CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 The December storm raged on.<\/p>\n
The undermanned Cavs lost their third straight game and eighth in the last 11, falling at home to the Chicago Bulls, 136-125, on Friday night. <\/p>\n
Chicago, just 12-15 overall, has three wins since Nov. 23. Two of them have come against the free-falling Cavs in the last 48 hours. Cleveland is now 15-14 this season, eighth in the Eastern Conference. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis style of play has hurt us this year,\u201d Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. \u201cDefinitely something we\u2019ve got to look at. It\u2019s kind of the style of the East right now. A lot of the teams play this way. We didn\u2019t do a good job slowing them down tonight. Not good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
With just 10 players in uniform, the Cavs opened the game on a spirited 11-0 burst, as first-time starter Tyrese Proctor accounted for six of those points. <\/p>\n
That was one of the few highlights of an otherwise lousy evening. <\/p>\n
The Bulls pulled even by the 6:45 mark of the first quarter \u2014 and it remained that way going into the second quarter. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Chicago took control \u2014 a turnaround capped by a 15-5 end-of-quarter run that allowed it to build an 11-point halftime edge. <\/p>\n
As boos poured down around the four-minute mark of the third quarter, the Cavs finally claimed their first lead of the second half \u2014 part of an energetic 9-0 flurry in response to loud jeers from the irritated home crowd. <\/p>\n
That advantage lasted only 67 seconds. <\/p>\n
Despite erupting for 44 third-quarter points and outscoring the Bulls in the period (44-35), the Cavs went into the fourth trailing by two. <\/p>\n
They tied the game at the six-minute mark on Darius Garland\u2019s long-range triple. It was 115-all. But that\u2019s as close as they got. From there, Chicago outscored Cleveland 21-10 to finish the game, leading to more heckles as the Cavaliers dejectedly walked off the court. <\/p>\n
Again. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the fourth time in the last five games the Cavs have been booed by the Cleveland faithful. <\/p>\n
Donovan Mitchell and Craig Porter Jr. \u2014 both unavailable because of illness \u2014 couldn\u2019t even be in the arena. Evan Mobley (calf strain), Sam Merrill (sprained right hand), Larry Nance Jr. (calf strain) and Max Strus (foot surgery) were also unavailable. <\/p>\n
So undermanned, the Cavs booked a last-minute flight for two-way forward Luke Travers who was with the Cleveland Charge preparing for the G League Showcase in Orlando when he received the call. Travers took a Southwest Airlines direct that landed in Cleveland at 5:30 p.m. \u2014 about two hours before tipoff. He logged five minutes and scored four points. <\/p>\n
Garland tallied a season-high 35 points. Proctor added 16. Nae\u2019Qwan Tomlin chipped in with 16 off the bench while Jarrett Allen (14 points), De\u2019Andre Hunter (11) and Thomas Bryant (11) also reached double figures. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know we lost, we didn\u2019t go out how we wanted to, but I think throughout the whole game, the effort was there,\u201d Allen said. \u201cWe were making the adjustments. Even though we got down, we didn\u2019t let that get to us. We fought back and tried to get back into the game. That\u2019s what we need. I think that\u2019s going to be the turnaround for this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bulls used a balanced attack to overwhelm Cleveland\u2019s already flimsy defense. Nikola Vucevic and Matas Buzelis had 24 points apiece. Five others reached the double-digit mark, including Josh Giddey who had 17 points, seven assists and six rebounds. <\/p>\n
The Bulls shot 52% from the field and 38.3% from 3-point range. They dished out 34 assists, had 58 points in the paint and 20 fast-break points. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t stop them tonight,\u201d Atkinson said pointedly. \u201cI liked our camaraderie. I loved our spirit on the bench. The guys who weren\u2019t playing were supporting the guys. We didn\u2019t put our heads down. At the end of the day, you score 125 points and that should be enough. That was the deflating part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout Friday, with doubts from around the league intensifying, players were asked about weathering the storm and remaining positive in the face of adversity. Atkinson said pregame that more clouds were rolling in as a result of Mitchell and Porter being added to the injury report. <\/p>\n
It was a fitting metaphor. That\u2019s the state of the Cavs right now. <\/p>\n
Darkness. <\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The Cavs will have the weekend off before hosting Charlotte at Rocket Arena on Monday night. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2014 The December storm raged on. The undermanned Cavs lost their third straight game and eighth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[177741,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-359783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-dd1_7478","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359783","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=359783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}