The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the deep end. They lost to the Charlotte Hornets 119-111 tonight. Let\u2019s see who won and lost this game.<\/p>\n
LOSER \u2013 Cohesion<\/p>\n
The Cavs are a disconnected team right now. They aren\u2019t on the same page for more than two minutes at a time. It\u2019s hard to win games comfortably when there are that many gaps in your armor.<\/p>\n
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Take the defensive end, where the Cavs are one blow-by away from losing all of their defensive integrity. Forcing this team into motion is all it takes to generate a clean look, as they rarely execute their rotations as precisely as they should. Blame it on personnel or communication. Either way, it\u2019s bad.<\/p>\n
Then on offense, the ball just doesn\u2019t move the same. This team doesn\u2019t play with any harmony. They don\u2019t play off each other like they did last season. It\u2019s stagnant, slow, and doesn\u2019t wield the instant \u2018Cavalanche\u2019 potential they previously had.<\/p>\n
All of this, in part, stems from a lack of cohesion. There are plenty of other problems to address \u2014 but the underlying factor is this team isn\u2019t playing like a team.<\/p>\n
WINNER \u2013 Darius Garland\u2019s Second Half<\/p>\n
Alright, let\u2019s get the hopium out of the way.<\/p>\n
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Garland is still clearly injured. There\u2019s no hiding that, as he routinely limps up the floor and winces at every change of direction. But tonight was by far the most effective scoring game he\u2019s had all season. And for various stretches, Garland showed he can work through the discomfort to be an effective finisher.<\/p>\n
The Cavs nearly won this game behind Garland\u2019s advantage creation in the fourth quarter. He used his burst to penetrate Charlotte\u2019s defense and nail floaters or dish to open teammates. Garland finished with a season-high 26 points and 9 assists.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still concerned about Garland\u2019s mobility. But it was encouraging to see him deliver an impactful game despite his injury.<\/p>\n
LOSER \u2013 De\u2019Andre Hunter (again)<\/p>\n
I take no pleasure in listing De\u2019Andre Hunter in the \u2018loser\u2019 category once again. But he\u2019s left us no choice.<\/p>\n
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Hunter shot 1-7 tonight and was even worse defensively. He\u2019s been perpetually lost on both ends of the floor for weeks at this point. This is shaping up to be one of the more disappointing months from a key Cavalier in my lifetime.<\/p>\n
WINNERS \u2013 Dean Wade, Jaylon Tyson and Lonzo Ball<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s close on some positives.<\/p>\n
Wade has really turned his season around. After a brutal opening month, Wade has since found his touch and is making an impact as a cutter. He scored a handful of backdoor layups tonight and shot 3-6 from downtown. Just as important, he grabbed 8 rebounds, including some heavily contested boards against the crowd. Good job, Dean.<\/p>\n
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Ball was helpful, as well. He isn\u2019t shooting particularly well, but he\u2019s reigned in some of his volume. That\u2019s allowed the finer aspects of his game to shine. Ball was disruptive all night and nearly won the game for Cleveland when his 5th steal of the night led to a go-ahead layup from Tyson.<\/p>\n
Speaking of Tyson, this kid keeps getting better. This was his third double-double of the season as Tyson poured in 16 points and 13 rebounds. You can complain about a lot of things this season. But Tyson isn\u2019t one of them. He keeps getting the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cleveland Cavaliers are in the deep end. They lost to the Charlotte Hornets 119-111 tonight. Let\u2019s see…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11949,8174,27494,27496,133524,19803,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-349115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-charlotte-hornets","9":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","10":"tag-darius-garland","11":"tag-dean-wade","12":"tag-jaylon-tyson","13":"tag-lonzo-ball","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}