkin. In the defensive low point of the game, Larkin shot-faked from the left wing, and sent Andy flying. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but LeBron and Kevin Love both stared at Larkin as he dribbled to the mid post and launched a completely uncontested jumper that scored. Here’s the video. The lack of effort is even worse than the last movie.

The Knicks shot 54% percent during the game. Yes, they hit some unbelievably tough shots, including this absolutely back-breaking 31-footer by Prigioni in the late third, but two or three passes consistently led to open shots or open driving lanes for the Knicks. J.R. Smith abused every Cav guarding him throughout the game to the tune of 11 points and seven dimes in 25 minutes and was able to score the biggest crunch-time basket with 48 seconds left to put the Knicks up five. In the video, you can see that he easily drove by Waiters, who got caught completely flat footed, and then scored over a challenge by Kevin Love that was half-a!$ed who exhibited poor defensive fundamentals. Andrew Wiggins would have sent that weak shot into the third row. Just sayin’.

Carmelo Anthony played about half his game outside of the triangle offense and scored some isolation baskets, but also in the flow of triangle sets. He played very well. He notched 25 points and six assists on 64% True Shooting. Anthony sealed the game when he canned this absolutely filthy step back jumper from the left baseline over LeBron with 25 seconds remaining to push the lead to seven.

Carmelo is going to score his points. He’s not one of the best scorers in the league for nothing. But allowing the likes of Jason Smith to score 12 points on 5-6 shooting in 18 minutes is not winning basketball. If you want to watch Kevin Love consistently fail to even try to close out on Smith, you can watch the video here (Yes, Love was defending on every single field goal).

Humungotron Love!

Kevin Love was the Cavs best offensive player, scoring 19 points on 60% true shooting. He scored on cuts, three pointers, post ups, and he also added 14 rebounds. But when you get 11 defensive rebounds because you refuse to challenge shooters, I’m going to raise my eyebrow when I read your box score.

Kevin was also a part of the cabal that absolutely ignored Anderson Vareao in the post. Andy was 4-5 from the floor including going 2-2 on his now-perfected, absolutely unblockable, jump hook. More than once Andy had the undersized Quincy Acy one-on-one in the post, and the Cavs pretended like he wasn’t there. There was a narrative throughout the game about the Cavs “big three.” One of the reports from the announcers about their pre-game conversations with Blatt revealed that Blatt planned to have one of the Cavs “Big Three” (Love, Irving, and LeBron) on the floor at every point during the game. There seemed to be a very concerted effort to get these guys their shots instead of just passing the ball to the player that was open or in a good position to score. This was dumb. Where was the Delly/Waiters chemistry that worked so well in the early third quarter last year?

Dion Waiters was OK. He didn’t force anything, but he he wasn’t able to attack in transition as he has gotten so adept at, because mostly, there were four Knicks back on defense every time. Waiters finished with 10 points on nine shots, but was deferring a lot.

Matthew Dellavedova came in during the late third and his energy was needed. He got beat by J.R. Smith a couple times (as did everyone), but had some good defensive effort, especially on a post entry denial when he was matched up on ‘Melo in the fourth. Delly went 2-2 from three (a good sign), added three dimes, no turnovers, and was a team high +6 for the game. He was the Cavs best bench player. David Blatt went with a surprisingly short rotation of only 8 players with TT and Marion getting the only other significant minutes. The Cavs bench was out-scored 41-12 by the Knicks bench.

David Blatt’s rotations were baffling. He played LeBron 44 minutes and Irving 43: too many. The Cavs went three guard in their crunch time lineup with Delly and Love at center in an attempt to increase the tempo. But the lineup lacked the defensive chops to stop the Knicks from scoring. A little offense/defense substitution there would have been helpful, and Varejao’s absence was glaring on defense. Blatt also put LeBron at the two in the second quarter. That lineup failed to put LeBron into the post as consistently as it should have and mostly looked clunky.

Not that this game was all bad. The Cavs ball movement, especially early, was crisp. Kyrie Irving scored 22 and added seven assists. He scored from everywhere: in transition, off the ball, and off the dribble. But his 1-6 three point shooting hurt, and he forced more than a couple threes. Irving also, as one reader put it, “channeled his inner Curly Neal” on defense: sticking to screens and closing out on the wrong side of players, which allowed dribble penetration.

Shawn Marion looked done. He got smoked on defense, and was 0-2 from the floor as he attempted two shots that never had a chance to go in. Can we officially retire the “36 year old defensive stopper” meme?

Aside from a nice finish on an oop from Kyrie to close the first half and a pass from Delly to close the third quarter,  Tristan Thompson had a mostly unnoticeable two more points two rebounds in the other 20 minutes.

But this game mostly came down to LeBron. This was one of the worst games I’ve seen him have in some time. He was nervous and the hooplah of the past few days probably got to him. LeBron isn’t going to play this poorly very often. Most of his turnovers turnovers were the result of him not being on the same page with the his teammates. It was hard to tell if they were his teammates’ faults or his. It probably doesn’t matter. It’s just a guess, but I think James will bounce back.

In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. I think we all forgot that lesson for a minute. But we had our party. Hopefully, this feel good hippy-dippy happy crappy that seems to make all you millennials weep is over. Now that we’ve had our Kumbaya fest, our inspirational shoe commercials, and our paint advertisement posters, the Cavs can get down to the business of basketball. The party was fun, but after a three months, the sheen of the narratives have started to wear around the corners. It’s time to get to work. Take me to church. (OK, that commercial still gets me. I’m not made of stone.)