The Cleveland Cavaliers have been on the receiving end of some ugly blowout losses so far this season, and on Saturday night, the team was able to add another game to that unfortunate list. Cleveland played host to Houston in a nationally televised game, and by the time the clock hit zero, all of the questions about this Cavaliers squad reared their ugly head.
The Rockets, sans Eric Gordon or Trevor Ariza, walked out of Quicken Loans Arena with a 120-88 win. That is obviously terrible, and the numbers illustrated how bad things were for Cleveland. The team’s much-maligned defense got carved up, allowing the Rockets to hit 47.3 percent of their attempts from the field and 19 of their 51 three-pointers.
James Harden didn’t have his best night (16 points on 5-for-16 shooting in 31 minutes), but Chris Paul and Ryan Anderson got the job done, going for 22 and 21 points respectively. Even more stunning was how good the Rockets were with those two on the floor: Paul ended the night with a +/- of +47, while Anderson was +39. While the story from this game is that Cleveland laid an egg, Houston deserves credit for throttling the three-time defending Eastern Conference champs.
Throughout the Cavaliers’ issues, though, they’ve at least been able to say they have the offensive firepower to stay in games. That did not happen on Saturday, as nothing worked for Cleveland on that end of the floor, either. Isaiah Thomas and J.R. Smith were the leading scorers with 12 points. LeBron James was right behind them with 11, while Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade had 10. The team went 34-for-87 (39.1 percent) from the field and 8-for-30 (26.7 percent) from three. It was ugly.
The worst part, though, was that Cleveland just looked like a team that had tapped out. Here’s what Tyronn Lue had to say at halftime, when the Cavs were trailing, 65-39.
Report from@saltersl – this is how Ty Lue described his Cavs team to her as they walked back to the court after halftime: “Soft, weak, no physicality, no toughness, no grit.”
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) February 4, 2018
Things were so bad that Mike Breen of ESPN cracked a joke about how much the fans booed over the course of the game.
Again, all credit in the world to the Rockets, as they realized they were playing a nationally televised game and took it as a chance to send a message. They are clearly one of the best teams in the NBA and should be considered a legitimate threat to knock off Golden State in the Western Conference en route to a potential title. They were also really feeling themselves, as they had Paul doing cool stuff like this towards the end of the game.
But for good reason, the attention from this game is going to be paid on Cleveland looking like a disinterested basketball team that wasn’t ready to take a punch. Unless you’re one of the people who believes this is just the Cavs going through their normal midseason struggles, it’s not a hot take to say something needs to change with this team if they want to be considered a legitimate title contender.
