While the Golden State Warriors are over on the West Coast balling out at a legendary rate, their 2015 NBA Finals opponents (and fellow top conference seed) the Cleveland Cavaliers have had a brutal season. Even though their record stands at a very good 44-18, they’ve been perennially unsatisfied and often miserable. Their discontent has at times spilled into social media, but after an upsetting loss to a severely shorthanded Memphis Grizzlies team, they didn’t cloak their dissatisfaction in pseudo-philosophical tweets.
The Grizzlies were without Mike Conley, Marc Gasol, Matt Barnes and Zach Randolph, and the Cavaliers were as healthy as they’ll ever be, but the Grit ‘n Grind boys played with an intensity that the Cavs sorely lacked. LeBron James put it in no uncertain terms:
“I can sit up here and say that we’re a team that’s ready to start the playoffs tomorrow, but we’re not. We’re still learning. We still have things that happen on the court that just, that shouldn’t happen.”
The Cavs committed 25 turnovers on the night, a number more commensurate with the Philadelphia 76ers than a team with title aspirations. Time and time again this season, when the Cavs have looked like they might finally come together, they lay eggs like this. Of course, the Warriors got blown out by the Lakers, but the difference is that the Dubs have the team personality to brush it off and move forward, whereas every Cavs disappointment is a referendum on what’s wrong with the team — and a lot of that is internal, not just media pressure.
Indeed, Kevin Love’s postgame comments sound like they could have come from a crotchety local columnist:
“We just could have done a better job of respecting the game. A team like that, they were going to come out and swing for the fences, and they did. That was a real bad loss for us. … Turnovers were terrible. That was what I mean, respecting the game.”
It’s hard to say exactly where this sort of attitude started, but one thing’s for sure: Nobody in the NBA is as publicly critical of himself and his teammates as LeBron James. He’s so used to shouldering the weight of the world’s pressure that he now sees it as a matter of course.
The Cavs are inching closer to a traditional Greek tragedy now. This could have been a season with less pressure than LeBron’s seen since his early days in Cleveland, before Miami. The Warriors have dominated the national conversation, leaving everyone in their shadow. The Cavs are still easily the top seed in the Eastern Conference, and if the playoffs shake out the same way, they’ll still have the opportunity to win one difficult seven-game series to take the NBA title.
Many teams would fly the “Nobody believes in us!” banner at this opportunity, but LeBron seems to see the title as a zero-sum game in a year when people would be the most willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, if they lose to the Warriors, they will simply have been beaten by possibly the greatest NBA team of all time. Instead, LeBron and the Cavs are still living as if all eyes are on them, and they’re torturing themselves over it.
(Via ESPN)
