No team in basketball has assisted on fewer made field goals than the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James‘ team managed just six helpers in its last-second loss to the Utah Jazz last night, pushing Cleveland’s assist rate to a league-low 47.8 percent. And while contributions to the Cavs’ stagnant offense is sweeping, James believes Kyrie Irving is the biggest culprit.
Considering that the 2014 All-Star Game MVP became the first point guard since Steve Francis in 2002 to score at least 34 points and record no assists in a single game on Wednesday, there’s certainly merit to LeBron’s assessment. The question now is if Irving is willing or equipped to adjust – he certainly wasn’t against Utah despite James imploring him to do so just one night prior.
According to a report by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, LeBron and Kyrie had a heated, “healthy” locker room discussion after Cleveland lost to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday.
LeBron James and Kyrie Irving exchanged words in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ locker room following the team’s 19-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night, and it led to Irving leaving quickly without speaking to the media, multiple sources told ESPN.com.
The discussion was seen as healthy, sources said, with the veteran James voicing concerns about the direction of the Cavs’ offense. James scored just 11 points against the Blazers and did not score in the second half, and he was often not a part of the offense. Cleveland is off to a 1-3 start following a last-second loss to the Utah Jazz on Wednesday night…
James addressed Irving to discuss the way he’d been dominating the ball in the early going of the season. Irving is averaging just 3.8 assists thus far.
James said yesterday before playing the Jazz that he’d allow the Cavs’ young players to grow out of bad habits by taking a backseat offensively. While the viability of that leadership style is debatable, LeBron’s discussion with Irving and play against Utah certainly aren’t examples of its implementation.
James was far more aggressive on Wednesday than he was the night before, taking 18 shots, getting 12 free throw attempts, and scoring 31 points – including six in the game’s last 15 seconds. But it wasn’t enough for Cleveland, who once trailed by 16 points early in the second half before Irving and LeBron led a slow-burning fourth quarter charge.
Before the Cavs’ struggles turned from simmer to boil, James said earlier this week that he wouldn’t allow his teammates to be selfish. That’s a strong sentiment, and one that surely reverberated throughout the Cleveland locker room. But there’s only so much even a bellwether like LeBron can do to immediately curb long-held basketball tendencies.
Irving has never played with a teammate like James or Kevin Love. The 21 year-old has only known hoops roles of primary scorer and playmaker. As LeBron and David Blatt have said since The King announced his return to Northeast Ohio, it takes time for star players to grow comfortable playing with other stars. James knows it first-hand from his time with the Miami Heat; Irving and Love are getting their taste of that adjustment on the fly.
The Cavaliers are hardly humming offensively right now, and stories like this, recent words of Dion Waiters, and even a simple eye-test make it seem they’re far from reaching harmony on that end. But it will come in time. Cleveland is simply too talented and LeBron’s basketball id too team-first for any other outcome. It will help once Blatt’s squad is capable of running anything more than basic high ball-screens in halfcourt situations, too.
What has been a bigger problem so far and surely will be as the season wears on is the Cavs’ defensive play. They’re third-worst in defensive efficiency at the moment, falling victim to lazy perimeter defending that leads to chances at the rim against non shot-blockers Love, Anderson Varejao, and Tristan Thompson. Ballhandlers get whatever and wherever they want against Cleveland, and LeBron’s performance on that end thus far has been just as dispiriting as any of his teammates’.
But that’s a worry for another day. The Cavs will need to win with offense at first, and haven’t been good enough to get it done in the season’s early going. Will a more pass-happy Irving yield better results? Certainly. But he’s far from the only problem here.
To see another one, James need only look in the mirror. He’s normally good enough to offset team-wide struggles. While that’s asking too much of any player, LeBron has made doing so easy with his historically dominant play over the past few years. Once he regains that form, it will be time to mold Irving and the rest. But until then, The King should worry about himself first and foremost.
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