Cleveland Cavaliers: Cavs far from gold rush vs Denver Nuggets

The Cleveland Cavaliers came out strong but it wasn’t enough as the Denver Nuggets came away with a 110-91 win.

The Cleveland Cavaliers jumped out to a 12-point lead in the first quarter (which was a welcome surprise), thanks to good defense and being able to score in transition. Those two areas have provided spotty production, at best, this season on a broad scale. The Denver Nuggets were held to just 15 points in the first quarter. The Nuggets quickly turned it around, though, as they scored 35 and 33 points in the second and third quarters as Denver ran away with this one in the end.

In postgame availability with the media, Tristan Thompson laid out just how much the Cavs need to do to be successful and sounded pretty discouraged, quite frankly.

The Cavs seemed to be giving very good effort in this one, which is a plus, but there were still far too many breakdowns and sloppy plays at both ends of the floor for the Wine and Golders against a really good opponent in Denver that doesn’t need any help to win games. The Nuggets reserves killed the Cavs, specifically Juan Hernangomez, who had 23 points, and Cleveland couldn’t recover.

As far as positives, Jordan Clarkson displayed what he could do again as a bench microwave, as he was the Cavs’ leading scorer with 17 points on seven-of-14 shooting. Cedi Osman added in 13 points and three rebounds, while Collin Sexton contributed 12 points and two rebounds.

The Nuggets are one of the best teams in the league and are in a complete other class than the Cavaliers. As was mentioned, Cleveland fought hard, but they aren’t skilled enough offensively to execute in the halfcourt consistently.

Here’s what we learned from the loss.