Cavaliers drubbed by Wizards 97-85
BY STONE LEXINGTON
CAVALIERS BEAT WRITER
Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt walked in to his pregame press conference Tuesday evening clothed in his customary blue jeans, a cornflower long sleeve blue shirt and black tennis shoes. His demeanor throughout the endeavor didn’t reflect that of a person that had been named Eastern Conference Coach of the Month earlier in the day.
“It says that I owe a lot of credit to my staff and to the great players that I coach, but the award itself doesn’t really have a great deal of significance beyond that for me,” Blatt said. “It’s a nice thing though that I can sit here and say that I got a tremendous staff to work with — and I certainly work with some of the best players in the NBA — and the fact that our team had a pretty good month, considering particularly the situation they we were in. That’s my takeaway from it.”
Blatt’s Eastern Conference coaching honor is for games played in October and November, during which Cleveland went 13-4 despite missing its starting backcourt in every game. Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert continue to recover from injuries, however both practiced for the first time with the team on Monday as each of them get closer to returning to the court.
The Cavs could have used Irving and Shumpert Tuesday night as the Washington Wizards topped Blatt and the Cavaliers with a 97-85 drubbing in Quicken Loans Arena. The loss was the Cavs’ first at home this season following a 9-0 start.
“No question that the better team tonight won,” Blatt said. “I think we didn’t accomplish our main objectives in that game in terms of stopping them. Offensively, I thought that we suffered from the facts that we didn’t create much pace from our defense — And then we just simply didn’t move the ball well and play the kind of basketball that we had to play in order to get good looks.”
The contest wasn’t as close as the final score indicated. Cleveland trailed by more than 20 points in the third quarter, watching the Wizards blow by defenders for layup after layup. When Wizards forward Jared Dudley sank a three-pointer, followed by a layup with 5:46 remaining in the third period, Washington secured a 69-47 lead, its largest of the game. Cleveland cut the deficit to 80-67 when the third quarter ended, but Washington never let Cleveland come within 10 points after that point.
“I saw our guys practice yesterday and I saw them this morning in our morning shootaround, and I didn’t feel like they weren’t ready to play,” Blatt said. “I just feel like we didn’t get back on defense and we didn’t take care of the ball.”
LeBron James led Cleveland with 24 points, a season-high 13 rebounds and four assists. However, James was one turnover (9) shy of a triple-double. Matthew Dellavedova finished with 15 points.
“Obviously, it starts with me committing more than half of our team’s turnovers,” James said. “I can’t do that. We can’t do that, but I have to be better with the ball.”
The Cavs were never in the game from the start. Washington raced out to a 10-0 lead, forcing Blatt to call a timeout less than three minutes into the game. Cleveland used several runs to cut the deficit in the first half, but the Cavs never led in the game.
If there were any bright spots for the Cavaliers, Mo Williams passed 4,000 field goals for his career with his first bucket. Williams totaled 12 points, three rebounds and three assists in 28 minutes against Washington. Tristan Thompson finished with five points and grabbed 11 rebounds, the seventh straight contest he’s pulled down double-digit boards. Finding silver linings in the Cavs’ performance against Washington is a challenge.
Wizards point guard John Wall led Washington with a season-high 35 points, four rebounds and 10 assists. Bradley Beal added 18 points, nine rebounds and six assists, while Marcin Gortat chipped-in 15 points and 11 rebounds against Cleveland. The Wizards simply out-hustled the Cavs the entire evening, while it seemed like the Cavs caught whatever bug the Cleveland Browns had following their debacle the night before.
“They beat us from the beginning to the end,” James said. “With the 10-0 run in the first quarter to the 7-0 run in the third quarter, they beat us at every facet of the game right from the beginning.”
Blatt, who is in his second year as an NBA head coach, has probably been asked about his coaching progression more times than he cares for. He wasn’t particularly delighted when the subject was broached again Tuesday.
“We’re really sort of in the middle of it now, and I’m not so interested in talking about myself,” Blatt said. “I’m really happy that I get to work with the guys I get to work with every day. I’m always looking for ways to improve myself in order to help the team improve and looking for ways to work best with the group of guys that we have.
“We’re all in this together and certainly, every day I grow as an NBA coach because my eyes are wide open and my ears are wide open.”
While Blatt earned Eastern Conference coaching honors, Golden State Warriors interim head coach Luke Walton was named Western Conference of the Month Tuesday.
“For what it’s worth, I think Luke has done a fabulous job,” Blatt said. “Not only in terms of what they’ve done with their winning streak, but to step in to replace Steve for this significant amount of time when Steve himself did such a fabulous job last year and was a championship coach — That’s not an easy thing to do. That’s no small pressure to walk into that situation and have to maintain the level and the standard of what was being done.”
The Cavs don’t meet the Warriors until Christmas day in Oakland. Cleveland will hit the road for a matchup with the Pelicans in New Orleans this Friday.
POSTED 12/01/2015 22:35
Lake County Sentinel
