The Cleveland Cavaliers first game with Tyronn Lue at the helm didn’t go as planned, as the Cavs suffered an ugly 96-83 loss.
The Cavaliers ended an absolutely crazy week with an uninspiring performance against the Bulls. Tyronn Lue’s first game as head coach didn’t go exactly as planned. The Cavs had an awful shooting night and appeared to be in disarray after firing a coach who was only two wins away from an NBA title last season.
Here’s what we learned from the 96-83 loss to Chicago.
The Cavaliers need to spend some extra time shooting free throws.
It’s almost impossible to win an NBA game when you shoot 41% from the free throw line. The Cavs aren’t a good free throw shooting team, but you certainly expect more than that from them. Hopefully this isn’t something that plagues them going forward.
The Cavaliers apparently aren’t in shape.
It isn’t typical to blame a loss on not being in game shape in the end of January, but that’s one of the excuses that Lue gave for the Cavs’ poor performance. While it is hard to believe that NBA players halfway through the season aren’t in shape to run an up-tempo offense, it is interesting that Lue made that comment after the loss.
It appears that Lue wants the Cavaliers to push to tempo more than his predecessor did. That would explain why Lue expanded the rotation to ten players and only played Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving for around 15 minutes in the first half.
There wasn’t much to like about this game, but one of the few silver-linings was the increased tempo. One of the best ways to get everyone involved is by getting buckets in transition. It was refreshing to see Love beat his defender down the floor and score an easy lay-up.
While upping the tempo of the offense sounds nice, it may not work as well as Lue expects. LeBron James’s teams typically prefer to play in the half-court. But we’ll just wait and see how this plays out.
Getting Love the ball on the elbow appears to be a priority for Lue.
Not being able to utilize Love on offense is certainly one of the reasons Blatt was fired. Lue made an effort to get Love the ball on the elbow repeatedly and it worked out well. Love had an efficient offensive game finishing with 14 points on 50% shooting from the field.
The Cavaliers continue to struggle with the high screen.
Pau Gasol exposed the Cavs’ weakness on defense time and time again. He was able to use the pick and pop to get wide open mid-range shot whenever he wanted.
Being able to defend the high screen has been a problem for the Cavaliers the entire season and it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Next Saturday’s game against San Antonio could get ugly fast if Cleveland doesn’t find some sort of solution in the meantime.
Lue appears to be struggling with setting rotations.
Lue made more than questionable substitutions including having James Jones be the first man off the bench.
The Cavs’ offense came out looking good, but it sputtered in the final seven minutes of the first quarter when he decided to sit Love, James, and Irving at the same time. The offense looked out of sync without any of the big three on the floor. The lack of offense allowed Chicago to take the lead and the Cavaliers never recovered.
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More alarming than that was the lack of use of some of the Cavaliers’ most effective lineups. Cleveland’s highest offensive rated four man rotation (Love, Thompson, Irving, and James) was only on the floor together for five minutes. Lue also only played the Cavaliers’ best defensive rated four man rotation (Love, Thompson, Delly, and James) together for only two minutes.
It’s generally in the best interest of the team to play the best players on the floor at the same time. We’ll see how Lue handles the rotation as the season progresses.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Lue will be expected to build it in 41 games. We’ll see how the Cavs respond to an uninspiring loss when they host the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday night.
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