Cleveland Cavaliers Inching Closer to LeBron James' Expectations
In the wake of back-to-back losses to divisional opponents, the Cleveland Cavaliers made it clear that they'd come correct against the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday night.
"I'm not sitting up here saying it's Armageddon or anything like that," James said prior to his team's latest appearance on TNT (via ESPN's Dave McMenamin). "But we need to play better ball. Until we own that, we won't get better."
What would that kind of ball look like? Beyond bringing more attitude and toughness to the court, what specifically could the Cavs do to up their game and, in the process, please their overlord?
James didn't leave the answer up to anyone else's imagination. Via ESPN:
"I think it's trying to play as consistent a 48 minutes as possible, play our game. That's defending at a high level and that's not turning the ball over. When we don't turn the ball over, we share the ball offensively, we got the ball popping, and we defend at a high level, we're a pretty good team. When we're not, we're not good at all.
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Cleveland didn't quite match James' expectations tit-for-tat in its 115-100 win over Milwaukee, but the reigning Eastern Conference champion took some encouraging strides toward re-becoming the greatness it never wasn't.
For one, the Cavs weren't perfectly consistent from beginning to end, but they came close. Aside from the third quarter, in which Milwaukee scored 31 points on 12-of-18 shooting (6-of-6 from the free-throw line), the home team won the three other periods by at least five points apiece.
Even without that hot third frame, the Bucks still managed to shoot 47.3 percent from the floor against a Cavs defense that, in terms of field-goal percentage, was far stingier during their recent losses in Milwaukee and Detroit.
Not that Cleveland wasn't challenging its guests on that end. According to NBA.com, 69.9 percent (51-of-73) of the Bucks' shots were contested, though 49 percent of those still went through.
The effort was there for the Cavs, but about as often as not, it didn't stop the young Bucks from getting buckets.
It didn't help that Timofey Mozgov, already hobbled by a healing knee, left the game with a right shoulder injury late in the second quarter. The Bucks pounded and pirouetted their way to 52 points in the paint, 30 of which came after Mozgov's untimely exit.
So Cleveland's defense remains a work in progress, but what about James' other key indexes?
The ball security? Not great, Bob. Amid Milwaukee's thicket of long arms and active hands, the Cavs coughed it up 17 times on their 86 possessions—19.8 percent of their trips down the floor. For comparison, the Philadelphia 76ers rank dead-last in the league in turnover rate, at 19.1 percent.
On the whole, though, Cleveland moved the ball well. The Cavs completed a whopping 370 passes—far more than their season average of 306.7 and better than what the league-leading San Antonio Spurs (360 passes per game) typically turn out.
Matthew Dellavedova, starting in place of the injured Mo Williams, was the happiest passer of all, dishing the ball 105 times on the way to a career-high 13 assists. As a team, the Cavs came up with 29 assists (32 if you count passes that resulted in free throws) on their 40 baskets.
That hot-potato passing paved the way for plenty of pretty shot-popping on Cleveland's part. The Cavs hit a season-high 56.3 percent of their attempts, bolstered by a blazing-hot (and season-high-tying) 11-of-24 showing from beyond the arc.
J.R. Smith (18 points, 4-of-8 from three) and Kevin Love (22 points, 3-of-5 from three) got Cleveland going early.
James, the game's most prolific fourth-quarter scorer, kept them going late, but not with his own points. He dispensed 19 passes before taking his first shot of the final frame, though he piled up a team-high 27 points all the same.
All things considered, it's hard for James and company to argue with the results. They led by as many as 21 points against a Bucks squad that clipped them in overtime less than a week prior. The final 15-point margin was the second-widest of the early season for Cleveland, behind only a 30-point pounding of the Memphis Grizzlies.
And the Cavaliers did all that with their starting backcourt, Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert, still on the mend; Irving's stand-in stuck in street clothes and their first-string center trapped in the training room for the entire second half.
James spoke to the those issues before the game (via ESPN):
"It's still been challenging because I look around the league, we're the only team that hasn't kind of had our whole team just yet. Trying to see how many guys have been out all year, I'm not quite sure. We haven't had our All-Star point guard or our 2-guard to start the season, so it's been challenging, but at the same time, it shouldn't take away from the guys that's in uniform. We need to come out and play with a little bit more sense of urgency.
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That much, the Cavaliers accomplished. They also proved that, warts and absences and all, they can still ball better than what Charles Barkley thinks will be the best of the rest in the East.
James demands greatness from these Cavs, regardless of who's available, because they're capable of that. Less than six months ago, he dragged a similarly ragtag team to within two wins of the franchise's first title.
The team's wounded will be back to more than walking at some point. And when they are, James wants the rest of the machinery to be up and running at full capacity.
The challenge, in the meantime, will be improving day by day, building good habits and preparing themselves for the bigger picture by turning the end of their bench into real depth. Cleveland will host the Atlanta Hawks, its Eastern Conference Finals foe, on Saturday and the upstart Orlando Magic on Monday before taking off for Toronto and Charlotte.
Irving and Shumpert won't be available. Mozgov and Williams might not be.
But these Cavaliers, shorthanded and all, will still have opportunities to strengthen their shaky foundation and, in the process, put a smile on James' face.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
