Friday, March 31, 2017
The Cleveland Cavaliers remind me of the guy who had a paper due in two months and wasn’t the least bit worried about it.
Then eight weeks became four and the glass was still half full. A month? Plenty of time to get this done.
Then four weeks became two, but the rationalizing continued. There’s still time. No worries.
Then two weeks became one and all of a sudden it was time to panic.
Some people do their best work under pressure. But when it’s over, they’re often left wondering how good the work could have been if they’d been grinding at it all along instead of waiting until the last minute.
If that sounds just a little autobiographical, there is a good reason for that.
But enough about me. This is about the defending NBA champs.
If the Cavaliers don’t wake up soon — like right now — and decide they want to try to win another NBA title, it might just be too late for them.
I know. The Cavaliers have LeBron James, still arguably the best player in the NBA on any given night, and Kyrie Irving, who can be the league’s best point guard at times. They also have Kevin Love, who was having the best season he has had with Cleveland before his injury.
But even with a Big Three that is the envy of almost every other NBA team, the Cavaliers seem out of sorts.
LeBron still gets his numbers. Irving still scores at least 20 points every night. Love is still bankable for a double-double.
But they aren’t getting winning performances consistently from role players like J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert and Kyle Korver, among others.
The chemistry that was so good last season hasn’t been there, especially recently. There have been injuries and a demanding schedule, but not everything can be blamed on those factors.
Last year’s Cavs had intangibles that helped them become greater than the sum of their parts when necessary.
That moment came when they were down 3-1 to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. The Cavaliers started winning and didn’t stop until they had shocked the Warriors and the world by winning it all.
Have you seen that sort of moxie in this Cavaliers team? I haven’t really seen it since that Christmas Day comeback against Golden State. Since then, they’ve been hot and cold, and now they’re just cold.
The Cavaliers are 6-10 in March. They’ve lost three in a row and four of five and it’s their second such stretch like that this month.
When Love and Smith went down earlier this season, the hope was that both would return before the playoffs and the Cavs would just flip the switch and start playing well.
Both are back, but the Cavs do not appear to be playing with a sense of urgency, especially on defense.
James and Irving say it’s a bad or ugly stretch they have to fight through. They’re in a funk, but they’ll work it out.
It’s time to start fighting. If the Cavaliers don’t get started on this project soon, they might just flunk — or funk — out of the playoffs a lot sooner than we thought.
Write Vindicator Sports Editor Ed Puskas at epuskas@vindy.com and follow him on Twitter, @EdPuskas_Vindy.