For the Cavaliers, the first quarter has been an issue in the last two games. Against the Knicks on Tuesday night, Cleveland trailed by 14 after one and could not recover, and on Thursday afternoon against the Pacers, the Cavaliers trailed by 11 after one. It was an uphill battle the rest of the way, as Indiana(4-1) defeated Cleveland(3-2) 118-99 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
Domantas Sabonis led the way for Indiana with a team-high 25 points and 11 rebounds.
This was Cleveland’s first game of a six-game road trip, which continues on Saturday in Atlanta against the Hawks. In their three wins, Cleveland had the lead or was tied after the first quarter. However, in their two losses, they have trailed by double digits after the opening stanza. Cleveland has been outscored by 25 points in the past two games in the first quarter.
“In these last two games, we’ve allowed the first quarters to impact us throughout the game,” Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said after the game. “Again, you go back and look at it. We had open shots; we had shots that we didn’t take, and we had bunnies at the rim that we didn’t finish. That carried over into other things.”
Collin Sexton, who had a game-high 28 points against Indiana, felt the team was not playing together in that first quarter.
“First quarter, I felt like the offense got stagnant. We wasn’t going by our principles, and that’s sharing the ball and feeding the post… We wasn’t playing together. That’s first and foremost. We wasn’t playing together. You can tell. Everybody was like, ‘swing, swing.’. Passing up open shots. We need guys to shoot those open shots every time.”
Darius Garland, who poured in 22 points, including 5-7 from three-point range, believes the team has to come out with more energy.
“We just have to start the game with more energy, set the tone,” he said. “We were on our heels a lot at the end of the first half of the game… We just got to start the game better. That’s all.”
After the game, Bickerstaff kept the team in the locker room a little longer than usual, and he explained why.
“Things are easy when things are good. Things become a little more difficult when things are hard, and our response to that is important,” he said. “We just wanted to have a discussion about that, about the grit we need to play with all the time, about the confidence we need to play with all the time, and believing in what we are doing and believing in ourselves through the good times and bad times.”
Cleveland has a young basketball team, and unfortunately, what comes with that is inconsistency. The Cavaliers have to get back to what made them successful, sharing the ball, creating turnovers, and making open shots. We’ll see if that back to that against the Hawks on Saturday.
Notes:
Andre Drummond recorded his fifth straight double-double with 11 points and 13 rebounds.
Leave a Reply