Cavs: One stud and one dud from loss against Suns on Saturday

Cavs dud: Turnovers

The Cavaliers have had games this year that you can point to them being sloppy and not taking care of the ball as much as they should. First and foremost the Suns deserve a ton of credit with the way they played defense mid-second quarter and mostly the rest of the game. The Cavs have to do a much better job of taking care of the ball though. This game changed when the Cavs started turning the ball over, and it for the most part fueled the Suns run.

It was mainly self-inflicted wounds from the Cavs young backcourt in Darius Garland and Collin Sexton, as they had 12 of Cleveland’s 19 turnovers, but the Cavs bench isn’t without blame committing seven turnovers themselves.

You can probably put some of it on the Cavs at times in this game looking tired and every bit of a team that was playing three games in four nights, however, again Cleveland’s sloppiness with turnovers has been a problem in other games this season as well. 19 turnovers is just too much to overcome against a team like the Suns who went all the way to the NBA Finals last year.

The Cavs are still a really young team and are still learning how to win. There will be times this year where the Cavaliers still show some growing pains as they hope to take a step in their rebuild. I’m sure the team’s issue with turnovers is something Bickerstaff will emphasize to the Cavs during their next practice, in any case.

Early on in the season the Cavaliers have been very competitive against some of the teams that figure to be elite, but if they want to win more of these games they have to do a better job of cleaning some of this up and taking better care of the ball.

Up next the Cavs finish their road trip against the Charlotte Hornets on Monday.