The Cleveland Cavaliers have a ton of problems that have been on display this season. Few, if any, have been more prominent than the team’s struggles to do anything on the defensive end of the floor. This has been a problem in Cleveland for a while now, but this year, the team has looked especially slow and disinterested defensively.
For Isaiah Thomas, who has lamented about the team’s defensive struggles already this season, it all comes down to a lack of trust and hard work. While Thomas isn’t exactly considered to be a stout defender, he still sees the issues that the team has, and believes they’re the kind of things that anyone can do, regardless of how good they are on that end of the floor.
After Cleveland got blown out by Houston on Saturday night, knocking the team to 0-8 in nationally televised games this season, Thomas went off on the Cavs’ defensive effort.
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“Trust is from being out there in the battle together and knowing ‘Ok, if I get beat, the next guy got me,’” Thomas said. “And then the next guy’s helping up, somebody else got him on the back side. We don’t have that at all on that end of the floor. It is an effort thing. Teams are out-hustling us, and that can fall into the toughness category as well.”
No one will claim that Thomas is a good defender, and the numbers this year show that he’s actually been one of the worst ever as he’s worked to get back into game shape.
Isaiah Thomas currently has a defensive rating of 117.5 with the Cavs.
Not only is that the worst by any player (min 25 MPG) this season, it's in fact the worst by any player in the last 25 years. pic.twitter.com/z6GnkaxhGG
— StatMuse (@statmuse) January 31, 2018
Despite this, Thomas has always been someone who at least tries hard on the defensive end of the floor and goes for things like steals and loose balls that are on the floor. He understands manning someone up isn’t his strength, so he tries to compensate for it by making hustle plays, which doesn’t always work but has helped get him this far in his career.
This year, those hustle plays are gone from everyone on the Cavs’ roster. This includes Thomas, who has been so bad since returning to the floor that ESPN’s Brian Windhorst straight up said he thinks it’d be for the best if the former All-Stat was in the G League right now.
Just about every number backs up that Cleveland’s defense is a mess this year. It can be blamed on a lack of trust, a lack of hard work, or the fact that this is the oldest team in the league, but the real answer is that it’s probably some combination of the three.
